Few people knew Flora MacDonald as well as Professor Emeritus John Meisel did. After all, he’s the person responsible for bringing her to Queen’s University and Kingston, where she would eventually embark upon her trailblazing political career.

Ms. MacDonald, the Member of Parliament for the riding of Kingston and the Islands from 1972 to 1988 and appointed Canada’s first Secretary of State for External Affairs in 1979, died Sunday in Ottawa at the age of 89.

A close friend, Dr. Meisel says that Ms. MacDonald was a remarkable person and a standout politician.

“She was a person of immense energy. She was just indefatigable,” he says. “She was a very public-spirited person. When she saw something in the public domain that needed to be done she went around and started doing it.”

Dr. Meisel first got to know Ms. MacDonald as he researched the 1957 general election for a book. Ms. MacDonald worked as a secretary within the Progressive Conservative party and helped provide the information he requested for various research projects in following years. She was incredibly efficient and impressed him greatly, he says. He told her that if she ever needed a job he would find her a place at the university.

Several years later and Ms. MacDonald took him up on his offer and Dr. Meisel, now the head of the Department of Political Studies, went to Principal James Alexander Corry and requested that an administrative position be created to allow him to focus more on academic work.

Principal Corry agreed. It was a decision that would have a lasting impact on the Kingston community as well as Canadian politics.

During her time at Queen’s, Ms. MacDonald proved popular and was a pillar of strength for the department.

“She was marvelous. At that time we were having a lot of people arrive, graduate students, and they had to be found accommodation and she did all that,” Dr. Meisel says. “She wasn’t just a secretary. She was really kind of a departmental mother.”

While she would remain a friend of Queen’s, Ms. MacDonald was destined for a grander stage and after being invited to take a year-long course at the National Defence College in Kingston, she returned to politics, claiming the Progressive Conservative banner for the riding and winning the 1972 election.

She would then unsuccessfully contend for the party leadership in 1976 and when the party came to power under eventual winner Joe Clark in 1979, Ms. MacDonald would become the Canada’s first female Secretary of State for External Affairs. When the PCs returned to power in 1984 under Brian Mulroney, Ms. MacDonald was named Minister of Employment and Immigration and then Minister of Communications in 1986.

Dr. Meisel says that one of Ms. MacDonald’s strengths was that she was always so well informed. The reason for that was a skill she learned during her secretary days.

“She had a wonderful advantage – she knew how to take shorthand,” Dr. Meisel says. “So she always took notes wherever she went. She never missed or forgot anything because she kept notes. She told me that when she was a Cabinet minister she used to take shorthand notes during the Cabinet meetings for herself. So she was always much better informed than other people because she had all these records.”

Flora McDonald’s funeral will be held this Sunday at 2 pm in Ottawa.

Red riders rolled their way into Queen’s University on Tuesday, making their annual stop as part of the Friends for Life Bike Rally.

The fundraiser for the Toronto People With AIDS Foundation (PWA) is a six-day ride from Toronto to Montreal and Kingston marks the halfway point.

“Queen’s University has always been extremely helpful,” says Allan Hooey, the bike rally’s co-chair. “This year they not only helped us around, because of the construction, but literally told us where to go and set up. They did the map and sent it to us.”

The 17th annual ride involves 201 riders and 101 crew members, who stay in Queen’s residences for the night before hitting the road early Wednesday.

Organizers say that $1 million of the $1.4 million goal has been raised by participants, with the total accounting for 40 per cent of the PWA’s operating budget.

Sir Sandford Fleming is best known for his work on standard time, the Canadian Pacific Railroad and surveying large swathes of the growing nation, but he is also indelibly linked to Queen’s University having served as chancellor from 1880 to 1915.

To mark the 100^th anniversary of the death of this ‘Great Canadian’ the university is hosting an exhibit highlighting Fleming’s many accomplishments throughout his life as an engineer, innovator and Queen’s chancellor.

Curated by Pam Manders and Alvan Bregman, W.D. Jordan Special Collections and Music Library, and Deirdre Bryden, Queen’s University Archives, the exhibition continues through to the end of August. All the items on display on the third floor of the Douglas Library come from collections at Queen’s.

From books and journals to medals and maps there is a wide array of material, which is fitting considering all that Fleming achieved in his lifetime.

And while much of his life is well documented the research team was continually excited by the breadth of information and “little jewels” they found.

“It was just a discovery process that as we went along there was something more that he was noted for, famous for,” says Ms. Manders.

Creator of the first Canadian stamp, the driving force for connecting the Commonwealth by underwater cable, railway inventor, founder of the Royal Canadian Institute and a founding member of the Royal Society of Canada, the list goes on and on.

“He is a Great Canadian, a truly Great Canadian,” says Dr. Bregman, adding that Fleming’s reach stretched beyond Canada’s borders. “He’s world famous. His influence is on a world stage with universal time and the cable.”

Fleming was a very influential figure at Queen’s as well, as Principal George Monro Grant – a long-time friend dating back to their time in Nova Scotia and work together on the CPR survey – brought him to the university as chancellor, a position he held for 35 years until his death.

 “We all started off with a general view of Sir Sandford Fleming and we found that it was really quite interesting to work on,” says Dr. Bregman. “He’s a great figure to be associated with Queen’s and Queen’s is partly great because it is associated with people like Fleming and Grant.”

“We have a new hero,” Ms. Manders adds.

For Deirdre Bryden of Queen’s University Archives, the most difficult part of the exercise was selecting what to display from his time as chancellor, as there is so much available.

One of her favourite pieces is a pin that Fleming designed for Annie Fowler and Eliza Fitzgerald, the first women graduates from Queen’s in 1884.

“I find that such an amazing thing that this man, who was a great man and did so many big things for Canada, took the time to design a pin and got it made by Tiffany’s, as he happened to be in New York, because he thought it was so important that these two women had graduated from Queen’s,” she says.

For Queen’s University Archives the exhibit is an opportunity to showcase the historic resources that are available at the university.

“Exhibits like the Sir Sandford Fleming one, allow those that see it to gain a much better understanding of the breadth, the depth, the variety, and the uniqueness of the holdings that constitute Queen’s University Archives; as well as providing a wonderful glimpse into the university’s storied past,” says Paul Banfield, Queen’s Archivist.