BIOGRAPHY OF

MADAME MICHAËLLE JEAN

Michaëlle Jean was born in Port au Prince, Haiti. As a young child in 1968, she and her 

family left her country and sought refuge in Canada.

She received a Bachelor of Arts in Italian and Hispanic languages and literature, and 

continued her studies towards a Master of Arts in comparative literature at the University 

of Montreal.  From 1984 to 1986, she taught at the Faculty of Italian Studies at the 

University of Montreal.  She is fluent in five languages: French, English, Italian, Spanish 

and Creole and fluently reads Portuguese.

As she pursued her studies, Michaëlle Jean worked for eight years, from 1979 to 1987, 

with Québec shelters for battered women.  She has taken in, supported and accompanied 

hundreds of women and children in crisis, while actively contributing to the establishment 

of a network of emergency shelters throughout Québec and elsewhere in Canada. She 

was also involved in aid organizations for immigrant women and families, and later 

worked at Employment and Immigration Canada and at the Conseil des Communautés 

culturelles du Québec.

For 18 years, she has been a highly regarded journalist and anchor of information 

programs. She joined Radio-Canada in 1988, working successively as a reporter, host 

and anchor. 

In the mid-1990s, Michaëlle Jean also participated in a number of documentary films 

produced by her husband, filmmaker Jean-Daniel Lafond: La manière nègre ou Aimé 

Césaire chemin faisant, Tropique Nord, Haïti dans tous nos rêves, and L’heure de Cuba. 

These thought-provoking documentaries were critically acclaimed and earned awards 

both in Canada and internationally.

She holds the following official titles: membership in the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada 

(C.P.), Companion of the Order of Canada (C.C.), Commander of the Order of Military 

Merit (C.M.M.), Commander of the Order of Merit of the Police Forces (C.O.M.) and the 

Canadian Forces Decoration (C.D.).

Sworn in on September 27, 2005, as the 27th Governor General and Commander-in-

Chief of Canada the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean, assumed the function of Head of 

State.  She ensured that the institutional space she occupied could become, more than 

ever before, a meeting place where dialogue prevails and citizen voices are heard.  A 

fervent practitioner of “diplomacy of proximity” and “diplomacy on a human scale,” she 

also led forty missions and State visits abroad in Afghanistan, in China, in ten African 

countries, in nine countries in the Americas, and in more than ten European countries.

Black Canadian Curriculum – ETFO – 2014