Walter Alexander Buck (December 16, 1930 – March 14, 2013) was a provincial politician and dentist from

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. He served as a member of the

Legislative Assembly of Alberta The Legislative Assembly of Alberta is the deliberative assembly of the province of Alberta, Canada. It sits in the Alberta Legislature Building in Edmonton. The Legislative Assembly currently has 87 members, elected first past the post from singl ...

(MLA) from 1967 to 1989. During his time in office he served in numerous party caucuses and as an Independent.

Political career

Buck ran for a seat to the Legislative Assembly in the

1967 Alberta general election The 1967 Alberta general election was held on May 23, 1967, to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta to the 16th Alberta Legislature. The election was called after the 15th Alberta Legislature was prorogued on April 11, 1967, and ...

. He won the electoral district of Clover Bar by a wide margin to hold it for the governing

Social Credit Party of Alberta Alberta Social Credit was a provincial political party in Alberta, Canada, that was founded on social credit monetary policy put forward by Clifford Hugh Douglas and on conservative Christian social values. The Canadian social credit movement wa ...

. While still a rookie MLA, Buck ran for the leadership of the Social Credit party in the 1968 leadership election following the retirement of longtime premier

Ernest Manning Ernest Charles Manning, (September 20, 1908 – February 19, 1996), a Canadian politician, was the eighth Premier of Alberta between 1943 and 1968 for the Social Credit Party of Alberta. He served longer than any other premier in Alberta's histor ...

. Buck survived the first round of balloting but distantly trailed

Harry Strom Harry Edwin Strom (July 7, 1914 – October 2, 1984) was the ninth premier of Alberta, from 1968 to 1971. His two-and-a-half years as Premier were the last of the thirty-six-year Social Credit dynasty, as his defeat by Peter Lougheed saw its r ...

and two other candidates to end in fourth place with 10.8% of the delegates. On the second ballot his votes dropped and he ended up with just 8.8% of the convention delegates while Harry Strom had a clear majority. Buck was not invited into Strom's cabinet after he became leader of the party and Premier of the province and thus remained in the back benches. Buck ran for a second term in office in the 1971 general election. He won a tight three-way race just edging out Progressive Conservative candidate J. Devereux in an election that ended the Socreds' 36-year run in government. He would reclaim a large majority with his biggest win in terms of popular vote to date when he was elected to his third term in the 1975 general election. Buck won his fourth term with a massive landslide and the largest plurality of his career in the 1979 general election. This was his last win under the Social Credit party banner. After a disastrous attempt to dissolve the Social Credit Party at a convention held in 1982, parliamentary leader

Raymond Speaker Raymond Albert "Ray" Speaker, (born December 13, 1935) is a Canadian farmer and politician. Speaker was born and raised in Enchant, Alberta, where he farms to this day. He was an elected official at the federal and provincial levels for 34 years, ...

and Buck resigned from the party to run as independents in the 1982 provincial election. Buck held his seat in a tight race with Stan Berg of the Progressive Conservatives and two other candidates. Buck and Speaker attempted to form the official opposition as an Independent caucus as had been done after the 1940 general election, over the

Alberta New Democratic Party The Alberta New Democratic Party (french: Nouveau Parti démocratique de l'Alberta), commonly shortened to Alberta's NDP, is a social-democratic political party in Alberta, Canada. It is the provincial Alberta affiliate of the federal New Democr ...

(NDP) which also had two members. The speaker denied them opposition status and the same caucus funding that had been provided to the NDP and limited the amount of questions that could be asked. The pair decided for form a new political party in 1984, the

Representative Party of Alberta The Representative Party of Alberta (first registered as the Political Alternative Association, and known as the Alternative Government Movement prior to registration in 1984) was a provincial political party in Alberta, Canada formed by former Al ...

. It branded itself as a modern version of Social Credit, and opened its doors to former Socreds who had left the party. Buck ran for re-election in the 1986 general election under that banner winning a sizable majority in his riding. Buck retired from provincial politics at dissolution of the assembly in 1989. Buck died of stomach cancer in 2013 at Fort Saskatchewan. He was 82.

References

External links

Legislative Assembly of Alberta Members Listing
{{DEFAULTSORT:Buck, Walt Alberta Social Credit Party MLAs Representative Party of Alberta MLAs Independent Alberta MLAs 1930 births 2013 deaths Deaths from stomach cancer Deaths from cancer in Alberta Canadian dentists 20th-century dentists