Marilyn Churley

Marilyn Churley (born May 7, 1948) is a former politician in Ontario, Canada.

Churley was born in Old Perlican, Newfoundland in 1948.

Her parents were Eddie Churley and Myrtis Emberley.

Shortly after being born the family moved to Happy Valley, Labrador where her father worked as a cook at Goose Bay Air Force Base.

In 1968, she gave birth to a son, Billy (Bill Boertjes), whom she placed for adoption.

She also has a daughter, Astra Crosby, born in 1974.

Churley's experience with adoption and the search for her son led her to advocate for adoption disclosure reform.

She moved to the Downtown Toronto neighbourhood of Riverdale in 1978.

She has served as a director of the Co-op Housing Federation of Toronto, and was a co-founder of the Bain Avenue Day Care Centre.

Among other community commitments, Churley was also a director of the Co-operative Housing Federation of Toronto.

Churley was elected to the Toronto City Council in 1988.

She defeated longtime alderman Fred Beavis in the downtown riding of Riverdale.

She was involved in a number of Toronto council initiatives, including the energy efficiency office, the "Clean Up the Don" movement (with fellow city councillors Jack Layton and Barbara Hall) and police patrols on bicycle.

She was a New Democratic member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1990 to 2005 who represented the downtown Toronto ridings of Riverdale and Toronto—Danforth.

She served as a cabinet minister in the Bob Rae government.

In opposition she served as her party's critic for the Environment, Women's Issues and Democratic Renewal.

She resigned from the legislature to run for the federal New Democratic Party.

Through the 1990s, she introduced several Private Member's Bills to facilitate the process of locating children placed for adoption.

None of these passed.

Subsequently, she was a strong supporter of a similar bill introduced by Sandra Pupatello.

This bill later became the Adoption Information Disclosure Act.

Churley was elected as a New Democrat in the riding of Riverdale in the provincial election of 1990.

The NDP won a majority government in this election and she briefly serving as a Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of the Environment.

On 18 March 1991, Churley was named Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations after the previous minister, Peter Kormos was fired by Bob Rae for a series of political blunders.

Churley remained in this position throughout the Rae government's mandate.

In cabinet, Churley opposed attempts to reduce social assistance to single mothers, and only accepted the introduction of casino gambling with reluctance.

Toronto singer/songwriter Kurt Swinghammer wrote a song called "The Signature of Marilyn Churley", inspired by Churley's signature on an elevator license dating from her term in the Rae cabinet.

Rae's government lost the provincial election of 1995, and Churley was one of seventeen NDP members to retain a seat in the legislature.

In opposition, she worked to force the government of Mike Harris to keep the Riverdale Hospital open, stopped the closure of 11 schools, and forced the government to cap tax increases for small business.

She later reconnected with him in 1997, as described in her 2015 book "Shameless".

She also served as Deputy Speaker of the legislature from October 1997 to October 1998.

In the provincial election of 1999, she was re-elected in the redistributed riding of Broadview—Greenwood.

Churley became deputy leader of the NDP in 2001, following the retirement of Frances Lankin from the legislature.

In the by-election to replace Lankin, the Liberals nominated Greenpeace co-founder and popular television personality Bob Hunter to run for them against former East York mayor Michael Prue for the NDP.

During the race, Churley denounced Hunter for having written a novel with first-person accounts of encounters with child prostitutes in Bangkok.

The Toronto Sun quoted Ms. Churley as saying: "It says something about Bob Hunter's character he could write such nasty, disgusting stuff about young girls in Thailand."

Hunter claimed that the story was written as satire, and sued both Churley and Prue for slander.

The suit was withdrawn after the by-election, which Prue won.

Churley was easily re-elected for a fourth term in 2003.

Churley was her party's candidate for the riding of Beaches—East York in 2006 and 2008, but was defeated both times.