McLaughlin was born
Audrey Marlene Brown in
Dutton, Ontario, the daughter of Margaret Clark and William Brown, of Scottish and English descent. She worked as a social worker in
Toronto, Ontario, and in
Ghana. In 1955, she graduated with a Diploma in
Home Science from the MacDonald Institute, later a founding college of the
University of Guelph. In 1979, McLaughlin moved to
Yukon and set up a
consultancy business. In 1987, she ran in a by-election and won, the first
federal NDP candidate to win in Yukon. In 1988, she was appointed caucus chair, and in 1989, she won the
NDP 1989 leadership convention, replacing the retiring
Ed Broadbent. McLaughlin had taken over the NDP during a peak in its popularity. However, the party began a steady decline in the polls for several reasons. One was the NDP's provincial affiliates in
British Columbia and
Ontario, whose unpopularity in government reflected badly on the federal party. The rise of the
Reform Party also sapped much NDP support in Western Canada. In the
1993 election, the NDP lost badly and went from 44 seats to only 9 in
Parliament. More than half of its losses came in Ontario, where it lost all 10 of its MPs, and British Columbia, where it lost 17 of its 19 MPs. McLaughlin won her seat in the Yukon but resigned as leader and was succeeded by
Alexa McDonough in 1995. McLaughlin did not run for re-election in the
1997 election. McLaughlin was an overseas volunteer in
Barbados in 1986 with
Canadian Crossroads International. Today, she is an honorary patron with Crossroads. In 1991, she was sworn in as a member of the
Queen's Privy Council for Canada so that she could access classified documents during the
Gulf War. In August 2003, she was made an Officer of the
Order of Canada. She published an autobiography, ''A Woman's Place: My Life and Politics'', in 1992.
Post-political career In 2000, she joined the
National Democratic Institute, an organization that promotes democracy and peace in
developing nations, and travelled to
Kosovo to help women run in that country's
first democratic election. McLaughlin has also served as the President of the
Socialist International Women and as special representative for the Government of the Yukon on Circumpolar Affairs. She was an honorary pallbearer at the
state funeral of
Jack Layton in 2011. ==Archives==