Spirit River-Fairview was a provincial

electoral district An electoral (congressional, legislative, etc.) district, sometimes called a constituency, riding, or ward, is a geographical portion of a political unit, such as a country, state or province, city, or administrative region, created to provi ...

in northwestern

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, mandated to return a single member to 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 ...

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 from 1971 to 1986.

History

Spirit River-Fairview electoral district was created prior to the

1971 Alberta general election The 1971 Alberta general election was the seventeenth general election held in the Province of Alberta, Canada on August 30, 1971, to elect seventy-five members of the Alberta Legislature The Alberta Legislature is the unicameral legislatur ...

by merger of the Spirit River and

Dunvegan Dunvegan () is a village on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. It is famous for Dunvegan Castle, seat of the chiefs of Clan MacLeod. Dunvegan is within the parish of Duirinish, Skye, Duirinish. In 2011, it had a population of 386. Name In ''The Nors ...

electoral districts. The district was abolished in 1986 and recreated into Dunvegan.

Boundary history

Spirit River-Fairview was created in 1971 out of

and the north half of Spirit River. It contained the communities of Spirit River, Fairview and Rycroft, and extended northward past the Chinchaga River. Its boundaries remained unchanged until it was abolished in 1986 and replaced by the second incarnation of Dunvegan.

Representation history

Spirit River-Fairview's first MLA was NDP leader Grant Notley. He is the father of premier

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 ...

, who was seven years old when he was first elected. Notley was the only New Democrat elected in 1971, and would remain the party's only MLA until 1982. He served as leader of the opposition until his untimely death in a plane crash on October 19, 1984. Notley's closest competition during his career came in 1982 with Progressive Conservative physician Doug Snider who advocated for a hospital to be built in the community. The resulting by-election in 1985 saw the NDP hold Spirit River-Fairview, with Jim Gurnett serving as MLA for the remainder of the term, after which the riding was abolished. This makes Spirit River-Fairview the only rural riding in Alberta to have elected only New Democrats to the Legislative Assembly.

Election results

1971

''Swing is calculated from the 1967 result in

, which had similar boundaries.''

1975

1979

1982

1985 by-election

References

External links

Elections AlbertaThe Legislative Assembly of Alberta
{{Coord, 56.0, N, 118.7, W, display=title Former provincial electoral districts of Alberta