Walter Grant Notley (January 19, 1939 – October 19, 1984) was a Canadian politician. 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 1971 to 1984 and also served as leader of the Alberta NDP from 1968 to 1984.

Early life

Notley was born in Didsbury, Alberta, the son of Frances (Grant) and James Walter Notley, who were farmers. He graduated from the

University of Alberta The University of Alberta (also known as U of A or UAlberta, ) is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first premier of Alberta, and Henry Marshall Tory, t ...

in 1960 with a history degree. After having been involved with the

Alberta New Democratic Party The Alberta New Democratic Party (Alberta NDP; ), is social democratic political party in Alberta, Canada. The party sits on the centre-left to left-wing of the political spectrum and is a provincial Alberta affiliate of the federal New Democra ...

in campus politics, he became the party's provincial secretary in 1962.

Political career

Notley ran for a seat to the Alberta Legislature for the first time in the

1963 Alberta general election The 1963 Alberta general election was held on June 17, 1963, to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. The Social Credit Party, led by Ernest C. Manning, won its eighth consecutive term in government, winning roughly the same nu ...

as a candidate for the Alberta NDP. He was defeated, finishing last in the four-way race losing to incumbent Edgar Gerhart. He also ran in the 1967 provincial election and in a 1969

by-election A by-election, also known as a special election in the United States and the Philippines, or a bypoll in India, is an election used to fill an office that has become vacant between general elections. A vacancy may arise as a result of an incumben ...

. Notley was elected leader of the Alberta NDP in 1968. Notley ran in the 1971 provincial election, winning a

seat A seat is a place to sit. The term may encompass additional features, such as back, armrest, head restraint but may also refer to concentrations of power in a wider sense (i.e " seat (legal entity)"). See disambiguation. Types of seat The ...

in the

in the electoral district of

Spirit River-Fairview Spirit River-Fairview was a provincial electoral district in northwestern 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 1986. History Spi ...

defeating incumbent

Social Credit Social credit is a distributive philosophy of political economy developed in the 1920s and 1930s by C. H. Douglas. Douglas attributed economic downturns to discrepancies between the cost of goods and the compensation of the workers who made t ...

MLA Adolph Fimrite. He served as the

Member of the Legislative Assembly A Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) is a representative elected to sit in a legislative assembly. The term most commonly refers to members of the legislature of a federated state or an autonomous region, but is also used for several nation ...

(MLA) for Spirit River-Fairview, and was, for eleven years, the sole NDP MLA in the provincial legislature. In the 1982 provincial election, he was joined by a second NDP MLA, Ray Martin, and the NDP was named the

Official Opposition Parliamentary opposition is a form of political opposition to a designated government, particularly in a Westminster-based parliamentary system. This article uses the term ''government'' as it is used in Parliamentary systems, i.e. meaning ''t ...

, as Notley, Martin and two independents were the only non- Progressive Conservative MLAs elected.

Death

On October 19, 1984, Notley and five other passengers were killed near

Slave Lake Slave Lake is a town in northern Alberta, Canada that is surrounded by the Municipal District of Lesser Slave River No. 124. It is approximately northwest of Edmonton. It is located on the southeast shore of Lesser Slave Lake at the junction ...

in northern Alberta when Wapiti Aviation Flight 402 crashed into a snow-covered, wooded hillside. Four people survived the crash, including then Minister of Housing, Larry Shaben. A year after Notley's death, his party achieved a breakthrough. In the 1986 provincial election, the NDP, for the first time, won 16 seats and 29 percent of the vote.

Personal life

Notley's daughter,

Rachel Notley Rachel Anne Notley (born April 17, 1964) is a Canadian lawyer and former politician who was the 17th premier of Alberta from 2015 to 2019 and leader of the Alberta New Democratic Party (NDP) from 2014 to 2024. Notley was the member of the Le ...

, served as MLA (NDP) for the provincial riding of Edmonton Strathcona, from the 2008 provincial election to 2024. She became leader of the party on October 18, 2014, as her father had before her, and she served as

premier of Alberta The premier of Alberta is the head of government and first minister of the Canadian province of Alberta. The current premier is Danielle Smith, leader of the governing United Conservative Party, who was sworn in on October 11, 2022. The premi ...

, from May 24, 2015, to April 30, 2019. She stepped down as Leader of NDP in January 2024. One of his two sons, Stephen Notley, writes the popular newspaper and web

comic strip A comic strip is a Comics, sequence of cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often Serial (literature), serialized, with text in Speech balloon, balloons and Glossary of comics terminology#Captio ...

'' Bob the Angry Flower''. His other son is Paul Notley.

Legacy

In 2010 the Peace River farm district Dunvegan-Central Peace-Notley was renamed Central Peace-Notley. Notley had represented the area as MLA from 1971 to his death in 1984. A statue was erected in his honour in Edmonton's Grant Notley Park near Lemarchand Mansion, 100th Avenue and 116 Street. ''Socialism and Democracy: Essays in Honour of Grant Notley'' was published after his death. The biography ''Grant Notley The Social Conscience of Alberta'' by Howard A. Leeson was published by UofA Press in 1992, reprinted 2015.

References

External links

Legislative Assembly of Alberta Members Listing
{{DEFAULTSORT:Notley, Grant 1939 births 1984 deaths Alberta New Democratic Party MLAs Leaders of the Alberta CCF/NDP Canadian socialists Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in Canada Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in 1984 Accidental deaths in Alberta 20th-century members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta