Alberta’s NDP spent the weekend celebrating the future and remembering the past as MLA Rachel Notley was elected party leader on the eve of the anniversary of her father’s tragic death.
Thirty years ago Grant Notley, then leader of the Alberta New Democrats, was killed in a plane crash near High Prairie. Notley had helped found the party and won a seat in the legislature in 1971.
On the night of October 19, 1984 his daughter, Rachel, was just 20 when she got the news of the crash.
“We didn’t really think that he would be one of the ones that didn’t survive because he had been in a lot of accidents before and always seemed to be able to withstand them.”
Writer Carol Shaben, and daughter of crash survivor Larry Shaben, said her research showed that Grant died instantly. She has documented the story of the crash and how it changed the survivors in her book Into the Abyss.
She had been working as a journalist in Jerusalem when she read the news in a local paper.
“It was surreal. How do you absorb the kind of information from half a world away? I called home right away in tears.”
Shaben said that the death of Grant changed Alberta’s political landscape.
“Grant Notley was the conscience, that kind of hard-working scrapper for the little guy in Alberta. He was well respected across the floor.
“With his passing Alberta lost a great opportunity to take a higher road in politics, a more compassionate road in politics.”
She described Rachel’s win on Saturday as “potent”.
“When I heard the news I just felt like this was right and it’s time. I was just gratified.
“It just made this day for me feel far more important and powerful and meaningful.”
However, Rachel is more focused on the future rather than the past.
“One could say there is some symbolism to it but I want to speak to Albertans as Rachel Notley, not as Grant Notley’s daughter.
“As much as it is coincidental and as much as many people who love and admired my father see a lot of symbolism in it really I am focused on trying to look forward, taking the strength that I have from my background and from my dad’s history and his legacy but really moving forward.”
She explained that the family did not mark the anniversary every year.
“We talk about it but we don’t necessarily do a massive thing every year.”
Instead, she said the anniversary was a good time to look back and see if the party has achieved what her father would have wanted.
“In some cases I don’t know if we have made the progress that we would have liked to have seen. So I think it is really important that we double our efforts.
“We are not in this for his legacy or the party’s legacy or a history book. We are in it to make life different for Albertans and better for Albertans and so that is what we need to keep our eye on.”
An Edmonton park has been named in Grant Notley’s honour and his riding was renamed the Dunvegan-Central Peace-Notley riding.
With files from Amanda Anderson, The Canadian Press
