Electing Dynasties: Alberta Campaigns Since 1935

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Topic spans: 1935 - 2001

Electing Dynasties: Alberta Campaigns Since 1935

Albertans don't elect parties so much as anoint political dynasties. And the governments — led by some of the most colourful, popular and durable premiers in Canadian history — have tended to rule for decades. CBC Archives looks back at pivotal election campaigns in Canada's bastion of conservative populism; the glory and the gaffes, the landslides and the losers, the radio preachers and the man they just call Ralph.

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1935: The gospel of Social Credit

Broadcast Date: Jan. 10, 1962

William Aberhart, a popular radio evangelist and politician, is performing a miracle. His upstart Social Credit party, promising Albertans deliverance from the grinding poverty of the Great Depression, is poised to crush the governing United Farmers of Alberta party. In this CBC Television clip, "Bible Bill" implores voters at a campaign rally: "Fight through, I charge you, for the sake of your sons and daughters!" A supporter describes the physically imposing politician as looking "like a trout among minnows."

There's no doubt that Aberhart's charisma and sense of purpose have electrified Alberta. Less certain, a Calgary Herald reporter says, is whether people actually understand the radical Social Credit monetary doctrine that, Aberhart promises, will put a $25-a-month government dividend in the pockets of every adult Albertan.

1935: The gospel of Social Credit

• The first Social Credit government in the world swept to power in Alberta on Aug. 22, 1935. William Aberhart's party, promising monetary reform based on the principles of British engineer Major C.H. Douglas, captured 56 of the legislature's 63 seats. That ended a 14-year reign by the United Farmers of Alberta party, which had won 39 seats in the previous election. In the face of near-fanatical fervour for Aberhart and his party, the UFA lost every single seat.

• The 1935 election had the highest voter turnout in Alberta history — an incredible 82 per cent, compared to the current average of about 53 per cent. The Alberta Liberal Party formed the Opposition with only five seats while the Conservative Party of Alberta elected two MLAs.

• The Great Depression was a huge influence on the campaign. Economic crisis triggered by the 1929 stock market crash was intensified by plunging wheat prices and prairie drought. Unemployment soared, banks repossessed farms and business bankruptcies were rampant.

• In the summer of 1932, the Ontario-born Aberhart was a Calgary school principal, founder of his own fundamentalist Christian sect — the Bible Institute Baptist Church — and a popular radio evangelist. He arrived at a provincial teachers' meeting depressed by the despair of his jobless graduates. Edmonton high school teacher Charles Scarborough lectured Aberhart on Douglas's theories on redistributing purchasing power and convinced the lay preacher to spread the gospel of social credit.

• Aberhart adapted Major C.H. Douglas's theories, which included government payments to citizens to bridge the gap between their incomes and the value of the goods and services their work produced. Aberhart also infused the ideas with his religion. The "conspiracy" of eastern banks and financiers said to control purchasing power — credit — was branded "wicked." Aberhart failed, however, to interest the UFA, Conservative or Liberal party in social credit policies.

• Aberhart decided to mobilize his grassroots group, the Alberta Social Credit League, into a political force. Portraying his cause as a movement above politics, he recruited candidates but did not himself seek a seat. The centerpiece of the Social Credit platform was a "basic dividend" of $25 per month, in the form of a government certificate to be issued to every adult Albertan.

• Town halls across the province echoed with speeches by Aberhart and his acolytes. And every Sunday, the leader used his electronic pulpit, the Back to the Bible Hour on CFCN Radio, to reach an estimated 300,000 potential voters. His legendary charisma, coupled with a message of guaranteed prosperity, was unbeatable. "Albertans were seized by a mass hysteria which has rarely come to the surface of this continent," wrote J.G. MacGregor in the 1965 book, Edmonton, A History.

• Alberta returned to prosperity under Aberhart — no thanks to social credit principles. Laws to give the province control of credit regulation and bank taxes were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada. The issue precipitated the Rowell-Sirois Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations. The drought ended, wartime prosperity arrived and Social Credit evolved into a more traditional populist conservative party. The $25 dividends never materialized.

• Aberhart survived a revolt within his party over his inability to deliver on the party platform and was re-elected premier in 1940. He died in office of liver disease on May 23, 1943. Ernest C. Manning, his right-hand man, became premier.

• Alberta's first government was Liberal, ruling from the province's entry into Confederation in 1905 until the UFA toppled it in 1921. One year before the 1935 Social Credit victory, UFA Premier John Brownlee resigned after he was successfully sued for the seduction of a young woman.