Only the hardest hearts can take comfort in news that Ralph Klein has dementia.
Klein was the famous and popular mayor of Calgary, who went on to become one of the most popular premiers in Alberta’s history.
He was also one of the most polarizing.
Klein was elected three times as mayor and four times as premier, but was denied the opportunity to finish his final term when his party turned on him.
Throughout his political career, Klein was willing to express his views — unpopular or not — with reporters and the public. He had a warmth and ability to relate to everyday Albertans — the metaphorical couple he called Henry and Martha.
Now he can read for only a few minutes at a time and can barely speak.
Dementia is a dread fate whose prospect haunts all those of a certain age, when the body and mind slow down, when facts and memories that used to come immediately to the brain escape us.
While Klein’s memory is failing, Albertans’ memories of him have not.
He came from a modest background to lead a remarkable life.
He was late in graduating from high school and earned a university degree well into his middle age.
He was the manager of a business college, worked for the Red Cross and then became a popular television reporter.
Covering City Hall piqued his interest in politics.
In 1980, when Klein announced his plan to become mayor to a friend at The Calgary Herald, the reporter thought he was joking.
Voters didn’t though. They elected Klein to two more terms as mayor, capped by hosting the extremely successful and profitable 1988 Winter Olympics.
As premier for precisely 14 years, Klein led Alberta through boom and bust.
Late in his political career, he became grumpy, bitter and increasingly insulated.
You don’t succeed in politics without a thick hide, and Klein certainly had that. But when harsh criticism comes from within party ranks, it really has to hurt.
Klein’s approval rating fell to 55 per cent at a 2006 Progressive Conservative convention, held in his own home town, five years ago this month.
Klein knew the jig was up.
Previously, he had flirted with approval numbers approaching 90 per cent at Conservative conventions.
Before becoming party leader, Klein thought of himself as a Liberal.
When he became premier, succeeding Don Getty in 1992, his Conservative party was trailing the Liberals, led by Laurence Decore, in public opinion polls.
It looked like Tory hegemony in Alberta might end after 21 consecutive years in power, but Klein turned it around with his folksy charm.
He immediately set about balancing the provincial budget, which had fallen into deficit during a period of low oil prices.
Klein balanced those books by slashing spending and, most notoriously, razing an inner-city Calgary hospital to cut health-care spending.
Then he set about paying off the provincial debt.
He did so a full generation ahead of schedule, at great long-term cost to Albertans.
Infrastructure that should have been built as the economy boomed and our population exploded was delayed or cancelled.
Public services were shredded. Alberta politics became more polarized and Klein became increasingly insulated.
Now he and his wife, Colleen, have joined the victims of those diminished services.
In announcing this month that Ralph had dementia as well as emphysema from his many years as a smoker, Colleen talked about the difficulties in getting a diagnosis and treatment for him.
That included lengthy waits for medical appointments and a two-year search for a specialist who could help treat his dementia.
“He’s being treated like everyone else in the system,” Colleen told a Calgary Herald columnist.
“I wouldn’t want anybody to think what he’s getting is preferential — it certainly is not,” she added.
Not preferential, but not good enough for Klein or any other Albertan.
Unwitting or not, Ralph Klein has to carry a share of that burden.
There’s no joy in saying so, but it is a cruel fact.
Joe McLaughlin is the retired former managing editor of the Red Deer Advocate.