1. Elizabeth May previously served as party leader from 2006 to 2019.
28 Facts About Elizabeth May
1. 2.
Elizabeth May attended St Francis Xavier University in rural Nova Scotia, graduated from Dalhousie University in Halifax with a law degree in 1983, and later studied theology at Saint Paul University in Ottawa for which she told the Anglican Journal in a 2013 interview that she had to withdraw from the program due to conflicting schedule demands.
3.
Elizabeth May resigned on principle from the position in 1988 over permits for construction of a dam granted without environmental assessments, which were later determined to be illegal by a federal court.
4.
Elizabeth May served as the executive director of the Sierra Club Canada from 1989 to 2006.
5.
Elizabeth May resigned as Green Party leader on November 4,2019, but remained as parliamentary leader in the house.
6.
Elizabeth May was a candidate in the 2022 Green Party of Canada leadership election, after the party had gone through a couple of difficult years since May's departure.
7.
In 2025, the party changed its leadership model to co-leadership, and Elizabeth May began serving alongside Pedneault in February.
8.
Elizabeth May has been an Officer of the Order of Canada since 2005, and has been named by the United Nations as one of the leading women environmentalists worldwide.
9.
On moving to the province, the May family purchased a landlocked schooner, the Marion Elizabeth which had been used as a gift shop and restaurant since the mid 1950s.
10.
Elizabeth May relinquished her US citizenship in 1978, when she became a Canadian citizen, in accordance with American nationality law at the time.
11.
Elizabeth May briefly enrolled at St Francis Xavier University in 1974, but dropped out.
12.
Elizabeth May first became known in the Canadian media in the mid-1970s through her leadership as a volunteer in the grassroots movement against proposed aerial insecticide spraying on forests near her home on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia.
13.
In 1985, Elizabeth May moved to Ottawa to work with the Public Interest Advocacy Centre.
14.
Elizabeth May held the position of Associate General Counsel, representing consumer, poverty and environmental groups from 1985 to 1986.
15.
In 1986, Elizabeth May became Senior Policy Advisor to then-environment minister, Thomas McMillan of the Progressive Conservatives.
16.
Elizabeth May was the first volunteer executive director of Cultural Survival Canada from 1989 to 1992 and worked for the Algonquin of Barriere Lake from 1991 to 1992.
17.
In 1989, Elizabeth May became the founding executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada.
18.
On March 17,2007, Elizabeth May announced that she would run in the Nova Scotia riding of Central Nova, in the 2008 federal election.
19.
Elizabeth May was initially excluded from the televised national leadership debate in the 2008 federal election, based on the lack of any elected Green party MPs.
20.
Elizabeth May received 32 per cent of the vote in Central Nova in 2008 to MacKay's 47 per cent.
21.
In 2012, Elizabeth May tabled a Private member's bill, Bill C-442, with the aim of creating a national framework to address Lyme disease.
22.
In 2012, Elizabeth May was voted by her colleagues in the House of Commons as Parliamentarian of the Year, in 2013 she was voted Hardest Working MP, and in 2014 she was voted Best Orator.
23.
In October 2015, Prime Minister-designate Justin Trudeau invited Elizabeth May to be part of the Canadian delegation to the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in Paris, France, in late November 2015; the summit was intended to negotiate post-2020 targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and resulted in the GHGPPA.
24.
On March 23,2018, Elizabeth May was arrested for civil contempt during a demonstration against the Kinder Morgan pipeline.
25.
Elizabeth May said she regretted the decision but confirmed that she planned to continue as leader into the 2025 Canadian federal election, and run for re-election in her Vancouver Island riding.
26.
Elizabeth May was interviewed by a CBC videographer that was published two days prior to the start of the 2019 federal election.
27.
In November 2011, Elizabeth May tweeted concerns about the possible dangers of WiFi.
28.
On November 27,2018, Elizabeth May announced her engagement to John Kidder, brother of actress Margot Kidder and one of the founders of the Green Party of British Columbia.