Maureen Anne McTeer is a Canadian author and lawyer, married to Joe Clark, the 16th Prime Minister of Canada.
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Family and education
McTeer was born to John and Bea McTeer. Her father taught her and her older sister, Colleen, to play hockey, resulting in McTeer's childhood dream of playing in the NHL. Her commitment to feminism was born when her father reminded her that girls do not play in the NHL. She switched her focus to her academic and debating talents, which earned her a scholarship to the University of Ottawa. She earned an undergraduate degree in 1973 and a law degree in 1976, both from Ottawa, where she served as features editor of the student newspaper, The Fulcrum, and was a member of the English debate team and the Progressive Conservative Campus Club. McTeer was later awarded an MA in biotechnology, law and ethics from the University of Sheffield, and in 2008 she received an honorary LLD from that institution.
Wife of the prime minister
McTeer worked as a member of Joe Clark's staff before marrying him in 1973. When Clark became leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada in 1976, McTeer became controversial for keeping her own surname and maintaining her own career. At one official luncheon for Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, where McTeer was seated with the guest of honour, the other women at the table teased McTeer by addressing her always as "Mrs. Clark". The Queen Mother, however, did not, and after McTeer escorted the Queen Mother to her car, the latter said "Don't be bothered by criticism," and, left as parting words: "Good Luck … Ms. McTeer." As of 2022, McTeer remains the only wife of a Canadian prime minister not to assume any part of her husband's surname; although both Laureen Teskey Harper and Sophie Grégoire Trudeau had kept their own birth surnames in their earlier years of marriage, but shifted to using their husbands's surnames upon assuming the role of prime minister's spouse, in part because of the controversy McTeer experienced.