Louise Fish

Marie Louise Fish is Director of Risk Management at Trent University and a former Lieutenant Commander in the Canadian Armed Forces. Born in 1955 in Toronto, she grew up in Oakville and graduated from McMaster University in Hamilton. Fish’s father, a Second World War veteran, taught her to shoot competitively and insisted that women need only determination and persistence to do as well as men. Joining the military in 1974, she not only launched a distinguished career but also blazed a trail for women. Fish was the first woman to serve as a naval officer at sea; the first woman to qualify and serve as a ship’s diving officer; and the first woman to represent Canada in the grueling Nijmegen March. Serving at sea when there were few women in Canada’s navy—and none in operational roles— Fish underwent the same arduous training as her male counterparts. When she retired from the military in 1998, she entered the field of security administration, becoming the first woman to serve as president of the Ontario Association of College and University Security Administrators. Fish received a Governor General’s Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case in 2010.