Canadian politician (1831–1889)
Richard Charles Hardisty (3 March 1831 – 15 October 1889) was a Hudson's Bay Company official at Edmonton and a politician in the North-West Territories, Canada.
He married Eliza McDougall on 21 September 1866 while he was a Hudson's Bay Company employee.
He ran as an Independent Conservative in the 1887 Canadian federal election and finished a close second in the Alberta (Provisional District). He lost to Donald Watson Davis.
He was appointed to the Senate of Canada on the advice of Prime Minister John A. Macdonald on 23 February 1888, the first Métis senator. He died on 15 October 1889, two weeks after being thrown from a buggy. His replacement in the Senate was Sir James Lougheed, who later married Richard Hardisty's niece Isabella (Belle) Hardisty in 1891. James Lougheed was the grandfather of Peter Lougheed, premier of Alberta from 1971 to 1985.
The village of Hardisty, Alberta, is named in his honour, as is Mount Hardisty in Jasper National Park.
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