Hopeful makes it her goal ‘to fight injustice’
Linda Osinchuk concerned for poor, addicted
A couple of brushes with death told Linda Osinchuk she had to do something meaningful with her life — and she’s still on that quest.
After surviving a run-in with a train in northern Alberta and overcoming a life-threatening blood clot in India, the mother of four believes she is alive for a reason.
“I think my reason to be here is to fight injustice and to speak on behalf of people,” Osinchuk says, explaining her decision to run for the leadership of the provincial Wildrose party.
She has already served as a registered nurse, school board trustee, county councillor and most recently as mayor of Strathcona County.
Now she wants to replace Danielle Smith, the Wildrose leader who defected to the Tory government with eight opposition MLAs on Dec. 17.
Her first near-death experience happened in 1979, a year after she married her husband of 36 years, Jim Osinchuk, a psychiatrist at Edmonton’s Royal Alexandra Hospital.
The newlyweds were headed for a weekend at a cabin north of Smoky Lake when their truck collided with a moving train at a level crossing.
“We didn’t hear the whistle,” she recalls. “My husband put his foot on the brake and we started skidding into the tracks. The engine went by and cut the front of the truck off and threw us into the ditch.”
Osinchuk says she cut her head on the rear-view mirror, but got away with a few stitches. Her husband escaped serious injury as well.
Another time, when she wound up in hospital in Delhi with a blood clot in her leg, Osinchuk thought the end was near, but she recovered from that crisis as well.
“Yeah, we’ve had a few close calls,” she remarks. “I guess I wasn’t done yet.”
Osinchuk, 58, was raised on a farm near Cudworth, Sask., a middle child with seven siblings, who cooked meals and drove the grain truck for her father during the harvest.
She later moved to Saskatoon to attend high school and college, and graduated with a registered nursing diploma that eventually took her to Edmonton.
Pastor Doug Sedore says he came to know Osinchuk when she supported his efforts to open an office to help people who are impoverished or who have addictions.
“She was quite helpful,” says Sedore of the Church of the Nazarene. “She is honest; has integrity. She has a heart and is very much interested in the needs of people in the community at every level.”
Sedore says he appreciated Osinchuk’s support because she not only talked about the need for the facility, but she got involved, attending fundraisers and the grand opening.
John Ashton, who served as a PC MLA under Peter Lougheed for eight years in the 1970s, says Osinchuk was an outstanding president of the Sherwood Park Rotary Club.
“One of her key characteristics is her compassion when it comes to the disadvantaged,” says Ashton, 80. “She is right up front to help them. It’s not about her. It’s about the voter and it’s about helping people.”
Ashton says Osinchuk wasn’t afraid as Strathcona County mayor to take on the provincial government over its decision to not provide a full-service hospital for the community.
He says that might have cost her when she ran for re-election, losing by 200 votes.
Longtime friend Marilyn Chorney, who met Osinchuk 25 years ago when they served on a parent council together, says the civic election loss was heartbreaking, but she took it harder than her friend.
“I shed tears, but she has that strength and backbone,” Chorney says. “She will bounce back — it’s amazing — through hardship or through losses.”
Osinchuk, a lifelong Progressive Conservative, was considering running federally for a seat in Parliament, but residents of Strathcona County, known for its Refinery Row, urged her to run provincially for the Wildrose instead.
Osinchuk says she came to the decision after talking to hundreds of people at the Great Canadian Trade Fair in Sherwood Park, where she had set up a booth last April.
“I thought I would crowdsource,” she explains. “Hundreds and hundreds of people said at that time one year ago — the majority of people — said we will not vote for the PCs again.”
Since entering the Wildrose leadership race, Osinchuk has painted herself as the maverick, taking contrary positions on royalties and pipelines.
She thinks oil companies should pay their fair share for access to Alberta’s resources and believes oilsands bitumen should be processed in Alberta, rather than petroleum producers shipping the raw product elsewhere to be re- fined into gasoline or diesel fuel.
The Wildrose leadership candidate also says she would have accepted the premier’s recent offer of airtime to rebut his television address on Tuesday.
Osinchuk rejects the premier’s contention that taxes must be raised.
“I think we have a government that’s pulling the wool over Albertans’ eyes,” she concludes. “Wake up and smell the coffee. You have choices.”