Calgary-Glenmore, styled Calgary Glenmore from 1957 to 1971, is a provincial electoral district in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The district is mandated to return a single member to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta.
The electoral riding of Calgary Glenmore is one of two original Calgary ridings of the seven that still survives from the 1959 redistribution of the Calgary riding. This riding covers the mid-southwest portion of Calgary and contains the neighbourhoods of Bayview, Braeside, Cedarbrae, Chinook Park, Eagle Ridge, Glenmore Park, Kelvin Grove, Lakeview, Palliser, Pump Hill, Oakridge, Woodbine, and Woodlands. The riding is named after the Glenmore Reservoir.
History
The Alberta government decided to return to using the first past the post system of voting from Single Transferable Vote for the 1959 general election. The province redistributed the Calgary and Edmonton super riding's and standardized the voting system across the province.
Calgary-Glenmore was one of the six electoral districts created that year. The others were Calgary Bowness, Calgary Centre, Calgary West, Calgary North, Calgary North East, Calgary South East.
The 2010 boundary redistribution saw Calgary-Glenmore lose the neighborhood of Southwood south of Southland Drive. It gained the neighborhoods of Chinook Park, Kelvin Grove, Kingsland, North Glenmore Park and Lakeview up to Glenmore Trail.
Boundary history
Electoral history
When Calgary Glenmore was created in 1959 it covered most of Southwest Calgary that existed at the time. Voters of the district returned Progressive Conservative candidate Ernest Watkins who was the last representative elected in the old Calgary electoral district in a 1957 by-election. He became the only candidate from his party returned to the Legislature that year and one of four opposition candidates elected as most of the province had chosen Social Credit candidates that year.
Watkins became leader of the Progressive Conservatives shortly after his election. He held the leadership until 1962 when he stepped down. He decided not to run for re-election and retired from the Legislature.
The riding continued its trend of electing opposition candidates by returning Liberal candidate Bill Dickie. Dickie who had served as a Calgary Alderman was just one of two Liberals elected in the 1963 general election. He was re-elected in 1967 and crossed the floor to the Progressive Conservatives on November 23, 1969. He would be the last serving member under the Liberal banner until 1986.
The voters of Glenmore re-elected Dickie as a Progressive Conservative in the 1971 election as that party won its first term in Government under Peter Lougheed. Dickie served as the first member of cabinet for the district with the portfolio of Minister of Mines and Minerals. He retired in 1975 and was replaced by Hugh Planche who won some of the biggest majorities in his three terms representing Calgary-Glenmore. Planche served in cabinet as Minister of Economic Development from 1979 until his retirement in 1986.
The fourth member of the district Dianne Mirosh served in cabinet as Minister of Innovation and Science and later as Minister of Transportation during her time in office from 1986 to 1997. She had some tough electoral battles with Liberal candidate Brendan Dunphy as he almost managed to defeat Mirosh twice.
Ron Stevens became the districts MLA in 1997 serving until 2009. He served a number of cabinet portfolios. His first portfolio was Minister of Gaming starting in 2001. He then moved on to be the Minister of International and Intergovernmental Relations, then Attorney General and finally Deputy Premier. Stevens vacated his seat on May 15, 2009.
On September 14, 2009, the district would provide its first surprise result since the 1960s by electing Wildrose Alliance candidate Paul Hinman in a hotly contested race. Hinman was leader of his party at the time and previously served as the representative for Cardston-Taber-Warner before being defeated in 2008.
In the 2012 Alberta general election Hinman lost his seat to Progressive Conservative Linda Johnson, despite Wildrose making gains elsewhere in the province.
In 2015, Johnson and NDP candidate Anam Kazim won exactly the same number of votes in the initial count. Elections Alberta confirmed in a recount that Kazim defeated Johnson by a razor-thin margin, taking Calgary-Glenmore for the NDP.