Michael Ignatieff - Family

Family

Ignatieff's paternal grandfather was Count Pavel Ignatieff, the Russian Minister of Education during the First World War and son of Count Nikolay Pavlovich Ignatyev, an important Russian statesman and diplomat. His mother's grandfathers were George Monro Grant and Sir George Robert Parkin, and her younger brother was the Canadian Conservative political philosopher George Grant (1918–1988), author of Lament for a Nation. His great-aunt Alice Parkin Massey was the wife of Canada's first native-born Governor General, Vincent Massey. He is also a descendant of William Lawson, the first President of the Bank of Nova Scotia.

Ignatieff is married to Hungarian-born Zsuzsanna M. Zsohar, and has two children, Theo and Sophie, from his first marriage to Londoner Susan Barrowclough. He also has a younger brother, Andrew, a community worker who assisted with Ignatieff's campaign.

Although he says he is not a "church guy", Ignatieff was raised Russian Orthodox and occasionally attends services with family. He describes himself as neither an atheist nor a 'believer'.

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