Marie Jean Laing ( Sprado; July 30, 1937 – March 24, 2023) was 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 1986 to 1993. She earned

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

and R.Psych degrees 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 ...

Political career

Laing represented the now-defunct southeast

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 ...

riding of Edmonton-Avonmore for the Alberta New Democrats. She taught at the

in Edmonton. Before her election she was active in the peace movement, and served as the Executive Director of the Edmonton Sexual Assault Centre. Laing was narrowly elected in an upset during the 1986 election by just 93 votes defeating the PC incumbent Horst Schmid. She was part of a sweep of many Edmonton ridings by New Democrats. As an MLA, she was noted for introducing feminist causes in the Legislature. Something she was less known for, Marie also supported treating lesbian and gay people as full citizens who deserved equal rights, and also legal protection from those that thought otherwise, including some even in her own caucus. She was re-elected 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 ...

by a wider margin, but was defeated by

Gene Zwozdesky Eugene Zwozdesky (July 24, 1948 – January 6, 2019) was a Canadian politician in the province of Alberta. He served in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta from 1993 to 2015, and was the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly from 2012 to 2015. E ...

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 ...

. Throughout her career, Marie mentored many women, serving as a role model and inspiring them to progressive causes. After her time as an MLA, she began teaching and became the Executive Director of the WORTH Centre, which assisted women with addictions. She was published in journals dealing with

Family Law Family law (also called matrimonial law or the law of domestic relations) is an area of the law that deals with family matters and domestic relations. Overview Subjects that commonly fall under a nation's body of family law include: * Marriag ...

, including her 1999 article ''For the Sake of the Children: Preventing Reckless New Laws''. Laing died on March 24, 2023.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Laing, Marie 1937 births 2023 deaths Alberta New Democratic Party MLAs Women MLAs in Alberta People from the County of Stettler No. 6 20th-century members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta