Profiles of Alberta Women
Mary LeMessurier
Personal life
On June 12, 1929 Mary J. LeMessurier (née Murray) was born alongside her twin sister Joan Parke to Kenneth and Jean Murray. Born in Montreal, Mary spent her early years playing in the outdoors, engaging in activities including swimming and skiing. As she grew older, she turned her love of the outdoors towards a supervisory role, serving as a camp counselor at Camp Kanawana.1
Eventually Mary moved to Atlantic Canada, where she graduated with the class of 1948 at Netherwood School for Girls, a university prep school in Rothesay, New Brunswick. After graduating, Mary returned to Montreal to attend McGill University. There she was able to pursue her love of athletics in an academic environment, studying physical education. While at McGill she also met Ernest LeMessurier, whom she married in 1953, and with whom she had four children. During her time in Montreal, Mary studied to become a registered technician of hematology, earning a diploma from the Royal Victoria Hospital. Mary also cultivated a love of art and culture, attending symphonies and ballets, visiting the art gallery, and serving on the board for the opera.2
In 1958, Mary and Ernest moved from Montreal to Halifax, a move brought about by opportunities for Ernest in his developing career in the print industry. In Halifax Mary entered the worlds of both public service and politics, getting involved in the campaign of Robert Stanfield, a Progressive Conservative (PC) member of parliament and eventual leader of the federal PC party. She continued her volunteer work when, in 1971, the family again relocated, this time to Edmonton. There she worked with PC member of parliament Marcel Lambert for five years as a constituency secretary before she turned her eye to running in provincial politics herself.
Political career
Mary entered Alberta politics in 1979, running as the Alberta PC candidate for the constituency of Edmonton-Centre. She defeated the New Democratic (NDP), Social Credit, and Liberal candidates, netting 54% of the vote. After the election, she was invited by Premier Peter Lougheed to serve as the minister responsible for culture, becoming one of the first women to serve in the Alberta cabinet. Mary would continue in her position as minister until 1986, retaining her Edmonton-Centre seat in the 1982 provincial election.
As the minister responsible for culture, Mary pursued a variety of initiatives to promote arts, culture, and heritage in Alberta. During her tenure many sites received the designation of Provincial Historical Resource, including the Ritchie Mill, the oldest surviving flour mill in Alberta, the Poundmaker Lodge, and the original Edmonton Public School Building. Mary also worked towards recognition of existing sites like the First Presbyterian Church in Edmonton, which had been designated in 1978 but did not receive a plaque because of lack of funding. After being made aware of this, Mary pushed to find money to fund the plaque and was present for its unveiling on July 26, 1981, the 100th anniversary of the laying of the church’s cornerstone.3 Another church, St. Bonafice Church in the locality of Friedenstal, underwent restoration while Mary was in office. Recalling a visit to the site Mary said:
I must say that one of the delights of my four years in office was to visit this community. . . . As we were driving along, I thought it must be a family reunion in front of this church, not knowing that the cavalcade was going to make a slight detour to the church. . . . So we arrived at Friedenstal to see many, many citizens from the community who had been there for many years. In the front row were the grandchildren and great grandchildren of the citizens of that community, all with sort of placards on their fronts saying who they were and what generation. It was a very moving ceremony, and I did ring the bells. I was absolutely amazed that the church could be preserved as it was. It has a roof that is absolutely terrible; it was leaking. And the people have such devotion to that church. I’m happy to say that money has been given to the community to repair the roof. I have asked that when the church has been repaired to its original state, I be asked to take part in a service at that church. I understand that should be sometime this fall.4
In the early 1980s, in response to appeals from Albertan writers for government support for the literary arts, Mary hosted a one-day symposium of writers and publishers, followed by the creation of an advisory committee. In subsequent years, Mary would appeal to the executive in her party on behalf of the literary community. Though she was at times flatly rejected, there were successes, such as a $830,000 increase to the province’s library budget after a year of lobbying, and the formation of the Alberta Publishers’ Association.5 Additionally, in 1984 the Alberta Foundation for the Literary Arts (AFLA) was founded to serve as an organization that funded and dispersed grants to Alberta’s literary community through a peer jury. The spirit of the AFLA continues today as a part of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts (AFA), which was born of a merger of AFLA and the Alberta Foundation for the Performing Arts (AFPA) in 1991. Also in the 1980s, Mary traveled to Quebec to meet with cultural affairs minister Clement Richard, with whom she established two annual $5000 prizes for innovation in film and television in Alberta and Quebec.6
“Also at this time, I would like to stress the fact that in 1979, when I became the Minister of Culture, funding for libraries in this province was approximately $2,842,000. This year, just for grant alone, the budget is $9,810,000, which I think is a 245 per cent increase in four years. I do not think that is too dusty for libraries.”
Legislative Assembly of Alberta, “Tuesday, May 3, 1983 2:30 P. M.,” Alberta Hansard, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, 1983.
While Mary did do much to support arts, culture, and heritage through distribution of grants and other supports, she also demonstrated a capacity for adaptation when funds were limited. In 1984, at a time when money for heritage spending was lacking, Mary arranged for the creation of the Friends of the Ukrainian Village Society, a group founded to provide operational support to the Ukrainian Village. The society’s mandate quickly grew to manage many aspects of the Village, and the organization functioned as an important buffer in the face of reduced provincial spending.7
She also managed limited funding with a firm hand to keep control of spending. When, in 1986, the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra was dealing with rising administrative costs and losing musicians to prolonged contract negotiations, Mary installed Glen Buick, the assistant deputy cultural minister, in the board meetings of the symphony. With Buick reporting to her, Mary was able to intervene more directly and work with the symphony to keep them afloat, enforce responsible use of funds, limit spending on administrative costs, and get musicians paid.8
Mary’s time in the Alberta legislature came to an end with the 1986 general election, when she narrowly lost the Edmonton-Centre seat to NDP candidate William Roberts. However, Mary remained in public service, and was appointed that same year to serve as the agent-general representing Alberta in the United Kingdom. Mary moved to London and took up residence in the (now closed) Alberta House, where she worked until the early 1990s.
As an agent-general, Mary represented Alberta in London, promoting the province’s economic and political interests, and assisting in financial and commercial affairs. In her position she promoted opportunities in Europe to Alberta’s private sector, attended political events involving Canada and the United Kingdom, and travelled across Europe to advocate for Alberta’s interests. While in London Mary also involved herself with the Canadian Women’s Club (CWC), an organization based in the city that started as a social club for Canadian women in the British Isles, and evolved into a charitable, humanitarian organization after the Second World War. One of her primary contributions was to assist the CWC in re-establishing its Canadian Centennial Scholarship Fund (CCSF), originally started in 1967, as a registered charitable trust. Still operational today, the CCSF awards scholarships to Canadians enrolled in programs and studying abroad in the United Kingdom.
Later life
In 1992, after seven years as agent-general, Mary returned to Edmonton and retired from political service. However, she continued to be active in her community, getting involved with the iHuman Youth Society, for which she served as a founding member and first president of the board. The organization, which is still in operation, reaches out to marginalized youths and offers support for their needs as well as opportunities for them to express themselves artistically and have their voices heard. Mary also served for many years with the Edmonton Opera as chair of the board, and as a board member of the Glendale Golf Course.
Mary died at the age of eighty-eight on March 11, 2018. She was predeceased by her husband, and was survived by their four children. In her memory, her family established the Mary LeMessurier Fund for the Arts, a fund that “supports and rewards members of our Alberta arts community.”9 Additionally, in honour of her work with the CCSF and the Canadian Women’s Club, the CCSF created the Mary LeMessurier Award for the Study of History, awarded annually to Canadian students studying in the United Kingdom.
In her capacity as Alberta’s minister responsible for culture, Mary LeMessurier exercised a balance of love for arts and culture with a belief in the need for smart spending. When she took the position in 1979, she said “I just want to make sure that we’re giving the people who are coming along a fair share, and not continually funding groups that we have been funding. . . . Sometimes people look to the government for an easy way out. They don’t try to raise funds on their own. It’s very easy to get into the habit of continually funding the same groups.”10
Both as minister and as agent-general, Mary oversaw the creation of many new organizations with mandates to promote culture, preserve heritage, and pursue charitable and humanitarian goals. Her volunteer work with groups like the CWC and the Edmonton Opera also demonstrates a belief in the power of community-created and community-driven organizations, with or without government support.
Read more about Mary LeMessurier
Footnotes
1 “Mary LeMessurier,” Connelly-McKinley Limited, March 11, 2018, https://www.connelly-mckinley.com/obituaries/mary-lemessurier/.
2 Ibid.
3 Kenneth Munro, First Presbyterian Church, Edmonton: A History (Edmonton: Trafford Publishing, 2004), 383.
4 Legislative Assembly of Alberta, “May 3, 1983, 2:30 P.M.,” Alberta Hansard, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, 1986.
5 Kenneth McGoogan, “Industry in a Bind: Alberta Writers Left Stranded in Literary Sandlot,” The Calgary Herald (Calgary, AB), Aug. 8, 1981.
6 “Alberta/Quebec Establish Prizes for Filmmakers,” Cine Mag (May 1985): 54.http://cinemacanada.athabascau.ca/index.php/cinema/article/viewFile/2835/2878.
7 Karen Gabert, “Locating Identity: The Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village as a Public History Text,” in Re-imagining Ukrainian Canadians: History, Politics, and Identity, eds. Jim Mochoruk and Rhonda L. Hinther (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 66.
8 Duncan Thorne, “Symphony Costs Needed Overseer – LeMessurier,” The Edmonton Journal (Edmonton, AB), Mar. 29, 1986.
9 “LeMessurier, Mary,” Edmonton Community Foundation, 2018. https://www.ecfoundation.org/funds/lemessurier-mary/.
10 Reg Silvester, “Alberta’s New ‘Culture Czarina,’” The Edmonton Journal (Edmonton, AB), May 19, 1979.
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