28 Facts About Edward Schreyer

Edward Richard Schreyer was born on December 21,1935 and is a Canadian politician, diplomat, and statesman who served as the 22nd governor general of Canada from 1979 to 1984.

Edward Schreyer previously served as the 16th premier of Manitoba from 1969 to 1977.

Edward Schreyer later moved into federal politics, winning a seat in the House of Commons, but returned to Manitoba in 1969 to become leader of the provincial New Democratic Party.

The party then won that year's provincial election and Edward Schreyer became the 16th premier of Manitoba, aged 33.

Edward Schreyer then attempted, without success, to get elected to the House of Commons; he was the first person to run for election in Canada after serving as Governor General.

Edward Schreyer was born in Beausejour, Manitoba, to Anglophone ethnic German-Austrian Catholic parents John Edward Schreyer and Elizabeth Gottfried; his maternal grandparents were Austrians who emigrated from western Ukraine.

Edward Schreyer attended Cromwell Elementary School and Beausejour Collegiate Secondary School, then United College and St John's College at the University of Manitoba.

From 1962 to 1965, Edward Schreyer served as a professor of International Relations at St Paul's College.

Edward Schreyer held the riding until resigning in 1965 to run successfully for the House of Commons in Ottawa.

Edward Schreyer returned to provincial politics in 1969, and was on June 8 elected leader of the New Democratic Party of Manitoba, the successor to the Manitoba CCF.

Edward Schreyer differed in some ways from the previous leaders of Manitoba's NDP: he came from a rural background and was not committed to socialism as an ideology; he won the support of many centrist voters who had not previously identified with the party.

Edward Schreyer led his party to a watershed showing in the 1969 provincial election.

Edward Schreyer himself returned to the legislature from the newly created north Winnipeg seat of Rossmere.

Finally, Liberal Laurent Desjardins threw his support to Edward Schreyer, making Edward Schreyer the first social democratic premier in Manitoba's history.

Edward Schreyer's premiership oversaw the amalgamation of the city of Winnipeg with its suburbs, introduced public automobile insurance, and significantly reduced medicare premiums.

Re-elected in 1973, Edward Schreyer maintained his position as premier, though the council was this time less innovative, the only policy of note being the mining tax legislation implemented in 1974.

Edward Schreyer served as his own minister of finance between 1972 and 1975, and as the minister responsible for Manitoba Hydro from 1971 to 1977.

Edward Schreyer sometimes favoured policies different from those of the federal NDP; in 1970, he supported Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's invocation of the War Measures Act in response to the October Crisis, despite the opposition of federal NDP leader Tommy Douglas.

Edward Schreyer remained leader of the NDP in opposition until 1979, when Trudeau offered him the office of Governor General.

The Edward Schreyer government undertook to provide types of services to people in the northern part of the province which people in the south took for granted.

On December 28,1978, Queen Elizabeth II, by commission under the royal sign-manual and Great Seal of Canada, appointed Pierre Trudeau's choice of Edward Schreyer to succeed Jules Leger as the Queen's representative.

Edward Schreyer was sworn in during a ceremony in the Senate chamber on January 22,1979, making him the first Governor General from Manitoba, and, at the age of forty-three, the third youngest ever appointed, after the Marquess of Lorne in 1878, and the Marquess of Lansdowne in 1883.

Edward Schreyer invested Terry Fox as a companion of the Order of Canada, travelling to Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, to present Fox with the order's insignia.

Edward Schreyer later suggested that he might have dissolved parliament at any point through 1981 and 1982, had the Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau tried to impose his constitutional proposals unilaterally.

Edward Schreyer held those positions until 1988, when he returned to Winnipeg.

On returning to Canada, Edward Schreyer was employed as a national representative of Habitat for Humanity, an honorary director of the Sierra Legal Defence Fund, and an honorary advisor to the Canadian Foundation for the Preservation of Chinese Cultural and Historical Treasures.

Edward Schreyer was a founding member of the Winnipeg Library Foundation.

On November 1,2002, Edward Schreyer was appointed the Chancellor of Brandon University and was re-elected to the position in early 2005 for a term that ended on October 31,2008.