Mary Kardash was a long-time Communist

Communism

Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...

 politician in the north end of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

. She was a member of Winnipeg school board in the 1970s and 1980s, having been elected as a Communist Party of Canada

Communist Party of Canada

The Communist Party of Canada is a communist political party in Canada. Although is it currently a minor or small political party without representation in the Federal Parliament or in provincial legislatures, historically the Party has elected representatives in Federal Parliament, Ontario...

 candidate. She had also been active in the Communist Party's predecessor, the Labour-Progressive Party

Labour-Progressive Party

For the Labour-Progressive Coalition Government in New Zealand see the Fifth Labour Government of New ZealandThe Labor-Progressive Party was the legal political organization of the Communist Party of Canada between 1943 and 1959....

. Her husband, William Kardash was also a Communist leader and represented the party in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba

Legislative Assembly of Manitoba

The Legislative Assembly of Manitoba and the lieutenant governor form the Legislature of Manitoba, the legislature of the Canadian province of Manitoba. Fifty-seven members are elected to this assembly in provincial general elections, all in single-member constituencies with first-past-the-post...

 from 1941 to 1958.

In the 1980s, Mary Kardash, who was herself of Ukrainian

Ukrainian Canadian

A Ukrainian Canadian is a person of Ukrainian descent or origin who was born in or immigrated to Canada. In 2006, there were an estimated 1,209,085 persons residing in Canada of Ukrainian origin, making them Canada's ninth largest ethnic group; and giving Canada the world's third-largest...

 background and active in the Ukrainian community, courted controversy by questioning the generally accepted account of Ukrainian famine

Holodomor

The Holodomor was a man-made famine in the Ukrainian SSR between 1932 and 1933. During the famine, which is also known as the "terror-famine in Ukraine" and "famine-genocide in Ukraine", millions of Ukrainians died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe unprecedented in the history of...

 and opposing a proposal that the history of the famine be included in the educational curriculum. The Communist Party acknowledged that many Ukrainians died by famine in the early 1930s, but denied that Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

's government was responsible for an act of genocide

Genocide

Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...

.

Kardash ran in north Winnipeg as a Communist candidate for the Manitoba legislature in the 1973 provincial election

Manitoba general election, 1973

The Manitoba General Election of June 28, 1973 was held to elect Members of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Manitoba, Canada. It was won by the social-democratic New Democratic Party, which took 31 of 57 seats...

, and for the Canadian House of Commons

Canadian House of Commons

The House of Commons of Canada is a component of the Parliament of Canada, along with the Sovereign and the Senate. The House of Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 308 members known as Members of Parliament...

 in the 1974 federal election

Canadian federal election, 1974

The Canadian federal election of 1974 was held on July 8, 1974 to elect members of the Canadian House of Commons of the 30th Parliament of Canada. The governing Liberal Party won its first majority government since 1968, and gave Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau his third term...

, but won only a few hundred votes in both attempts.

Her departure from the Winnipeg school board in the late 1980s ended several decades of Communist representation in the city.

Kardash died in the mid-1990s. The St. Cross Child Care Centre of Winnipeg was renamed the Mary Kardash Child Care Centre in her honour in 1995.