Eleanor Clitheroe is a lawyer and an Ordained Minister with the Anglican Church of Canada. She has been a pioneer in many fields where women were not at the time commonly employed: she entered law school in 1973 and business school in 1980. She became one of the first female vice presidents of a Canadian bank and one of few women CEO’s of a major Canadian Corporation, Hydro One. She also entered into leadership of prison ministry. Her interest in public welfare expanded when she joined the Ministry of Treasury and Economics as Assistant Deputy Minister, quickly becoming Deputy Treasurer and Deputy Minister of Finance, working under three political parties between 1989 and 1993, assisting each government in public policy and financial management. In 2005, she completed her M.Div at Wycliffe College. She has been driven by a passion for justice in all facets of her life – in her ministry, with her family, in her work and concern for those on the margin, especially those who are homeless, incarcerated, and children living in violence. Eleanor joined the Canadian Forces Reserves in 2009 as Padre, Governor General Horse Guards, working with soldiers deployed domestically and overseas and riding with the Cavalry Squadron. She now serves the Lorne Scots Cadet Corp 557 in Brampton, Ontario. As Chaplain, she has counselled hundreds of soldiers and cadets, and trained thousands of cadets in life skills.

 

Quotes by Eleanor Clitheroe from WomenTalk:

“Where do we want to go? We want to go to a position of equality so that women’s theological research, teaching and leadership are respected and accepted on a consistent basis globally no matter what nation we come from. However, this is not going to happen in our lifetime. This change will be one of the slowest changes in, at least, the Christian church because where it is restricted, it is doctrinal. In the interim, what do we do? Women theologians, I think, must take every opportunity to publish, lead and make their voices known as publicly as they can.”

“Women have unique gifts and they bring them to the Christian community. These gifts have not been fully integrated into the life of the Church and the church structures and we can raise this complimentarity with our voices.”

“I want to emphasize something that has threaded its way a little bit through the dialogue this afternoon and that is interfaith dialogue and how we do that differently. I think that that is a place that we, as women theologians, can contribute significantly. Men and women, of course, can contribute there. But it is an area, I think, where we can use many skills that, for better of for worse, we’ve been trained in: to listen, to dialogue and to not judge. And bringing that effort into women’s dialogue and then dialogue with women towards the world, I think is one of the key areas that we need to focus on to deal with some of these deep-seated conflicts that we see all around us.”