Catherine Pinhas

Who is Catherine Pinhas?

Catherine Pinhas Mulcair is a psychologist and the wife of Canadian Opposition leader Thomas Mulcair.

She was born in France to a Sephardic Jewish family of Turkish origin that had survived the Holocaust.

Pinhas works in private practice in Verdun, Quebec as well as in long-term and palliative care at a community health centre and is a member of the board of directors at the Order of Psychologists of Quebec and the regional health board for southwest Montreal.

She and Thomas Mulcair met as teenagers when she visited Quebec from France in order to attend a cousin's wedding. She immigrated to Canada soon after and the couple married in 1976 when they were both 21.

She is a dual citizen of Canada and France and ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the Assemblée des Français de l'étranger, a body of French citizens living abroad, in 2009.