Wes MacAleer was known across Prince Edward Island as the "Singing MLA," a former cabinet minister who was as likely to sing for residents of a long-term care home as speak from a podium in the legislature. He died on September 19, 2026, in Charlottetown, according to MacLean Funeral Home Swan Chapel. He was 82.

He was born on February 12, 1944, and graduated from Saint Dunstan's University in 1966 before pursuing graduate studies in history at Dalhousie University. In 1969 he and his new wife, Connie (Bateman) MacAleer, moved north to Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, where they built a life for the next eighteen years. There he co-founded Mackenzie Media, the territory's first privately owned broadcasting company, served two terms on Yellowknife's city council and a term as deputy mayor, and helped organize and manage the first Arctic Winter Games in 1970. He also ran for the territorial legislature in the 1979 Yellowknife South race, finishing second.

The family returned to Prince Edward Island in 1987, and MacAleer became publisher of The Guardian newspaper before entering provincial politics. He won the Charlottetown-Spring Park seat for the Progressive Conservatives in 1996 and held it through three terms, until 2007. In cabinet he served as Attorney General, Minister of Economic Development and Tourism, and Minister of Community Affairs, according to MacLean Funeral Home Swan Chapel, and he chaired standing committees on fisheries, intergovernmental affairs and transportation, according to Yahoo News Canada.

After leaving office he gave his time to the University of Prince Edward Island, Rotary, and island entrepreneurship efforts. In 2014 the Canadian Red Cross named him its Humanitarian of the Year, and in 2018 UPEI awarded him an honorary Doctor of Laws for his community service. Islanders came to know him by another title too, the one that stuck: the "Singing MLA," earned less for anything he did at Province House than for the hours he spent singing for residents of long-term care homes.

"He was a constant gentleman on the court," said Lorne Acorn, his tennis partner of 40 years. Gordon Christie, a retired broadcaster and fellow member of Tennis P.E.I., put it more plainly: "He didn't have a vindictive bone in his body." Barb McKenna, who worked under him at The Guardian, remembered a boss who arrived each day "just like your friend was walking in the door."

MacAleer is survived by his wife of 57 years, Connie, their children Gillian King and Darren MacAleer, grandchildren Olivia King and Julia MacAleer, and his sister, Bethany Elliott. What he built runs from a broadcasting company and the first Arctic Winter Games in the North to a legislative record in Charlottetown, and, in his last years, an audience of care home residents who simply called him the Singing MLA.