Elizabeth May, lawyer, writer and internationally recognized environmentalist, is Executive Director of the Sierra Club of Canada. In the 1970s she became known in the Canadian media for her successful volunteer work against insecticide spraying near her Cape Breton home. Before going to the Sierra Club in 1989, she was a Senior Policy Advisor to the Federal Minister of the Environment and was instrumental in establishing several parks. In 2001, she fasted 17 days on Parliament Hill to draw attention to the plight of people whose homes were on contaminated land in Sydney, Nova Scotia.