Stanley Waters
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Stanley Charles "Stan" Waters, CD (June 14, 1920–September 25, 1991) was Canada's first, and so far only, elected Senator.
Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Waters enlisted in the Canadian Army in 1941, and chose to remain in the military after the war. He rose steadily through the ranks, and ended his career as a Lieutenant-General and Commander of the Canadian Forces Mobile Command (1973-75). In 1975, he joined Mannix organization at Calgary, becoming president of Loram Group, a subsidiary of the parent company. He was a co-founder of the Bowfort Group of Companies, which engage in farming, real estate and investment operations throughout Western Canada. He held a variety of executive positions until his retirement from business in 1989.
Stan Waters was also keenly interested in Canadian politics. In 1987, Waters became a founding member of Preston Manning's Reform Party of Canada. While Waters did not choose to participate as a Reform Party candidate in the federal election of 1988, he was seen as one of the party's most popular early spokesmen and policy communicators, speaking at numerous party rallies and events from 1987 to 1991.
In 1989, under strain from the troubling and complex wrangling surrounding the Meech Lake Accord and constitutional amendment talks, Alberta Premier Don Getty called for a Senate election. Stan Waters came forward as the Reform Party candidate for the open Alberta Senate seat. On October 16, 1989, he received 41.7% of the more than 620,000 votes cast by Albertans in his bid to go to Ottawa as the first elected Senator in the country's history. He represented the senate division of Alberta. Pressured by Getty and Reform, with Deborah Grey promising that if "we don't get this seat, we'll get 10 in the next election", Prime Minister Brian Mulroney agreed to appoint Waters to the Canadian Senate.
On June 11, 1990, Stan Waters was sworn in as Canada's first democratically elected Senator. He was also the first and only representative of the Reform Party in the Upper House. During his year-long tenure as a Senator, Waters spoke for Western Canadian and conservative values. He pushed for an end to official bilingualism, urged health care reform, opposed federal funding grants to artists and fervently pushed the Mulroney Government to adopt a "Triple-E Senate" (Elected, Effective and Equal) during the constitutional debates of 1990-91.
In September 1991, Waters died. When the federal Liberal Party was returned to power in the 1993 election under party leader Jean Chrétien, Senate reform was all but abandoned. Chrétien, and his successor, Paul Martin, have not appointed to the Senate candidates elected by Albertans, citing the fact that the elections are outside of jurisdiction.
