News
Remembering Notley, Twenty Years Later
Brian Mason releases public statement in honour of a great Albertan
October 19, 2004
by Brian Mason, Leader Alberta NDP
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Rachel Notley presented with photo |
"Twenty years ago today, Grant Notley, leader of the Alberta NDP, died with five others in a plane crash near Lesser Slave Lake. He had been leader of the Alberta NDP for 16 years. Prior to that, Notley was the provincial secretary of the party - responsible for all organizational aspects of the NDP from candidates to fundraising. Notley was the first provincial secretary, and built our party into what it is today.
Grant Notley spent his life in politics, working for the public good. International issues, such as peace and disarmament drew him in as a history student at the U of A in the late 50s. A desire to change the way things were, and to a large extent still are, in Alberta, kept him in political life. His life in politics focused on building the party one person at a time. As I travel throughout the province even today, many of our most ardent, committed supporters - who have been with us through good times and bad - were brought into the party during Grant Notley's years as provincial secretary and leader. He crisscrossed the province, listening and building. His legacy is a grassroots party that survives and even thrives in the most unexpected corners of this province - in Lethbridge, in Grande Prairie, and in Fairview, where Grant won a seat in the 1971 campaign, by 147 votes. That was the start of the Alberta NDP's presence in the Legislature. For 11 years, Grant Notley was alone in the Legislature. In 1982 he was joined by Ray Martin. Their two-man presence in the House was the only real opposition to the big-oil Conservative government of Peter Lougheed. But that two-person opposition presence was built into a successful political movement and party in Alberta. After Grant's death in 1984, Ray Martin took over the leadership and led the party to 16 seats and Official Opposition status.
In his final Legislature address, on the evening of October 18, 1984, Notley talked about, and this is a quote, "the primacy of people over things." At that time, Alberta's oil boom had gone bust, and hardship was increasing as government bailed out the oil industry but largely ignored the human dimensions of economic downturn. Grant was always concerned with going to where the silences were - he spoke of farm foreclosures, worsening unemployment, domestic violence, increasing suicide rates, and the broken families and broken dreams of a boom-bust economy. This concern for people, for the underrepresented, the marginalized, and the shortsighted cruelty of leaving people to the mercies of an unforgiving market economy is what motivated Grant to dedicate his life to politics and public service in Alberta. It is that legacy that we continue with today, as New Democrats, in building a better province for all Albertans."
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