Edgar Peter Lougheed PC, CC, AOE, QC, BA, LL.B, MBA, LL.D
10th Premier of Alberta
In office 10 September 1971 – 1 November 1985
Preceded by	Harry E. Strom
Succeeded by	Don Getty
Member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta for Calgary West
In office 23 May 1967 – 28 February 1986
Preceded by	Donald S. Fleming
Succeeded by	Elaine McCoy
Born	July 26, 1928 (1928-07-26) (age 80) Calgary, Alberta
Political party	Progressive Conservative
Spouse	Jeanne Lougheed (née Rogers)
Children	Stephen, Andrea, Pamela, and Joseph
Residence	Calgary
Alma mater	University of Alberta, Harvard University
Profession	Lawyer
Religion	Anglican

Edgar Peter Lougheed, PC, CC, AOE, QC, (born July 26, 1928, in Calgary, Alberta) is a Canadian lawyer, and a former politician and Canadian Football League player. He served as premier of Alberta from 1971 to 1985.

Lougheed is the grandson of Sir James Alexander Lougheed. In 1950, he received a BA degree, and in 1952, he received a LL.B degree, both from the University of Alberta. While in Edmonton as a student, he played football for the Edmonton Eskimos (for two seasons, 1949 and 1950) and served as President of the Students' Union and of the Alberta Chapter of Delta Upsilon. In 1954, he received a MBA degree from Harvard University.

In 1965, he was elected leader of the Alberta Progressive Conservatives. The party won the 1971 provincial election, with 49 of the 75 seats in the legislature, defeating the Social Credit Party which had governed the province since the 1935 election. Lougheed established a Tory dynasty in the province that has continued uninterrupted since then. Lougheed led his party to victory in the 1975, 1979 and 1982 provincial elections.

As Premier, Lougheed furthered the development of the oil and gas resources, and started the Alberta Heritage Fund as a way of ensuring that the exploitation of non-renewable resources would be of long-term benefit to Alberta. He also introduced the Alberta Bill of Rights. Lougheed quarrelled with Pierre Trudeau's federal Liberal government over its 1980 introduction of the National Energy Program. But Lougheed and Trudeau eventually reached an agreement for energy revenue sharing in 1982, after hard bargaining. The successful Calgary bid to host the 1988 Winter Olympics was developed during Lougheed's terms.

From 1996–2002, Lougheed served as Chancellor of Queen's University.

Lougheed currently sits on the boards of a variety of organizations and corporations.

Early life

Peter Lougheed was born in Calgary on 26 July 1928, the son of Edna and Edgar Lougheed.¹ His paternal grandfather was Sir James Lougheed, a successful lawyer, federal cabinet minister, and senator.² Sir James accumulated a seizable fortune before his 1925 death, but the Great Depression wiped out much of it, and the first years of Peter's life was spent moving from one rented accommodation to another.² He was educated at the Strathcona School for Boys, Earl Grey School, Rideau Park School, and the Central Collegiate Institute, all in Calgary.¹ At the last of these, he proposed the formation of a students' union, and subsequently became its first president.³ He also excelled at sports, particularly football.²

Upon graduating from Central Collegiate, Lougheed enrolled at the University of Alberta, from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (in 1950 or 1951)¹³ and a bachelor of laws (in 1952).¹ There, he played football for the University of Alberta Golden Bears and, in 1949 and 1950, the Edmonton Eskimos.¹⁴ He also served as president of the Students' Union in 1951–1952 and was editor of the sports section for the Gateway, the University of Alberta student newspaper.⁵ While studying at the University of Alberta, he lived for a time in Rutherford House as a member of the Delta Upsilon fraternity.⁶ In 1952, he married Jeanne Rogers, who he met during his schooling.² Soon after the wedding, the couple went to Massachusets, where Lougheed pursued a Master of Business Administration at Harvard University, which he earned in 1954.³ During this degree, he worked for a summer with Gulf Oil in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he witnessed an oil boom town after the oil ran out; political scientist Allan Tupper has suggested that Lougheed saw here a possible future of Alberta.⁷

After Harvard, Lougheed had to make decisions about his career. He believed that people should avoid excessive specialization in favour of maximizing their diversity of experience.⁸ He anticipated spending time in business, law, and politics.⁸ In pursuit of the first, he took a management position with Mannix Corporation, a Canadian construction firm.⁸ Later, he left the company to establish a law practice.⁸ During the early sixties, he began to turn his attention towards politics.⁸

Early political career

Lougheed was of Conservative stock, and it was with that party that he decided to pursue his political career. At the time, Alberta was represented almost entirely by Progressive Conservatives in the Canadian House of Commons.⁸ While this might have made federal politics appealing to Lougheed, he viewed it as a drawback; he considered the field of federal P.C. politicians from Alberta to be crowded, and the life of a backbencher held little appeal for him.⁸ Instead, he turned his attention to the provincial Progressive Conservatives, who held no seats in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta and who had captured only 13% of the vote in the 1963 election (when it had contested only 33 of the province's 63 constituencies).⁸ The province had been governed by the Social Crediters since 1935, with the government having been led for all but the first eight years of that period by Premier Ernest Manning.⁸ Manning was popular, and had won 60 of 63 seats in the legislature in 1963, but Lougheed felt that the time was ripe for change.⁸ He believed that Albertans were beginning to find Social Credit too rural and insufficiently assertive in intergovernmental relations.⁸ In Lougheed's view, Alberta should be a senior partner in Confederation, and Social Credit was out of touch with the province's potential.⁸

He resolved to capture the leadership of the provincial Progressive Conservative party and to navigate it into government.⁹ The first phase of this was not difficult; despite having no provincial profile and little organization, Lougheed defeated Duncan McKillop, a former former P.C. candidate (Calgary Queens Park 1963) and fellow Calgary lawyer, on the first ballot of the party's 1965 convention.¹⁰ Another candidate, Edson town councillor John Scott, had withdrawn on the convention's first day.¹⁰ Lougheed was nominated from the floor by Lou Hyndman and Charles Arthur Clark, father of future Prime Minister Joe Clark.¹⁰ Vote totals were not released.¹⁰

Lougheed's first challenge as leader was a 1966 by-election in Pincher Creek–Crowsnest. The riding had been represented by Social Crediter William Kovach, who had died.¹¹

Honours

Lougheed was styled "The Honourable" for the duration of his membership in the Executive Council of Alberta from 1971 to 1986. When he was appointed a privy councillor (postnominal: "PC") on April 17, 1982, the style "The Honourable" was extended for life. In 1986, he was named a Companion of the Order of Canada (postnominal: "CC"), and in 1989 he was named to the Alberta Order of Excellence (postnominal: "AOE"). In 2001 he was inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame.

The Peter Lougheed Provincial Park was named after him in Alberta, and an acute care hospital has been named the Peter Lougheed Centre.

Electoral record

As party leader

As MLA

References

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