Rosamond Wilkinson (née Owens; March 19, 1885 – December 18, 1968) was a provincial and municipal level politician 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 Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

. She served as Calgary city councillor 1936-1955 and 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 1944 to 1963. She was born in County Cavan, Ireland.

Political career

Wilkinson was first elected to public office as a Calgary city councillor in 1935. She would serve on council until 1955. For some of this time, she also was a MLA. Wilkinson ran as a Social Credit candidate in the Calgary provincial electoral district in the

1944 Alberta general election The 1944 Alberta general election was held on August 8, 1944, to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. As well, in late 1944 and early 1945, Armed Forces voters voted for separate representation - by electing an Army, an Air Forc ...

. She was the third most popular candidate in the city-wide district used at the time to elect Calgary's five MLAs. Although she did not get quota on the first count, she was elected on the 15th count, after votes were transferred as per the

Single Transferable Vote The single transferable vote (STV) or proportional-ranked choice voting (P-RCV) is a multi-winner electoral system in which each voter casts a single vote in the form of a ranked ballot. Voters have the option to rank candidates, and their vot ...

system in use at the time. Wilkinson ran in the

1948 Alberta general election The 1948 Alberta general election was held on August 17, 1948, to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. Ernest C. Manning led the Social Credit to a fourth term in government, increasing its share of the popular vote further ab ...

and was elected on the First Count. She won a third term in office in the

1952 Alberta general election The 1952 Alberta general election was held on August 5, 1952, to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. Ernest C. Manning in his third election as leader of the Social Credit Party, and its first election since the Social Credit ...

. The

1955 Alberta general election The 1955 Alberta general election was held on June 29, 1955, to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. Despite losing almost 10% of the popular vote (compared to its 1952 proportion of the vote) and 30% of its seats in the legisla ...

saw Wilkinson lose significant support. She was the fifth most popular candidate in the first count, but did not take quota until the end. She eventually won the fourth of the six seats in Calgary. Her surplus votes were transferred to help fellow SC candidate Arthur Dixon win a seat as well. Liberal

Grant MacEwan John Walter Grant MacEwan (August 12, 1902 – June 15, 2000) was a Canadian farmer, professor at the University of Saskatchewan, dean (education), Dean of Agriculture at the University of Manitoba, the 28th Mayor of Calgary and both a Membe ...

won the 5th seat. (In all, Calgary elected three SC MLAs, two Liberals and one Conservative in this PR-based election.) After this election, Calgary's city-wide electoral district was abolished in favor of single member districts,

Single transferable voting The single transferable vote (STV) or proportional-ranked choice voting (P-RCV) is a multi-winner electoral system in which each voter casts a single vote in the form of a ranked ballot. Voters have the option to rank candidates, and their vo ...

was replaced by First Past The Post/single-member

Plurality voting Plurality voting refers to electoral systems in which the candidates in an electoral district who poll more than any other (that is, receive a plurality) are elected. Under single-winner plurality voting, and in systems based on single-member ...

. Wilkinson ran in the new electoral district of Calgary North in 1959. She received a majority of the votes and defeated two experienced opponents, former Members of the Legislative Assembly A.J.E. Liesemer and Grant MacEwan, (and Conservative candidate James Macdonald) to win another term in office. She did not run for re-election in 1963 - she was 78 years old at the time. Wilkinson died in Edmonton on December 18, 1968, after a stroke and was buried in the Holy Cross Cemetery in that same city.

References

External links

Legislative Assembly of Alberta Members Listing
1885 births Alberta Social Credit Party MLAs 1968 deaths Women MLAs in Alberta 20th-century Canadian women politicians Calgary city councillors 20th-century members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta Women municipal councillors in Alberta 20th-century Canadian municipal councillors {{Alberta-MLA-stub