Ezra Riley

Ezra Hounsfield Riley (June 5, 1866 – January 5, 1937) was a politician and rancher from Alberta, Canada.

Riley was born in 1866 in Yorkville, Ontario. He owned a large sum of land that he sold off to the City of Calgary in 1904. The land was developed into the historical Hillhurst-Sunnyside community northwest of Downtown.

Riley ran for the Legislative Assembly of Alberta in a by-election for the Alberta Liberal Party on December 7, 1906. He would be re-elected to a second term in the 1909 Alberta general election.

After serving a year into his second term he resigned his seat to protest the leadership of Arthur Sifton who became leader of the Liberal party in the wake of the Alberta and Great Waterways Railway scandal. Riley would run in the subsequent by-election on October 3, 1910 The Conservatives did not run a candidate in that by-election instead choosing to support Riley.

Explaining his resignation in a memorable stump speech on September 30, 1910 Riley was quoted as saying

I tell you, I am a Liberal, but I believe in the brand of Liberalism by and for the people. I am not afraid of the people and I could not continue to sit in the house at Edmonton without giving the people a chance to express themselves.

On election day Riley was defeated by 100 votes in a hotly and bitterly contested by-election rife with accusations of tampered voters lists.

His brother Harold Riley would end up winning the district for the Conservatives in another by-election almost exactly a year later.

Riley Park in Calgary, Alberta, the site of which was on his former ranch is named in his honor.

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