Kathryn Cholette

Kathryn Cholette served as leader of the Green Party of Canada from 1988 to 1990. Just prior to the end of her term as leader, Cholette publicly resigned her post in an article entitled, "Why I Left The Green Party," which ran as the cover story of the People's Voice, the Communist Party of Canada newspaper in the summer of 1990.

Although the party constitution mandated it from 1988 to 1996 and the party's national council required it from 1985 to 1996, Cholette is the only person to have won the position of party leader on the platform of not speaking for the organization. From 1985 to 1996, the party officially prohibited its leader from speaking on its behalf (despite filing a court challenge to the leader's exclusion from the 1988 and 1993 federal leaders' debates) on the grounds that it was a non-hierarchical organization. Cholette, a member of the party's Ecofeminist Caucus, was a passionate proponent of this system.

Although they did not follow her into the Communist Party, all but one member of the caucus quit the party between 1990 and 1993, paving the way for Green parties in Canada to develop more traditional organizational structures.