Laurel Thompson is a retired public school and college teacher, labor organizer and political activist. She has lived in Ontario, the U.K. and Colorado and now makes her home in Montreal. She earned her M.A. from York University and taught at the University of Windsor in the late sixties. Her thesis on 19th century fiction publishing earned her a doctorate from the University of London in 1978. After that she became child care worker, then an elementary teacher in Colorado. Active in the environmental movement, she helped to found the Denver Greens and Citizens for Balanced Transportation. She went back to college teaching at Metropolitan State College of Denver and joined the American Federation of Teachers. In 2008 she left Metro to work at the Colorado AFL-CIO on Obama’s campaign and the Employee Free Choice Act. In Montreal she was Group Leader for Citizens Climate Lobby and an active member of Climate Justice Montreal.  She is currently an activist with LEAP and Trainsparence.