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By Jordan Press

OTTAWA — Sen. Denise Batters was minutes from boarding a flight home when she noticed two-day old Twitter posts that said she was only in the upper chamber because her husband killed himself.

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Twenty years earlier on the same night, she and her husband had been among the last people to leave their wedding reception.

It was the second time this summer the Conservative senator from Saskatchewan was told on social media that she is only in the Senate because Dave Batters, a former Conservative MP, died by suicide.

The senator said she is accustomed to personal criticism online — it comes with being in politics and a partisan — but invoking the death of her husband crosses a line.

“This was just beyond the pale,” she said in an interview Friday.

“I thought, no, they don’t get to do this to me.”

Dave Batters was a two-term Conservative MP from Saskatchewan who died by suicide in 2009.

No, they don't get to do this to me

The couple met by chance while crossing a street during a provincial Progressive Conservative convention in Saskatoon in the early 1990s.