It was on this date in 1967 that Joe Clark’s journey through Canadian politics continued. He earned a provincial nomination in Alberta. I’ll let the Calgary Herald’s next day coverage of the nomination tell the rest of the story.
The Calgary Herald: Political science lecturer Joe Clark won the Conservative nomination for the Calgary South riding unopposed at a constituency meeting Wednesday. Promising his supporters a "short, strenuous and exciting campaign," Mr. Clark delivered a scathing attack on Social Credit's competence to govern. "The province is changing and its government is not," he said. The Social Credit administration “born before I was “has grown old, complacent, arrogant and out of touch with the real problems of Albertans.
Mr. Clark described the billboards seen in many sites of Calgary and Edmonton which are expected to carry Social Credit campaign slogans later in the campaign. At present, they show a family of four, the words "horizons unlimited" in large letters, and a huge question mark suggesting more to come. The question mark, which he said symbolized Social Credit policy, was added when the party's admen were "overwhelmed with honesty.”
It might stand for the question of who takes over Premier (Ernest) Manning what will be done about 213,000 low-income Albertans not covered by medical insurance, what will be done to ease load on urban property and what is being done in educational research.
Social Credit, concluded Clark, is the only party ever went into an election "clad only in white and a question mark."
Mr. Clark reminded his supporters that half the registered voters in Calgary South did not vote in the 1963 election. "Their support is ours for the asking and we certainly intend to ask,” he said.
Mr. Clark, whose family published The High River Times from 1905 until last year and who has worked in newspapers, radio and television in Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto, is now a political science lecturer at the University of Alberta.
Accepting the nomination, he said Alberta is faced with the double threat of arrogant and arbitrary government and a complacent public. Under Social Credit administration it has "the resources but not the disposition to be a leader among the provinces." Jaded by 32 years in power, the Alberta government has lost "the pioneers' inclination to govern," falling behind the poor provinces of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in imaginative policies.
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.