[1][2] Russell was born in 1930 in California and was raised on a farm in the Burns Lake, British Columbia area where he lived until the age of 14 when the family moved to Lethbridge, Alberta.
Russell was an active sportsman in his teens, winning a Canadian welterweight boxing championship as well as playing junior ice hockey during high school.
[3] He was defeated by Calgary lawyer Adrian Berry, but nevertheless ran in the 1967 provincial election as a Liberal in the riding of St. Albert.
[3] The party had no seats in the legislature at this point, and Lowery responded by exploring coalition options with Social Credit.
These explorations were opposed by much of the party's membership, including Russell, and Lowery resigned from the leadership without contesting an election.
While he had previously supported the so-called "west bypass" alignment that would have seen a bridge cross the Sturgeon River near the mouth of Big Lake, an eleven thousand name petition opposing the alignment apparently convinced him to support the alternative Ray Gibbon Drive alignment, which crossed the river further from the mouth of the lake and was the recommendation of the CityPlan process, a months long municipal planning initiative initiated by council in part in response to the petition.
Choice, a lobby group that publicly endorsed a set of pro-bypass candidates in the 2001 election; Russell was defeated, along with fellow pro-Ray Gibbon incumbents Paul Chalifoux, Penny Reeves, and Jim Starko.
[5] Russell has held a number of community and political positions, including president of the Liberal riding association in Edmonton—St.