The family connection between Cargill and the UCP
While recently reading a story about Cargill reopening, I was interested in a statement saying that UFCW 401, the union representing Cargill workers, had written a letter to Alberta government officials and Cargill executives.
I was curious if a copy of the letter was online. If I knew who was in the Cargill executive, maybe I could see if there was any connection to the current provincial government.
After a bit of searching, I found the letter. And there at the top of it was the name of the general manager:
Dale LaGrange
I was immediately curious, as he shares a last name with Adriana LaGrange, Alberta’s education minister. And I wasn’t the only one: just earlier this week, someone else was asking about the connection.
It is just a coincidence that Dale LaGrange (general manager at Cargill) and Adriana LaGrange (her husband Darren LaGrange) have the same last name… isn’t it? @kim_siever @sprawlcalgary @TheTyee
- Lisa Miguez (@grafxbylisa) May 6, 2020
And so I set out on some sleuthing. It took no time at all to discover what Lisa had: that Adrianna’s husband was Darren LaGrange. But finding a connection between Darren and Dale was a bit more challenging.
Nevertheless, I persisted. And after a few hours I found a connection.
In a 10 May 1983 issue of the Calgary Herald, there was an insert called Right-to-Life Signature Proclamation, a collection of over 37,000 signatures of Albertans proclaiming “respect for all innocent human life from conception until natural death”.
The signatures were organized by community. In the Red Deer section was a list of 19 people with the last name of LaGrange.
In that list, we find both Darren and Dale. Now that I knew both of them were from Red Deer, I figured they were likely related. I needed to parse out who all those other people were in the list. Then I could find out how closely related.
I found an obituary for the Daniel J LaGrange listed in that proclamation. It showed his parents and siblings. I determined that the Dan and Mabel on that list were the start of the family line, with Daniel J being one of their children, and Brenda was his wife. Ray and Fred were his siblings, and Annette and Linda were their respective spouses.
But the obituary didn’t show Dale or Darren. Which meant they were either Daniel’s grandchildren or nephews.
So I did some more searching, and I discovered an obituary from 2003 in the Red Deer Advocate for a Lena LaGrange, which matches one of the names on the list. Turns out that Lena was Darren’s mother.
I still lacked a connection for Dale.
But then I came across an obituary-again from the Red Deer Advocate-for a David LaGrange, who died of hypothermia in 1998.
Dale and David were brothers. And there’s Lena’s name, right at the bottom of the image. Lena, who was Darren’s mother, was Dale’s grandmother. Dale is Darren’s nephew.
In other words, Adriana LaGrange is the aunt of Cargill’s general manager.
Something to keep in mind when considering how long it took for Cargill to close, how the minister of agriculture said that their workplace practices were sufficient, and how quickly they reopened.
Originally published at https://kimsiever.ca on May 9, 2020.
