8 Daring to Be Left in Social Credit Alberta

Recollections of a Young New Democratic Party Activist in the 1960s

Ken Novakowski

As I sat in my Vancouver home and watched the Alberta provincial election results roll in on the evening of 5 May 2015, I suddenly felt tears passing over my cheeks. They were tears of joy. A short time later, my phone began to ring and person after person who knew of my involvement in the Alberta New Democratic Party in the 1960s called to chat and seek out my thoughts on what was happening in my home province. When the evening ended, I realized Alberta would now have an NDP premier whom I had only met as a toddler whenever I dropped in to meet with her father at their family home in the Garneau area of Edmonton.

Even though I had not lived in Alberta since 1971, I still followed political developments in the province with interest. That election led me to think back to my youth, to those years spent on the left in Alberta, tracing my activism to the period from 1965, when I first became politically involved, until 1971, when I moved to British Columbia. I had kept extensive files about all of my arenas of activism, so when the editors of Bucking Conservatism invited me to share my memories of being on the left in Alberta during that time, I quickly agreed.

I can identify three areas of political work that characterized my activism: building an informed and active left-wing youth movement, influencing the Alberta NDP to move left, and working to build a broad, issue-based left in the province. And even though much of my activism involved provincial and even national forums and events, most of my story will reflect events in Edmonton.

First, my involvement at the University of Alberta campus and in the Alberta New Democratic Youth (NDY) provided me with an opportunity to learn more about the political left. It also allowed me to play a key role in helping to build a broad, active, and progressive youth movement. This eventually extended to my doing so on a national scale.

Second, I was committed to the view that the political vehicle for change in Canada was the NDP, the party of labour. I thought the party should offer more progressive solutions to the problems facing Albertans, so I set out to mobilize people inside the party to make that change. I found myself doing that primarily through the NDY and later the left-wing group within the NDP called the Waffle.

Third, I believed in the value of coalitions on the left, bringing together a range of organizations committed to a common cause. I found myself doing that in the anti-war movement, either through the NDY/NDP or the Edmonton Committee to End the War in Vietnam. Similarly, the battles around civic issues lent themselves to bringing different groups together in common cause.

I was born in Alberta and lived there for twenty-seven years, every one of them with a Social Credit government in office. And as a red-diaper baby (my father was a communist) I learned early some of the problems this presented to those wanting to improve the work lives and social amenities of most Albertans.

I grew up in the small and, by 1950s standards, thriving farming community of Mundare, about an hour’s drive east of Edmonton. The town not only was a commercial centre for farmers but also provided educational, cultural, religious, and recreational outlets for people of all ages. Culturally mostly Ukrainian, the town was also a significant centre for the Greek Catholic faith.

I was the eighth of ten children in the family, raised by a very busy full-time mother and a father who operated a small business, an automotive sales and repair garage that included selling and servicing farm implements. I grew up with stories of my dad’s political history—from his arrest and trial as an organizer of the December 1932 Edmonton Hunger March, to his second-place showing running for the legislative assembly as a Communist in 1935, to his significant role in the founding of the Mundare Co-op Store and in the provincial cooperative movement. As I grew older I spent long hours talking politics with my father and began to shape my own political thinking. At some point, I decided I was very much a socialist but did not share my father’s view that the Communist Party was the appropriate vehicle for change in Canada.

I had a lot of respect for my dad’s beliefs and his political activities during the Depression. In 1956, when I was twelve, I read The Scalpel, the Sword, Ted Allan and Sydney Gordon’s biography of Norman Bethune, and was very impressed by the life of this Canadian communist. That same year, Khrushchev’s revelations of Stalin’s horrific disposal of dissenters and others suggested that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union no longer possessed the moral authority or credibility to provide leadership to Communist parties around the world. During the Cold War, the increasing reality for the vast majority of working-class Canadians was that the Communist Party was not even considered as a political option. My Grade 7 social studies teacher, Stanley Ruzycki, was one of two sitting Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) MLAs and we spent some time after hours talking about the socialism represented by his party. And when the CCF merged with labour in 1961 to create the NDP, I watched the whole event on television and was inspired by the possibilities this new party represented.

I enrolled at U of A in the fall of 1962. But not until two years later, when I switched from majoring in the sciences to political science and philosophy, did I meet others who shared my political inclinations and drew me into political involvement. Since 1947, Social Credit governments had continued to sell out our oil resources to giant corporations, usually American. Oil royalties buoyed the economy, but successive Social Credit governments made no effort to diversify the economy. In the sixties, family farms were beginning to disappear, again in favour of corporate enterprises. And Social Credit ministers and MLAs, often citing Christian values, created an aura of paternalism that pervaded not only government but other public institutions in Alberta.

But I had learned a bit of Alberta history that went beyond the oil politics of E. C. Manning and the ruling Social Credit Party. I knew there was a strong progressive tradition in the province that was expressed not only in the militant mine unions of the Crowsnest Pass and other Alberta communities but also in the actions of farmers. They had taken on the large grain companies and the banks, held grain strikes, and even formed their own co-ops. Alberta was also part of the broad progressive brushfire that swept through the West after the First World War, helping to elect a large Progressive Party caucus in Ottawa and progressives in several provincial governments. In Alberta, the United Farmers of Alberta (UFA) was elected in 1921. In 1935, the UFA was swept out by the populist Social Credit Party, promising relief from the Depression. The 1932 Edmonton Hunger March was a landmark event of political protest during the Depression, and the founding meeting of Canada’s first national socialist party, the CCF, was held in Calgary that same year. This all added to my belief that Albertans had a progressive tradition; it needed only to be reawakened.

In the spring of 1965, Wayne Coulter signed me up as a member of the Alberta NDY and with that I also became a member of the Alberta NDP. I made numerous friends and immediately engaged in animated discussions about left-wing ideas and movements and about everything that was wrong with the world. I found many in the NDY who shared my political thoughts and who were struggling with finding the best vehicle to bring about the changes we sought. This was university in the sixties, when student radicalism was in the ascendancy across North America and students were demanding a greater say in their education.

While I could understand the appeal that the New Left had to students, I did not agree with their total cynicism about the electoral process. I had made a conscious decision to join the NDP because it had the potential to present a political alternative and because it was the party of organized labour. Historically, the labour movement has been the largest and most successful endeavour of the working class to improve their lives and livelihoods. I did not believe that student rebellion by itself could ever materialize into a lasting movement for societal change. But I did see the demand for democratization of our universities and opposition to the war in Vietnam as catalysts for young people, drawing them into the political process.

In the fall of 1965, at its annual convention, the Alberta Young New Democrats (AYND) passed numerous resolutions calling for a more activist youth movement to take on issues like the war in Vietnam. The majority view was that we needed to be more than an electoral appendage to the senior party. We needed to raise issues important to young people and to publicly lead on those issues. That same convention elected me president of the NDY to help forge this new direction.

Responding to a motion from the council of the AYND, the federal NDY called on its provincial organizations across Canada to organize protest demonstrations on 26 March 1966 in opposition to the war in Vietnam. These turned out to be the largest peace demonstrations ever before held in Canada, drawing thousands in Vancouver and Ottawa. Over three hundred marched in Edmonton from city hall down Jasper Avenue to the legislature, where speakers included Alberta Federation of Labour president Doug Murdoch and Ed Nelson from the Alberta Farmers’ Union.

A week before the demonstration, the U of A campus NDY club sponsored a large public meeting at convocation hall, drawing over three hundred people to hear Yale professor Staughton Lynd accuse his government of lying to Americans again and again about its intentions in Vietnam. He emphatically stated that the American war on Vietnam was “illegal, immoral and undemocratic.” John Burke, a political science graduate student and vice-president of the NDY club, said that Canada had “completely lost her sense of objectivity” in its continued complicity with American involvement in the war.¹ As the anti-war movement grew, so did the number of young people participating in NDY activities.

In January of 1967, the NDY club scheduled a public meeting on campus featuring Donald Duncan, a former master sergeant with the US Army who was critical of American aims and methods in the war. U of A president Dr. Walter Johns objected to the meeting and the use of university facilities “by any political party to attack the foreign policy of a friendly power.” Johns backed down when his position was widely criticized. An editorial in the conservative Edmonton Journal asked, “Why the fuss?” It went on to state, “We were not aware that the students of our university are accountable to the government of the United States for their choice of political speakers.”² The meeting went ahead, drawing over six hundred people.

But NDY activities were not confined to anti-war actions. One of the reasons we believed the NDY had broad potential was because it reached beyond the campus and its students. We could also organize and mobilize high school students and young workers involved in the union movement.

As part of growing the NDY, we set out to establish clubs in the city high schools in Edmonton and Calgary. In Edmonton, we leafleted high school students on their way to school with specially designed brochures and with the NDY publication Confrontations. Published by the federal NDY, the newspaper highlighted actions by young people across the country and internationally. Much like the administrative opposition we had found on campus, we soon faced criticism from the Edmonton superintendent of schools, Dr. Roland Jones. He said that “schools should not be used for partisan politics in any form.” ³ Once again we were surprised by the response of the Edmonton Journal. In an editorial titled “School and politics,” it took school officials to task, stating emphatically, “The response of the public school system to the ‘threat’ of political literature in our high schools is absurd.”⁴

The Edmonton City Young New Democrats took on organizing support pickets for striking unions. When the United Packinghouse Workers’ of America, Local 243, went on strike against Canada Packers in the summer of 1966, the NDY joined the picket lines. We obtained additional publicity for the strikers and helped to identify the NDP as the party for working people. Two years later, the Alberta NDY joined striking postal workers in 1968 when they struck across the country for higher wages, better working conditions, and job security. On 19 July, Edmonton NDYers walked the picket lines and drew media attention to the issues in the strike.

One of the significant developments in building a strong and active NDY presence on the U of A campus was the establishment of NDY House at 11137 89th Avenue in the 1966–67 year. A very short distance from campus, NDY House quickly became an important political action centre where meetings and seminars were organized. It gave the NDY a presence on campus that no other student political organization could claim. Additionally, it had a significant agitprop capability located in the basement: silkscreening equipment and a Gestetner printing press to turn out materials for a whole range of campaigns. NDY volunteer labour produced leaflets and posters that were distributed all over the campus, highlighting meetings, seminars, events, and protests. NDY House rent was covered by those of us who lived there.

In early 1966, the Alberta YND joined with the Saskatchewan NDY in the printing and distribution of the newspaper Candor. The SNDY, a much larger organization, had begun producing the paper in the fall of 1965 and welcomed the AYND’s participation. The AYND also initiated the organization of an annual conference in early May at the Banff School of Fine Arts. It was co-sponsored by the SNDY and the British Columbia YND, but the Alberta organization carried virtually all of the planning and organizing of the event.

The first conference, held on 7, 8, and 9 May 1966, drew 60 participants from the three provinces; they heard speakers address the overall theme “Political Action and Direct Action.” The conferences provided an excellent opportunity for young leftists from all of the provinces not only to broaden their knowledge and understanding of issues but also to share and learn from their mutual experiences. Three subsequent conferences were held in 1967, 1968, and 1969, on topics including economic nationalism and worker-student alliances. The conference grew in attendance over the years, the last one involving over 150 participants. While each conference contributed to a broadened understanding of issues, it was the time spent interacting on the Banff School’s lawns during breaks and subsequent social events that proved most invaluable. This is where new initiatives were hatched and ongoing alliances built. Overall, it was an experience in movement building.

By 1967, the AYND had functioning clubs in Grande Prairie, Red Deer, and Lethbridge, in addition to two clubs each in Calgary and Edmonton—and those four clubs had grown significantly in size as well. But in addition to its work in the youth movement, the Alberta NDY also played a significant role in attempting to move the politics of the Alberta NDP in a more progressive direction.

As young people, we were not oblivious to the political climate that was created by years of Social Credit government in the province with little effective opposition. Indeed, we recognized that it was clearly an act of courage in 1960s Alberta to even proclaim one’s support for the NDP. In seeking to move the Alberta NDP left, we were trying to make the party more appealing to young people. And we firmly believed Albertans would be open to a genuinely progressive choice.

When the NDP was formed in Alberta in 1962, the key organizers of the new party ensured that the more left-leaning elements of the old CCF leadership would have little influence in the NDP. As a result, many of these leaders chose instead to put their energy into the newly created Woodsworth-Irvine Socialist Fellowship, a separate group committed to conducting socialist education programs. And so it was the youth activists in the Alberta NDP who ended up providing leadership within the party for more progressive positions on policy issues and in public statements.

By virtue of being president of the Alberta NDY, I had a seat on the provincial party executive and soon began engaging in the discussions and debates that occurred there. Much of the party’s direction was formulated by the executive. The leader, president, treasurer, and secretary for most of this period were, respectively, Neil Reimer, Ivor Dent, Roy Jahma, and Grant Notley. They were a powerful group of people, and their strategy for electoral success was to focus on trying to discredit the Social Credit government rather than on emphasizing NDP policies and ideas. When we began to criticize this negative approach in favour of a strategy that would focus on progressive changes in Alberta, we often found more significant support for these ideas at the council meetings and conventions of the party.

For example, at the March 1967 party convention, a resolution put forward by the Alberta NDY and adopted by the convention resulted in a major story in the 20 March Edmonton Journal, headlined “Sweeping mental health reforms urged by Alberta NDP convention.” The government’s approach to mental health had come under broad criticism. The resolution called for the decentralization of mental health services, with the construction of cottage-type facilities throughout the province to facilitate greater attention to the health of the patients. Our initiative had an impact. Eight months later, the Social Credit government announced the creation of a comprehensive study of mental health treatment methods and facilities in the province, led by W. R. N. Blair, head of the U of A psychology department.

And the NDY also felt it had an important role in elections, helping NDP candidates get elected. In the Pincher Creek–Crowsnest by-election in the fall of 1966, carloads of NDYers drove from Calgary and Edmonton to engage in door-to-door canvassing every weekend of the campaign. As we listened to the results on election night, 6 October, we were ecstatic. Our candidate, Garth Turcott, had won and would sit in the legislature as the first elected NDP MLA. Later that night I walked from NDY House across the High Level Bridge to the provincial legislature and touched it. I firmly believed it was the beginning of change in Alberta. As did the Edmonton Journal, which ran a cartoon the next day showing a very sad Premier Manning as a tree trunk, woefully watching a leaf labelled “Pincher Creek” falling from his well-laden tree.

Success, however, was short lived. Turcott took his cues from the NDP leadership and focused in the legislature almost entirely on making allegations of impropriety against government ministers. That became an important theme the NDP carried into the May 1967 general election. However, as a new party, we failed to emphasize to Albertans all the positive changes we would introduce if elected. Into the vacuum moved Progressive Conservative leader Peter Lougheed with his comprehensive platform “Blueprint for the Seventies.” On election night, 23 May 1967, we lost the only seat we had and were blanked again. Lougheed’s Conservatives won six seats, formed the official opposition, setting the stage for the next election. The high point of the Pincher Creek–Crowsnest by-election now seemed a long time back.

The 1967 election campaign had been noteworthy for Young New Democrats because for many it was their first taste of electoral politics. We served as canvassers in many city ridings and, in particular, a large number of us worked hard to try get Notley elected in Edmonton-Norwood. The NDY House silkscreens were going full time. We turned out the election signs for virtually all sixty-five ridings in the province. No one could accuse us of not doing our part in that election. Our impact on the party continued. I was elected a vice-president of the provincial NDP in 1967.

Following the 1967 election, I wrote a seven-page document titled “Critique of the Alberta NDP.” Written primarily to stimulate inner-party discussion, it took the leadership to task for the “bland negativity of the entire campaign” and its failure to “present a coherent, progressive platform that would completely distinguish it from the other three parties.” And I held the leader, Neil Reimer, responsible for the tone and nature of the campaign.

When stepping down as Alberta NDY president at its convention in December 1967, I sounded a warning to the senior party that was reported in the 11 December issue of the Calgary Herald: it needed “to come up with some constructive answers to the criticisms levelled at it” by the NDY, or the youth organization would have no other alternative but to look for a new provincial leader.

A year after the election, Reimer stepped down as leader. The tone of his parting comments to the 1968 convention were captured in a page three Edmonton Journal headline on 11 November: “Retiring leader warns against leftward swing.”

In the ensuing leadership race, most of the youth movement threw its votes and support behind Gordon Wright. He was the main challenger to Notley, who, perhaps unfairly, was viewed as too close to the outgoing leadership; we wanted a change, a progressive change. Notley not only won but began to advance the policies of the NDP in public forums around the province. He went on to become a much-respected politician in the province, for many years the NDP’s lone voice in the legislature.

The Edmonton NDY’s political involvement was not confined to provincial politics. We had established a second NDY House in 1968, at 10042 118th Street, a half block off Jasper Avenue. Again, the basement housed multiple silkscreens but also a small printing press, compliments of an Edmonton firefighter and union activist. In the fall of 1968, Barrie Chivers, an active NDYer, became manager of Ivor Dent’s bid to become mayor of Edmonton. Virtually all of the campaign posters and materials were produced at NDY House, and Dent went on to win the election. A known New Democrat, he was not the first of those with such leanings to occupy the mayor’s chair in Edmonton. Elmer Roper—Alberta CCF leader from 1942 to 1955 and a CCF MLA for Edmonton from 1944 to 1955—also served as Edmonton mayor, from 1959 to 1963.

The NDY also got involved in civic issues. Another major story, “Delegation to protest council ban,” made the front page of the Edmonton Journal on 9 January 1969. The NDY was opposed to the city council’s decision to allow a representative of the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce to attend and participate in closed-door city council planning sessions. The publicity from our ensuing protest against this act of favouritism caused the chamber to withdraw its representative, a complete victory for our position.

From 29 June to 2 July 1967, I attended my first federal NDY convention, held at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto, preceding the fourth federal NDP convention. It was a fascinating experience for me, twenty-three years old, meeting young socialists and political activists from across Canada, engaging in intense political discussions and debates on the convention floor. I was soon drafted to run for federal NDY president on a left-wing platform, challenging the hold that the youth movement’s more conservative elements had had on the NDY since it was formed six years earlier. In an upset election, I won on the second ballot. A front-page story in the 3 July Globe and Mail said it all: “New Democrat Youth revolts, moves left.”

I soon found myself in the thick of federal NDP politics. Because of all the media attention generated by my election, I was asked to speak to the party convention, and I drew significant applause when I stated that nationalization should remain an important instrument of NDP policy. Immediately following the convention, I participated in a national television program with NDP leader Tommy Douglas discussing the war in Vietnam, an issue that had been prominent in both the youth and party conventions. I greatly admired Douglas and was awestruck by the experience.

In December 1967, the federal NDY launched the newspaper Confrontations. It covered regional, national, and international events of interest to the young left across the country. Our slogan, for both the NDY and Confrontations, had become “For an independent, socialist Canada.” In Alberta, we established Confrontations Publications and, using NDY House facilities, began producing pamphlets, posters, and reading materials, making them all available to NDYers and others across Canada. We staffed tables at all progressive events in Edmonton, selling our literature and handing out copies of Candor and Confrontations.

Earlier I recounted the Alberta NDY’s involvement in mobilizing against the war in Vietnam. The anti-war movement in Edmonton had grown from early initiatives, and in addition to the NDY, the Students’ Union for Peace Action, the Voice of Women, and many church and labour groups spoke out against the war. The Edmonton Committee to End the War in Vietnam (ECEWV) emerged as an umbrella coordinating structure to bring together these groups and others to focus on reaching out to people and educating them about what was going on in Vietnam. And the ECEWV took on the role of organizing demonstrations in Edmonton to coincide with the International Days of Protest—usually twice a year. Our 27 April 1968 demonstration was the front-page story the following Monday in the Edmonton Journal. Each demonstration was larger than the last one, and this one was endorsed by fifteen separate organizations.

The anti-war movement was focused on public protest, and opposition was growing significantly in the United States and around the world. We held teach-ins and distributed leaflets, and our 5 April 1969 demonstration drew a thousand participants with twenty supporting organizations, with the NDY continuing to play an important role in these protests.

By July of 1969, when I stepped down as federal NDY president, the youth movement had grown considerably across the country. The convention was more united than previous ones had been and clearly reflected the more left-wing politics first adopted two years earlier. In my president’s report to the convention, I identified capitalism as the challenge we faced and argued that we would never achieve a just society unless it included economic justice for all. I called upon the youth movement to make a greater effort in having its voice heard in the councils of the federal NDP.

The Waffle movement was now emerging across Canada as a strong force in the NDP. The Waffle was initiated as a caucus within the NDP that pledged to fight “for an independent, socialist Canada.” It advanced strongly progressive positions on issues such as nationalization, women’s rights, Québec sovereignty, labour, and democracy. The Waffle had the potential to change the party into more of a socialist party, a direction that NDYers had sought for years. Provincial Waffle branches were established in every province. In Alberta, we formed a steering committee that included not only youth activists but also a broad spectrum of party members from across the province.

Edmonton Waffle members had begun to revitalize the NDP’s metro council—a city-wide council representing all the city’s NDP ridings. Led by its new president, Tom Pocklington, the metro council began to coordinate efforts on a number of civic issues. It publicly campaigned to defeat three civic monetary bylaws in the fall of 1970 that would have built an omniplex, a huge civic facility that would house all professional sports at considerable cost to taxpayers. This money would be much better spent on community facilities in all parts of the city. Metro council distributed fifty thousand leaflets that urged people to “Vote No to Omniplex.” Voters rejected the project.

Metro council concerned itself with a myriad of issues important to people, including the problems of high rents and inadequate public housing. It advocated for improved public daycare facilities and increased public transportation. The council also advocated that the NDP become active in civic politics, a position again surprisingly endorsed by the Edmonton Journal, in a 4 September 1970 editorial. Under the heading “Welcome step,” it stated that the “possibility that the New Democratic Party would run a slate of candidates in the next civic election is good news for all those interested in better civic government.”

The Alberta Waffle organized a Western Regional NDP Waffle Conference at the Banff School of Fine Arts, to be held 25 and 26 April 1970. The conference brought together activists from the three westernmost provinces. We held sessions to develop positions on issues from labour and industrial democracy to regionalism and Québec nationalism. The conference was a precursor to the National Waffle Conference held in Toronto later that summer and to the NDP’s leadership convention in Ottawa in April 1971.

The Alberta Waffle organized to influence the February 1971 provincial NDP convention. Our work had already resulted in the executive producing a far more progressive energy statement than it might otherwise have done. It called for nationalization of privately owned natural gas, electrical, and water utilities, pipelines, the McIntyre-Porcupine and other large coal-exporting interests, and development of the Athabasca oil sands as a Crown corporation. We introduced a motion “that an Alberta NDP government would establish immediately a public corporation whose prime purpose will be to explore for, develop, produce and direct the usage of all sources of energy within the province.” After a ninety-minute debate, the Waffle motion, although defeated, garnered support from 40 percent of the delegates.

From 21 to 24 April 1971, we were at the NDP National Leadership Convention in Ottawa. Half the Alberta NDP delegation attended Waffle caucus meetings, where I served as one of the chairpersons. I had played a significant role on the Waffle’s national steering committee and chaired the Waffle floor committee during the convention. We had a significant impact on policy debates and in the actual leadership contest; our candidate, Jim Laxer, went through to the final ballot before being defeated by David Lewis. Although Lewis had won the leadership, we saw the convention as a high point because we had succeeded in engendering significant debate and discussion and broad support on key issues important to Canada’s future.

In Alberta, Social Credit premier Harry Strom called a general election for 30 August 1971, the first election with Notley as NDP leader. Notley had chosen to run in Spirit River–Fairview in the Peace River country, a riding he was to win and represent until his untimely death in 1984. I campaigned for Barrie Chivers in Edmonton-Beverley. On election night, the Social Credit dynasty ended. The Progressive Conservatives under Lougheed had won. Alberta New Democrats would have to wait another forty-four years before they would form a government. Two days after the 1971 election, I was on my way to British Columbia.

It was clear that young people were turning away from many of the policies of the Manning and Strom governments. Campus politics indicated that, but young workers were also increasingly looking for alternatives to both the social conservatism and the narrow economic strategies of Social Credit. One might believe we hardly made a dent in the conservative armour that covered the province, but we mobilized people and found ways of challenging what had been a homogenous right wing. Small dents in the armour, perhaps, but that is almost always how progressives have moved forward.

When I reflect upon those seven years spent on the left in Alberta, I realize how fortunate I was to be part of a young left that learned how to organize and communicate with the tools we had available to us at the time. And we engaged in the political process. As Stephen Langdon, then a member of the parliamentary press gallery, wrote in the July 1971 issue of Maclean’s magazine,

Among the young in this country, especially the students, the dominant political mood is cynicism, a belief that all political parties are similarly uncaring and irrelevant. [. . .] This is the constituency in which Waffle supporters live. They are constantly being told [by these young people] that the NDP is too moderate, too similar to the old-line parties. It’s natural then, that the Waffle should be trying to make the NDP more radical, more aggressive, to differentiate it from other parties, to make it more appealing to the young.

Although Langdon’s comments referred to the Waffle following the 1971 federal NDP convention, they capture well what motivated NDYers in Alberta to push the NDP left.

When I look at young people today, I sense their frustration with issues such as inequality, poverty, and the climate crisis, all products of capitalism. But I often see that frustration leads them to opt out of the political process. It is equally essential today that the NDP offer clear, progressive policies and strategies for these and other critical issues in its election campaigns.

I mentioned earlier my feelings when the NDP government was elected in Alberta in May 2015. Later that summer I visited Edmonton and had another emotional moment: once again I walked to and touched the Alberta legislature as I had done the night of the Pincher Creek–Crowsnest by-election forty-nine years earlier. It took a long time, but this time it was for real.