Stephen Harper sent his regrets and a note, which was read to the
300-odd revellers the other night at the Coast Edmonton Plaza Hotel.
“Special greetings to Ted Byfield and Preston Manning, who have done so
much to inspire, inform and lead the conservative movement in Canada,”
the Prime Minister’s note said.The occasion was a “victory celebration” for a defunct magazine that never made anyone rich. The magazine was Alberta Report. Well, sometimes it had other titles, but we’ll stick with that one. Its founder was Ted Byfield, an irascible right-wing coot—I do not believe his friends would disagree with that description—and a mentor to dozens of journalists who went on to other roles, including this magazine’s Ken Whyte, Mark Stevenson and Colby Cosh.
But as I’ve said, the Report shut down in 2003. So what’s to celebrate? Power. “The West Is In,” the party invitations read. The reference was to the Harper Conservatives’ majority government. The dinner’s souvenir program promised a “national gala to reunite the original authors of Harper’s historic victory.”