Leonard Gaetz (June 7, 1841 – June 9, 1907) was a Canadian

politician A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking ...

. He was one of the first settlers and founder of what is now the city of

Red Deer, Alberta Red Deer is a city in Alberta, Canada, located midway on the Calgary–Edmonton Corridor. Red Deer serves central Alberta, and key industries include health care, retail trade, construction, oil and gas, hospitality, manufacturing and education ...

Early life

Born in 1841 at Musquodoboit,

Nova Scotia Nova Scotia ( ; ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. Nova Scotia is Latin for "New Scotland". Most of the population are native Eng ...

, Gaetz married Caroline Blowers Hamilton in 1865. They had a family of eleven children, six sons and five daughters. Gaetz was an ordained Methodist minister, serving the church until 1883. He left the ministry due to ill health and moved to the Red Deer Valley. He decided to homestead on the west half of a section on the Red Deer River, and one of his sons, Halley Gaetz, took up the other half section.

Red Deer

Leonard Gaetz acted as the local land agent for the Saskatchewan Colonization Company and purchased parts of three other sections from his employers. By 1890, the Gaetz family owned vast land holdings along the south bank of the Red Deer River around the mouth of the Waskasoo Creek. The holdings included parts of Sections 16, 17, 20 and 21. Leonard Gaetz's increasing wealth allowed his family to play a central role in the growth of Red Deer. In 1895, Gaetz returned to the active ministry in Manitoba, at Brandon and Winnipeg. Once again, this proved detrimental to his health. He retired back to Red Deer in 1901, and resided here for the remainder of his life. He was a strong promoter of the area, founding the Westerner showgrounds and annual "Westerner Days", akin to the Calgary Stampede. A Conservative, Gaetz ran for 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 sin ...

unsuccessfully in the Alberta general election, 1905 and for the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories in

1894 Events January–March * January 4 – A military alliance is established between the French Third Republic and the Russian Empire. * January 7 – William Kennedy Dickson receives a patent for motion picture film in the United S ...

, both times for the Red Deer constituency.

Death

He died in Red Deer in 1907, less than a year after the death of his wife in December 1906. Two sons would serve as mayor of Red Deer, Raymond Leonard Gaetz, and Halley Hamilton Gaetz. Another son, Clarence Wilberforce Gaetz would become the first mayor of

Leduc, Alberta Leduc ( ) is a city in the province of Alberta, Canada. It is south of the provincial capital of Edmonton and is part of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region. History Leduc was established in 1891, when Robert Telford, a settler, who had bough ...

Legacy

A Methodist church was built in 1892 and enlarged in 1909, when the new Methodist Church was announced by the Board of Trustees, to be known as The Leonard Gaetz Memorial Methodist Church, named after Reverend Leonard Gaetz. In 1925 the local Methodist congregation voted in favour of church union, and their building became Gaetz Memorial United Church, again named in honour of Reverend Leonard Gaetz. He is memorialized in the name of Red Deer's major thoroughfare, Gaetz Avenue, also known as 50th Avenue.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Gaetz, Leonard 1841 births 1907 deaths