Former Edmonton Senior columnist dies at 99

Former Edmonton Senior columnist Lou Broten has died at the age of 99.

His death occurred on May 7, following some years of ill health.

Broten was born in North Dakota in 1914, and then the family moved to a farm in Saskatchewan three years later.

During the course of his life he was a homesteader, freight train rider, salmon fisher, railway locomotive engineer and international trade union official, as well as a World War II veteran.

Broten began writing a column for the Edmonton Senior in 1994, his first venture into journalism. Adorned with a photo of him in his trademark hat, the column became a must-read for many of the newspaper’s readers.

“When I started writing articles for the Edmonton Senior I had no journalistic experience, so it was a matter of trial and error,” he once wrote. “Fortunately, as a senior citizen I had the experience of a lifetime on which to draw…”

He touched on politics and issues of the day, provincial, national and international, along with favourite topics such as the importance of growing food in the city.

Holding strong opinions but never shrill, Broten was an adherent of no particular party. A theme he returned to many times was the need for a new style of non-partisan politics and government.

Broten often drew on lessons from history, including his own experiences of the Depression and wartime, to point the out the path to social progress. He frequently used the image of the Roman god Janus, portrayed with two faces, one looking back and one looking forward, to emphasize the importance of looking at the events of the past to gain an understanding of the present and future.

The face of Janus also appeared on the cover of Looking Back, Looking Forward, a collection of 98 of the Edmonton Senior columns, published in 2003. Once the book was published, he and Vera, his wife of more than 60 years, promoted and sold it themselves.

Affected by worsening health, Broten wrote his last column in early 2009. A couple of years later Vera passed away.

On February 14, 2004, a couple of hundred people attended a party to celebrate his 90^th birthday at the Calder Seniors Drop-in Centre, where he had been president.

As reported in the Edmonton Senior, Broten told those in attendance, “I do know that if I am here for a purpose it has to be to contribute to this life and that’s what I have tried to do. If there is any purpose it has to be to make a better life for all of us.”