LITTLE ROCK — Former state Sen. Eugene “Bud” Canada of Hot Springs died early Monday, leaving behind a legacy of fighting for the removal of the sales tax on groceries, which he lived to see reduced in recent years.
Canada, 84, was also a member of the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame and the University of Arkansas Hallof Honor for h i s s t a n d - out career in football in the 1940s.
His daughter, Gina Canada Watson, said he might have been just as proud ofthe accomplishments of the 10-year-olds he coached on youth football teams in HotSprings, which advanced to regional championships.
“He kept in touch with many of them over the years,” Watson said.
Canada’s passion for helping poor Arkansans afford food stemmed from his own childhood. After he finished sixth grade, his father, who supported a large family, asked him to leave the house and get a job.
Canada was taken in by aHot Springs fireman who let him live at the firehouse. The firefighters later supplemented his football scholarship at Arkansas with $10 monthly contributions.
He worked a variety of jobs as a teen, including caddying at local country clubs, working in restaurants and taverns and setting bowling pins in a bowling alley. He sent money home to help support his family, Watson said.
A Democratic state senator from 1973 to 2000, when he left because of term limits, Canada’s signature legislative efforts were his repeated attempts to eliminate the 6 percent state sales tax on groceries.
State Insurance Commissioner Jay Bradford, who served with Canada in the Senate, said the Hot Springs legislator believed in elimi-nating the tax “back when it wasn’t popular at all.”
“He was a true gentleman and there wasn’t a kinder guy that I ever served with,” Bradford said.
When Gov. Mike Beebe signed the first bill to cut the tax in half in 2007, he invited Canada and gave him the ceremonial pen.
In a statement Monday, Beebe praised Canada as a lawmaker distinguished by his “determination, kindness and class.”
“His insight and steady temperament had a great influence on me during my formative years in the state Senate. It was his dream to see Arkansas do away with the sales tax on groceries, and it was a privilege to have Bud standing next to me when I signed the grocery-tax cut in 2007,” Beebe said.
At that ceremony, Canada said, “I knew it would happen some day ... It’s the right thing to do.”
Earlier this year, the Legislature reduced the grocery tax by another 1 percent. It now stands at 2 percent.
Canada served two terms in the Arkansas House from 1959 to 1962 before being elected to several terms as Garland County sheriff in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Watson said.
He never wore a uniform or gun as sheriff, saying he trusted his deputies’ professionalism to maintain law and order, she said.
Watson fondly remembers election nights when her father was on the ballot.
After the polls closed, he would take up to 50 young people to get burgers before checking the results at each precinct, then heading to the county courthouse to see the final vote tallied.
“It’s something the kids looked forward to every year. He helped make us part of the democratic process,”she said.
Canada’s hardscrabble youth paid off with a stellar athletic career for Hot Springs High School and a scholarship to the state’s flagship university.
A halfback and safety when he joined the Razorbacks in 1945, Canada led the team in passing that year, completing 24 of 69 passes for 272 yards and two touchdowns. After a coaching change at the university, he moved to offensive and defensive end, and helped the Razorbacks win a Southwest Conference title in 1947. He also played in the first bowl game the team won, in 1948.
He briefly pursued a professional football career before being drafted into the Army during the Korean War.
Sen. Terry Smith, D-Hot Springs, said that 10 years ago he and Canada had a habit of meeting at a newspaper box early each morning near where they stayed during the legislative session.
For a week or so, Canada didn’t show up. Smith finally asked him where he had been. Canada told him he had been visiting a sick friend in a Little Rock hospital, getting there very early so she didn’t have to wake up to strangers.
“He had a heart as big as a house,” Smith said.
Ann Cornwell, director and secretary of the Arkansas Senate, said Canada was “just very personable, I don’t know anyone who didn’t like him.”
Canada died from complications from a heart attack suffered in late November, his family said. In recent years, he had battled illness stemming from fluid on the brain, which a second operation had fixed just weeks before his last heart attack. He died at St. Joseph’s Mercy Health Center in Hot Springs.
Canada is survived by his wife, Patricia Canada of Hot Springs; his three daughters, Watson, Lisa Albright and Toni Holland; and their families.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 12/22/2009