Alvin Finkel

The social credit phenomenon in Alberta

Few parties in political history have had such a swift metamorphosis from one end of the political spectrum to the other as did the Social Credit Party of Alberta. Between its establishment in the 1930s and the defeat of the Social Credit government in 1971, the party changed from a movement-based reformist organization to a cliquish, religious-oriented outfit whose main purpose was to hold the levers of power. In this account of the Social Credit transformation, Alvin Finkel challenges earlier works which focus purely on Social Credit monetary fixations and religiosity. He argues that the early party is best seen as a coalition of reformers, including working-class social democrats, the unemployed, small business owners, and farmers placed in jeopardy by the Depression. In its first term of office, Social Credit was perceived as on the left, opposed in the 1940 provincial election by a right-wing coalition. During the later Aberhart years, and especially after Ernest Mannings accession to the premiership, Social Credit switched its fire from bankers to socialists and the partys rhetoric became extremely right-wing. Manning opposed, on ideological grounds, most of the social programs introduced by federal government after 1945. Though patronage was rife, most Albertans regarded Social Credit as righteous because of the leadership of Manning, a radio evangelist. Only Mannings departure from the political scene began the slow process of decay of the governing party.

In Search of Canadian Political Culture (review)

disheartening effects of the First World War, social reformers of the Prairie West worked tirelessly to remake the place in the image of their ideals. While much of this was intellectual labour and political work, emotions played a special role, a point that Randi Warne makes in her skilful analysis of Nellie McClung. That the visions of some meant hardships and restrictions for others is the subject of the fourth section. Land-holding law and settlement patterns made the Prairie West ‘no place for a woman,’ but so did the ways that many people thought about the West, ways that had more in common with imperial outposts than with Canadian farming. Chris Kitzan’s chapter on Bishop Lloyd offers a timely corrective to any lingering view that Sifton’s policies were embraced universally. In a chapter reminiscent of recent events, Steve Hewitt makes plain the restrictive power of the state in determining who was and who was not to partake of the promise of the West. The volume returns to the process of visioning the Prairie West in the latter half of the twentieth century through art, commemoration, consumption, and the search for new myths. Returning ultimately to the realm of ideas is fitting in a book that is, in many ways, an intellectual history, though not only of intellectuals, political leaders, or social reformers. Given the unifying theme of the Promised Land and the use of material already published, this volume is at times repetitious and covers familiar topics without adding much new interpretation. It also lacks a firm material grounding. The structural forces that affected life on the Prairies come up mainly as context to emerging or revisioning ideas about place. Since promise can be offered or curtailed economically, the absence of detailed discussion of distribution of land and wealth more generally seems odd, especially given the role that gender and ethnicity (but less so, class) play in the volume’s analysis of the discursive level. Used with other works that deal with the material realm, this volume makes a fine contribution to the undergraduate history classroom, as we urge our students to think more deeply about place and the ideas that construct it. MARY ELLEN KELM Simon Fraser University

Riding to the Rescue: The Transformation of the RCMP in Alberta and Saskatchewan, 1914–1939 (review)

were either no subsidies for the working poor, or subsidies too low to make it feasible to join the plan. Nonetheless, from Manning’s point of view, he had provided ‘access’ to medicare for all Albertans. Barrie also notes that ‘there is no evidence that Aberhart or Manning were anti-Semites.’ (48) Anyone who has read Janine Stingel’s work, including her book, Social Discredit, would know otherwise. Perhaps, if Barrie was aware of Stingel’s efforts, she would dispute the findings, as I have done in part, but she seems oblivious to their existence. These quibbles aside, Barrie does present a coherent argument about political culture in Alberta that deserves close attention. I would like to be as charitable about Eisler’s book, as I am aware that he had a distinguished career as a journalist in Saskatchewan, chronicling political developments for a generation. However, the pro-growth rhetoric that he cites for different periods in Saskatchewan, particularly after the Second World War, could be found in all of Canada’s provinces, and so it strikes me that ‘false expectations’ is too facile an explanation for Saskatchewan’s political culture. ALVIN FINKEL Athabasca University

Filming Politics: Communism and the Portrayal of the Working Class at the National Film Board of Canada, 1939–46 (review)

advertisements, cartoons, and pamphlets found in the national CCF party records. He is also the first to use the papers of two of the chief architects of this anti-CCF advertising campaign, Gladstone Murray and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. (The third major anti-CCF propagandist, Burdick Trestrail, appears to have left no papers.) One wonders, though, why the author did not undertake an independent canvass of the Financial Post and perhaps some other major Canadian newspapers for the period 1943–5. An extensive collection of clippings of newspaper articles and editorials would certainly be an appealing prospect for any researcher, but one is left with this nagging question: did the individual(s) who did the clipping do a thorough job? Including a sample of the editorial and other cartoons that were a key part of this sophisticated advertising campaign would also have enhanced Boyko’s analysis of its nature, scope, and impact. In the last years of the Second World War, Boyko concludes, Canadians appeared willing to consider the CCF and the ideological alternative it offered. However, the CCF was not able to effectively counter the ‘multi-faceted, well-financed, brilliantly orchestrated, and ruthlessly executed campaign’ that was undertaken to destroy the party and its ideology (158). The CCF never recovered. There are a few factual errors that ought to have been caught before this book went to press. It is erroneous to state that ‘M.J. Coldwell shared J.S. Woodsworth’s Winnipeg upbringing’ (4). Coldwell was born in England and taught school in rural Saskatchewan and Regina before becoming involved in left-wing politics in 1930. It was Blairmore (not Blairmount), AB, where the Communists won all the seats on the town council in 1933 (not 1935) and proceeded to rename the main street in honour of Tim Buck (121). The date Boyko gives for the founding of the League for Social Reconstruction is incorrect; in one instance the date of the Saskatchewan election that brought the CCF to power is wrong too. (45, 106). J. WILLIAM BRENNAN University of Regina

The State of Writing on the Canadian Welfare State: What's Class Got to Do With It?

SINCE 1979, THE MAJOR SYNTHESIS on the history of the welfare state in Canada has been Dennis Guests The Emergence of Social Security in Canada. Revised twice, most recently in 1997, Guests overview is a workmanlike presentation of the contexts that produced the major pieces of social legislation in Canada. If Guest deals well with the debates surrounding the emergence of various programs, he provides little sense of the range of alternatives that were available to policymakers, and why some were dismissed as too radical while others were viewed as too conservative. Though the third edition registers a great deal of concern about the erosion of the welfare state in the last two decades of the 20th century, there is a Whiggish quality to the lament, a sense that a social consensus was reached at different junctures that allowed some new program to see the light of day, and that most, if not all, Canadians benefited. But such a picture, which reflected the small literature on the welfare state when Guest first produced his book, no longer provides much of the flavour of the historical work that is now being published regarding the emergence and implementation of social programs in Canada. Marxists, feminists, critical theorists, postmodernists, and social activists outside the academy of various ideological