Ex-Brandon East NDP MLA Len Evans dies at 86

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This article was published 04/01/2016 (3918 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Tenacious, dedicated, generous, kind and inspiring — just some of the words used to describe Len Evans by those who knew him. The former NDP MLA for Brandon East passed away suddenly on Saturday morning at the age of 86.

Evans served 30 years in the Manitoba legislature and worked under both NDP premiers Ed Schreyer and Howard Pawley — Pawley also passed away last week at the age of 81.

Drew Caldwell, municipal government minister and current NDP MLA for Brandon East, says the sudden passing of both men has been a shock for him.

“Manitoba’s lost two great citizens in the last (week),” he said over the phone on Saturday.

Caldwell succeeded Evans in his Brandon post, which he held from 1969-99, and says his entire political career has been modelled after the late cabinet minister.

“Len taught me what it was to be a public servant … he was like a father to me,” Caldwell said. “There’s never been an elected official in Brandon, at any level, that has worked as hard for Brandon (as Len).”

When Caldwell worked for Evans in the 1980s — while he was minister of employment services and economic security — he took note of the former MLA’s open door policy and his commitment to delivering provincial resources to the Wheat City.

During his time in office, Evans became a champion

of local infrastructure development and was instrumental in re-drawing the city’s boundaries to include surrounding municipalities.

“It basically turned Brandon into a modern community,” Caldwell said, adding that the new jurisdiction grew the city’s tax base exponentially.

Evans also played a large role in finishing the construction of the Keystone Centre, which was little more than a stalled project and a cage of steel beams when Evans was elected.

“Len would often tell me that his first assignment, if you will, as a brand-new elected MLA … he immediately had to get his arms wrapped around this Keystone thing,” Mayor Rick Chrest said on Saturday.

The centre opened in 1972 and was a project that stayed with Evans throughout his career. Chrest says he is amazed the MLA was able to maintain provincial funding for building expansions and renovations, even as a member of the opposition.

“It didn’t become the political football that some other issues become,” Chrest said. “I think the hallmark of how he approached it is the Keystone has always remained a non-partisan entity.”

Born in Winnipeg in 1929, Evans became a professor of economics and taught at Brandon University before entering politics.

In 2010, the province of Manitoba named the new addition to Assiniboine Community College’s North Hill campus the Len Evans Centre for Trades and Technology.

College president Mark Frison didn’t know Evans’ well personally, but got to speak with him at a reception during the holidays.

“I was joking with him that we use his name on a daily basis … he certainly got a chuckle out of it,” Frison said, adding that the trades and technology part of the name has been all but dropped among staff and students.

Evans’ daughter Janet says her father suffered a heart attack early last week and was air lifted to Winnipeg were he later passed away.

“He waited for my brother to come in from England and for me to come in from Ottawa before he passed away,” said Janet, who is one of Evans’ three children.

Evans’ wife Alice passed away in June last year, just short of the couple’s 62nd wedding anniversary.

Regarded by some as the forefather of modern Brandon, Evans’ death is a blow to the city.

“It’s a surprising and significant loss for the fabric and political history of Brandon,” Chrest said.

On Saturday, Premier Greg Selinger tweeted “Our thoughts go out today to the family and friends of Len Evans, who worked tirelessly for the people of (Brandon) and Manitoba.”

» ewasney@brandonsun.com, with files from The Canadian Press

» Twitter: @evawasney