You can read the speech she delivered that historic day below.

Rt. Hon. Kim Campbell: First of all, I want to say how proud I am to have my portrait hanging in the House of Commons. It is very humbling. When the time came, and they are not in a big hurry, in the Curator’s Office here, to get you going, to get your portrait done and I would suggest actually, Prime Minster (Paul Martin), you might want to choose an artist and just sort of think about it because it really does take a long time, but what happens is by the time the portrait made, I was ten years older and a lot fatter then I was when I was Prime Minister, but happily the artist was prepared to kind of split the difference. It’s a bit awkward ….

Being in Parliament was such an education, and it was so, it made such a difference to my life, and so when I look at this picture, I’m hoping that others who look at it down the years will ask questions, why the justice robes, why that insignia, but what I see are the many, many people who were a part of my education. I am now the Secretary General of an organization called the Club of Madrid, an organization of former Presidents and Prime Ministers, we’re now fifty-five strong, who work to promote democratic transition around the world.

In many ways, the life that this portrait represents seems a long time ago, it is eleven years, since my time as Prime Minister came to an end. But in other ways, it is with me every day, what people in this room, and what the people of Canada taught me about what a democracy really is, and what a privilege it is to take that knowledge, and try to combine it with the knowledge of many other leaders who come from many different countries and systems of government, to try and continue to work for what is really one of the most important priorities in the world, and that is the creation of and the consolidation of democratic governments.

So much of what is wrong in the world, results from the lack of the capacity of the government, the inability of people to organize themselves in ways to set priorities based on the public interest, and to solve their problems in the way that would seem so much of the way we operated here on Parliament Hill.

And so, I am deeply honoured that I am the first woman to have her picture in the corridor, I really look forward to the day when there are many other female faces also hanging in the corridor, it gives me great pleasure that I get messages often from young women saying, in school we’re doing a program on the Prime Ministership and I’m writing about you because you’re the only woman.

It was an honour, and it is an honour that I will always hold dear to my heart, and for those of you who were my colleagues, my friends, but more than ever, my teachers, I want to tell you how much it means to me to have had that experience, and to commit to you that I will continue to honour what you taught me by trying to share it with the world. Thank you so much.[caption id="attachment_1486651" align="alignleft" width="485"] Kim Campbell (with a miniature Sir John A. Macdonald!) when the former PM performed her tree-planting at Art’s famous Kingston garden, January 11, 2015[/caption]

Cutline: Kim Campbell (with Sir John A. Macdonald!) at Art’s House on January 11, 2015 when she performed her tree-planting at Art’s famous Kingston garden.

Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist.  He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy.  A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.