Former B.C. MLA Peter Albert Dueck, who served as health minister during the Bill Vander Zalm Social Credit administration, has died.
He was 91.
A memorial service will be held Wednesday in Abbotsford.
Dueck was born July 5, 1923 in Russia. When he was three years old, his family immigrated to Canada.
He first met his wife Helen Goerz, also a Russian immigrant, in Grade 2 in Coaldale, Alta., before her family moved to Vancouver. Dueck, however, stayed in Coaldale where he grew up on the family farm.
But fate it would seem was with the pair and they met again in 1944, fell in love and married two years later. Then the pair settled in Abbotsford.
Peter and Helen Dueck shared a passion for gardening and won six gardening awards from the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board. They also spent many happy days together ballroom dancing, skiing and playing tennis.
They were married for 62 years before Helen died of cancer in 2009.
Dueck began his career in 1951 as co-founder of MSA Motors in Abbotsford, and from there set up several other successful car dealerships in Metro Vancouver. He also worked briefly as a real estate agent and in insurance.
His foray into politics came in 1978, when he became an alderman and deputy mayor of Matsqui. He was elected to the B.C. legislature in 1986 and served seven years in provincial government, holding several different cabinet posts, the most prominent being that of health minister.
Dueck was one of five Socred ministers, along with Jack Kempf, Cliff Michael, Bill Reid and Bud Smith, who resigned when the party was accused of misconduct. At the time, Dueck was quoted as stepping down because the party could never win another election or regain the trust of the electorate. (Vander Zalm was acquitted of criminal breach of trust over the 1990 sale of his Fantasy Gardens theme park, and Dueck summed up the ordeal by saying: “He was foolish, not a criminal.”)
Dueck quit his seat in 1993 to sit as an independent, and his resignation forced a byelection in Matsqui in which Liberal Mike de Jong upset newly crowned leader Grace McCarthy.
Peter and Helen Dueck are survived by their four children — Edward, Gerald, Larraine and Leonard — and nine grandchildren.
