Don Getty

Donald Ross Getty (August 30, 1933 – February 26, 2016) was a Canadian politician who served as the 11th premier of Alberta between 1985 and 1992.

Don Getty was born on August 30, 1933, in Westmount, Quebec, the son of Beatrice Lillian (Hampton) Getty (1910–1973) and Charles Ross Getty (1909–1974).

His father had dropped out of McGill University's medical school due to the Great Depression and worked a variety of jobs—sometimes more than one at a time—to support his wife, three sons, and two daughters.

Getty's childhood was spent in Verdun, Toronto, Ottawa, London, and Agincourt, sharing a three-room apartment with his seven-member family in the last.

Returning for London in time for high school, he became an accomplished athlete (drinking eggnog to gain enough weight to play football) and was elected students' council president.

Sports were his passion, and he was an especially great fan of the Montreal Canadiens and of Toronto Argonauts running back Royal Copeland.

After graduating, Getty enrolled to study business administration at the University of Western Ontario, where he became a football star and a member of The Kappa Alpha Society.

He also played basketball, and was part of championship teams in that sport in 1952, 1953, and 1954.

He quarterbacked the Western Ontario Mustangs to Eastern Collegiate Union Championships in 1954 and 1955, and was awarded the Claude Brown Memorial Trophy as the outstanding athlete at UWO in 1955.

A week after his 1955 graduation, he married Margaret Mitchell, his high school sweetheart.

The Edmonton Eskimos had offered Getty a professional contract, so the newlyweds drove out west in an old blue Buick.

While still playing football, Getty was hired by Imperial Oil in 1955.

He worked for Midwestern Industrial Gas Limited, beginning in 1961 as Lands and Contracts Manager with a promotion to Assistant General Manager following in 1963.

In 1964 he founded his own company, Baldonnel Oil and Gas Company, before entering the world of finance as a partner with Doherty, Roadhouse, and McCuaig investments in 1967.

In 1965, Getty was approached by fellow Eskimos veteran and Progressive Conservative leader Peter Lougheed to run in the 1967 provincial election.

Getty agreed to run in Strathcona West, and defeated incumbent Social Crediter Randolph McKinnon by more than one thousand votes.

He entered the Legislative Assembly of Alberta as one of six newly elected P.C.s. Four years later, in the 1971 election, Getty was re-elected by more than 3,500 votes in the new riding of Edmonton-Whitemud and was appointed Minister of Federal and Intergovernmental Affairs in the new Lougheed majority government.

With Getty and the government both re-elected by increasing margins in the 1975 election, Lougheed appointed him Minister of Energy.

In this capacity Getty partially continued his responsibility for relations with the federal government, as energy policy was a major sticking point between the two governments (at one point, federal Energy Minister Donald MacDonald called Getty "dripping with venom").

A member of the Progressive Conservatives, he served as Energy Minister and Federal and Intergovernmental Affairs Minister in the government of Peter Lougheed before leaving politics for the private sector in 1979.

He returned to politics six years later to enter the Progressive Conservative leadership contest resulting from Lougheed's retirement.

Getty did not seek re-election in the 1979 election.

While out of politics, Getty became the head of an investment firm and sat on the boards of a number of corporations, including the Royal Bank of Canada, Sparrow Energy, Nortek Energy and Celanese Canada.

His time in office was characterized by attempts to reduce the government's budget deficit and interventions calculated to stabilize the economy during the recession of the 1980s.

When Getty became Premier he left his predecessor's cabinet completely intact.

He defeated two other candidates, and became Premier November 1, 1985.

As Premier, Getty was faced with an economic slowdown and falling energy prices, which hit Alberta's petroleum-dominated economy hard.

Faced with mounting government deficits and increasing unemployment, he cut social spending and intervened with government money to prevent businesses from failing.

Several of these interventions backfired in high-profile fashion, failing at their intended objective and costing scarce public funds as well.

While some analysts argue that Getty's fiscal program laid the groundwork for Ralph Klein's later balancing of the provincial budget, on Getty's departure from office the government's debt had reached $11 billion, setting the stage for his successor to characterize the Getty years as an era of wasteful and excessive spending.

His efforts at strengthening Alberta's presence in Canada initially appeared more successful, as he won the agreement of Canada's other first ministers in including elements of Senate reform in the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords, but these efforts came to naught when both accords were rejected—the second by the Canadian public, including a majority of Albertans.

However, when Lougheed stepped down from the Progressive Conservative leadership in 1985, Getty entered the contest to replace him and immediately became the favourite.

At an October convention, Getty won a second ballot victory against Minister of Municipal Affairs Julian Koziak and former legislator Ron Ghitter.

Getty was appointed Premier November 1, 1985.

He returned to the legislature just over a month later, winning a by-election in his old riding of Edmonton-Whitemud.

As Premier for nearly seven years, Getty presided over some of Alberta's toughest economic times.

Getty was also facing political problems within Alberta, including a defeat in his home riding of Edmonton-Whitemud in the 1989 election (leading to a successful by-election in Stettler, vacated by a P.C. MLA) and leadership machinations from some of his own ministers.

In light of this, he resigned the Premiership in 1992.

Before entering politics, Getty had been a quarterback for the Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League.

He passed for more than eight thousand yards over his ten-year career, and was put on the team's Wall of Fame in 1992.