Louise Frances Hardy, nee MacKinnon (b. 1959)
Louise Hardy was born in Whitehorse to parents Columbus (Collie) and Julia Adams MacKinnon. Louise attended the Catholic elementary school in downtown Whitehorse, then Christ the King high school to grade nine, and then F.H. Collins Secondary. She started learning Shotokan Karate when she thirteen and it remained a consistent thread through her adult life. She married Todd Hardy when he was twenty-one and she was eighteen. During the depression in the early 1980s, Todd looked for work as a carpenter and Louise raised their four children and looked after her sick mother who was in Macauley Lodge part time. When the kids were young, Louise looked after other children in her home as well, and in 1991, at age thirty-two, took the Social Work program at Yukon College. After graduation in 1993, she was hired by Yukon Health and Social Services in 1994, at the Social Assistance Branch. She saw the results of political decisions and went for the NDP nomination for Member of Parliament [in 1997]. She won over popular Whitehorse councillor Katie Hayhurst by four votes. In 1999, Hardy was the NDP critic for Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development as well as Human Rights.1) In 2000, Larry Bagnell succeeded Louise Hardy as the Member of Parliament for Yukon.