Stanley Stanford Schumacher (12 June 1933 – 10 October 2020) was a politician from Alberta, Canada. He was speaker 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 ...

and a member of the

House of Commons of Canada The House of Commons of Canada () is the lower house of the Parliament of Canada. Together with the Monarchy of Canada#Parliament (King-in-Parliament), Crown and the Senate of Canada, they comprise the Bicameralism, bicameral legislature of Ca ...

Early life

Stanley Stanford Schumacher was born in

Hanna, Alberta Hanna is a town in Central Alberta, Canada, approximately 57 km northeast of the town of Drumheller. It is surrounded by Special Area No. 2 and the district office of the Alberta government's Special Areas administration is located in Hann ...

, to parents Louis and Gladys Schumacher on 12 June 1933. Louis Schumacher was a businessman and his mother Gladys was a school teacher. In 1968, he married Virginia Brodie whom he met in the Young Progressive Conservative Club and with whom he would have two children, Sandra and David. Schumacher joined the Canadian Officers' Training Corps in fall 1954 and served until 1958 as a commissioned second lieutenant in the

Royal Canadian Armoured Corps The Royal Canadian Armoured Corps (RCAC; ) is the armoured corps within the Canadian Army, including 3 Regular and 18 Reserve Force regiments,The Regiments and Corps of the Canadian Army (Queen's Printer, 1964) as well as the Royal Canadian Armo ...

, including a deployment to

Soest, Germany Soest (, as if it were 'Sohst'; Westphalian language, Westphalian: ''Saust'') is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, in western Germany. It is the Capital (political), capital of the Soest (district), Soest district. Geography Soest is located al ...

with the

Royal Canadian Dragoons The Royal Canadian Dragoons (RCD) is the senior armoured regiment of the Canadian Army by precedence. It is one of three armoured regiments in the Regular Force and forms part of the Royal Canadian Armoured Corps. The colonel-in-chief of the ...

. Schumacher's military service ended in March 1962. He attended school in Dorothy and

Drumheller Drumheller is a town on the Red Deer River in the badlands of east-central Alberta, Canada. It is located northeast of Calgary and south of Stettler. The Drumheller portion of the Red Deer River valley, often referred to as Dinosaur Vall ...

, Alberta, and went on to the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a Public university, public research university with campuses near University of British Columbia Vancouver, Vancouver and University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, in British Columbia, Canada ...

, where he received his

Bachelor of Commerce A Bachelor of Commerce (BCom or B Com) is an undergraduate degree in commerce, accounting, mathematics, economics, and management-related subjects. The degree is mainly offered in Commonwealth nations. Structure Bachelor of Commerce The Bac ...

in 1958 and

Bachelor of Laws A Bachelor of Laws (; LLB) is an undergraduate law degree offered in most common law countries as the primary law degree and serves as the first professional qualification for legal practitioners. This degree requires the study of core legal subje ...

in 1959. He returned to Drumheller where he practised law.

Federal political career

Schumacher first ran for the

Progressive Conservative Party of Canada The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada (PC; ) was a Centrism, centre to centre-right List of federal political parties in Canada, federal political party in Canada that existed from 1942 to 2003. From Canadian Confederation in 1867 unti ...

in the 1968 federal election and was elected to represent Palliser in Alberta. He served three terms in the House of Commons. During this time Schumacher chaired the Alberta Progressive Conservative caucus and was the secretary of the national caucus for one year. As a result of redistribution before the 1979 federal election, the district of Palliser was abolished. Schumacher intended to seek his party's nomination in the new riding of

Bow River The headwaters of the Bow River in Alberta, Canada, start at the Bow Glacier and Bow Lake (Alberta), Bow Lake in Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies, Canadian Rocky Mountains. The glacial stream that feeds Bow Lake (Alberta), Bow Lake ...

, which included much of his old district, but was asked by party officials to step aside in favour of leader

Joe Clark Charles Joseph Clark (born June 5, 1939) is a Canadian businessman, writer, and retired politician who served as the 16th prime minister of Canada from 1979 to 1980. He also served as Leader of the Official Opposition (Canada), leader of the ...

, whose own riding of

Rocky Mountain The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of Western Canada, to New Mexico in ...

had also been abolished. Although Tory officials offered him the nomination in another riding, Schumacher refused to stand down, forcing Clark to run in Yellowhead. In Bow River, Schumacher was challenged for the nomination by former Socred Gordon Taylor and lost in a controversial meeting in which Schumacher's supporters alleged that people who were not bona fide members of the party voted. Schumacher's former assistant, John Aimers, resigned from the party in January 1978 in protest, accusing the national executive of engineering Schumacher's defeat. On 28 February 1978, Schumacher left the party and sat as an independent. In the election the following year, he ran in Bow River against Taylor and was defeated.

Provincial political career

In the

1986 Alberta general election The 1986 Alberta general election was held on May 8, 1986, to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. Peter Lougheed, who had created the modern Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta, Alberta Progressive Conservatives, ...

, Schumacher ran for the

Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta The Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta, often referred to as the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta, was a provincial centre-right party in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Alberta that existed fro ...

. He was elected and was soon appointed Deputy Speaker, a position he held until 1993. Schumacher was reelected in the

1989 1989 was a turning point in political history with the "Revolutions of 1989" which ended communism in Eastern Bloc of Europe, starting in Poland and Hungary, with experiments in power-sharing coming to a head with the opening of the Berlin W ...

and

1993 The United Nations General Assembly, General Assembly of the United Nations designated 1993 as: * International Year for the World's Indigenous People The year 1993 in the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands had only 364 days, since its ...

general elections. He became the first elected Speaker of the Legislative Assembly after the retirement of David Carter, defeating Liberal candidate Bettie Hewes. As speaker, Schumacher never named a member and instead employed short adjournments for the purpose of restoring order. He retired from the Assembly after dissolution in 1997.

Late life

After his career in the provincial legislature, he formed the Drumheller law firm Schumacher, Gough and Pedersen, and served on the Alberta Surface Rights and Land Compensation boards where he eventually became Chairman in 2001. In November 2012, Schumacher received the

Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal The Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal () or The Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal was a commemorative medal created in 2012 to mark the 60th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's accession in 1952. There are four versions of the medal: one iss ...

in recognition for his public service contributions to Albertans and Canadians over the past more than 45 years. Earlier he had received the Silver and Golden Jubilee Medals. Schumacher died 10 October 2020, aged 87, from complications of dementia.

References

External links