Drugs, gaffes and good intentions: The Big Family Day Debate of 1989
The origin story of Alberta's mid-winter holiday
That time of year is once again upon us: the annual Family Day long weekend in Alberta. Thirty-five years after Albertans first marked the third Monday in February as a provincial holiday in 1990, most of us who get the day off work take it for granted, but there is a big political story behind how this day was created.
Some readers will be familiar with the story about then-Premier Don Getty’s son getting arrested for possession and trafficking of cocaine and his father creating a holiday to celebrate family values in response. It sounds like a cynical take but it’s a big part of the story.
The idea to create a mid-winter holiday had been around for some time before it was announced in Alberta’s 1989 pre-election Speech from the Throne.
A foundation chaired by Canadian historian Pierre Berton had been calling for a national mid-winter holiday called Heritage Day since the early 1970s. And just one year before it was announced in the Getty government’s 1989 Speech from the Throne, Alberta MLAs debated creating a holiday when Vegreville NDP MLA Derek Fox proposed it in a private members bill.
Fox’s bill was tabled in the Legislature in March 1988 and was paired with another private members bill introduced by Edmonton-Avonmore NDP MLA Marie Laing that would have created a province-wide contest to name that mid-winter holiday.
NDP leader Ray Martin praised his caucus colleague and described the holiday idea as “an excellent tonic to recharge the batteries and be more productive the rest of the year.”
The Progressive Conservative government’s Minister of Economic Development, Larry Shaben, had a different opinion. Shaben shot back by describing winters in Alberta as invigorating enough without a February break because “you have to keep moving or you freeze your ass.”
When the bill was debated in the Legislature, PC MLAs heckled Fox by jokingly suggesting the holiday should be named after Communist Manifesto author Karl Marx or Co-operative Commonwealth Federation founder J.S. Woodsworth.
As tends to happen in our parliamentary system, the idea proposed by the minority opposition was shot down by the governing majority. The mid-winter holiday bills introduced by Fox and Laing died on the order paper.
Not a year had passed since PC MLAs voted down Fox’s bill before Getty’s government announced in its early 1989 Speech from the Throne that Alberta would have a mid-winter holiday of its own and it would be called Family Day.
“My government will introduce legislation to designate the third Monday of February as Alberta’s Family Day, an annual statutory holiday highlighting a Family Week that will provide an opportunity to celebrate the strength and vitality of families.” - Lieutenant Governor Helen Hunley reading from the Speech from the Throne.
The NDP were not exactly chuffed when they learned that the PCs had stolen the idea they had just proposed a few months earlier.
“I hate to sound cynical, but it gets pretty bad when they’re calling for a mid-winter holiday after turning down our proposal for one year after year,” Martin said on February 18, 1989. “It’s even being scheduled on the same weekend that we suggested.”
“The opposition did such a poor job of selling their proposal that the Legislature didn’t accept it,” Getty responded. “I wanted to highlight the family. I’ve often felt that the period from Jan 1 until Easter is a long period.”
“I felt, ‘Let’s have a family day and make it really light up February,” Getty said.
The abrupt change of face happened not long after Getty weathered a media storm when his son was arrested for drug trafficking. While the incident may have sincerely convinced him to use his position as Premier to promote family values, it was viewed as a cynical move by a lot of Albertans.
Getty was also living in the shadow of his predecessor, Peter Lougheed, a giant in Alberta politics who led the PC Party for a heady 20 years. Facing a recession, low oil prices, Martin’s scrappy NDP opposition, and a resurgent Liberal Party led by popular former Edmonton Mayor Laurence Decore, Getty’s PCs looked more like a stumbling behemoth than the unstoppable juggernaut that Lougheed had built.
Getty calls a family-values election
Looking at his party’s uncertain political fortunes in the face of these challenges, Getty decided to call a provincial election in March 1989, less than three years after the May 1986 election.
Showing how key the Family Day promise was to his re-election campaign, Getty launched the election on the third Monday in February on what would later become Family Day. But it was a rough start. Getty was forced to apologize on the first day of his family values-themed election campaign after he made an off-the-cuff joke about whacking his kids and beating his wife.
The PC campaign was knocked off its family values message again when Minister of Social Services Connie Osterman, running for re-election in Three Hills, publicly mused that teenagers were getting pregnant just so they could get on the welfare rolls.
Despite the campaign blunders, “family” remained a common thread in the PC Party’s re-election platform that year. Getty’s PCs were promising to create a Family Day, a Family Week, $200 million to fund a Family Life and Drug Abuse Foundation as a “special investment in the future of our youth,” a Premier’s Council in Support of Alberta Families, and a Lieutenant Governor’s Conference on Alberta Families.
When the ballots were counted on March 20, 1989, the PCs saw their province-wide vote drop by 7 points with the NDP holding most of their vote from the previous election and the Liberals surging to 28 percent support. But the PC’s concentrated support in Calgary and rural Alberta was enough for Getty’s party to form a sixth consecutive majority government.
But it came at a personal political cost for Getty.
Getty lost his Edmonton-Whitemud seat to Liberal candidate Percy Wickman, a Decore confidant who served on Edmonton City Council from 1977 to 1986. When Getty refused to debate Wickman at a local all-candidates forum in the riding, the quick-witted Liberal campaign staged a now infamous media event that saw Wickman debate a two-meter tall stuffed chicken with a “Getty” sign around its neck.
Despite the personal political loss and immediate speculation that Getty would resign as Premier and be replaced by former Calgary mayor Ralph Klein, who had just been elected in Calgary-Elbow, it didn’t take long for a sitting PC MLA to step down so the Premier could run in a by-election. Getty was elected in the rural central Alberta riding of Stettler a few months later.
The Big Family Day Debate
When Getty returned to the Legislature, creating Family Day was still at the top of the government’s legislative agenda. Bill 1 was the Family Day Act. What ensued was a heated debate about the mid-winter holiday that was filled with incredible hyperbole from both sides of the Legislative Assembly. Government MLAs praised the idea and opposition MLAs roasted it.
“The promise of the throne speech of love of family, home, community, and province facilitates these choices,” argued Clover Bar PC MLA Kurt Gessell. “The Family Day Act is an excellent start, and forms part of the measures stressing the importance of Alberta families. I want to applaud our Premier for the introduction of this initiative.”
“It’s not enough to pay lip service to the family in Alberta, just to say, ‘Well, we love the family; therefore, everything’s going to be wonderful for families in Alberta’ or ‘We’re going to name a holiday Family Day, and everything will be wonderful for families in Alberta,’” argued Vegreville NDP MLA Derek Fox, who had proposed the creation of a mid-winter holiday only a few months earlier.
“Government alone cannot create a true family day. It can merely provide the opportunity for others to make it a family time, and therefore it is an important step to bring focus to the fundamental importance of the family, through family day,” said Highwood PC MLA Don Tannas. “Family day must grow in the hearts and minds of all Albertans, and I’m proud that this government has taken this important step.”
“It seems to me that when your province is in difficulty, when you know that you’re going to be experiencing the lowest economic growth rate in Canada, something should be brought forward to excite and energize and stimulate Albertans. The Family Day Act doesn’t do that,” argued Liberal leader Laurence Decore, who had been elected as the MLA for Edmonton-Glengarry and led the 8-MLA Liberal caucus.
Fort McMuray PC MLA Norm Weiss hoped “we’d see such things as family cards for family days, as we see for Valentine’s Day and Father’s Day and Mother’s Day and instances like that.”
“It’s really a shame to me that they would miss the real opportunity that this Bill could provide to create a genuine Family Day, not just some bogus, poor substitute for something that we once had once a week in this province,” argued Bob Hawksworth, the second term NDP MLA for Calgary-Mountain View, who was alluding to a time when stores and businesses were all closed on Sundays.
Edmonton-Avonmore NDP MLA Marie Laing argued that “all too often the member of that family that is forced to work is the mother or the woman, because they are employed in the retail trade. So we have to say: what kind of a Family Day do you have when the mother has to be at work and cannot be with her family?”
“We still are beset with runaways, with dropouts, with an increase in teenage pregnancy. Yet it doesn’t seem to me our Family Day will in any way help those problems that are a consistent source of stress in family life in Alberta and an increasing source of stress,” pleaded Edmonton-Gold Bar Liberal MLA Bettie Hewes. “This government’s commitment to strengthen family life has yet to materialize.”
“Well, the government in its authoritative wisdom decided to call it Family Day, and I guess we can't argue with that other than that we still have concerns about it springing from the politics of nostalgia, the fact that maybe the family is a way to look back at the '50s, back to the days when there was swimming in the river and a dollar was a dollar and people used to watch CFL football games all the time,” argued Edmonton-Centre NDP MLA William Roberts. “Those days, of course, are gone, and the family is in a very different mode in the 1990s.”
The over the top attacks by the opposition were matched by Premier Getty’s own over the top defence of his Family Day Act.
“The members opposite from the Liberal and ND parties are surely a hesitant, fearful, timid group, unable to bring themselves to look at something in a positive way,” Getty responded.
“I guess they’ve been in the opposition that long that they just can’t turn around their minds in a positive, thoughtful way and think of the kinds of things they could have raised to support Family Day and talk about the exciting things that will happen in the future in Alberta on Family Day,” Getty said. “Instead we heard a series of complaints and fears, and that’s really sad.”
“Both the NDP and the Liberal members said: will people participate; will they actually get together as families? Their view is: force them to; use state control in some way. Force them to. Make it the law that you’ve got to get together. Now, what kind of nonsense is that?,” Getty argued. “Surely that’s the kind of centralist, socialist thinking that is so wrong and the reason why they’re where they are, Mr. Speaker.”
When the debate ended on August 15, 1989, the Family Day Act passed third reading in the Legislature with the first annual holiday set for February 1990.
Calgary Herald columnist Don Braid, today the Dean of the Legislature Press Gallery, wrote about the first Family Day in 1990.
“The premier failed to consider a few realities of modern family life – little things like children, work, school and day care,” Braid wrote. “These matters refuse to vanish just because the couch potatoes in the legislature want another holiday and the premier waves his wand.”
While these debates are now mostly remembered only by those of us who scour through Hansard or scan through old newspaper databases, many Albertans who have tomorrow off work will hopefully be thinking more about spending time with their family than elections and politics from three decades ago.
Thirty-five years later, those who were involved in the big Family Day Debate of 1989 and who have enjoyed many Family Days since, might ask themselves: what was the big deal about it in the first place?
Happy Family Day.
Celebrating Family Day in 2025
The Legislative Assembly of Alberta is open for Family Day celebrations with free events in the Legislature Building and the Queen Elizabeth II Building Visitor Centre on Monday, February 17, from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
“Family Day has always been a special time to have fun and appreciate the bonds that tie us together,” said Legislative Assembly Speaker Nathan Cooper.“I welcome all Albertans to celebrate at our family-friendly event.”
Visit the Legislative Assembly website for event details.
Thanks for the thorough review. I well remember the debate and, since I worked at Lakeland College at the time, enjoying the day off. I noticed that Family Day became adopted by many other provinces across Canada - an Albertan contribution?
Federal public servants do not get Monday off. Instead, they have chosen to enjoy a four day weekend at Easter.