Ralph Klein, diagnosed with dementia, losing his ability to speak

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Josh Wingrove
& B/ f3 O1 a/ y$ K, ]& sEdmonton— Globe and Mail Update
Published Friday, Apr. 08, 2011 10:22AM EDT
! G/ _$ p  ]& V# K2 S  vLast updated Friday, Apr. 08, 2011 1:03PM EDT

1 T9 Z. \% f3 KFormer Alberta premier Ralph Klein has been diagnosed with a form of dementia, largely robbing the colourfully quick-witted leader of his ability to speak.
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Mr. Klein has frontotemporal dementia, a degenerative condition of the brain. The symptoms began to appear about a year ago, and the final diagnosis came to he and his wife, Colleen, last Friday.
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“What you notice is he's just slowed down. You know, he's just slowed down,” said Rod Love, his long-time chief of staff and close friend. “You can see him trying to get the right word, and it's not just mental but it's also physical. He's just slowed down.”
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Mr. Klein, 68, and his wife live in Calgary, where he once served as mayor. His wife is now in a caregiver role. (The family didn't answer their phone Friday, and declined comment through Mr. Love).

“There's good days, there's not so good days. Last time I had lunch with him, we had a good lunch, a good conversation. But, obviously, there are days that are not so good,” Mr. Love said. “About a year ago, you could notice concentration was just skipping a beat.”

The disease is similar to Alzheimer's, and includes the shrinking and atrophying of the frontal and anterior temporal lobes. Unlike Alzheimer's, however, it can often be associated not only with memory loss, but with behavioural changes. Some patients experience only the loss of language – symptoms consistent with what Mr. Klein's family report. It's a permanent, degenerative condition.
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Mr. Klein left office in 2006, after a 14-year tenure marked by successive majority governments and occasional gaffes, but one that left him tremendously popular across the province.
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/ n" H' ^6 J: ?- [He worked in broadcasting for 11 years before becoming Calgary's 32nd mayor in 1980, overseeing the city's hosting of the Olympics. He was elected provincially in 1989 and became premier three years later.
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0 `) h* r  u$ d" C% N- H# r“My bias is obvious, but incredibly good things happened at all three stops along the way, whether you agree with his politics or not,” Mr. Love said.

: U' K2 X" v" o. y; K6 v3 N# z- @In his time in politics, Mr. Klein did things no other Canadian politician could get away with, said Duane Bratt, a political scientist at Calgary's Mount Royal University, which three years ago created the Ralph Klein Chair in Media Studies in the former premier's honour.

% Y% ^$ p6 T  B4 |0 m' iSuch examples include walking out of an Ottawa health summit to gamble at a casino, drunkenly telling a homeless man to get a job, suggesting ranchers whose herds have mad cow should have "shot, shovelled and shut up" instead of triggering the crisis that closed borders, and opining that then-Liberal Belinda Stronach, a one time girfriend of Conservative MP Peter MacKay, had but "conservative bone" in her body.
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"Nothing stuck to him. Because when you look at him, this was an ordinary guy – high-school dropout, chain-smoking quasi-alcoholic who said what he thought. And he just had a tie-in to people," Prof. Bratt says. "What I find most interesting is the charisma around Ralph Klein. His ability to just turn on a dime. For him to say something, have some backlash, for him to apologize and go in another direction so quickly and people say, 'Well, that's just Ralph.'"
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Mr. Klein remains a divisive figure in his party, which elected Ed Stelmach as his successor and is already in another leadership race this year. There were deep cuts to health care in the 1990s as Mr. Klein eliminated the deficit and debt, for which he will be remembered, Prof. Bratt says.
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( Z  t! u' W% V0 T+ p"Slaying the deficit, slaying the debt. This continues to be a focal point for those who love Conservatives and love Klein. He's the guy who did it. For all the talk and promises, he's the guy who actually did it," Prof. Bratt said.

In 2008, he served as the inaugural professor in the chair named for him at the university.

( n$ ^' }) |  Z+ u  q"I still remember there was a 9 a.m. class, and I knew Ralph's reputation, so I was a bit worried. But he rolls in with a big Tim Hortons mug, leather jacket and a pair of jeans and just sat at the front of the class and told really great stories," Prof. Bratt says. "What they remembered were the drinking stories with Mike Harris. That's what the students took away."

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