OTTAWA (Staff) – The House of Commons last week paid tribute to former Alberta Conservative MP and rancher Bert Hargrave, who died in late September.
In tributes Sept. 30, Reform MP Ray Speaker called Hargrave “a great man, a man respected by all people who knew him.”
Agriculture minister Ralph Goodale said the former political opponent was “beyond all doubt … an expert” on agricultural issues.
Added Progressive Conservative leader Jean Charest: “He was unquestionably considered one of the most informed and knowledgeable parliamentarians on all sides in the realm of agriculture.”
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After years of involvement in Alberta and national cattle politics, Hargrave ran as a Conservative in the 1972 election, defeating then-Liberal agriculture minister Bud Olson in the Medicine Hat constituency.
He became an unofficial spokes-person for the cattle industry in the House of Commons.
When Canadian Cattlemen Association delegations came to town in the years before the CCA had an Ottawa office, Hargrave’s Parliament Hill office became their operations centre.
During the tributes, Goodale recalled one of Hargrave’s accomplishments in the 1970s, when he sat on opposition benches.
After a five-year lobby, he convinced the Liberal government in 1977 to open 90,000 acres of the Suffield, Alta. military base for cattle grazing.
Appreciated by constituents
“These were not the kinds of victories that create great national headlines but they are the kind that truly help one’s constituents,” said the agriculture minister who was a rookie MP and Liberal backbencher in 1977.
Hargrave, already in declining health, retired from the House of Commons in 1984 at age 67. He did not get to savor the nine years of Conservative government that followed.
In 1993, he was inducted into the Alberta Agricultural Hall of Fame. He served as a member of the senate at the University of Lethbridge and lived on the ranch near Walsh, east of Medicine Hat, until June.
Hargrave died Sept. 24 at a Medicine Hat nursing home.
