Wade MacLauchlan

H. Wade MacLauchlan (born 10 December 1954), is a Canadian legal academic, university administrator, politician and community leader. He served as the fifth president of the University of Prince Edward Island from 1999 to 2011, becoming president emeritus in 2012. He served as the 32nd premier of Prince Edward Island from 2015 to 2019. His government was defeated in the April 23, 2019 general election. MacLauchlan announced his intention to step down as Liberal leader on 26 April 2019, and completed his term as Premier on 9 May 2019. Early life, education and career MacLauchlan was born on 10 December 1954, the third of five children of Harry and Marjorie MacLauchlan, living in Stanhope, Prince Edward Island. Stanhope is the oldest Scottish community on PEI, with the first Scottish settlers arriving on the ship "Falmouth" in June 1770. The MacLauchlan's were early residents of Stanhope, with a large extended family in Stanhope and numerous other rural PEI communities. MacLauchlan was born into an entrepreneurial household. The family lived initially in an apartment above a country general store that his father Harry started at Stanhope in 1946 at the age of nineteen. Harry and Marjorie MacLauchlan were businesspeople involved in tourism, fisheries, heavy construction, and several other ventures through the 1960s. By the age of 10, Wade had two newspaper routes along with his cousin, selling The Guardian in the morning and The Evening Patriot in the afternoon. He would later recall that the only advice offered by his father regarding what was a fairly sizeable business venture for two youngsters was that they should read the newspaper before selling it; "In other words, the most important thing in business is to know what you're talking about." MacLauchlan's parents went on to other ventures including MacLauchlan's Motel in Charlottetown, expanding the heavy construction business and getting in to cable television, golf courses, oil and gas distribution, and real estate. MacLauchlan worked in many of those ventures with jobs such as weighing and salting fish, collecting garbage, building golf course greens, and carrying suitcases. In the summer of 1974, at the age of 19, he headed further afield, working as a guide on cross-Canada bus tours.