{"id":356,"date":"2005-05-29T13:46:00","date_gmt":"2005-05-29T17:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=356"},"modified":"2005-05-29T13:46:00","modified_gmt":"2005-05-29T17:46:00","slug":"hardly-a-funeral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=356","title":{"rendered":"Hardly a Funeral"},"content":{"rendered":"

So the Alberta Liberal Party (that\u2019s the provincial Liberals) held their convention in Calgary this weekend and I thought I\u2019d attend. The fact that the \u201c77th Annual Alberta Funeral Home Owners Conference<\/strong><\/em>\u201d was being held at the same hotel made for some incredibly obvious one-liners over the course of the two days. But, to be fair, the mood is a lot more morbid with the federal Liberals than the provincial Liberals in Alberta right now so I\u2019ll avoid cracking any funeral jokes during the remainder of this recap.<\/p>\n

The Friday night was \u201ccelebrating 100 years of the ALP<\/em>\u201d which I can only compare to John Turner\u2019s farewell tribute in 1990 (\u201ccelebrating mediocrity\u2026and that\u2019s the positive spin<\/em>\u201d). Let me just say to any Alexander Rutherford or Charles Stewart fans out there, you missed one heck of a recap of their lives. I know there have been few successes since 1920, but still\u2026 The \u201cDaryl who wins\u201d was the Master of Ceremonies and Kevin Taft gave a brief address before people made their way to what was, truth be told, one of the best hospitality suites I\u2019ve ever been to at a Liberal convention.<\/p>\n

Saturday featured a series of workshops on the \u201cOrganize to Win<\/em>\u201d theme. The most interesting was a discussion led by Keith Browsey with the open question of \u201cwhat the heck does it take to beat the Tories?\u201d. That led to a wide range of theories and suggestions which was really quite fascinating. The reason behind Tory domination in Alberta is a huge question worthy of a book in itself but it was interesting to see the many theories Liberals held.<\/p>\n

At the banquet lunch, party leader Kevin Taft gave what was probably the best speech I\u2019ve ever heard from him. The man is definitely improving. It was short on specifics and I\u2019m not sure how many people actually believe the optimistic \u201cwe\u2019re going to win\u201d attitude, but the speech hit on the right notes and was damn entertaining. Taft\u2019s recap of a Tory government circa 10,000 BC was really, really funny (\u201cthey\u2019d just discovered fire two years ago and already they were talking about firewalls<\/em>\u201d).<\/p>\n

So, all in all, I give the ALP credit on a very well organized and well run convention \u2013 their first in a long time. While the provincial Liberals are definitely less glamorous than the feds, they\u2019re very down to earth and they don\u2019t attract the power hungry crowd (for obvious reasons). I got to hear Rick Miller cracking jokes in the hospitality suite, Harry Chase singing his Ralph Klein song, and I had conversations with 4 or 5 MLAs, including Kevin Taft. The Liberal MLAs really seem like normal people and, unlike a lot of MPs, haven\u2019t let their egos consume them yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So the Alberta Liberal Party (that\u2019s the provincial Liberals) held their convention in Calgary this weekend and I thought I\u2019d attend. The fact that the \u201c77th Annual Alberta Funeral Home Owners Conference\u201d was being held at the same hotel made for some incredibly obvious one-liners over the course of the two days. But, to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}