A young Joe Clark, then a candidate in an Alberta provincial election, spoke to Calgary students on this date in 1967. A section of the Calgary Herald’s coverage of the event is found below.
“Loud yells, waving placards and crowds of cheering supporters greeted provincial election candidates at a forum of junior high school students staged today at Melville Scott School. The forum, held in conjunction with the school's model parliament election, gave the 400 students an opportunity to listen and cheer for their party's candidate and then subject his opponents to a round of difficult questions.
The four candidates who braved the partisan assembly's yells and questions were Joe Clark, Progressive Conservative candidate in Calgary South, R. J. Gibbs, Liberal contestant in Victoria Park, Donald Fleming, the Social Credit's man in Calgary West and Allan Early, and New Democratic contestant also in Calgary West...
‘After seeing the astuteness of these students,’ Clark said, ‘there seems to be an argument for reducing the voting age to twelve.’
Mr. Clark added the junior high students were more aware on provincial politics than many adults he had met. The students’ political interest was no accident since they have been drilled on all four parties' platforms and policies for two weeks by social studies teacher Alex McEachen.”
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.