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Alberta Politics

John Leedy: The Governor of Kansas who tried, tried and tried again to get elected in Alberta

Alberta’s political history is filled with colourful characters, but perhaps one of the most unlikely, and unlucky, was John Leedy. But before Leddy even arrived in Alberta in 1910, he had already served as the Governor and a State Senator in Kansas and a mayor and city attorney in Alaska.

Born in Ohio in 1849, John Leedy was elected to the Kansas State Senate in 1893 and served there until he was elected Governor of Kansas in 1897 while leading the Populist Party ticket to a full sweep in that year’s election. 

Asked what in his opinion caused the defeat of the Republicans in that year’s election, Leedy told the Kansas City Gazette in November 1896 that “I attribute the defeat of the Republican party in Kansas more to the fact that the sate of Kansas is for free silver, than to any other cause.”

John Leedy

“The next legislature will pass laws which will afford the people of Kansas, at least, an equal opportunity for existences long with the corporations,” Leedy said, referencing his criticisms that the large railway companies had too much influence over politics in Kansas.

Two years later, Leedy lost his party’s nomination and the Republicans regained control of the Governorship in Kansas.

Leedy moved to Alaska in 1901 following his first big electoral defeat in what some Kansan newspaper described as an “Alaskan exile.” He practiced law in Alaska, despite never having actually studied law. And he didn’t stay out of politics for long. 

He lost by one vote in his first bid for election as city attorney of the City of Valdez, according to a report by the Osbourne County Farmer. He was later elected as city attorney and served as mayor of Valdez.

He quit his job as city attorney in 1910 and applied to become a British subject in order to move to Canada to start a farm near Whitecourt, Alberta. 

Henry Wise Wood

Even in a different country, farming couldn’t quench his thirst for politics. He joined the United Farmers of Alberta and became very active in the farming advocacy group, serving on the UFA executive and working closely with UFA president Henry Wise Wood. 

The Kansas City Journal described him as a “fighting man,” “the kind that fights at the drop of the hat and drops the hat himself.”

So, true to character, he jumped back into electoral politics.

“Edmonton is so far north it would appear that even a Kansan’s desire to be a member of the legislature might be frosted,” wrote the Kansas City Star in April 1916.  “If he gets into the Alberta legislature the Conservative Canadians will head the Kansas language as she is spoke. For Leedy’s desire to go to the legislature shows that he is still a Kansan.”

Leedy ran in the June 1917 provincial election under the Non-Partisan League banner alongside fellow candidates Louise McKinney and James Weir.  He ran the southern Alberta district of Gleichen and placed third with 17 per cent of the vote.

Edmonton Journal, 1926

Months later he ran in the December 1917 federal election in the rural Alberta riding of Victoria, placing third with 7.9 per cent of the vote. He appears to have relocated from Whitecourt to Edmonton after these two electoral defeats. 

He split with Wise Wood shortly after the UFA’s surprise sweeping win in the 1921 election and resigned from the UFA executive. 

Following his split with the UFA, he became an enthusiastic promoter of monetary reform, calling for the creation of a smaller localized banking system over a centralized system dominated by central Canadian banks. He also clashed with evangelical followers of Social Credit theory during the big monetary reform debates of the 1920s and 1930s.

An April 1922 report in the Financial Post described Leedy as “one of those who has achieved a reputation in this country as a bank baiter,” having once published a pamphlet describing bankers as “our overlords” who “have skinned the farmer instead of shearing him.” 

Ad in the Edmonton Journal, 1925

After a break from electoral politics, he announced plans to jump back into electoral politics in 1925 as an Independent Progressive in Edmonton East in the federal election but he did not make it on to the ballot.

His next and final run for elected office would happen in 1926, when he advocated for monetary reform as an Independent candidate for MLA in Edmonton’s multi-member district. He eared 0.75 per cent of the vote and placed last out of 18 candidates.

Continuing to promote monetary reform theories, at age 83 he took his first trip in a airplane when flying back to Kansas in 1932 to give bankers monetary advice. 

In an Edmonton Journal article marking his 86th birthday, Leedy credited his longevity to “accepting his doctor’s advice to move to a colder climate.”

Leedy died in Edmonton on March 24, 1935 and is buried in the Edmonton Municipal Cemetery. His wife, Sarah Boyd Leedy died in 1941 and is also buried in the Edmonton Municipal Cemetery. 

Upon notice of his death, the Kansas House of Representatives voted to provide $1,000 to meet the burial expenses for him and his wife and erect a burial monument.

Categories
Alberta Politics

Climate change lawsuits could be the new reality and Alberta better get used to it

Toronto City Councillor Mike Layton announced his plans to bring forward a motion to the council of Canada’s largest city this week asking for a report on the long term cost implications of climate change on the City of Toronto’s infrastructure and programs and any legal avenues to pursue compensation for those costs from major greenhouse gas emitters.

Rachel Notley Alberta NDP leader
Rachel Notley

On the campaign trail in Alberta, NDP leader Rachel Notley and United Conservative Party leader Jason Kenney delivered sharp responses in defence of Alberta’s oil industry. Both leaders are trying to position themselves as the biggest defenders of the oil industry in an election where the economy and oil pipelines are top of mind for many Albertans.

Notley has spent the past four years positioning herself as the country’s biggest advocate in favour of oil pipelines and Kenney recently announced plans to create a government-funded PR war room to fight foreign criticism of behalf of the oil industry (I suspect Toronto now falls in the “foreign” category).

Layton’s motion has not even been debated yet and has been sent to committee, but it is part of a growing trend of North American municipal governments trying to hold large oil and gas companies to account for their role in global climate change.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced in 2018 that his City had filed a lawsuit against five of the world’s largest investor-owned fossil fuel companies – BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, and Royal Dutch Shell – for the billions of dollars the City will spend to protect the city and its residents from the impact of climate change.

Similar lawsuits have been launched by other American municipal governments, including San Francisco, Oakland, and Richmond.

Jason Kenney
Jason Kenney

For municipal governments suing oil and gas companies, the fight is over who is responsible for covering the cost of damages resulting from rising average temperatures – a particularly sensitive issue for Canadian cities located near large bodies of water like Victoria, Vancouver and Toronto. 

I am not a lawyer, so I cannot say for sure whether the same legal avenues are available to Canadian municipalities, it is clear that attitudes towards fossil fuels are changing in city halls across the country in respect to climate change. With an increasing number of provincial governments reneging on previous climate change initiatives, it is also becoming clearer that municipal councils cannot wait for provincial legislatures to find solutions.

Victoria City Council passed a resolution in January 2019 to support filing a class-action lawsuit against fossil fuel companies to recover costs arising from climate change.” Burnaby’s new Mayor Mike Hurley has asked the BC government to create legislation to allow municipal governments to launch and join class-action lawsuits against fossil fuel companies for climate-related harms.

The BC cities of Vancouver and Richmond have recently declared “climate emergencies.”

But in Alberta, with pipelines and Gay-Straight Alliances making headlines, climate change is a sleeper issue in the ongoing election campaign even as the World Meteorological Organization is reporting that extreme weather last year impacted 62 million people worldwide and forced 2 million people to relocate.

The Notley government implemented a much-lauded Climate Leadership Plan after it was elected into office in 2015, which included an ambitious plan to shut down Alberta’s dirty coal-fired power plants. But three years later, the most talked about element of Alberta’s climate change plan is the much-demonized carbon tax.

Kenney says a UCP government would repeal the carbon tax and dissolve Energy Efficiency Alberta, the government agency responsibly for renewable energy projects and energy efficiency programs, but he has not released any details about if he would take any meaningful action to combat climate change.

I expect that most or all of the Climate Leadership Plan would be scrapped under Kenney’s leadership, opening the province to more “foreign” criticism and making its large oil and gas industry into a more convincing target for political and legal challenges.

I already mentioned that attitudes towards oil and gas are changing, but so will demand for our oil, eventually. The challenge for future Alberta governments is how to meaningfully deal with climate change while recognizing that the goose that laid the golden egg could one day soon be barren. Alberta’s default has been to pray that the international price of oil will bounce back someday soon, creating plenty of jobs and replenishing government coffers.

Layton’s proposal, like similar actions pursued by the American cities, is to treat fossil fuel companies like tobacco companies who knew their products caused cancer but hid that information from the public. Like the tobacco companies, major oil companies have known for decades that they have been contributing to climate change and have been accused of spending $1 billion undermining climate change efforts.

Layton’s motion may just be a little bump on Alberta’s campaign trail, but it could be a sample of a much larger climate change fight coming in the years ahead.