Widow of former premier fought for marginalized
Colleen Klein, the familiar and more congenial face of 14 years of Ralph Klein’s Alberta premiership, has died at age 83.
According to those close to her, she died peacefully in palliative care on June 4, more than 11 years after the death of her husband, who served as the province’s 12th premier from 1992 to 2006.
“Her compassion, kindness, tact and intensely loyal spirit will live on and she will be forever remembered,” her daughter Teresa posted on Instagram. “She is now with her soulmate, completing her circle of life.”
Charlene Love, who has known Colleen Klein since 1980 and who had her own ringside seat to a political saga that ran from Calgary’s city hall to the province’s top political job, said she visited her late last week.
“She gave me the biggest Colleen hug and smile and was so happy to see me,” said Love, the widow of Rod Love, who served as Ralph Klein’s chief of staff in both Calgary’s city hall and in Edmonton.
“We talked about Rod and Ralph and she said to me, ‘We had the best of time, didn’t we?’ And I can tell you she was her feisty self.”
Klein was born Donna Hamilton in Victoria, B.C., and raised by grandparents who renamed her Colleen.
In Calgary, she worked at a racetrack and gas station, then a grocery store and as a single mother of two, she met then-calgary TV reporter Ralph in 1971.
In Don Martin’s book King Ralph, Klein said he met her in the bar of Calgary’s now-vanished Westgate Hotel and she first rejected his advances, not recognizing the well-known journalist.
“I met her again and asked if she’d go to a football game with me. She did and by halftime, we’d gone through a pint of rum,” he told Martin.
Following their modest 1972 wedding, the couple honeymooned in nearby Bragg Creek and would have one child together.
When Ralph Klein traded in his career as a reporter for one in politics, Colleen played the role of an often stern arbiter who’d vet her husband’s career decisions.
Her friendly, folksy presence became a political advantage for Klein — in one election campaign button, she could be seen hovering over her husband’s right shoulder.
That feistiness identified by Charlene Love was on display when never-confirmed rumours circulated that he’d domestically abused her in the late 1970s.
“You think a Scotch lady like me would let a little fart like that push her around?” she said.
She would be at his side when her husband won four majority governments and through his health struggles after he stepped down as premier.
In the mid-1990s, Colleen Klein became a political story herself when controversy exploded over her purchase of shares in Calgary software company Multicorp. without paying any money upfront.
She made the purchase after returning from Asia with her husband, where he attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony for Multi-corp in Hong Kong in November 1993. After he highlighted the company, its stock soared from $1 a share to about $9 a share, but Alberta Ethics Commissioner Robert Clark said implications that the premier was responsible for the increase were “not well-founded” and cleared the premier of wrongdoing.
But Clark conceded to reporters that a technical breach of the province’s conflict laws may have occurred.
The couple were known for their modest tastes, living for many years in an unassuming bungalow in Calgary’s Lakeview neighbourhood.
“My mom didn’t want any pomp and pageantry,” said daughter Teresa.
It was at that home in 2002 that Greenpeace operatives including current federal Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault climbed onto its roof to symbolically install solar panels to protest the premier’s opposition to the Kyoto Accords.
Teresa Klein said her mom was ready for battle.
“She armed herself with a broom and she was ready but she wasn’t going to open the door. She also had a fish bonker she kept by the side of her bed,” she said.
Colleen Klein dedicated much of her time advocating for women, children, the disadvantaged and Indigenous people facing racism, family challenges and systemic barriers.
In the 2005 book Alberta: A State of Mind, she recalls an upbringing that was distanced from her Métis roots, a realization that would ultimately contribute to that advocacy.
“I grew up unaware of my Métis heritage. I was also born with a large port wine birthmark across my face,” she wrote.
“That mark and my Aboriginal features made me different, and those differences weren’t very well tolerated by others ... as an adult, I pieced together my heritage and began to understand the difficult life my father and so many others like him had been forced to lead.”
When her husband died at age 70 in March 2013, Colleen said at the end of the day, her husband was a family man first.
“If the public will love him for all the things he did for them, his family will forever love him for all the things he meant to us,” Klein said in a statement following her husband’s death.
Following his death, Colleen maintained her activities in promoting causes that helped people and that were important to her.
“My mom had such a presence in what she did for women’s charities, the drug initiatives she did, the children’s charities,” said Teresa. “She was not just my dad’s wife, she was his right hand; he didn’t function without her.”
MY MOM HAD SUCH A PRESENCE IN WHAT SHE DID FOR WOMEN’S CHARITIES, THE DRUG INITIATIVES SHE DID, THE CHILDREN’S CHARITIES. SHE WAS NOT JUST MY DAD’S WIFE, SHE WAS HIS RIGHT HAND; HE DIDN’T FUNCTION WITHOUT HER. — TERESA KLEIN, DAUGHTER