CALGARY — Ralph would have wanted it this way.
A public memorial honouring former Alberta Premier Ralph Klein began Friday with the skirl of bagpipes, solemn faces and a white hearse, but soon morphed into smiles, laughter and memories about a man who wore his province and his heart on his sleeve.
“I couldn’t help but smile this morning as I recalled so many of the great times that I spent with Ralph over the past 20 years,” former Ontario premier Mike Harris told the crowd at the Jack Singer Concert Hall.
Harris remembered Klein as a kindred political spirit who carried the flag for balanced budgets.
“We say goodbye to one of Canada’s great public servants, a man who defined an era of Canadian conservative leadership in his own unique way,” he said.
But Harris said he most remembers Klein as a fishing buddy, card player and golf companion.
He said on the links Klein was willing but not always able, so was prone to taking a lot of second shots.
“The first term (Klein) learned was the word ’mulligan.’ And he took lots of them,” said Harris to laughter.
“He never cheated. He just took them.”
He said one day he gave Klein an over-sized driver that Klein labelled “Big Mike” and would thereafter brag about “hitting Big Mike all day long.”
Shirley McClellan, Klein’s former cabinet colleague and at one point his deputy premier, said the man she knew as “Boss” had a mischievous side.
Klein was an avid fan of the Calgary Flames and Calgary Stampeders, said McClellan. She was not. Nevertheless when the Stampeders went to the Grey Cup, Klein tapped her to go fly the flag for the province in support of the team.
She said she told Klein she didn’t own any Stampeder gear. “He said, ’Buy some,”’ she said.
“I went (to the game), we won, and it was great.”
Before the memorial began, former Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow said he remembered the time he and his partner beat Klein and Harris on the golf course, coming from behind to win double or nothing on the final hole.
“We were walking off the green, (Klein) stopped and said, ’Roy. It never pays to be too cocky,”’ said Romanow.
“If you think about it, that’s more than a golf story. It’s kind of a dictum of life. It never pays to be too cocky. It never pays to be arrogant. It pays to speak honestly and directly to the people and, man, I wish I had a quarter of his capacity to do so.”
Moments before the memorial, Klein made one last trip to the buildings that symbolized his greatest achievements.
His ashes were with his widow, Colleen, as she accepted the provincial flag at McDougall Centre, the southern office Klein called home when he ran the province from 1992 to 2006.
The flag was flying over the legislature March 29 when Klein died at age 70 after a battle with dementia and lung disease.
After the stop at McDougall, the procession stopped at Municipal Plaza across from city hall, where Mayor Naheed Nenshi proclaimed Friday Ralph Klein Day to honour Klein’s time as mayor from 1980 to 1989.
At the concert hall, people began lining up at 7 a.m. to secure one of the available 1,100 seats.
Michael Sztogryn was Klein’s neighbour and lined up for a seat inside.
“We saw Ralph Klein on a fairly regular basis in his PT Cruiser and he always said hello. His wife would always say hello when she was walking their dogs,” he said.
“I admired the man. He always said what he meant and he meant what he said and that was a big thing.”
Sally Black, a member of the Siksika Nation near Calgary, was crying as she stood in line. She said Klein was a pallbearer for her mother and father and she considers him a brother.
“He was well respected because of the way he treated native people. He got involved with them. There was no barrier. He was just like the rest of us.
“I will miss him.”
The event was billed by the family as a celebration of Klein’s life as the Everyman politician who was as comfortable in the boardroom as the corner bar and who tailored his policies to better the everyday lives of Alberta’s “Marthas” and “Henrys,” as he often called them.
The Alberta government offered to hold a state funeral, similar to the one given to former premier Peter Lougheed last year. But the family turned down the request, preferring instead to have a city-organized celebration for one of its favourite sons.
Klein’s death brought an outpouring of affection from across the country.
More than 1,400 have signed an online condolence book on the government’s website and almost 1,000 have signed remembrance books in person around the province.
On Friday, they came to remember a Calgary-born kid who grew up in Tuxedo Park and after covering Calgary city hall as a TV reporter won a long-shot campaign to become mayor in 1980.
After winning three terms and hosting the 1988 Winter Olympics, Klein leapt to provincial politics, winning a seat for Premier Don Getty’s Progressive Conservative party and then replacing him in a leadership vote in 1992.
When he became premier in 1992, Klein inherited a $23-billion debt and a party facing electoral defeat at the hands of the resurgent Liberals. Instead, the party won the first of four majorities under his leadership.
He slashed jobs and cut spending. Protesters railed against him, but he refused to change course and became more popular for it.
In doing so he became a national champion of change within a fiscally responsible framework.