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The Right Honourable Avril Phaedra Douglas "Kim" Campbell (born March 10, 1947, Port Alberni, British Columbia) was the nineteenth Prime Minister of Canada from June 25 to November 4, 1993. Though she was not popularly elected, she remains North AmericaNorth America is the third largest continent in area and the fourth ranked in population. It is bounded on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the east by the North Atlantic Ocean, on the south by the Caribbean Sea, and on the west by the North Pacific Ocea's only female head of a national government to date. She was also the second woman in history to sit at the table of the Group of Seven (now G8) leaders, the eight most industrialized countries in the world, after British Prime Minister Margaret ThatcherMargaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher LG, OM, PC, FRS (born October 13, 1925) is a British politician and the first woman Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, a position she held from 1979 to 1990. She is a member of the Conservative Party and still.

She was never particularly fond of any of her given names, and consequently adopted the first name Kim in her teens. She was educated at the University of British ColumbiaThe University of British Columbia UBC is located on Point Grey in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Located just 30 minutes from downtown Vancouver, the university is near several beaches and has views of the local mountains. 63 km² Pacific Spirit Reg (B.A., LL.B.) and studied towards a doctorate in Soviet Government at the London School of EconomicsThe London School of Economics and Political Science often called the London School of Economics or the LSE is one of the world's major specialist universities in economics and social sciences. It may have had a larger impact on the shape of the modern po.

Campbell married Nathan Divinsky in 1972. During their marriage, Campbell lectured in political science at the University of British Columbia and at Vancouver Community College , and entered politics as a Vancouver school board trustee. Campbell and Divinsky were divorced in 1983, and Campbell married Howard Eddy in 1986.

She was elected to the British Columbia legislature as a member of the Social Credit party in 1986 and later unsuccessfully ran for the leadership of the party. A few years later she resigned from the legislature to run in the 1988 federal election as a Progressive Conservative.

Upon her election to the Canadian House of Commons in 1988, Campbell became Canada's first female Minister of Justice ( 1990- 1993). Then she briefly became the first female Minister of National Defence before running to succeed Brian Mulroney when he resigned as leader of the Progressive Conservative Party in 1993. Campbell defeated Jean Charest at the Progressive Conservative leadership convention that June.

Also in 1993, Campbell and Eddy were divorced, although the divorce was finalized before she became Prime Minister.

Campbell's quick rise to fame from a relatively unknown cabinet member to Prime Minister of Canada came as a bit of a shock to many Canadians. The fact that she was a woman, the first to become Prime Minister, initially made her very popular. For a while, it seemed that she might have a chance of repairing the Conservative party's reputation, which had been badly damaged after a number of scandals during the Mulroney government. When an election had to be called in the fall of 1993, the party had high hopes that they may be able to remain in government, and if not would have a strong opposition.

However, Campbell's initial popularity soon wore off. The prime minister appeared to have troubles relating to "regular" Canadians, and many felt that she had an overly condescending and pretentious tone. She once famously quipped that an election was "no time to discuss serious issues." In addition, she was criticized as carrying much the same attitudes and positions of her widely detested predecessor epitomised in the activist chant, "Kim, Kim, you're just like him."

Campbell also had a habit of making public relations blunders. A Conservative election commercial in which Liberal leader Jean Chrétien's facial paralysis was mocked was largely regarded as the final nail in her campaign's coffin.

Despite all of the above, Campbell's Tories remained competitive in most polls; however, the result of the 1993 election was that all but two of the Conservative party's candidates lost their seats to a massive Liberal landslide, and Campbell herself failed to hold onto her Vancouver riding. This was despite the Convervatives having finished third in the popular vote, barely behind the Reform Party. The concentration of support for Reform in the west and the Bloc Québécois in Quebec allowed prevented the Conservatives from winning seats under the first past the post electoral system.

Although many pundits saw the unprecedented scope of her defeat as a reflection of the unpopularity of her predecessor Mulroney (rather than as a rejection of Campbell per se), nevertheless she quickly resigned her position as party leader.