Edward Schreyer

Edward Richard Schreyer (born December 21, 1935) is a Canadian politician, diplomat, and statesman who served as Governor General of Canada, the 22nd since Canadian Confederation.

Schreyer was born and educated in Manitoba, and was first elected to the province's legislative assembly in 1958.

In the Manitoba election of 1958, Schreyer was elected to the legislative assembly as a member of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), in the rural constituency of Brokenhead; at twenty-two years of age, Schreyer was the youngest person ever elected to the assembly.

There, he received a Bachelor of Pedagogy in 1959, a Bachelor of Education in 1962, a Master of Arts in International Relations, and a second Master of Arts in Economics in 1963.

From 1962 to 1965, Schreyer served as a professor of International Relations at St. Paul's College.

While pursuing his post-graduate degrees, Schreyer married Lily Schultz, with whom he had two daughters, Lisa and Karmel, and two sons, Jason and Toban.

He held the riding until resigning in 1965 to run successfully for the House of Commons in Ottawa.

He later moved into federal politics, winning a seat in the House of Commons, but returned to Manitoba in 1969 to become leader of the provincial New Democratic Party (NDP).

He returned to provincial politics in 1969, and was on June 8 elected leader of the New Democratic Party of Manitoba (NDP), the successor to the Manitoba CCF.

He differed in some ways from the previous leaders of Manitoba's NDP: he came from a rural background and was not committed to socialism as an ideology; he won the support of many centrist voters who had not previously identified with the party.

Also, he was the first leader of the Manitoba CCF/NDP who was not of British and Protestant descent.

Schreyer led his party to a watershed showing in the 1969 provincial election.

The NDP picked up 17 seats, vaulting them from third place in the legislature to first place.

Schreyer himself returned to the legislature from the newly created north Winnipeg seat of Rossmere.

However, with 28 seats, the NDP was one seat short of a majority.

Initially, the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives considered forming a coalition to lock the NDP out of power.

Finally, Liberal Laurent Desjardins threw his support to Schreyer (and later joined the NDP after a period as an independent), making Schreyer the first social democratic premier in Manitoba's history.

Schreyer's premiership oversaw the amalgamation of the city of Winnipeg with its suburbs, introduced public automobile insurance, and significantly reduced medicare premiums.

Schreyer sometimes favoured policies different from those of the federal NDP; in 1970, he supported Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's invocation of the War Measures Act in response to the October Crisis, despite the opposition of federal NDP leader Tommy Douglas.

Schreyer also served as his own minister of finance between 1972 and 1975, and as the minister responsible for Manitoba Hydro from 1971 to 1977.

It was from those positions that Schreyer advised the Lieutenant Governor to authorise construction of hydroelectric works instead of coal and gas burning electricity generators, and also put forward legislation that simultaneously eliminated provincial health care premiums and implemented home care and pharmacare.

Re-elected in 1973, Schreyer maintained his position as premier, though the council was this time less innovative, the only policy of note being the mining tax legislation implemented in 1974.

In the 1977 provincial election, Schreyer's New Democrats were defeated by the Progressive Conservative Party under Sterling Lyon.

In 1978 he was appointed Governor General by Queen Elizabeth II on the recommendation of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, to replace Jules Léger, and he occupied the post until succeeded by Jeanne Sauvé in 1984.

As the Queen's representative, he was praised for raising the stature of Ukrainian Canadians.

Later, he served as Canada's High Commissioner to Australia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu.

He then attempted, without success, to get elected to the House of Commons; he was the first person to run for election in Canada after serving as Governor General.

Schreyer was born in Beausejour, Manitoba, to Anglophone ethnic German-Austrian Catholic parents John Schreyer and Elizabeth Gottfried; his maternal grandparents were Austrians who emigrated from western Ukraine.

Schreyer attended Cromwell Elementary School and Beausejour Collegiate Secondary School, then United College and St. John's College at the University of Manitoba.

On December 28, 1978, Queen Elizabeth II, by commission under the royal sign-manual and Great Seal of Canada, appointed Pierre Trudeau's choice of Schreyer to succeed Jules Léger as the Queen's representative.

He remained leader of the NDP in opposition until 1979, when Trudeau offered him the office of Governor General.

He was sworn in during a ceremony in the Senate chamber on January 22, 1979, making him the first Governor General from Manitoba, and, at the age of forty-three, the third youngest ever appointed, after the Marquess of Lorne in 1878 (33 years old), and the Marquess of Lansdowne in 1883 (38 years old).

As Governor General, Schreyer championed women's issues, the environment, and official bilingualism.

During his first year in office, he established the Governor General's Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case, to recognize the efforts of Emily Murphy and others to ensure that Canadian women would be constitutionally recognized as persons.

In 1980, he caused controversy when he hesitated to call an election after Prime Minister Joe Clark advised him to do so.

In 1981 he instituted the Governor General's Conservation Awards and in 1983 he created the Edward Schreyer Fellowship in Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto.

Schreyer also later suggested that he might have dissolved parliament at any point through 1981 and 1982, had the Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau tried to impose his constitutional proposals unilaterally.

Also in 1983, he presided over the first Governor General's Canadian Study Conference, which has since been held every four years.

Schreyer invested Terry Fox as a companion of the Order of Canada, travelling to Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, to present Fox with the order's insignia.

The party then won that year's provincial election and Schreyer became the 16th premier of Manitoba, aged 33.