Full Biography
Peter Lougheed was born in Calgary on July 26, 1928. In 1950, he received a BA degree, and in 1952, he received a LL.B degree, both from the University of Alberta. In 1954, he received a MBA degree from Harvard University. Mr. Lougheed was very active in promoting the Canada – United States Free Trade Agreement as Co-Chair of the private sector group that sold the merits of the Agreement to the Canadian public in 1988. In 1965, he was elected leader of the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party. The party won the 1971 provincial election, with 49 of the 75 seats in the legislature, defeating the Social Credit Party which had governed the province since the 1935 election. Lougheed established a Tory dynasty in the province that has continued uninterrupted since then. Lougheed led his party to victory in the 1975, 1979 and 1982 provincial elections. He served as the tenth Premier of Alberta from 1971 to 1985. Mr. Lougheed's government created the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund in 1976 to save a portion of the revenue from its depleting non-renewable resources in order to provide a legacy for future generations of Albertans. He also introduced the Alberta Bill of Rights. But Lougheed and Trudeau eventually reached an agreement for energy revenue sharing in 1982, after hard bargaining. When he was Premier Mr. Lougheed worked directly with the Calgary organizing committee which secured the 1988 Olympic Winter Games for Calgary from the International Olympic Committee. Because of his key involvement as Alberta's Premier in the patriation of the Canadian constitution and the Canadian Constitutional Act of 1982, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II appointed Mr. Lougheed to the Privy Council of Canada. In 1986, he was named a Companion of the Order of Canada, and in 1989 he was named to the Alberta Order of Excellence. In 2001 he was inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame.