5 Calgary elections more interesting than this one

There are some that might say Monday's municipal election in Calgary is a bit dull.

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Historians Kirsten Olson and Harry Sanders outline five elections that really captured the conversation in the city.

Jan.5, 1886: Cleaning up Calgary

When Judge Jeremiah Travis arrived in Calgary in 1885it was a town ineconomicand some might say moraldecline.

Prohibition was nominally inplace, but bootleggers and prostitutes were generally left to go about theirbusiness.

Mayor George Murdoch (a harnessmaker who also owned the ParkHotel) and town solicitor Henry Bleeker were suspected of being involved in awhiskey ring.

The mayor had also been seen in a brothel, and he was allegedto have been running a protection racket with Police Chief John Ingram.

To make matters worse, Coun.Simon John Clarke was charged with assaultand resisting arrest in trying to prevent a search of his saloon (on the present siteof the Municipal Building).

Travis' Clerk of the Court, Hugh S. Cayley (whowas also editor of the Calgary Herald), was found drunk in the street when hewas supposed to be making up a jury list.

Travis judged that the late addition of 73 names to the voters list by the mayorand one of his candidates was a sign of corruption. He disqualified Murdochand three councillors and barred them from holding office for two years.

But thenominations officer, a Murdoch supporter, left the names of Murdoch and twoother barred candidates on the ballot and the 73 additions on the voters list.

Murdoch and his colleagues won, but the magistrate overturned the result andinstalled Murdochs opponent as mayorRoyal Hotel owner James Reilly.

Both Murdoch and Reilly claimed the mayoralty, and each aligned with his own setof councillors. Factions sprang up in support of both groups, but there were novictors.

Judge Travis was not given another judicial appointmentand, after 10months without governance, Calgarians elected George Clift King as mayor inthe second election of the yearheld Nov. 3, 1886. History recognizesMurdoch as mayor in 1886, but Reilly later held the post in1891-92 and 1898-99.

Murdoch later served as a councillor but never again became mayor.

Dec.10, 1917:Annie Gale wins big

The 1917 election was significant for two reasons. It was the first election heldunder a new proportional representation scheme and the first to elect a woman tocity council.

Under the new system, Calgarians voted not for a ward alderman, but foraldermen elected from the city as a whole.

Rather than marking an X to indicatetheir preference, voters were asked to mark the number 1 beside their first choice candidate, 2 beside the second choice, and so on until the voter hadgone through every name on the ballot.

Once a candidate was declared elected,any further first-choice ballots for that candidate were transferred to the second-choice candidate on the ballot.

This led to confusion by voters and many spoiled ballots as well as all-nightsessions of ballot counting. Ald. T.A.P. Frost referred to the new system ascontortional misrepresentation.

Thirteen candidates vied for nine aldermanic seats on the 1917 council. Whenthe votes were finally counted, Annie Gale the only woman candidate, hadplaced sixth. It madeher the first woman municipal politiciannot just in Calgarybut in the entire British Empire.

It took almost 10years for the second woman to be elected to Calgary citycouncil when Edith Patterson was elected in 1926. Proportional representationwas eliminated in 1960 when the ward system was re-established.

Dec.15, 1920: Pressure gets to pals

In stark contrast to the animosity that we see in elections today, the campaignfor mayor of Calgary in 1920 started out as friendly and congenial. Sam Adams,a lawyer, was first elected as an alderman in 1914.

He ran against anotheralderman, liveryman Ike Ruttle (whose barn stood on the present site of theShip and Anchor Pub). The two friends agreed to spend only $100 each, $50 toadvertise in the Herald and $50 for the Albertan.

Adams didnt have a car, but Ruttle did, so they travelled together to campaignmeetings and took turns speaking first. They got along so well that Ruttle evensaid, If you cant vote for me, vote for Sam; hes a good chap.

Similar to today, conflict makes a story better for reporters, and, unfortunately,Ruttle started to feel pressure and was unable to keep to the original agreement.

Adams got word that Ruttle had increased his campaign budget and had placedadvertisements between the films in one of the theatres. Adams countered with a$25 ad in the Market Examiner.

Adams won the election handily after spendinga grand total of $125 to an estimated $1,000 by Ruttle.

Nov.19, 1941: The non-election

There is nothing new in a group of concerned Calgary citizens promoting a slateof candidates. In 1941, unlike today, the slate being promoted comprised theincumbents and not an opposition group.

Both of the citys political factions the Calgary Labor Party and the Civic Government Taxpayers Association supported the slate, agreeing to nominate only as many candidates as wereneeded to fill vacating positions on council and school boards.

This was wartime, and all resources were being focused overseas. An electioncould cost as much as $5,500, and the general view was that the time andmoney could be better used on wartime efforts.

An advertisement, placed inthe Albertan by interested Calgary Citizens read, in part, this is no time todistract our thoughts or efforts from the important duties this war has imposedon everyone."

Only a dark horse would change these cost saving plans, as hadhappened a year earlier, when the Housewives League nominated their owncandidate which upset the apple-cart, according to an editorial in the Oct.10, 1941, Albertan.

There were 17 seats to be filled on city council and both school boards.Seventeen nominees agreed to serve. Both political factions had as manycandidates represented as they had had before the election, so it was felt thatcitizens were being fairly represented.

No independent candidates steppedforward, and no other organizations presented any nominations. The entire slateof candidates wasacclaimed and the election was cancelled, allowing everyoneto then turn their thoughts to more pressing concerns.

Oct.15, 1980:Ralph Klein gets political

In its early days, the 1980 mayoralty race seemed a replay of the 1977 contest,with two old foes as the only serious contenders Mayor Ross Alger and formeralderman Peter Petrasuk.

Both had run in 1974 (when they were defeatedby incumbent Rod Sykes) and 1977 (when Alger thumped Petrasuk by a15,650-vote margin).

Television reporter Ralph Klein made a late entry, but onSept.20 less than a month before the poll the Herald judged that the37-year-old upstart cannot be expected to knock either out of a first or second-place finish and predicted a boring re-match.

There were five other candidates,including Calgary Sun columnist Jack Tennant.

Algers eventful term saw the construction of the LRTs first leg, the bid for the XVOlympic Winter Games, planning for the Olympic coliseumand the acquisitionof land where the Municipal Building, Olympic Plazaand Epcor Centre for thePerforming Arts now stand.

But Algers dream of building a civic centre wasdefeated by plebiscite. As a former Chartered Accountant, Alger took a greatdeal of interest in the administration and finances of City Hall and perhaps notenough on political issues.

Even though he based most of his decisions on theircost-effectiveness, his support of a new $250-millioncivic centre wasseen as an unnecessary expense and he was peggedas being too close to cityadministration.

Klein, whose past political experience involved helping Petrasuks unsuccessfulLiberal bid in the 1968 Trudeaumania election, promised to be a peoplesmayor.

Politicians have become an arm of the bureaucracy, the Herald quotedhim as saying on Sept.25, and Im going to reverse that.

The outcome onelection night launched Kleins spectacular political career (nine years as mayor,three as provincial environment ministerand 14as premier of Alberta).

• Ralph Klein's remarkable political life

Italso ended those of Alger and Petrasuk (a lawyer who later went to prison afterpleading guilty to theft and breach of trust).

Kleins administration guided Calgary through the early-1980s recession and sawthe city transformed by the time he entered provincial politics in 1989. But someof his signature accomplishments had roots in his predecessors single term: theLRT (Little Ralphies Train), the Saddledomeand the 1988 Winter Olympics.

Klein also governed from the Calgary Municipal Building, which was approved inthe same 1980 vote that elected him, in partial fulfillment of Algers civic centreidea.