Chris Lea is a designer, politician and political activist in Canada. He was the leader of the Green Party of Canada from 1990 to 1996. Lea is notable for being the first openly gay political party leader in Canadian history. Biography Lea is a graduate student in theory and policy studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. He was formerly a professional architect. During the 1980s, he volunteered for The Body Politic, a periodical focusing on gay issues, sitting briefly on its editorial collective, and serving on the committee that set up Xtra!, Canada's most successful gay newspaper. Lea worked on the committee that organized the Summit Citizen's Conference, the counter-summit to the G-7 meetings taking place in Toronto in 1988. With Frank de Jong, Lea organized a successful viral campaign against McDonald's use of disposable styrofoam clamshell packing containers and as well a series of protests which stalled the expansion of nuclear power in Ontario in the early 1990s by bringing light on the massive debt that the province's nuclear programme had created. Lea, who hails from a family of entertainers that includes the 1950s Canadian TV icon Shirley Harmer, began a side career as an opera performer in 2002, and in February 2005 undertook his first on-stage solo in a performance of Gioacchino Rossini's The Barber of Seville. He was the director of facilities at Hart House at the University of Toronto, where as part of a team he won a Green Innovation Award in 2010, for a project to utilise electrical power generated from exercise bikes. For many years he was vice-President of the Toronto Opera Repertoire, and is now President of Toronto City Opera. Lea lives in Toronto. Green Party leadership Lea was the leader of the Green Party of Canada from 1990 to 1996. The Green Party of Canada's internal organization was very decentralized in the early 1990s, and its leadership position was seen as a nominal title. In his time as leader though, Lea worked to create a more usual party structure. Lea started Green Canada, the party's internal members' newspaper (which later became Green Canada Vert before it was absorbed into the Green Party of Canada web pages). Lea initiated the practice of having regular teleconference meetings of the party's council. Aided by de Jong and Steve Kisby, Lea was the first to compile a comprehensive Green Party policy document for