Winston Osler Backus (October 12, 1920 – June 15, 2020) was a Canadian politician. He served in 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 ...

from 1971 to 1979, and he served as Minister of Public Works in the cabinet of Premier Peter Lougheed from 1971 to 1975. The son of Percy Lavern and Verna Henrietta Backus, he was born in Eckville, Alberta in 1920. He died in June 2020 at the age of 99.WINSTON OSLER BACKUS obituary
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Political career

Backus ran for a seat to the Alberta Legislature in the

1971 Alberta general election The 1971 Alberta general election was the seventeenth general election held in the Province of Alberta, Canada on August 30, 1971, to elect seventy-five members of the Alberta Legislature to form the 17th Alberta Legislative Assembly. The Progr ...

. He defeated Social Credit candidate William Bowes by a few hundred votes in the electoral district of Grande Prairie to pick up the district for the Progressive Conservatives. After the election Premier Peter Lougheed appointed Backus Minister of Public Works in his first cabinet. In the 1975 general election he was returned to office with a landslide victory over three other candidates. Backus was left out of cabinet after the 1975 election. He served out the rest of his term as a private member and retired at dissolution of the assembly in 1979.

References

External links

Legislative Assembly of Alberta Members Listing
1920 births 2020 deaths Members of the Executive Council of Alberta Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta MLAs {{Alberta-politician-stub