Sindi Hawkins

Satinder Kaur "Sindi" Hawkins (née Ahluwalia; September 15, 1958 – September 21, 2010 ) was a Canadian politician who served as a member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) of British Columbia, representing Okanagan West from 1996 to 2001 and Kelowna-Mission from 2001 to 2009. A caucus member of the British Columbia Liberal Party, she served in the cabinet of Premier Gordon Campbell as Minister of Health Planning from 2001 to 2004, and Minister of State for Intergovernmental Relations from 2004 to 2005. She was the first Punjabi woman elected to a Canadian legislature, and the first Indo-Canadian woman provincial cabinet minister. She moved to Canada with her family at age 5, settling in Sturgis, Saskatchewan. While in Saskatoon she met her husband Ralph Hawkins; the two divorced in the 1990s. and eventually became head nurse at the Tom Baker Cancer Centre in Calgary. and served as head nurse of neurosurgery at Foothills Hospital. was called to the British Columbia Bar in 1995, and was appointed to the cabinet that June by Premier Gordon Campbell to serve as Minister of Health Planning. In that role she was responsible for a long-term strategy for training more doctors and nurses in British Columbia. As a result, the province added medical school campuses at the University of Northern British Columbia in Prince George, the University of Victoria, and at UBC Okanagan in Kelowna. The cancer recurred in late 2007, and she underwent another bone marrow transplant and chemotherapy. On November 17, 2008, Hawkins announced that she would not run for re-election in 2009.

She began treatment for leukemia for the third time in March 2009. She died on September 21, 2010 at her eldest sister's home in Calgary, a week after her 52nd birthday. In her honour, the cancer centre in Kelowna was renamed the BC Cancer Agency Sindi Ahluwalia Hawkins Centre for the Southern Interior.