Vegreville 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 ...

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 Member may refer to: * Military jury, referred to as "Members" in military jargon * Element (mathematics), an object that belongs to a mathematical set * In object-oriented programming, a member of a class ** Field (computer science), entries in ...

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 ...

from 1909 to 1963 and again from 1971 to 1993.

History

Boundary history

Vegreville was created from the northwest corner of the

Vermilion Vermilion (sometimes vermillion) is a color family and pigment most often used between antiquity and the 19th century from the powdered mineral cinnabar (a form of mercury sulfide). It is synonymous with red orange, which often takes a moder ...

district as part of the almost-doubling of seats in the Legislature in 1909. Over time, its boundaries were adjusted several times, shrinking to the area immediately surrounding the town of

Vegreville Vegreville () is a town in central Alberta, Canada. It is on Highway 16A approximately east of Edmonton, Alberta's capital city. It was incorporated as a town in 1906, and that year also saw the founding of the ''Vegreville Observer'', a week ...

. In 1963, Vegreville was merged with some of the

Bruce The English language name Bruce arrived in Scotland with the Normans, from the place name Brix, Manche in Normandy, France, meaning "the willowlands". Initially promulgated via the descendants of king Robert the Bruce (1274−1329), it has been ...

district to form

Vegreville-Bruce Vegreville-Bruce was a provincial electoral district in Alberta, Canada, mandated to return a single member to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta using the first past the post method of voting from 1963 to 1971. History Vegreville-Bruce is n ...

, but in the redistribution that followed, the district was renamed Vegreville with little change in boundaries. The riding was finally abolished in 1993, mostly absorbed by

Vegreville-Viking Vegreville-Viking was a provincial electoral district in Alberta, Canada, mandated to return a single member to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta from 1993 to 2004. History The Vegreville-Viking electoral district was created in the 1993 el ...

, with a small area transferred to Vermilion-Lloydminster.

Representation history

Vegreville (and Vegreville-Bruce) was mostly a

bellwether A bellwether is a leader or an indicator of trends.bellwether
" ''Cambridge Dictionary''. Re ...

riding, having been held by an opposition party only once until 1982. Its first MLA was

James Bismark Holden James Bismark Holden (October 4, 1876 – April 10, 1956) was a businessman and politician from Alberta, Canada. He served in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta from 1906 to 1913 as a member of the Liberal Party. He also served as the mayor of ...

, who had already served as MLA for

for the Liberals. He served one term in Vegreville and retired in 1913. His successor was Joseph McCallum, who won Vegreville for the Liberals by a much smaller margin in 1913 and 1917 but nonetheless held the district for the government. However, in 1921, he was soundly defeated by

United Farmers of Alberta The United Farmers of Alberta (UFA) is an association of Alberta farmers that has served different roles in its 100-year history – as a lobby group, a successful political party, and as a farm-supply retail chain. As a political party, it forme ...

candidate Archie Matheson in their party's rise to power. Matheson was a vocal backbencher in the UFA government, opposing his own government's stances on prohibition and eugenics, and aggressively advocating for local interests during his three terms. However, Matheson was in turn soundly defeated by

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 ...

candidate James McPherson when the UFA was swept out of power in 1935, placing third in the first round of voting. McPherson served only one term. In 1940, Social Credit held the seat with candidate George Woytkiw winning on the second round. Matheson ran in this election as well in an attempt to re-take the seat, this time as a

CCF CCF can refer to: Computing * Confidential Consortium Framework, a free and open-source blockchain infrastructure framework developed by Microsoft * Customer Care Framework, a Microsoft product Finance * Credit conversion factor converts the ...

candidate, but placed third again. Woytkiw also served only one term, but Social Credit candidate Michael Ponich held the seat again in 1944, despite a strong challenge by the

. Ponich won again in a landslide in 1948, but faced another close race in 1952. In 1955 Stanley Ruzycki defeated Ponich in the second round of voting to take the seat for the

Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF; , FCC) was a federal democratic socialism, democratic socialistThe following sources describe the CCF as a democratic socialist political party: * * * * * * and social democracy, social-democ ...

. In response, the Social Credit government abolished

instant-runoff voting Instant-runoff voting (IRV; ranked-choice voting (RCV), preferential voting, alternative vote) is a single-winner ranked voting election system where Sequential loser method, one or more eliminations are used to simulate Runoff (election), ...

in rural ridings and introduced

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 ...

voting across the province. Ruzycki was subsequently defeated by Social Credit candidate Alex Gordey in 1959. After Gordey's first term, Vegreville was merged with

, and he chose to run again in the new riding of

. He served two terms there, and Vegreville was reinstated in 1971. Running again in Vegreville, Gordey would be defeated along with

Harry Strom Harry Edwin Strom (July 7, 1914 – October 2, 1984) was the ninth premier of Alberta, from 1968 to 1971. His two-and-a-half years as Premier were the last of the thirty-six-year Social Credit dynasty, as his defeat by Peter Lougheed saw it ...

's government by the Progressive Conservatives. John Batiuk won the seat by a significant margin, and went on to serve four terms, becoming the longest-serving MLA in the district's history. When Batiuk chose not to run again in 1986, the open seat was picked up by

New Democrat New Democrats may refer to: * New Democratic Party, a social democratic party in Canada * New Democrats (United States), the ideological centrist faction of the Democratic Party ** New Democrat Coalition, the related caucus in the United States H ...

Derek Fox. He served two terms until the riding was abolished in 1993, and was defeated by future premier

Ed Stelmach Edward Michael Stelmach (; born May 11, 1951) is a Canadian politician who served as the 13th premier of Alberta, from 2006 to 2011. The grandson of Ukrainian immigrants, Stelmach was born and raised on a farm near Lamont and fluently spea ...

in the new riding of

. As of 2016, Fox is the last Alberta New Democrat to have held a rural seat for two successive terms.

Election results

1900s

1910s

1920s

For the 1926 election, the United Farmers government introduced

alternative vote Instant-runoff voting (IRV; ranked-choice voting (RCV), preferential voting, alternative vote) is a single-winner ranked voting election system where one or more eliminations are used to simulate runoff elections. When no candidate has a ...

in rural constituencies. Three counts were necessary in Vegreville, as Matheson failed to win a majority on the first or second round. , - !colspan=6, Second count , colspan=2, Neither , align=486 ''Final round swing represents gain from the first round. Overall swing is calculated from first preferences.''

1930s

''The source records a second count between McPherson and Gordon despite McPherson's majority result. This may be the result of an archiving error.''

1940s

, - !colspan=6, Second count , colspan=2, Neither , align=230 , - !colspan=6, Second count , colspan=2, Neither , align=417

1950s

, - !colspan=6, Second count , colspan=2, Neither , align=648 , - !colspan=6, Second count , colspan=2, Neither , align=395 After the 1955 election, the Social Credit government abolished

in rural districts and reintroduced

. Vegreville was therefore won without a majority on the first round in 1959, and this change can also be seen in the dramatic drop in spoiled (incorrectly marked) ballots.

1971

1975

1979

1982

1986

1989

Plebiscite results

1957 liquor plebiscite

On October 30, 1957 a stand-alone plebiscite was held province wide in all 50 of the then current provincial electoral districts in Alberta. The government decided to consult Alberta voters to decide on liquor sales and mixed drinking after a divisive debate in the Legislature. The plebiscite was intended to deal with the growing demand for reforming antiquated liquor control laws. The plebiscite was conducted in two parts. Question A asked in all districts, asked the voters if the sale of liquor should be expanded in Alberta, while Question B asked in a handful of districts within the corporate limits of Calgary and Edmonton asked if men and woman were allowed to drink together in establishments. Province wide Question A of the plebiscite passed in 33 of the 50 districts while Question B passed in all five districts. Vegreville voted in favour of the proposal by a solid majority. Voter turnout in the district was abysmal falling well under the province wide average of 46%. Official district returns were released to the public on December 31, 1957. The Social Credit government in power at the time did not considered the results binding. However the results of the vote led the government to repeal all existing liquor legislation and introduce an entirely new ''Liquor Act''. Municipal districts lying inside electoral districts that voted against the Plebiscite were designated Local Option Zones by the Alberta Liquor Control Board and considered effective dry zones, business owners that wanted a licence had to petition for a binding municipal plebiscite in order to be granted a licence.

References

External links

Elections AlbertaThe Legislative Assembly of Alberta
{{Coord, 53.50, N, 112.05, W, display=title Former provincial electoral districts of Alberta