📍 Fort Smith, Northwest Territories
Mark Joseph Carney was born on March 16, 1965, at St. Ann’s General Hospital in Fort Smith, a small town on the Slave River near the Alberta border.
Both of his parents were teachers — his father Robert was a school principal in Fort Smith, his mother Verlie an elementary school teacher. The family lived in Fort Smith until Mark was six, when they moved to Edmonton.
From there, the path went a long way from the Northwest Territories: a scholarship to Harvard, a doctorate at Oxford, a career at Goldman Sachs, then back to public service in Canada. Carney served as Governor of the Bank of Canada during the 2008 financial crisis, steering the country through one of the most difficult economic periods in modern history. In 2013, he was appointed Governor of the Bank of England — the first non-Briton to hold the role in the institution’s 300-year history.
In March 2025, Carney was sworn in as Canada’s 24th Prime Minister — the first ever born in a Canadian territory rather than a province.
In July 2025, he returned to Fort Smith as Prime Minister, visiting the community centre, speaking with families about affordability, and stopping by Berro’s Pizza, where a meat-topped pizza had been renamed the “Carneyvore” in his honour.
Fort Smith is a town of about 2,500 people on the edge of Wood Buffalo National Park, the largest national park in Canada. It’s known for the Slave River rapids, white pelican colonies, and the annual Paddlefest. It was also, for a time, the home of a future prime minister.
Photo: By World Economic Forum from Cologny, Switzerland – The Global Economic Outlook: Mark J. CarneyUploaded by January, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24234760
