Why I am a Liberal by Maureen McLeod (AB)

April 14, 2023

Unlike many Liberals, I do not come from a long tradition of liberal thinking.

My parents were first generation off the farm. My mother’s parents – he had been a soldier during the Great War – were itinerant farmers who had come West from Nova Scotia to Alberta in a vain search for a better life for their rapidly expanding family. The best they could do was to have their own small subsistence farm in rural northeastern Alberta. My paternal grandparents were among the thousands of poor Ontario labourers who – well into middle age with their four youngest sons in tow – followed the lure of free land to become homesteaders in southeastern Alberta only to be driven north by the dust storms and drought of the Dirty Thirties. Potatoes not politics were most often on all their minds.

However, the general unrest and discontent of the farmers and workers on the Prairies, which led eventually to the formation of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) the forerunner of the NDP, brought politics to the forefront for families like ours. Indeed, one of my uncles even ran, albeit unsuccessfully, for the CCF, and later my father, a well-respected small town school principal who eventually became Mayor, openly supported a local Liberal candidate. My siblings and I were now being served a liberal helping of politics with our potatoes.

But it took Trudeaumania to turn me into a true Liberal. Like so many of my generation, I fell under Pierre Trudeau’s spell. I sat entranced in front of my tv with my newborn daughter on my lap watching as he was elected the new Liberal Leader 55 years ago. Today, he may be gone, but his legacy and my loyalty to the Liberal cause live on. And that’s no small potatoes.

Maureen McLeod (Calgary Skyview Board member, SLC(A) Board member)