All in the family

Answer the door in Winnipeg North during an election campaign, and there could be three generations of a Manitoba political family waiting outside.

Kevin Lamoureux, the Liberal incumbent in the riding, is going door-to-door with his daughter, Cindy Lamoureux, the sole Liberal MLA in Manitoba, to hand out campaign literature and talk with voters.

It’s not unusual for the father and daughter pair to campaign together, but there’s another member of the team this time around — Cindy’s son, five-month-old Hudson, who has been a hit with constituents.

“The problem that I found with Hudson is that he grabs all the attention,” Kevin says, laughing.

“No, it’s quite nice. Going from campaigning with no children, to having Cindy on my campaigns being pulled in a wagon with signs, to now having Hudson. At 63, it’s a wonderful feeling.”

When a young Kevin Lamoureux told his father that, rather than follow in the family’s entrepreneurial footsteps, he wanted to be prime minister when he grew up, he couldn’t have envisioned the events that would occur later in life.

His brother, Darrin Lamoureux, got involved in some of Kevin’s earlier campaigns and served as the leader of the Saskatchewan Liberal party from 2013 to 2017.

Cindy quickly became accustomed to political life while spending portions of her childhood attending community events with her dad.

Today, they represent many of the same neighbourhoods, and even hold the same Saturday-afternoon “office” hours for constituents every week at a Keewatin Street McDonald’s.

“I think that there are many different types of politicians, whether that be party politicians, legislative politicians and, in my father’s case — and what he has passed on to me — I’m very focused on constituency work, so I would call myself a constituent politician,” Cindy says.

“I see it in my father every election, and that’s where I aim for myself.”

Hudson is already being addressed as “the future MLA” and “the future MP” when he makes appearances at community events, his mother says. Even Premier Wab Kinew described him as a possible third-generation Lamoureux to sit in the legislative chamber.

“Honestly, as long as my child is healthy and happy, he can pursue whatever he would like,” she says.

Politics as the family business isn’t uncommon in the province’s history.

Duff Roblin, Manitoba’s 14th premier (1958-1967), was the grandson of Sir Rodmond Roblin, a fellow Conservative and Manitoba’s ninth premier (1900-1915).

“Going from campaigning with no children, to having Cindy on my campaigns being pulled in a wagon with signs, to now having Hudson. At 63, it’s a wonderful feeling.”–Kevin Lamoureux

Late New Democrat Bill Blaikie served as an MP for the riding now known as Elmwood-Transcona from 1979 until 2008. He followed that up with a 2 1/2-year term as the MLA for Elmwood (2009-2011).

His son, Daniel Blaikie, was elected in his father’s federal riding in 2015 and served as NDP MP until March 2024, when he resigned to work as a special adviser on intergovernmental affairs in Kinew’s government.

Daniel’s sister Rebecca Blaikie was the president of the federal NDP from 2011 to 2016.

Amanda Lathlin, the current NDP MLA for The Pas-Kameesak, represents the same district her father, Oscar Lathlin, did until his death in 2008.

The common thread? University of Manitoba political studies adjunct professor Christopher Adams says there can be several, including familiarity with political life, a natural propensity for leadership and socio-economic factors that give relatives built-in toolboxes for their own campaigns.

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“I think that people who run for politics have a certain characteristic to them, that they share with their children, and sometimes it might be genetic, like a certain psychological propensity to do certain things, but also it’s socialization that you learn the values from your parents around the dining room table,” Adams says.

“Also, the fact that you’re brought to campaign events, it’s sort of like ducks to water, right? You’ve been brought up on this, and you’re very accustomed, and you enjoy it.”

A handful of other federal candidates have family ties at other levels of government in several wards, including Winnipeg South, St. Boniface-St. Vital, Winnipeg South Centre and Churchill-Keewatinook Aski.

Constituents connect to those generational links, Adams says.

“I think family names means that it’s a familiar name on the ballot,” he says.

That may, indeed, have been the case for both Lamoureuxs, who credit community connections for their victories in otherwise difficult elections for Liberals. For Kevin, that was 2011, when the Stephen Harper-led Conservatives prevailed in six of the eight Winnipeg ridings and the NDP hung onto one.

“I think that people who run for politics have a certain characteristic to them, that they share with their children.”–Christopher Adams

In Cindy’s case, it was 2023, when Kinew’s NDP swept to power and two of three Liberal seats were lost, leaving her as the lone party representative in the legislature.

Niki Ashton, the NDP incumbent in Churchill-Keewatinook Aski, likely found support and trust quickly in the riding in part because of her father Steve Ashton’s years of service as a cabinet minister in several provincial NDP governments, Adams says.

“That has benefited Niki Ashton in terms of having a vibrant NDP campaign machine to step in, whether it’s provincial or or federal,” he says.

“I would say that if Ashton holds on to her seat in this election, when nationally the NDP is sagging in the polls… (it’s) because the NDP has solidified its resources in that area, and also the familiarity of Steve Ashton and Niki Ashton in the North.”

But name recognition doesn’t always make the campaign trail easier, a reality Liberal Ben Carr knows intimately.

He’s running as the incumbent in Winnipeg South Centre, where his father, Jim Carr, was the MP from 2015 until his death in 2022. He was succeeded by his son in a June 2023 byelection.

The younger Carr, previously an educator, worked on his father’s campaigns. But before Jim entered politics, Ben served as the president of the Young Liberals of Canada in Manitoba, and had worked as a staffer on Parliament Hill.

He recognizes there’s an “added element of pressure and expectation” that comes from his father’s legacy in the area.

“When you come from a situation where a relative of yours — and, in my case, a close relative and my father — preceded you, you have to work a little harder to earn the trust and respect of the people that you hope to represent by helping them come to understand who it is that you are as a person, and what it is that you have accomplished and hope to accomplish on their behalf,” he says.

Carr says he finds himself drawing from the time he spent working with his father when he campaigns now.

“Those lessons and those values instilled in me at a young age by my father and exemplified by him in the way that he conducted himself as a person, as a community leader and as an elected official, I have tried very hard to emulate, while at the same time growing into and staying true to who I am as my own person.”

Not every candidate with family connections is an incumbent. Thomas Linner, who is running for the first time with the NDP in St. Boniface-St. Vital, is married to Advanced Education and Training Minister Renée Cable.

In Winnipeg South, Joanne Bjornson, also an NDP candidate running her first campaign, is the wife of Peter Bjornson, who was an NDP minister in the cabinets of former premiers Gary Doer and Greg Selinger.

She says she long held a supporting role, juggling her own career and raising their children, while her husband worked in politics.

She took on a volunteer role — her way, she says, of giving back to all the volunteers who have helped her husband — and when she realized she wanted to try being the face of a campaign herself, he quickly became her “biggest fan and greatest supporter.”

“Peter, having been in government, I understand what the role is to represent constituents, and seeing his passion and the way he’s able to help people, definitely influenced my decision to want to run in this election,” she says.

Her husband, who was a teacher pre-politics and is now an education instructor at the University of Winnipeg’s, is getting out in the riding with his wife’s campaign literature, sharing her platform.

It’s a “challenging career,” he says, but noted she knows that intimately, experiencing it first-hand for the 12 years he was in office.

“When you talk about a career where there’s no life like it, in politics there is no life like it,” he says.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca

Malak Abas
Reporter

Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak.

Every piece of reporting Malak produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.