Alberta’s history is filled with colourful characters and perhaps one of the most unlikely was John Whitnaw Leedy. But before Leedy even arrived in Alberta in 1910 and set his eyes on elected office in this province, 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, Leedy was elected to the Kansas State Senate in 1893 and served there until he was elected Governor of Kansas in 1896 by leading the Populist Party ticket to a 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 state of Kansas is for free silver, than to any other cause.”
