Portrait - Fabulous Western Canada: Capture the Excitement of the Great West! - page 17

again proved prosperous for the West,
and Alberta and the prairie provinces,
whose economies were essentially agri-
cultural at the time, were able to fi nish
clearing their territory.

the population believe it was the vic-
tim of a conspiracy involving the fed-
eral government and capitalists that he
was re-elected in 1940. He died in 1943
and was replaced by Ernest Manning,
elected in 1944. Manning got the party
in order and eliminated all the anti-cap-
italist rhetoric from the party line. He
dealt with all the controversy surround-
ing Alberta's debt, enabling the prov-
ince to benefi t once again from invest-
ment capital. In 1947, large oil deposits
were discovered, and from then on the
province enjoyed unprecedented pros-
perity, thanks to royalties and foreign
investment in the gas and petroleum
industries.

The great crash of 1929 had a profound
effect on Western Canada, in particu-
lar the Prairie provinces, which saw
their agricultural revenues drop by 94%
between 1929 and 1933! And the fact
that their farms specialized almost ex-
clusively in wheat made the situation
even worse.

SOCIAL CREDIT
AND THE CCF

For its part, the CCF reached its pin-
nacle in British Columbia in 1933 when
it became the offi cial opposition. An
outgrowth of the Socialist Party, work-
ers' unions and farmers' associations,
the party was brought to power in
Saskatchewan in 1944 with the election
of North America's fi rst socialist govern-
ment under Premier Tommy Douglas,
who introduced a public healthcare in-
surance plan during his term of offi ce.
The CCF eventually gave rise to the
New Democratic Party (NDP).

This period was marked by the evolu-
tion of two Western Canadian political
movements, both of which remained
almost exclusively local, Social Credit
and the Co-operative Commonwealth
Federation (CCF). The doctrine of
the Social Credit, which supported
the small farmers' and workers' stand
against the capitalist ascendancy by
providing interest-free credit, reached
its height under William Aberhart, who
was elected premier of Alberta in 1935.
His government dared to defy the cap-
italist system like no Canadian govern-
ment ever had before (or has since). In
1936, Alberta refused to redeem any
bonds, unilaterally cut the interest it
was paying on its loans in half, started
printing its own money, prohibited the
seizure of assets for non-payment and
even went so far as to force provincial
newspapers to print the government's
point of view.

6 William Aberhart. © Glenbow Archives; NB-16-217

One by one, these Albertan laws were
voided by the federal government
or the Supreme Court of Canada, but
Aberhart was so successful in making