The Hon. Landon Pearson

The Honourable Landon Pearson, O.C., (1930-2023) was a life-long advocate for the rights and well-being of children. As the wife of a Canadian ambassador, Geoffrey Pearson (the son of former Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson and Maryon Pearson), Landon Pearson brought up their five children in India, France, Mexico, the Soviet Union and Canada. She spoke English, French and Spanish, and received five honorary doctorates from Canadian universities. She learned first-hand about the challenges confronting the world’s children – and also listened to her own children. Below are only some of her accomplishments.

1974: Pearson co-founded the Children Learning for Living program, focused on children’s mental health, which ran for 23 years through the Ottawa Board of Education. She served as a school trustee in both Canada and India, and was involved in community programs, such as mobile crèches for children of working mothers and a daycare service for the children of traveling construction workers in New Delhi and Bombay.

1979: She was Vice-Chair of the Canadian Commission for the International Year of the Child and editor of the commission’s report, For Canada’s Children: A National Agenda for Action. Here, she first articulated a program for bold actions. Many of the recommendations in the report were implemented, such as: increasing financial support for shelters for women and their children; enacting legislation to restore Aboriginal rights to Aboriginal women who married non-Aboriginal men; and enacting legislation to require child-restraint provisions in vehicles.

1979-1989: Involved in negotiations to move the UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child into a Convention.

1984-1990: She served as President and then Chair of the Canadian Council on Children and Youth. She was a founding member and Chair of the Canadian Coalition for the Rights of Children from 1989, until she was summoned to the Senate in 1994.

1990: Landon Pearson published Children of Glasnost: Growing Up Soviet, a book about childhood in the former Soviet Union based on her years with her husband, Geoffrey, who was the Canadian Ambassador.

1994 to 2005: She served in The Senate of Canada, where she was known as the “Children’s Senator,” and sponsored every bill that had anything to do with children’s and young people’s lives. She published a newsletter and legislative report entitled Children & the Hill that provided a review of legislation affecting children. In 1996, she was named Advisor on Children’s Rights to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and in 1998, she became the Personal Representative of the Prime Minister to the 2002 United Nations Special Session on Children and compiled A Canada Fit for Children: Canada’s plan of action in response to the May 2002 United Nations Special Session on Children.

1995: She represented Canada at the 1995 Stockholm World Congress to End the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children and was the first to bring young Cherry Kingsley, an experiential youth, to Stockholm to address delegates directly. Afterwards, she co-chaired, with Kingsley, Out From the Shadows: The International Summit of Sexually Exploited Youth, which brought together 54 youth from Canada and other countries to tell their stories about being exploited in the sex trade. Landon Pearson also appeared before the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights to discuss how to stop the sexual exploitation of children.

1999: Prime Minister Jean Chrétien appointed Landon Pearson as his personal representative to the 2002 United Nations’ Special Session on Children and agreed that young people should be included on delegations and in preparatory meetings. The special session adopted an outcome document called A World Fit for Children. Following the Special Session, she coordinated Canada’s response to this document, producing the report called A Canada Fit for Children.

2003: She published Letters from Moscow, a selection of her personal correspondence while living in Moscow when her husband was the Canadian ambassador to the Soviet Union.

2005: Upon her retirement from the Senate, Landon Pearson became an Adjunct Professor and moved her library of documents to Carleton University, where she led the Landon Pearson Resource Centre for the Study of Childhood and Children’s Rights.

2008: After gathering stories from seven Oji-Cree Elders who had invited them, Landon Pearson and Judy Finlay, an Associate Professor at Toronto Metropolitan University, published in 2010, Tibacimowin: Gathering of Stories, which contained interviews with First Nations Elders about their childhood and the responses of their grandchildren. The goal of this North-South Partnership for Children (Mamow Sha-way-gi-kaywin) was to learn from one another while opening pathways of hope for young people at seven First Nations communities. She was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada for her extraordinary contributions in changing the way that rights children and youth are understood and affirmed in Canada.

2012: She received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.

2015: Landon revisited the outcome document, A Canada Fit for Children, of the 2002 UN Special Session on Children.

2022: Landon Pearson received the Janucz Korczak Award.

Today: The Hon. Landon Pearson ensured that the Landon Pearson Centre would continue to contribute to transforming societal understanding and to build a culture of respect for children and children’s rights. This idea is at the heart of the Centre’s long-term vision and informs our collaborations, dialogues and projects dedicated to the betterment of the lives of children and young people.