Canadians will have a picture of an Okotoks resident’s grandfather in their wallets.
Okotokian Leah Koski attended the unveiling of the sesquicentennial $10 bill in Ottawa earlier this month with her mother Pauline Dempsey. The bill, which is being released to the public June 1, features Koski’s grandfather, Senator James Gladstone, along with three other notable Canadians.
She knows him as grandpa rather than senator.
“I remember him rubbing his whiskers on us,” Leah said with a laugh. “I remember him as always smiling and always happy and very approachable.”
Gladstone, who passed away in 1971, was the first person from a treaty First Nation named to the senate when he was appointed by former prime minister John Diefenbaker in 1958.
“I was quite young when he passed away,” Leah said. “Every year that goes by, I learn more and more about him. I am just so proud, especially, all of the work that he did with the native people.”
Pauline Dempsey, Koski’s mother, and the senator’s daughter agreed, adding her father’s appointment to the senate was a turning point for improved relationships with First Nations people.
“I thought that was the beginning of opening the door to dialogue with native people,” Dempsey said. “It is a very complex issue. Now it has ballooned with the dialogue of the residential schools and other things. I am always proud to think that dad might have been the beginning of that.”
Gladstone, a member of the Blood reserve near Kainai, was a student at St. Paul’s Indian Residential School, an Anglican school on the reserve.
For Pauline, seeing her father honoured on the $10 bill is overwhelming.
“To me, dad was a simple farmer who just rose up the ranks,” Pauline said. “He loved farming but he read a lot. He loved politics. He would sit by the radio, read the news and kept abreast of the situations.”
Gladstone was elected president of the Indian Association of Alberta in 1949 and went to Ottawa three times seeking improvements to the Indian Act. He was selected to the Senate in 1958, two years before First Nations people could vote. He served in the upper chamber until 1971, shortly before his death.
Along with the Koskis, the senator had other connections in the Foothills area.
Senator Gladstone and his wife raised six children. His grandson, Jim Gladstone, was a lawyer and a member of both the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame and the Canadian Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame. He was a three-time Canadian roping champion and was the first Canadian to win a timed event at the World championships in Oklahoma City in 1977.
After becoming a lawyer, he settled in the Aldersyde area. His son, Zak, (Senator Gladstone’s great-grandson) was an award-winning football player with the Holy Trinity Academy Knights.
The senator had one more experience in Okotoks he would never forget.
“We were driving up to Calgary from the (Blood) reserve and dad said, ‘I will let you take over,’” Pauline said. “So I went up the big hill (now Veterans Way) and I killed the motor and it started rolling back. So I always remember our connection to Okotoks.”
The other three people on the bill are Canada’s first prime minister, John A. MacDonald,, Agnes Macphail, Canada’s first female member of parliament, and Sir George-Étienne Cartier, a Father of Confederation
There will be 40 million $10 bills printed, one for each resident of Canada.
For more information go to www.senatorjamesgladstone.ca
