Chris Axworthy

Christopher S. Axworthy, (March 10, 1947 – August 11, 2023) was a Canadian politician and academic.

Law professor
After teaching law at the University of New Brunswick and Dalhousie Law School, Chris Axworthy came to Saskatoon in 1984 as the founding executive director of the Centre for the Study of Co-operatives and as a professor of law at the University of Saskatchewan. In 2003 he returned to the University of Saskatchewan as a professor of law, where he taught until the spring of 2008.

In the spring of 2008, he was appointed Dean of Robson Hall at the University of Manitoba for a five-year term beginning on July 1, 2008. He was also the President of the Institute of Parliamentary and Political Law.

In May 2010, Axworthy assumed the position as the Founding Dean of Law at Thompson Rivers University's new law school, which opened in Fall 2011. On July 15, 2013, he resigned this position.

Political career
Axworthy was elected as a Saskatchewan Member of Parliament for the New Democratic Party in 1988 and was re-elected in 1993 and 1997.

Axworthy resigned from the House of Commons on June 1, 1999, to join the cabinet of then Saskatchewan Premier Roy Romanow. He was elected as an MLA in a by-election as the Saskatchewan NDP MLA for the constituency of Saskatoon-Fairview with 64% of the vote. He was also re-elected three months later in a general election that same year. He served as Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs. After Romanow stepped down, Axworthy ran against Lorne Calvert for the provincial NDP leadership convention and finished second. Axworthy, who was still serving as Justice Minister, resigned as MLA in January 2003.

Although he had been an NDP member for his entire political career, Axworthy announced his bid for the Liberal nomination in the riding of Saskatoon—Wanuskewin on March 5, 2004. He received 32.58% of the vote, but lost to incumbent Conservative MP, Maurice Vellacott. He lost to Vellacott a second time in the 2006 federal election.

Personal life and death
Axworthy was born in Plymouth, England on March 10, 1947. He died from cancer on August 11, 2023, at the age of 76.