Career
He returned to parliament in 1997 and served until 2004. At the time of his first victory he was the youngest Canadian ever elected to Parliament. Born in Wynyard, Saskatchewan, he was first elected for Yorkton-Melville in 1968.
At the age of 22 years and three months, he was the youngest Member of Parliament in Canadian history--a record he held until Claude-André Lachance was elected at the age of 20 years, 96 days in 1974.
He was reelected without serious difficulty until losing to Reform challenger Garry Breitkreuz in 1993 in a contest that saw him pushed into third place. He returned in 1997 in Qu"Appelle, succeeding fellow NDPer Simon de Jong.
He was reelected from this riding, renamed Regina-Qu"Appelle, in 2000. He ran for the leadership of the federal NDP three times.
He placed third at the 1975 1975 leadership convention, losing to Editor Broadbent.
In 1992, he was appointed to the Queen"s Privy Council for Canada. In 1995, Nystrom was considered a leading contender for the leadership during the campaign, finishing first in the one-member, one-vote primary system. But at the delegated convention he finished third on the first ballot, behind Svend Robinson and Alexa McDonough, and was dropped.
Although Robinson had finished first on that ballot, he conceded to McDonough before the second ballot as he felt that Nystrom"s support would have gone almost entirely to McDonough, giving her the victory.
(Reportedly, a number of Nystrom"s labour delegates voted for McDonough, fearing a Robinson victory and reasoning that McDonough would be better placed than Nystrom to defeat Robinson on the final ballot)
Nystrom ran for the NDP leadership again in the 2003 leadership election, placing third. He was defeated in the 2004 elections behind Conservative Andrew Scheer, who went on to become Speaker of the House in 2011.
Nystrom lost by a margin of 861 votes. After winning the NDP nomination again in 2005, he was defeated again by Scheer in the 2006 elections, this time losing by a wider margin of 2,740 votes.