Landon (Mackenzie) Pearson was born in Toronto in 1930. She graduated from the University of Toronto in 1951 with a B.A. in Philosophy and English. In 1978, she earned her M.Ed. in Psychopedagogy from the University of Ottawa. Wilfrid Laurier University awarded her an honorary doctorate in 1995.
Landon Pearson has been actively involved with children and issues associated with young people for more than 40 years. As the spouse of a Canadian diplomat, she worked with children's groups in France, Mexico, India and the Soviet Union. In addition to numerous articles on child development and policy questions, she has written Children of Glasnost: Growing up Soviet (1990).
In 1979, Senator Pearson was Vice-Chairperson of the Canadian Commission for the International Year of the Child and Editor of the Commission's report, For Canada's Children: National Agenda for Action. During the period 1984 to 1990, she was President, then Chairperson, of the Canadian Council on Children and Youth. She was a founding member and Chairperson of the Canadian Coalition for the Rights of Children. She is co-founder and chair of "Children Learning for Living," a prevention program in children's mental health operating in the Ottawa Board of Education. Landon Pearson is Vice-Chair of the Centre for the Study of Children at Risk at McMaster University and a member of the Board of the Canadian Paediatric Foundation. She was a Canadian delegate to the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in September 1995 and to the First World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in Stockholm in August 1996. Landon Pearson was summoned to the Senate in September 1994. In May 1996, she was appointed as Adviser on Children's Rights to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Canada