Martin Brian Mulroney, PC, CC, GOQ (born March 20, 1939) was the eighteenth Prime Minister of Canada from September 17, 1984, to June 25, 1993 and was leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada from 1983 to 1993. His tenure as Prime Minister was marked by the introduction of highly contentious economic reforms, such as the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and the Goods and Services Tax, and the failure of equally contentious constitutional reforms through the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords. Prior to his political career, he was a prominent lawyer and businessman in Montreal.

Mulroney was born in Baie-Comeau, Quebec, an isolated lumber town in the eastern part of the province. He is the son of Irish Canadian Catholic parents, Benedict and Irene (O'Shea) Mulroney. Benedict Mulroney was a paper mill electrician. The family had six children who survived infancy. Since there was no English Catholic high school in Baie-Comeau, Mulroney completed his high school education at a Roman Catholic boarding school in Chatham, New Brunswick operated by St. Thomas University (in 2001, St. Thomas University named its newest academic building in his honour). Money was very tight in the family. Benedict Mulroney worked extra shifts and ran a repair business on the side to earn extra money to fund his children's educations, and he encouraged his oldest son to go to university.

Mulroney would frequently tell stories about newspaper publisher Robert R. McCormick, whose company had founded Baie-Comeau. Mulroney would sing Irish songs for McCormick, and the publisher would slip him $50. He grew up speaking English and French fluently.