Marion Dewar

Marion Dewar, CM (February 17, 1928– September 15, 2008) was a prominent member of the New Democratic Party (NDP), mayor of Ottawa from 1978 to 1985 and a member of the Parliament of Canada from 1986 to 1988.

Early life

Dewar was born Marion Bell in 1928 in Montreal, the daughter of Agnes and Wilson Bell. She was raised in the town of Buckingham, Quebec, just outside Ottawa. She graduated from Saint Joseph's School of Nursing in Kingston, Ontario, in 1949 and was a nurse in the Ottawa region until 1952. She married civil servant Ken Dewar in 1951 and went into public health with the Victorian Order of Nurses. A devoted Roman Catholic, she would have 5 children, the last in 1963. She later studied nursing science and public health at the University of Ottawa, and was a public health nurse from 1969 to 1971.

Ottawa city politics

Dewar became an Ottawa alderman for Britannia Ward in 1972 and was elected Deputy Mayor in 1974, a position she held until 1978. In 1977 she ran unsuccessfully for the Ontario New Democratic Party in the provincial election in the riding of Ottawa West. She was elected mayor in 1978.