One of the most controversial of Alberta’s premiers was born on this date in 1878 in Kippen, Ontario. William Aberhart (also known as ‘Bible Bill’, thanks to his radio sermons) governed Alberta from 1935 until his death in office in 1943.
After earning a bachelor’s degree from Kingston’s Queen’s University in 1911, Aberhart became a teacher and was lured to Canada’s western frontier by an offer of exorbitant pay from a Calgary school board. In Calgary, he began his ministry and by the mid 1920s he had become a popular Christian radio personality. His broadcasting took a political turn during the Great Depression as the economy consumed the public debate. During these difficult times he took an interest in British monetary theorist C.H. Douglas’ social credit movement. Aberhart, was swept into office barely a month after his Social Credit Party coalesced- the first time a social credit party had been elected anywhere in the world.
As Premier, he centred his policies around radical monetary reform by promoting credit unions, creating a provincially owned bank, and even issuing a short-lived Alberta currency known as the ‘prosperity certificate’. He instituted socially conservative policies, bringing in the strictest alcohol laws in Canada outside of Prince Edward Island (until the 1960s, airlines could not sell alcohol in Albertan airspace). Premier Aberhart also brought forth legislation (later ruled unconstitutional) to curtail the freedom of press by mandating that newspapers print government rebuttals.
The Dictionary of Canadian Biography on-line today describes Aberhart as a “populist with little concern for convention”, also noting Bible Bill’s Social Credit philosophy earned “support elsewhere in Canada, notably in rural Quebec”. In any case, the social credit movement spread to British Colombia where similar success was met from the 50s to the early 90s. Both parties collapsed after losing power and have been replaced by various conservative movements.
Whatever the controversies, the ‘SoCreds’ remained in power all the way to 1971, when they were finally defeated by Peter Lougheed’s Progressive Conservatives. A connecting thread between the two is their relationship with Queen’s University. Aberhart was a student in Kingston as a young man and Lougheed went on to serve as the Chancellor after his time as Alberta Premier.
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.