Ernest Shilston Watkins (June 18, 1902 – September 20, 1982) was a provincial politician and author from

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 ...

, Canada. He served as a member of 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 ...

from 1957 to 1963.

Political career

Watkins was elected in a by-election held in the

Calgary Calgary () is a major city in the Canadian province of Alberta. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806 making it the third-largest city and fifth-largest metropolitan area in C ...

provincial electoral district October 2, 1957. He won nearly half the popular vote, defeating four other candidates. This was the first election held using the

first past the post First-past-the-post (FPTP)—also called choose-one, first-preference plurality (FPP), or simply plurality—is a single-winner voting rule. Voters mark one candidate as their favorite, or First-preference votes, first-preference, and the cand ...

method of voting, after the end of Alberta's use of STV (It had used STV in Alberta's largest cities since 1924.)Alberta Centennial Series, A Century of Democracy, p. 507 Under the new rules, Watkins was declared elected although he had not received a majority of the votes cast. Watkins was re-elected in the 1959 Alberta general election for the new electoral district of Calgary Glenmore. The election results showed Watkins (with 43 percent of the vote) just ahead of the next candidate (a Social Credit) only by about 200 votes, with a Liberal candidate getting 1900 votes (16 percent) of the vote. Again, although Watkins did not have majority of the votes cast, he was declared elected. Watkins was the only Progressive Conservative candidate elected in 1959. He became interim leader of his party replacing Cam Kirby. Watkins held the leadership until 1962 when he was replaced by Milt Harradence.

Author

His books include: The Golden Province. A Political History of Alberta R.B. Bennett: A Biography.

References

External links

Legislative Assembly of Alberta Members Listing
1902 births 1982 deaths Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta MLAs 20th-century members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta {{Alberta-MLA-stub