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Leona Aglukkaq told her college professor that her goal was to be deputy minister of personnel in the territorial government by the time she was 30 years old.

Not only did she achieve that goal – in the North, making it in government is the equivalent to making it on Bay Street in the south – she did even better.

On Thursday, she was appointed Minister of Health in Stephen Harper's cabinet – the first woman from Nunavut to be appointed to a federal cabinet, and one of three rookie female MPs to be given full and significant portfolios.

“Leona is very highly driven. Very ambitious,” says Jim Bell, the editor of the Nunatsiaq News, a weekly newspaper in Nunavut and Northern Quebec.

And Mr. Bell knows of what he speaks: He was one of her professors at the Arctic College in Iqaluit, and she was one of his best students.

“She was bright, diligent, hard-working, well-dressed and well-prepared,” he said. “I don't think she was more than 20 or 21 … very ambitious … working on a diploma in management studies.”

And so he asked her what she wanted to do when she graduated; she told him she wanted to make it in the world by becoming the deputy minister.

Ms. Aglukkaq (pronounced Ah-GLOO-cawk), 41, would not be interviewed for this profile.

She is married to Robbie MacNeil, a mental-health counsellor from Cape Breton, N.S., who is referred to in Nunavut as a “southerner.” The couple have a four-month-old boy, Cooper. And like Sarah Palin to the west of her, Ms. Aglukkaq, sticking with the narrative that she is an ambitious and tough woman (also like Sarah Palin), brought her baby to work just after he was born. She was then the Minister of Health in Nunavut and did not want to miss a thing.

First elected to the Nunavut Legislative Assembly in 2004, Ms. Aglukkaq also served as finance minister and House leader. And she was one of only two women in the 19-member assembly. She knows how to work in a male world, which will stand her in good stead in the testosterone-heavy House of Commons.

“She's very tough,” says Mr. Bell. “She doesn't back away from a fight and she knows how to duke it out with the guys … she's not scared of anybody.”

Born in Inuvik, Ms. Aglukkaq grew up in the small community of Gjoa Haven, (population 1,100), the daughter of a respected elder, Miriam Aglukkaq, who is a well-known educator. Her father, a hunter, died several years ago. She has several siblings, including an older sister.

Gjoa Haven's mayor, Uriash Pupuiqnak, has known Ms. Aglukkaq since she was a child. Her first language, he says, was Inuktitut, until she started school and learned to speak English.

Although he remembers her as a quiet girl, he recalls, too, that she had a mischievous streak, especially when, as 12-year-olds, she and his younger sister took off for a joy ride on his Honda motorcycle without first asking, and without any worry about their safety.

Ms. Aglukkaq replaced him as the MLA for the area.

As the provincial health minister, Ms. Aglukkaq was constantly under fire because of problems related to an under-funded health-care system in a territory that does not have a particularly healthy population.

The hospital for the area is not accredited; there are tremendous nursing shortages; residents have to travel to Ottawa or Winnipeg for some treatments because of a lack of specialists.

And all the woes and problems of her colleagues' constituents would be laid at her feet.

“She just brazened it out,” says Mr. Bell, who also describes her as “charming and upbeat.”

As she just brazened out the election campaign for a seat the Harper Tories were desperate to win. Mr. Harper travelled to the riding during the campaign and promised to create a new regional development agency for Northern Canada.

Reporters from the region say the Tories poured a lot of resources into the Aglukkaq campaign, which allowed the candidate to travel to more than a dozen communities, appearing on radio talk shows. One local reporter says that Ms. Aglukkaq spent three hours answering questions on a radio talk show in Rankin Inlet.

“They wanted it really badly,” Mr. Bell says.

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