John Baird (Canadian Politician) - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Baird was born in Nepean, the son of Marianne Collins and Gerald Baird. He became involved in politics when he backed a candidate for the local federal PC nomination in 1984. The next year, at age sixteen, Baird was the youngest delegate to attend the party's January 1985 provincial leadership convention. as a supporter of Ontario Attorney-General Roy McMurtry.

He was later president of the youth wing of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, and aligned himself with Dennis Timbrell during the latter's abortive campaign for the PC leadership in 1989–90. He backed Mike Harris when Timbrell withdrew from the contest. Baird has also indicated that he was charged with trespassing during the 1988 federal election, after he tried to question Ontario Premier David Peterson about free trade with the United States during a Liberal Party campaign stop in a Kingston shopping mall. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Studies from Queen's University in 1992.

Baird worked on the political staff of Perrin Beatty when Beatty was federal Minister of National Defence in the early 1990s, and followed Beatty through subsequent cabinet shifts, culminating in his becoming Secretary of State for External Affairs in the short-lived 1993 government of Kim Campbell. After the defeat of the federal Progressive Conservatives in the 1993 federal election, Baird worked as a lobbyist in Ottawa.

Baird claims to have been a vegetarian since 1997. However, he admits to eating fish, and he is also reported to have eaten seal meat on a trip to the Arctic in 2009.

He had a pet grey tabby cat named Thatcher; when the cat died on November 10, 2009, a message sent by Baird using his Blackberry which said "Thatcher has died" resulted in a false rumour to the effect that Margaret Thatcher had died. In June 2008, he was selected by the Ottawa Business Journal as a recipient of the "Forty Under 40" award.