Nicole Eaton

Nicole Marie Eaton (born January 21, 1945) is a Canadian politician and a Conservative member of the Canadian Senate. She is the daughter of Edmond Jacques Courtois, sister of Canada Post Chairman Marc Courtois, and sister of convicted insider trader E. Jacques Courtois Jr.

A fundraiser for the Conservative Party, she was appointed on the advice of Stephen Harper to the Senate on December 22, 2008, her term starting on January 2, 2009. A member of the Eaton family through her marriage to Thor Eaton, she was a trustee of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) from 1983 to 1989 and a director of the ROM Foundation from 1996 to 2002.

Eaton's brother is E. Jacques Courtois Jr, a convicted insider trader having peddled confidential insider takeover information while a Vice President in Morgan Stanley's mergers and acquisitions department from 1974 to 1977. Courtois Jr fled to Bogota, Colombia, where he was a fugitive for several years before pleading guilty to felony insider trading charges in New York in 1983.

In 2011 Eaton called Canada's national symbol, the beaver, a "dentally defective rat", and suggested that the polar bear should replace it in Canadian iconography. She gained further notoriety in 2012 by leading the Conservative government's charge in the Senate against environmental charities, making unsubstantiated accusations that the charities are involved in "influence peddling" and "political manipulation". On October 3, 2014, the day that Canada's involvement in a military mission against ISIS was announced, she tweeted, "The apple does not fall far from the tree. PM Trudeau refused to fight the Nazis in WWII, Stayed home comfortably in Outremont."

On August 26, 2016, Eaton ignited a controversy online when she tweeted that "Bicycles are a luxury, most of us use public transportation or walk. Never seen a bike rider obey traffic laws. They are special." This was in response to the addition of dedicated bike lanes to Bloor Street in downtown Toronto. She later deleted her Twitter account.