Ed Stelmach

His grandparents settled near Andrew, Alberta in 1898, after bypassing Saskatchewan because they did not care for the terrain.

His parents, Nancy (née Koroluk) and Michael N. Stelmach, had five children, of whom Edward was the youngest, ten years younger than his closest sibling.

Stelmach was raised speaking Ukrainian, and did not learn English until he started attending school.

He was raised a Ukrainian Catholic, and continues to attend church regularly, sing in the church choir, and act as a volunteer caretaker for the cemetery.

Through high school, he worked as a well-digger and a Fuller Brush salesman, where he said his grasp of Ukrainian helped him make sales.

After graduating high school—his grade 12 yearbook called him a future Prime Minister of Canada—he attended the University of Alberta, intending to become a lawyer.

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 speaks the distinctive Canadian dialect of Ukrainian.

He spent his entire pre-political adult life as a farmer, except for some time spent studying at the University of Alberta.

He continued there, working as an assistant manager at Woodward's, until 1973, when his oldest brother, Victor, died.

While his family had intended for Victor to take over the farm that his grandparents had settled 75 years before, Stelmach dropped out of university, returned home, and bought the land from his parents.

He continues to farm the land today.

As a teenager, he met Marie Warshawski at the wedding of a mutual friend.

They married in 1973, and have three sons and a daughter.

His first foray into politics was a 1986 municipal election, when he was elected to Lamont County council.

A year into his term, he was appointed reeve.

He continued in this position until his entry into provincial politics.

Stelmach entered politics in 1986 with his election to the council of Lamont County; one year later, he was appointed county reeve, a position he held until his entry into provincial politics in 1993.

In the 1993 provincial election, Stelmach was elected as the Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Vegreville-Viking (later Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville).

A Progressive Conservative, he served in the cabinets of Ralph Klein—at various times holding the portfolios of Intergovernmental Relations, Transportation, Infrastructure, and Agriculture, Food, and Rural Development—where he developed a reputation as a low-key politician who avoided the limelight.

Stelmach ran for the Legislative Assembly of Alberta as a Progressive Conservative in the 1993 provincial election, defeating incumbent New Democrat Derek Fox in the riding of Vegreville-Viking.

Stelmach became a member of the Deep Six, a group of enthusiastically fiscally conservative rookie MLAs; in addition to supporting Premier Ralph Klein's aggressive deficit-cutting, Stelmach practiced fiscal restraint himself, incurring low office expenses and declining a government vehicle.

During his first term, Stelmach served as Deputy Whip and, later, Chief Government Whip for the P.C. caucus.

As a backbencher, he sponsored the Lloydminster Hospital Act Repeal Act.

This was a government bill that dissolved the then-existing Lloydminster hospital board in preparation for an arrangement compliant with both the Alberta government's new system of regional health authorities and the Saskatchewan government's system.

Lloydminster sits on the border of Alberta and Saskatchewan, and the hospital, although built and operated by the Alberta government, sits on the Saskatchewan side.

It passed the legislature with little debate.

In 1996, shortly before an April by-election in Redwater, Stelmach was accused of "pork barrel politics" for presenting, along with colleague Peter Trynchy and P.C. candidate Ross Quinn, a large cheque to a local seniors centre.

Stelmach said that he had only stepped in to help the riding after its MLA, Nicholas Taylor, had been appointed to the Senate.

With the advent of the late-2000s recession, Stelmach had to cope with a deteriorating economic situation and the Alberta government's first budget deficit in 16 years.

When Klein resigned the party's leadership in 2006, Stelmach was among the first to present his candidature to replace him.

After a third-place finish on the first ballot of the leadership race, he won an upset second ballot victory over former provincial treasurer Jim Dinning.

Stelmach's premiership was heavily focused on management of the province's oil reserves, especially those of the Athabasca Oil Sands.

He rejected calls from environmentalists to slow the pace of development in the Fort McMurray area, and similarly opposed calls for carbon taxes.

Other policy initiatives included commencing an overhaul of the province's health governance system, amendments to the Alberta human rights code, a re-introduction of all-party committees to the Legislature, and the conclusion of a major labour agreement with Alberta's teachers.

His government also attracted controversy for awarding itself a 30% pay increase shortly after its re-election, and featured strained relations with Calgary, one of Klein's former strongholds.

Despite this, Stelmach increased the Progressive Conservatives' already substantial majority in the 2008 election.

Stelmach was succeeded as Premier by Alison Redford on October 7, 2011.

He joined the board of Covenant Health a year later, and has been its chair since January 2016.

Edward Michael Stelmach was born on a farm near Lamont, Alberta, the grandson of immigrants from Zavyche, Ukraine.