Ed Ewasiuk
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Edward William "Eddie" Ewasiuk (September 24, 1933 – April 14, 2006) was a labour activist, a city councilor in
Edmonton Edmonton is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Alberta. It is situated on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, which is surrounded by Central Alberta ...
,
Alberta Alberta is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Canada. It is a part of Western Canada and is one of the three Canadian Prairies, prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to its west, Saskatchewan to its east, t ...
and a
NDP NDP may stand for: Computing * Neighbor Discovery Protocol, an Internet protocol * Nortel Discovery Protocol, a layer two Internet protocol, also called SONMP * Nondeterministic programming, a type of computer language Government * National Dev ...
Member of the Legislative Assembly in the
Legislative Assembly of Alberta The Legislative Assembly of Alberta is the deliberative assembly of the province of Alberta, Canada. It sits in the Alberta Legislature Building in Edmonton. Since 2012 the Legislative Assembly has had 87 members, elected first past the post f ...
. He was born in
Vegreville Vegreville () is a town in central Alberta, Canada. It is on Highway 16A approximately east of Edmonton, Alberta's capital city. It was incorporated as a town in 1906, and that year also saw the founding of the ''Vegreville Observer'', a week ...
, Alberta.


Early life

Ewasiuk was born on September 24, 1933, in Vegreville, Alberta. He was born to parents of Ukrainian descent. Ewasiuk was a labour activist with what was the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union. He served as a president of his local and then as a national vice-president. In 1980, he ran for city council in Edmonton's Northeast Ward 3 as part of the now-defunct Edmonton Voters' Association municipal party. and won, and was re-elected in 1983. While serving as an Edmonton city councillor in 1984 and 1985, Ewasiuk cast the only vote in favor of proclaiming ''Gay and Lesbian Awareness Day''. Though the motions were defeated both years, his support stood out as one of the earliest documented acts of municipal allyship for Edmonton’s LGBTQ+ community.


Provincial politics

In the
1986 Alberta general election The 1986 Alberta general election was held on May 8, 1986, to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. Peter Lougheed, who had created the modern Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta, Alberta Progressive Conservatives, ...
, Ewasiuk stood for MLA as a
New Democrat New Democrats may refer to: * New Democratic Party, a social democratic party in Canada * New Democrats (United States), the ideological centrist faction of the Democratic Party ** New Democrat Coalition, the related caucus in the United States H ...
in the northeast riding of
Edmonton-Beverly Edmonton-Beverly was a provincial electoral district in Alberta, Canada, mandated to return a single member to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta using the first past the post method of voting from 1971 to 1993. History The Edmonton-Beverly ...
. He won easily, garnering almost 60% of the vote, in an NDP sweep of Edmonton under Ray Martin's leadership. He defeated powerful PC Cabinet minister Bill Diachuk. In City Hall and Legislature, Ewasiuk gained a reputation as a devout advocate of workers' rights and reducing
poverty Poverty is a state or condition in which an individual lacks the financial resources and essentials for a basic standard of living. Poverty can have diverse Biophysical environmen ...
. In the
1989 Alberta general election The 1989 Alberta general election was held on March 20, 1989, to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. Many political observers were surprised by the early election call as less than three years had passed since the previous el ...
, Ewasiuk was re-elected with 50% of the vote. He was defeated in the
1993 Alberta general election The 1993 Alberta general election was held on June 15, 1993, to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. The Conservative government was re-elected, taking 51 seats out of 83 (61 percent of the seats) but only having support of 45 pe ...
by
Julius Yankowsky Julius Edward Yankowsky (born August 8, 1938) is a former politician from Alberta, Canada. He served in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta from 1993 to 2004. Political career Yankowsky first ran for the Alberta Legislature in the 1993 general ...
in the new electoral district of Edmonton-Beverly-Belmont after his old electoral district of Edmonton-Beverly was redistributed.


Late life and legacy

Ewasiuk died suddenly at his home in Edmonton in 2006. In 2007, a memorial bench for Ewasiuk was unveiled by the NDP and the CEP union facing
Edmonton City Hall The Edmonton City Hall is the home of the Edmonton City Council, municipal government of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Designed by Dub Architects, the building was completed in 1992. It was built to replace the former city hall designed by architect ...
.


References


External links


Legislative Assembly of Alberta Members Listing
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ewasiuk, Ed 1933 births 2006 deaths Alberta New Democratic Party MLAs Canadian people of Ukrainian descent Canadian socialists Trade unionists from Alberta Edmonton city councillors People from Vegreville 20th-century members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta