Sterling Rufus Lyon PC OC OM QC (January 30, 1927 – December 16, 2010)[1] was a Canadian lawyer, cabinet minister, and the 17th premier of Manitoba from 1977 to 1981.

Born in Windsor, Ontario, the son of David Rufus Lyon and Ella Mae Cuthbert,[2] he moved with his family to Manitoba at a young age and grew up in Portage la Prairie.

[2] Lyon was first elected to the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba in 1958, in the south-central Winnipeg riding of Fort Garry, running as a Progressive Conservative.

Lyon defeated incumbent Liberal-Progressive MLA L. Raymond Fennell, and was subsequently named as Attorney General in Dufferin Roblin's minority government.

[3] Lyon ran for the House of Commons of Canada in 1974 for the federal Progressive Conservatives, narrowly losing the riding of Winnipeg South to Liberal incumbent James A. Richardson.

Spivak, a former cabinet colleague of Lyon's who had been elected party leader in 1971, was a Red Tory opposed by many of the more conservative figures within his caucus.

The right wing of the party consolidated around Lyon's challenge, and he defeated Spivak by fifty-seven votes at a very divisive leadership convention in December 1975.

Lyon was also an initial opponent of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's constitutional plans, and subsequently became a leading supporter of the notwithstanding clause provision.

In 2009, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada "for his contributions as a judge and long-time politician in Manitoba, where, as premier, he led the expansion of community-based health and social services, and modernized governmental financial procedures".

An unsigned editorial in the Winnipeg Free Press argued:The other major pillar of Mr. Lyon's legacy – the inclusion of the notwithstanding clause in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as a defence of the supremacy of elected parliaments over unelected courts – was controversial when he first supported it and remains so today.