Yvette Swan

Yvette Victoria Angela Swan (20 August 1945 – 18 April 2021) was a Bermudian senator for the United Bermuda Party, optician, and pastor, as well as president of International Federation of Business and Professional Women and Project 5-0.

Born in Saint Thomas Parish, Jamaica^[1] to two schoolteachers, she went to study at Paddington Technical College in London and Aston University in Birmingham, studying optometry.^[2] Swan would then move to Bermuda with her husband Malcolm,^[2] working there as an optometrist.^[3] She was appointed as a senator for the United Bermuda Party in 1993, having been a campaigner for the party in Warwick West, she was later made Minister of Community and Cultural Affairs in 1995.^[3] She would also serve as Minister for Women's Issues, and addressed the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.^[3] She made two bids for the House of Assembly, one in 1998, running in Warwick West with Quinton Edness,^[4][3] the other in 2003, in Warwick North Central, both bids were unsuccessful.^[3] She was also president of the International Federation of Business and Professional Women,^[5] and Project 5-0.^[2]

Swan would later move to Canada, studying Theology and earning her Masters in Divinity at the Atlantic School of Theology.^[2] She would go on to become a minister at St. Paul's United Church, in Riverview, New Brunswick, and in 2015 was ordained by the Maritime Conference.^[2] Swan spent the last seven years of her life serving the Nashwaak Pastoral Charge.^[2]

Bermudian Leader of the Opposition Cole Simons, a member of the One Bermuda Alliance which formed as a merger between the United Bermuda Party and the Bermuda Democratic Alliance, described Swan as "a woman of great passion and dedication, who served tirelessly at various levels of society".^[3]