Peter Lougheed Edgar Peter Lougheed , PC , CC , AOE , QC , ( ; July 26 , 1928 – September 13 , 2012 ) was a Canadian lawyer and politician . He served as the tenth Premier of Alberta from 1971 to 1985 as a Progressive Conservative . Lougheed was the grandson of Sir James Alexander Lougheed , an early Senator and prominent Alberta businessman . After a short football career he entered business and practised law in Calgary . 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 . As premier , Lougheed furthered the development of the oil and gas resources , and started the Alberta Heritage Fund as a way of ensuring that the exploitation of non - renewable resources would be of long - term benefit to Alberta . He also introduced the Alberta Bill of Rights . Lougheed quarrelled with Pierre Trudeau ' s federal Liberal government over its 1980 introduction of the National Energy Program . But Lougheed and Trudeau eventually reached an agreement for energy revenue sharing in 1982 , after hard bargaining . The successful Calgary bid to host the 1988 Winter Olympics was developed during Lougheed ' s terms . From 1996 to 2002 , Lougheed served as Chancellor of Queen ' s University . Lougheed sat on the boards of a variety of organizations and corporations . In a 2012 edition , the Institute for Research on Public Policy ' s magazine , " Policy Options " , named Lougheed the best Canadian premier of the last forty years . Early life . Peter Lougheed was born in Calgary on July 26 , 1928 , the son of Edgar Donald Lougheed ( 1893 – 1951 ) and Edna Alexandria Bauld ( 1901 – 1972 ) . His paternal grandfather was Sir James Lougheed , a successful lawyer , federal cabinet minister , and senator . Sir James accumulated a sizable fortune before his 1925 death , but the Great Depression wiped out much of it , and the first years of Peter ' s life were spent moving from one rented accommodation to another . He was educated at the Strathcona School for Boys , Earl Grey School , Rideau Park School , and the Central Collegiate Institute , all in Calgary . At the last of these , he proposed the formation of a students ' union , and subsequently became its first president . He also excelled at sports , particularly football . Upon graduating from Central Collegiate , Lougheed enrolled at the University of Alberta , from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts ( in 1950 or 1951 ) and a Bachelor of Laws ( in 1952 ) . There , he played football for the University of Alberta Golden Bears and , in 1949 and 1950 , the Edmonton Eskimos . He also served as president of the Students ' Union in 1951 – 1952 and was a writer in the sports section for " the Gateway " , the University of Alberta student newspaper . While studying at the University of Alberta , he lived for a time in Rutherford House as a member of the Delta Upsilon fraternity . In 1952 , he married Jeanne Rogers , whom he met during his schooling . Soon after the wedding , the couple went to Massachusetts , where Lougheed pursued a Master of Business Administration at Harvard University , which he earned in 1954 . During this degree , he worked for a summer with Gulf Oil in Tulsa , Oklahoma , where he witnessed an oil boom town after the oil ran out ; political scientist Allan Tupper has suggested that Lougheed saw here a possible future of Alberta . After Harvard , Lougheed had to make decisions about his career . He believed that people should avoid excessive specialization in favour of maximizing their diversity of experience . He anticipated spending time in business , law , and politics . In pursuit of the first , he took a management position with Mannix Corporation , a Canadian construction firm . Later , he left the company to establish a law practice . During the early sixties , he began to turn his attention towards politics . Early political career . Lougheed was of Conservative stock , and it was with that party that he decided to pursue his political career . At the time , Alberta was represented almost entirely by Progressive Conservatives in the Canadian House of Commons . While this might have made federal politics appealing to Lougheed , he viewed it as a drawback ; he considered the field of federal P . C . politicians from Alberta to be crowded , and the life of a backbencher held little appeal for him . Instead , he turned his attention to the provincial Progressive Conservatives , who held no seats in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta and who had captured only 13 % of the vote in the 1963 election ( when it had contested only 33 of the province ' s 63 constituencies ) . The province had been governed by the Social Crediters since 1935 , with the government having been led for all but the first eight years of that period by Premier Ernest Manning . Manning was popular , and had won 60 of 63 seats in the legislature in 1963 , but Lougheed felt that the time was ripe for change . He believed that Albertans were beginning to find Social Credit too rural and insufficiently assertive in intergovernmental relations . In Lougheed ' s view , Alberta should be a senior partner in Confederation , and Social Credit was out of touch with the province ' s potential . He resolved to capture the leadership of the provincial Progressive Conservative party and to navigate it into government . The first phase of this was not difficult ; despite having no provincial profile and little organization , Lougheed defeated Duncan McKillop , a former P . C . candidate ( Calgary Queens Park 1963 ) and fellow Calgary lawyer , on the first ballot of the party ' s 1965 convention . Another candidate , Edson town councillor John Scott , had withdrawn on the convention ' s first day . Lougheed was nominated from the floor by Lou Hyndman and Charles Arthur Clark , father of future Prime Minister Joe Clark . Vote totals were not released . Lougheed ' s first challenge as leader was a 1966 by - election in Pincher Creek - Crowsnest . The riding had been represented by Social Crediter William Kovach , who had died . While the Tories finished third , Lougheed viewed it as only a minor setback ; his real focus was building up momentum for a general election due a year later . In that race , Lougheed was elected to the legislature for Calgary - West along with five other PCs , becoming Leader of the Opposition . In a harbinger of things to come , all but one of the new PC MLAs were from either Calgary or Edmonton . Leader of the Opposition . Manning retired as premier a year later , and Harry Strom was named his successor . However , after three decades in power , Social Credit had become tired and complacent . The first sign of a momentum shift came soon after Manning ' s retirement , when the PCs managed to take his former seat in a by - election . Over the next three years , the Tories built their tiny caucus up to 10 members with one other by - election win and two floor - crossings . During the 1970 spring session , Lougheed moved to position the PCs as a credible alternative to the Socreds . His party introduced 21 bills , an unusual number for an opposition party in a Westminster system . Premier . Strom called a snap election for August 1971 . For the campaign , Lougheed crafted a simple slogan — " NOW ! " — symbolizing his goal of increasing Alberta ' s clout in Canada . His platform combined fiscally conservative economic policies with a modern , urban outlook . Lougheed ' s urbane image also struck a responsive chord in contrast to Strom ' s rather dour image . In the election , Lougheed and the Tories swept the Socreds from power , ending what was , at the time , one of the longest unbroken run in government at the provincial level in Canada . While the PCs finished only five percentage points ahead of the Socreds — 46 percent to 41 percent — they reaped a major windfall in the cities . The PCs took every seat in Edmonton , and all but five in Calgary . Due to the nature of the first past the post system , which awards power solely on the basis of seats won , this gave Lougheed a strong majority government , with 49 seats to the Socreds ' 25 and the NDP ' s one . Lougheed spent most of his tenure as premier in a bitter fight with the federal government over control of Alberta ' s resources . His first term also saw the start of a decade - long development boom , and he later established the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund , which used oil revenues to invest for the long term in such areas as health care and research . He won an even stronger mandate in 1975 , reducing the opposition to only six MLAs in total ( four Socreds , one New Democrat and one independent ) . He would lead the party to two more landslide victories in 1979 and 1982 . His last victory netted the PCs a staggering 75 seats out of 79 — in terms of percentage of seats won , the second - largest majority government in the province ' s history . As a result , he governed with very large majorities for virtually his entire tenure , and was in a position to enact practically any program he wanted . This served him well , since he was a Red Tory leading a party whose base was largely social conservatives in rural parts of the province . Lougheed retired in 1985 , and Don Getty , a member of the original PC caucus from 1967 , was chosen his successor . Illness and death . Lougheed had long been suffering from a heart condition and high blood pressure . In early September 2012 , his health severely deteriorated and he was taken to hospital , where he died of natural causes at the hospital named after him in Calgary . His body lay in state from September 17 to 18 inside the main rotunda of the Alberta Legislature Building . The national and provincial flags were flown at half - mast throughout the province . After lying in state , Lougheed ' s body travelled back to Calgary in a motorcade from Edmonton that followed a procession through the city , passing places of significance to Lougheed . A state memorial was held on September 21 , 2012 , at the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium in Calgary . In response to his death , Prime Minister Stephen Harper described Lougheed as " one of the most remarkable Canadians of his generation . " Alberta Premier Alison Redford cut short her trip to Asia in order to attend his funeral . Alberta ' s opposition leader Danielle Smith , former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien ( who was the Minister of Justice during negotiations to patriate the Canadian constitution ) , federal opposition leader Thomas Mulcair and Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi issued statements condoling his death . Former Prime Minister Joe Clark wrote a special commentary in " The Globe and Mail " praising Lougheed . Honours . Lougheed was styled " The Honourable " for the duration of his membership in the Executive Council of Alberta from 1971 to 1986 . When he was appointed a privy councillor ( postnominal : " PC " ) on April 17 , 1982 , the style " The Honourable " was extended for life . In 1986 , he was named a Companion of the Order of Canada ( postnominal : " CC " ) , and in 1989 he was named to the Alberta Order of Excellence ( postnominal : " AOE " ) . In 2001 he was inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame . The Peter Lougheed Provincial Park was named after him in Kananaskis , Alberta . In Calgary an acute care hospital was named the Peter Lougheed Centre , where he would spend his last days . After his death proposals were made to rename Calgary International Airport in his honour .