William Aberhart
Encyclopedia
William Aberhart also known as Bible Bill for his outspoken Baptist
views, was a Canadian
politician and the seventh Premier of Alberta
between 1935 and 1943. The Social Credit party believed the reason for the depression
was that people did not have enough money to spend, so the government should give everyone $25/month to stimulate the economy. Aberhart also campaigned for and instituted several anti-poverty and debt relief programs during his premiership.
) to William (c. 1844–1910) and Louisa (c. 1850–1944) (née Pepper) Aberhart. William Aberhart Sr. had immigrated to Canada from Germany with his family at the age of seven, while Louisa Pepper was born in Perth County, Ontario
. Historian Harold Schultz describes the Aberharts as "prosperous", while biographers David Elliott and Iris Miller says they "lived better than the average family". The fourth of eight children, William Aberhart Jr. delivered milk to his father's customers before school each day. At school, he was a hard-working but average student. Mathematics was one of his strengths, though his approach involved more rote learning
than reasoning. Elliott and Miller suggest that this tendency stayed with him his entire life, and that he "never really acquired an appreciation for inductive intellectual analysis". Aberhart was not a social child. Though he excelled at soccer, he generally preferred solitary pursuits such as reading or teaching himself to play musical instruments.
In 1896, Aberhart three months of model school in Mitchell
. Although this training qualified him to work as a schoolteacher, he instead enrolled in business college in Chatham
, from which he withdrew after four months of successful study. In 1897-98, Aberhart attended Seaforth Collegiate Institute, where he was nicknamed "Whitey" (for his blond hair) and broadened his athletic prowess to include the long jump
, shot put
, 100-yard dash
, high jump
, cycling
, and football
.
On July 29, 1902, Aberhart married Jessie Flatt, whom he had met in 1901 at a football game. A daughter, Khona Louise Aberhart, was born in the winter of 1903, and a second, Ola Janet Aberhart, followed in August 1905.
On July 20, 1910, William Aberhart Sr. died in an accident at a pharmacy owned by his son (William Jr.'s brother) Charles. Prohibition
was in effect, but pharmacists were permitted to provide alcohol for "medicinal purposes". Charles kept a bottle of whiskey for William Sr. to drink whenever he was in the store. One day a clerk rearranged the bottles, and the illiterate William Sr. took a swallow of carbolic acid; he died within minutes. William Jr., by now in Calgary, did not make the trip east to his father's funeral. Louisa Aberhart died February 20, 1910, outliving William Aberhart Jr. by less than a year.
, for which he was paid $60 per month. He fast won a reputation as a strict disciplinarian: he addressed his students by number rather than name and was liberal in his use of the strap
. By his own account in a 1903 essay, he viewed the classroom as a battlefield, and admired Oliver Cromwell
's military organization. While his tactics divided his students—some loved him, while others recounted that "he did everything he could to break the spirit of a child"—his supervisors gave him uniformly positive reviews.
His school's principal died in 1905, and Aberhart was selected to replace him; his salary increased to $1,000 per year. This figure had reached $1,200 by 1910 when, in response to glowing reviews from his colleagues, the Calgary Board of Education
offered him a principalship at $1,400 per year. In response to a petition from his staff and students that this offer be matched by Brantford, Aberhart was offered a raise to $1,300; he declined it, and moved to Calgary that spring. His family followed later, after he purchased a two-storey wooden house and Khona finished her academic year in Brantford. 1910 Calgary was a frontier town that smelled of horse manure and in which public drunkenness was common; though Aberhart's sensibilities were less shocked by this than his wife's were, he also had to make some adjustments: in Brantford he had always attended church in a silk top hat
and frock coat
, but he quickly abandoned this custom after discovering that he was the only one in Calgary to do so.
Aberhart was to become principal of Mount Royal School, but it was not yet complete at the time of his arrival, so he became the principal of Alexandra Public School immediately on his arrival. Mount Royal was still not completed by the fall, so he took over the principalship of Victoria School, which he held until becoming principal of the new Crescent Heights High School
in 1915.
Elliott and Miller write that Aberhart took a less rigid approach to discipline at Crescent Heights than he had in Ontario, though Schultz says that as principal he was "authoritarian in manner and a strict disciplinarian". His love of organization persisted, and his penchant for it enhanced his reputation as "an able administrator". Crescent Height's students scored very well on departmental examinations, though some members of the school board believed that he achieved this at least partly by culling weaker students with a preliminary qualifying examination.
One way Aberhart applied his organizational prowess was in creating one of Calgary's first and largest Parent-Teacher Association
s, which had an average of two hundred parents attend each meeting; Aberhart had a generally good relationship with parents. His standing with his staff was more mixed: he had a habit of "talking down" to them, dominated the school to the point that teachers were left with little initiative, and, as Elliott and Miller put it, "never entered the staff room except to issue an order". Many of his teachers, while respecting his abilities an administrator, thought very little of him as a man, and some believed that his domineering approach stemmed from a fear of people smarter than him. In 1919 eight Crescent Heights teachers wrote the school board requesting an investigation into Aberhart's work; the resulting inspection led to the transfer of three male teachers—with whom Aberhart had a particularly poor rapport—to other schools, and stated that persisting problems would lead to a request for Aberhart's resignation. A follow-up investigation two years later found a substantial improvement in conditions and reported favourably on Aberhart's abilities. Despite this uneven relationship, Aberhart was not all together closed-minded, and would entertain—and sometimes even be convinced by—arguments from his staff.
Besides his administrative duties, Aberhart taught English and math. True to form, in doing so he emphasized rote memorization at the expense of independent reasoning, to the point that one of his teachers once likened him to a dog trainer. He cared for his students and provided extensive extra tutoring, especially for students in whom he saw a genuine interest in learning the material. Outside of the classroom, he applied his talents to organizing picnics and games, and in 1922 organized an elected student council
years before the concept became widespread in Calgary. When some students wanted the school to purchase a movie projector
not provided for the in school's budget, Aberhart organized a company into which students could buy for ten cents per share; the company put on movies for which it charged admission, and at the end of its first year of operation it declared a dividend
of 25 cents per share. He urged his students to adopt four axioms he followed in his own life: "be enthusiastic, be ambitious, develop a distinctive personality, [and] have a hobby and ride it hard."
In the assessment of John Barr, a Social Credit staffer years after Aberhart's death who later wrote one of the first histories of the party's years in power, "Aberhart generally had the respect and admiration of a broad following of parents, teachers, and students." Schultz claims that the only area in which all 61 people he interviewed in researching Aberhart's career agreed was that he was an excellent high school teacher.
as a Presbyterian church. Under circumstances that are not clear to history, in high school he became a devout Christian. He initially adopted Biblical literalism
, though while at normal school he was exposed to more liberal versions of Christianity that taught the existence of internal inconsistencies in the Bible; for several years he adopted the approach of a Bible teacher who counselled him to "treat [the] Bible as [...] a nice plate of fish" and "eat the meat and leave the bones for the dogs." Though at first he subscribed to the notion of unconditional election
, and worried about whether he was destined for salvation
, he later adopted the Arminian doctrine of conditional election
, and became confident that, through his faith, he would be saved.
While in Brantford, Aberhart studied at Zion Presbyterian church, where he became interested in Biblical prophecy, which in turn led him to Dispensationalism
. Dispensationalism held that history was divided into seven dispensations, during each of which God made a covenant
with man, and during each of which man broke the covenant. That the terms of the covenant were different in each dispensation resolved Aberhart's earlier concerns about the Bible's internal inconsistencies. His views were heavily influenced by a correspondence course he took offered by American Dispensationalist Cyrus Scofield
; Elliott and Miller speculate that such a course would have appealed to Aberhart by reducing "difficult theological problems to a matter of memorizing questions and answers".
In 1911, he earned a Bachelor of Arts
degree from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario
.
Aberhart had aspired to take ministerial training at the Presbyterian Knox College Divinity School, but the church in Brantford was reluctant to take on the support of both him and his family in the four year training period. He became fascinated with prophetical teaching in the Bible and studied a correspondence course by the American evangelical theologian Cyrus Scofield
. He had been introduced to this system while attending a men's Bible Class at Zion Presbyterian, taught by Wiiliam Nichol, an elderly physician.
In 1910, Aberhart accepted a position as principal of Alexandra School in Calgary
, Alberta. His initial Bible Study Teaching in Calgary commenced at the Grace Presbyterian Church at the Young Men's Bible Class. Within a few weeks attendance was over 100 and he attracted the attendance of the senior minister Dr. Esler, but his views on prophecy did not jibe with senior minister's reformed beliefs and his teaching privileges were cancelled. He then moved on to teach successively at the Wesley and Trinity Methodist Churches. Although seeds of his interest in the Baptist
faith had been planted while in Ontario, it was not until his involvement with Westbourne Baptist Church in Calgary as a lay preacher, that he and his wife were baptised in the Baptist faith. In 1918, Aberhart began a Bible study group in Calgary, Alberta which grew steadily year-by-year; by 1923, the Palace Theatre had to be rented to accommodate those interested in Aberhart's message. In 1925, radio station CFCN broadcast his Sunday sermons for the first time, taking his prophetic message beyond the confines of a theatre to listeners across the Prairies. In 1927, Aberhart was appointed Dean of the newly-founded Calgary Prophetic Bible Institute. The institute's building served as a centre of worship, radio broadcast, and biblical studies. Aberhart's Sunday broadcasts proved as popular as his Bible studies as they drew regular listeners across the Canadian mid-west, and some listeners in the northern United States.
, a time which was especially harsh on Albertan and Saskatchewan farmers. Particularly, he was drawn to the Social Credit
theories of Major C. H. Douglas
, a British engineer. From 1932 to 1935, Aberhart lobbied for the governing political party, the United Farmers of Alberta
, to adopt these theories, but it is doubtful that Aberhart fully understood the theories. The basis of Douglas's A+B theorem is that prices rise faster than incomes when regarded as a flow, and individuals' purchasing power should be supplemented through issuance of new credits which have not derived from the productive system. Aberhart's lobbying to encourage the United Farmers to adopt Social Credit principles was not successful. He then helped found the Social Credit Party of Alberta
, which won the 1935 provincial election
by a landslide with over 54% of the popular vote.
The Social Credit Party remained in power in the province until the 1971 election
, though it moved away from Douglas' monetary theories after Aberhart's death in 1943. Aberhart served as Premier of Alberta
, Minister of Education
and, starting in 1937, Attorney General
during his tenure with the party.
His government was unable to implement much of the party platform since the social credit
concept relied on control of the money supply and of the banks, both of which are a responsibility of the federal government of Canada under the British North America Act. Lieutenant-Governor John C. Bowen
refused to give Royal Assent
to three government bills in 1937. Two of the bills would have put the province's banks under the control of the provincial government, while a third, the Accurate News and Information Act
, would have forced newspapers to print government rebuttals to stories the provincial cabinet
deemed "inaccurate". All three bills were later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada
and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council
, and for its leadership in the fight against the latter act, the Pulitzer Prize committee awarded the Edmonton Journal a Special Citation, the first time it honoured a non-American newspaper.
Aberhart instituted a variety of relief programs to help people out of poverty, as well as public-works programs and a debt-relief program that froze some collections. This, like Tommy Douglas
' similar program in Saskatchewan, was later overturned in the mid-1940s by the Supreme Court although it aided people for number of years during and (for a short time) after the Great Depression.
By late 1937, relations with the Lieutenant-Governor became so strained that Bowen even threatened to dismiss Aberhart's government, which would have been an extraordinary use of his reserve powers, (a similar situation of which had occurred in 1932 in Australia between Jack Lang and Sir Philip Game, the Premier and Governor, respectively, of New South Wales). The Social Credit government remained immensely popular with the Albertan people, however, so the threat was not carried out. Aberhart's government was re-elected in the 1940 election
. With 43% of the vote his party won 63% of the seats.
Although Aberhart was unable to gain complete control of Alberta's banks, his government eventually gained a foothold in the province's financial industry by creating the Alberta Treasury Branches in 1938. ATB has become Aberhart's legacy, operating as an orthodox financial institution
and crown corporation.
Aberhart died unexpectedly on May 23, 1943, during a visit to his his adult daughters in Vancouver, British Columbia, and was interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Burnaby as his widow intended to move to Vancouver to be close to her children. He was succeeded as the Premier of Alberta by his lifelong disciple, Ernest C. Manning.
The Aberhart Centre, a long-term medical care centre at the University of Alberta Hospital
in Edmonton
, is named in his honour, as is William Aberhart High School
in Calgary.
(1970)
Baptist
Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...
views, was a Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
politician and the seventh Premier of Alberta
Alberta
Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...
between 1935 and 1943. The Social Credit party believed the reason for the depression
Great Depression in Canada
Canada was hit hard by the Great Depression. Between 1929 and 1939, the gross national product dropped 40% . Unemployment reached 27% at the depth of the Depression in 1933...
was that people did not have enough money to spend, so the government should give everyone $25/month to stimulate the economy. Aberhart also campaigned for and instituted several anti-poverty and debt relief programs during his premiership.
Childhood, education, and family
William Aberhart was born December 30, 1878 in Tuckersmith Township (now part of Huron East, OntarioHuron East, Ontario
The Municipality of Huron East is located in Huron County, Ontario. It was formed in 2001 as an amalgamation of the former Grey, McKillop and Tuckersmith townships with the town of Seaforth and village of Brussels due to an Ontario-wide local government restructuring imposed by the government of...
) to William (c. 1844–1910) and Louisa (c. 1850–1944) (née Pepper) Aberhart. William Aberhart Sr. had immigrated to Canada from Germany with his family at the age of seven, while Louisa Pepper was born in Perth County, Ontario
Perth County, Ontario
Perth County is a census division of the Canadian province of Ontario. The county seat is Stratford and is located in Southwestern Ontario, west of Toronto. It encompasses , 90% of which is classified as prime agricultural land...
. Historian Harold Schultz describes the Aberharts as "prosperous", while biographers David Elliott and Iris Miller says they "lived better than the average family". The fourth of eight children, William Aberhart Jr. delivered milk to his father's customers before school each day. At school, he was a hard-working but average student. Mathematics was one of his strengths, though his approach involved more rote learning
Rote learning
Rote learning is a learning technique which focuses on memorization. The major practice involved in rote learning is learning by repetition by which students commit information to memory in a highly structured way. The idea is that one will be able to quickly recall the meaning of the material the...
than reasoning. Elliott and Miller suggest that this tendency stayed with him his entire life, and that he "never really acquired an appreciation for inductive intellectual analysis". Aberhart was not a social child. Though he excelled at soccer, he generally preferred solitary pursuits such as reading or teaching himself to play musical instruments.
In 1896, Aberhart three months of model school in Mitchell
Mitchell, Ontario
Mitchell is a community in Perth County, Ontario, Canada. Mitchell is located at the intersection of Highways 8 and 23, 20 km west of Stratford, and 60 km north of London, in the municipality of West Perth.-History:...
. Although this training qualified him to work as a schoolteacher, he instead enrolled in business college in Chatham
Chatham, Ontario
Chatham is the largest community in the municipality of Chatham-Kent, Ontario. Formerly serving as the seat of Kent County, the governments of the former city of Chatham, the county of Kent, and its townships were merged into one entity known as the Municipality of Chatham-Kent in 1998.Located on...
, from which he withdrew after four months of successful study. In 1897-98, Aberhart attended Seaforth Collegiate Institute, where he was nicknamed "Whitey" (for his blond hair) and broadened his athletic prowess to include the long jump
Long jump
The long jump is a track and field event in which athletes combine speed, strength, and agility in an attempt to leap as far as possible from a take off point...
, shot put
Shot put
The shot put is a track and field event involving "putting" a heavy metal ball—the shot—as far as possible. It is common to use the term "shot put" to refer to both the shot itself and to the putting action....
, 100-yard dash
100-yard dash
The 100 yard dash is a track and field event of 100 yards or 91.44 metres. It was part of the Commonwealth Games until 1966, and was included in the decathlon of the Olympics, at least in 1904. It is not generally used in international events...
, high jump
High jump
The high jump is a track and field athletics event in which competitors must jump over a horizontal bar placed at measured heights without the aid of certain devices in its modern most practiced format; auxiliary weights and mounds have been used for assistance; rules have changed over the years....
, cycling
Cycling
Cycling, also called bicycling or biking, is the use of bicycles for transport, recreation, or for sport. Persons engaged in cycling are cyclists or bicyclists...
, and football
Canadian football
Canadian football is a form of gridiron football played exclusively in Canada in which two teams of 12 players each compete for territorial control of a field of play long and wide attempting to advance a pointed prolate spheroid ball into the opposing team's scoring area...
.
On July 29, 1902, Aberhart married Jessie Flatt, whom he had met in 1901 at a football game. A daughter, Khona Louise Aberhart, was born in the winter of 1903, and a second, Ola Janet Aberhart, followed in August 1905.
On July 20, 1910, William Aberhart Sr. died in an accident at a pharmacy owned by his son (William Jr.'s brother) Charles. Prohibition
Prohibition in Canada
The temperance movement reached its height in Canada in the 1920s, when outside imports were cut off by provincial referendums. As legislation prohibiting consumption of alcohol was repealed, it was typically replaced with regulation restricting the sale of alcohol to minors and imposing excise...
was in effect, but pharmacists were permitted to provide alcohol for "medicinal purposes". Charles kept a bottle of whiskey for William Sr. to drink whenever he was in the store. One day a clerk rearranged the bottles, and the illiterate William Sr. took a swallow of carbolic acid; he died within minutes. William Jr., by now in Calgary, did not make the trip east to his father's funeral. Louisa Aberhart died February 20, 1910, outliving William Aberhart Jr. by less than a year.
Teaching career
In the fall of 1901 Aberhart was hired as a teacher at the Central Public School in BrantfordBrantford, Ontario
Brantford is a city located on the Grand River in Southern Ontario, Canada. While geographically surrounded by the County of Brant, the city is politically independent...
, for which he was paid $60 per month. He fast won a reputation as a strict disciplinarian: he addressed his students by number rather than name and was liberal in his use of the strap
Strapping (punishment)
Strapping refers to the use of a strap as an implement of corporal punishment. It is typically a broad and heavy strip of leather, often with a hard handle, the more flexible 'blade' being applied to the offender....
. By his own account in a 1903 essay, he viewed the classroom as a battlefield, and admired Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader who overthrew the English monarchy and temporarily turned England into a republican Commonwealth, and served as Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland....
's military organization. While his tactics divided his students—some loved him, while others recounted that "he did everything he could to break the spirit of a child"—his supervisors gave him uniformly positive reviews.
His school's principal died in 1905, and Aberhart was selected to replace him; his salary increased to $1,000 per year. This figure had reached $1,200 by 1910 when, in response to glowing reviews from his colleagues, the Calgary Board of Education
Calgary Board of Education
The Calgary Board of Education is the public school board in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. As a public system, the CBE is required to accept any students who meet age and residency requirements, regardless of religion.-Size:...
offered him a principalship at $1,400 per year. In response to a petition from his staff and students that this offer be matched by Brantford, Aberhart was offered a raise to $1,300; he declined it, and moved to Calgary that spring. His family followed later, after he purchased a two-storey wooden house and Khona finished her academic year in Brantford. 1910 Calgary was a frontier town that smelled of horse manure and in which public drunkenness was common; though Aberhart's sensibilities were less shocked by this than his wife's were, he also had to make some adjustments: in Brantford he had always attended church in a silk top hat
Top hat
A top hat, beaver hat, high hat silk hat, cylinder hat, chimney pot hat or stove pipe hat is a tall, flat-crowned, broad-brimmed hat, predominantly worn from the latter part of the 18th to the middle of the 20th century...
and frock coat
Frock coat
A frock coat is a man's coat characterised by knee-length skirts all around the base, popular during the Victorian and Edwardian periods. The double-breasted style is sometimes called a Prince Albert . The frock coat is a fitted, long-sleeved coat with a centre vent at the back, and some features...
, but he quickly abandoned this custom after discovering that he was the only one in Calgary to do so.
Aberhart was to become principal of Mount Royal School, but it was not yet complete at the time of his arrival, so he became the principal of Alexandra Public School immediately on his arrival. Mount Royal was still not completed by the fall, so he took over the principalship of Victoria School, which he held until becoming principal of the new Crescent Heights High School
Crescent Heights High School (Calgary)
Crescent Heights High School is currently a high school with approximately 1700 students in grades 9-12 in Calgary, Alberta. The school is part of the Calgary Board of Education's public school system.-History:...
in 1915.
Elliott and Miller write that Aberhart took a less rigid approach to discipline at Crescent Heights than he had in Ontario, though Schultz says that as principal he was "authoritarian in manner and a strict disciplinarian". His love of organization persisted, and his penchant for it enhanced his reputation as "an able administrator". Crescent Height's students scored very well on departmental examinations, though some members of the school board believed that he achieved this at least partly by culling weaker students with a preliminary qualifying examination.
One way Aberhart applied his organizational prowess was in creating one of Calgary's first and largest Parent-Teacher Association
Parent-Teacher Association
In the U.S. a parent-teacher association or Parent-Teacher-Student Association is a formal organization composed of parents, teachers and staff that is intended to facilitate parental participation in a public or private school. Most public and private K-8 schools in the U.S. have a PTA, a...
s, which had an average of two hundred parents attend each meeting; Aberhart had a generally good relationship with parents. His standing with his staff was more mixed: he had a habit of "talking down" to them, dominated the school to the point that teachers were left with little initiative, and, as Elliott and Miller put it, "never entered the staff room except to issue an order". Many of his teachers, while respecting his abilities an administrator, thought very little of him as a man, and some believed that his domineering approach stemmed from a fear of people smarter than him. In 1919 eight Crescent Heights teachers wrote the school board requesting an investigation into Aberhart's work; the resulting inspection led to the transfer of three male teachers—with whom Aberhart had a particularly poor rapport—to other schools, and stated that persisting problems would lead to a request for Aberhart's resignation. A follow-up investigation two years later found a substantial improvement in conditions and reported favourably on Aberhart's abilities. Despite this uneven relationship, Aberhart was not all together closed-minded, and would entertain—and sometimes even be convinced by—arguments from his staff.
Besides his administrative duties, Aberhart taught English and math. True to form, in doing so he emphasized rote memorization at the expense of independent reasoning, to the point that one of his teachers once likened him to a dog trainer. He cared for his students and provided extensive extra tutoring, especially for students in whom he saw a genuine interest in learning the material. Outside of the classroom, he applied his talents to organizing picnics and games, and in 1922 organized an elected student council
Student council
Student council is a curricular or extra-curricular activity for students within elementary and secondary schools around the world. Present in most public and private K-12 school systems across the United States, Canada and Australia these bodies are alternatively entitled student council, student...
years before the concept became widespread in Calgary. When some students wanted the school to purchase a movie projector
Movie projector
A movie projector is an opto-mechanical device for displaying moving pictures by projecting them on a projection screen. Most of the optical and mechanical elements, except for the illumination and sound devices, are present in movie cameras.-Physiology:...
not provided for the in school's budget, Aberhart organized a company into which students could buy for ten cents per share; the company put on movies for which it charged admission, and at the end of its first year of operation it declared a dividend
Dividend
Dividends are payments made by a corporation to its shareholder members. It is the portion of corporate profits paid out to stockholders. When a corporation earns a profit or surplus, that money can be put to two uses: it can either be re-invested in the business , or it can be distributed to...
of 25 cents per share. He urged his students to adopt four axioms he followed in his own life: "be enthusiastic, be ambitious, develop a distinctive personality, [and] have a hobby and ride it hard."
In the assessment of John Barr, a Social Credit staffer years after Aberhart's death who later wrote one of the first histories of the party's years in power, "Aberhart generally had the respect and admiration of a broad following of parents, teachers, and students." Schultz claims that the only area in which all 61 people he interviewed in researching Aberhart's career agreed was that he was an excellent high school teacher.
Early religious views and adoption of Dispensationalism
Though his parents were not churchgoers, as a child Aberhart attended Sunday schoolSunday school
Sunday school is the generic name for many different types of religious education pursued on Sundays by various denominations.-England:The first Sunday school may have been opened in 1751 in St. Mary's Church, Nottingham. Another early start was made by Hannah Ball, a native of High Wycombe in...
as a Presbyterian church. Under circumstances that are not clear to history, in high school he became a devout Christian. He initially adopted Biblical literalism
Biblical literalism
Biblical literalism is the interpretation or translation of the explicit and primary sense of words in the Bible. A literal Biblical interpretation is associated with the fundamentalist and evangelical hermeneutical approach to Scripture, and is used almost exclusively by conservative Christians...
, though while at normal school he was exposed to more liberal versions of Christianity that taught the existence of internal inconsistencies in the Bible; for several years he adopted the approach of a Bible teacher who counselled him to "treat [the] Bible as [...] a nice plate of fish" and "eat the meat and leave the bones for the dogs." Though at first he subscribed to the notion of unconditional election
Unconditional election
Unconditional election is the Calvinist teaching that before God created the world, he chose to save some people according to his own purposes and apart from any conditions related to those persons...
, and worried about whether he was destined for salvation
Salvation
Within religion salvation is the phenomenon of being saved from the undesirable condition of bondage or suffering experienced by the psyche or soul that has arisen as a result of unskillful or immoral actions generically referred to as sins. Salvation may also be called "deliverance" or...
, he later adopted the Arminian doctrine of conditional election
Conditional election
In Christian theology, conditional election is the belief that God chooses, for eternal salvation, those whom He foresees will have faith in Christ. This belief emphasizes the importance of a person's free will...
, and became confident that, through his faith, he would be saved.
While in Brantford, Aberhart studied at Zion Presbyterian church, where he became interested in Biblical prophecy, which in turn led him to Dispensationalism
Dispensationalism
Dispensationalism is a nineteenth-century evangelical development based on a futurist biblical hermeneutic that sees a series of chronologically successive "dispensations" or periods in history in which God relates to human beings in different ways under different Biblical covenants.As a system,...
. Dispensationalism held that history was divided into seven dispensations, during each of which God made a covenant
Covenant (biblical)
A biblical covenant is an agreement found in the Bible between God and His people in which God makes specific promises and demands. It is the customary word used to translate the Hebrew word berith. It it is used in the Tanakh 286 times . All Abrahamic religions consider the Biblical covenant...
with man, and during each of which man broke the covenant. That the terms of the covenant were different in each dispensation resolved Aberhart's earlier concerns about the Bible's internal inconsistencies. His views were heavily influenced by a correspondence course he took offered by American Dispensationalist Cyrus Scofield
Cyrus Scofield
Cyrus Ingerson Scofield was an American theologian, minister, and writer whose best-selling annotated Bible popularized dispensationalism among fundamentalist Christians.-Youth:...
; Elliott and Miller speculate that such a course would have appealed to Aberhart by reducing "difficult theological problems to a matter of memorizing questions and answers".
In 1911, he earned a Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
degree from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario
Kingston, Ontario
Kingston, Ontario is a Canadian city located in Eastern Ontario where the St. Lawrence River flows out of Lake Ontario. Originally a First Nations settlement called "Katarowki," , growing European exploration in the 17th Century made it an important trading post...
.
Aberhart had aspired to take ministerial training at the Presbyterian Knox College Divinity School, but the church in Brantford was reluctant to take on the support of both him and his family in the four year training period. He became fascinated with prophetical teaching in the Bible and studied a correspondence course by the American evangelical theologian Cyrus Scofield
Cyrus Scofield
Cyrus Ingerson Scofield was an American theologian, minister, and writer whose best-selling annotated Bible popularized dispensationalism among fundamentalist Christians.-Youth:...
. He had been introduced to this system while attending a men's Bible Class at Zion Presbyterian, taught by Wiiliam Nichol, an elderly physician.
In 1910, Aberhart accepted a position as principal of Alexandra School in Calgary
Calgary
Calgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...
, Alberta. His initial Bible Study Teaching in Calgary commenced at the Grace Presbyterian Church at the Young Men's Bible Class. Within a few weeks attendance was over 100 and he attracted the attendance of the senior minister Dr. Esler, but his views on prophecy did not jibe with senior minister's reformed beliefs and his teaching privileges were cancelled. He then moved on to teach successively at the Wesley and Trinity Methodist Churches. Although seeds of his interest in the Baptist
Baptist
Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...
faith had been planted while in Ontario, it was not until his involvement with Westbourne Baptist Church in Calgary as a lay preacher, that he and his wife were baptised in the Baptist faith. In 1918, Aberhart began a Bible study group in Calgary, Alberta which grew steadily year-by-year; by 1923, the Palace Theatre had to be rented to accommodate those interested in Aberhart's message. In 1925, radio station CFCN broadcast his Sunday sermons for the first time, taking his prophetic message beyond the confines of a theatre to listeners across the Prairies. In 1927, Aberhart was appointed Dean of the newly-founded Calgary Prophetic Bible Institute. The institute's building served as a centre of worship, radio broadcast, and biblical studies. Aberhart's Sunday broadcasts proved as popular as his Bible studies as they drew regular listeners across the Canadian mid-west, and some listeners in the northern United States.
Political career
Aberhart became interested in politics during the Great Depression in CanadaGreat Depression in Canada
Canada was hit hard by the Great Depression. Between 1929 and 1939, the gross national product dropped 40% . Unemployment reached 27% at the depth of the Depression in 1933...
, a time which was especially harsh on Albertan and Saskatchewan farmers. Particularly, he was drawn to the Social Credit
Social Credit
Social Credit is an economic philosophy developed by C. H. Douglas , a British engineer, who wrote a book by that name in 1924. Social Credit is described by Douglas as "the policy of a philosophy"; he called his philosophy "practical Christianity"...
theories of Major C. H. Douglas
C. H. Douglas
Major C. H. Douglas MIMechE, MIEE, , was a British engineer and pioneer of the Social Credit economic reform movement.-Education and engineering career:...
, a British engineer. From 1932 to 1935, Aberhart lobbied for the governing political party, the United Farmers of Alberta
United Farmers of Alberta
The United Farmers of Alberta is an association of Alberta farmers that has served many different roles throughout its history as a lobby group, a political party, and as a farm-supply retail chain. Since 1934 it has primarily been an agricultural supply cooperative headquartered in Calgary...
, to adopt these theories, but it is doubtful that Aberhart fully understood the theories. The basis of Douglas's A+B theorem is that prices rise faster than incomes when regarded as a flow, and individuals' purchasing power should be supplemented through issuance of new credits which have not derived from the productive system. Aberhart's lobbying to encourage the United Farmers to adopt Social Credit principles was not successful. He then helped found the Social Credit Party of Alberta
Social Credit Party of Alberta
The Alberta Social Credit Party is a provincial political party in Alberta, Canada, that was founded on the social credit monetary policy and conservative Christian social values....
, which won the 1935 provincial election
Alberta general election, 1935
The Alberta general election of 1935 was the eighth general election for the Province of Alberta, Canada. It was held on August 22, 1935 to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta....
by a landslide with over 54% of the popular vote.
The Social Credit Party remained in power in the province until the 1971 election
Alberta general election, 1971
The Alberta general election of 1971 was the seventeenth general election for the Province of Alberta, Canada. It was held on August 30, 1971 to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta....
, though it moved away from Douglas' monetary theories after Aberhart's death in 1943. Aberhart served as Premier of Alberta
Premier of Alberta
The Premier of Alberta is the first minister for the Canadian province of Alberta. He or she is the province's head of government and de facto chief executive. The current Premier of Alberta is Alison Redford. She became Premier by winning the Progressive Conservative leadership elections on...
, Minister of Education
Education in Alberta
As with any Canadian province, the Alberta Legislature has exclusive authority to make laws respecting education. Since 1905 the Legislature has used this capacity to continue the model of locally elected public and separate school boards which originated prior to 1905, as well as to create and/or...
and, starting in 1937, Attorney General
Attorney General
In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general, or attorney-general, is the main legal advisor to the government, and in some jurisdictions he or she may also have executive responsibility for law enforcement or responsibility for public prosecutions.The term is used to refer to any person...
during his tenure with the party.
His government was unable to implement much of the party platform since the social credit
Social Credit
Social Credit is an economic philosophy developed by C. H. Douglas , a British engineer, who wrote a book by that name in 1924. Social Credit is described by Douglas as "the policy of a philosophy"; he called his philosophy "practical Christianity"...
concept relied on control of the money supply and of the banks, both of which are a responsibility of the federal government of Canada under the British North America Act. Lieutenant-Governor John C. Bowen
John C. Bowen
John Campbell Bowen was a clergy man, insurance broker and long serving politician. He served as an Alderman in the City of Edmonton on the municipal level and then went on to serve as a member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta from 1921 to 1926 sitting with the Liberal caucus in opposition...
refused to give Royal Assent
Royal Assent
The granting of royal assent refers to the method by which any constitutional monarch formally approves and promulgates an act of his or her nation's parliament, thus making it a law...
to three government bills in 1937. Two of the bills would have put the province's banks under the control of the provincial government, while a third, the Accurate News and Information Act
Accurate News and Information Act
The Accurate News and Information Act was a statute passed by the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, Canada, in 1937, at the instigation of William Aberhart's Social Credit government...
, would have forced newspapers to print government rebuttals to stories the provincial cabinet
Cabinet (government)
A Cabinet is a body of high ranking government officials, typically representing the executive branch. It can also sometimes be referred to as the Council of Ministers, an Executive Council, or an Executive Committee.- Overview :...
deemed "inaccurate". All three bills were later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada
Supreme Court of Canada
The Supreme Court of Canada is the highest court of Canada and is the final court of appeals in the Canadian justice system. The court grants permission to between 40 and 75 litigants each year to appeal decisions rendered by provincial, territorial and federal appellate courts, and its decisions...
and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council
The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council is one of the highest courts in the United Kingdom. Established by the Judicial Committee Act 1833 to hear appeals formerly heard by the King in Council The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) is one of the highest courts in the United...
, and for its leadership in the fight against the latter act, the Pulitzer Prize committee awarded the Edmonton Journal a Special Citation, the first time it honoured a non-American newspaper.
Aberhart instituted a variety of relief programs to help people out of poverty, as well as public-works programs and a debt-relief program that froze some collections. This, like Tommy Douglas
Tommy Douglas
Thomas Clement "Tommy" Douglas, was a Scottish-born Baptist minister who became a prominent Canadian social democratic politician...
' similar program in Saskatchewan, was later overturned in the mid-1940s by the Supreme Court although it aided people for number of years during and (for a short time) after the Great Depression.
By late 1937, relations with the Lieutenant-Governor became so strained that Bowen even threatened to dismiss Aberhart's government, which would have been an extraordinary use of his reserve powers, (a similar situation of which had occurred in 1932 in Australia between Jack Lang and Sir Philip Game, the Premier and Governor, respectively, of New South Wales). The Social Credit government remained immensely popular with the Albertan people, however, so the threat was not carried out. Aberhart's government was re-elected in the 1940 election
Alberta general election, 1940
The Alberta general election of 1940 was the ninth general election for the Province of Alberta, Canada, was held on March 21, 1940 to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta....
. With 43% of the vote his party won 63% of the seats.
Although Aberhart was unable to gain complete control of Alberta's banks, his government eventually gained a foothold in the province's financial industry by creating the Alberta Treasury Branches in 1938. ATB has become Aberhart's legacy, operating as an orthodox financial institution
Financial institution
In financial economics, a financial institution is an institution that provides financial services for its clients or members. Probably the most important financial service provided by financial institutions is acting as financial intermediaries...
and crown corporation.
Aberhart died unexpectedly on May 23, 1943, during a visit to his his adult daughters in Vancouver, British Columbia, and was interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Burnaby as his widow intended to move to Vancouver to be close to her children. He was succeeded as the Premier of Alberta by his lifelong disciple, Ernest C. Manning.
The Aberhart Centre, a long-term medical care centre at the University of Alberta Hospital
University of Alberta Hospital
The University of Alberta Hospital is a research and teaching hospital in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The hospital is affiliated with the University of Alberta and run by Alberta Health Services, formerly Capital Health, the health authority for Alberta...
in Edmonton
Edmonton
Edmonton is the capital of the Canadian province of Alberta and is the province's second-largest city. Edmonton is located on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Capital Region, which is surrounded by the central region of the province.The city and its census...
, is named in his honour, as is William Aberhart High School
William Aberhart High School
William Aberhart High School is a public senior high school in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, which teaches grades 10, 11, and 12. It is operated by the Calgary Board of Education. It is a comprehensive English and French Immersion school of 1500 students. William Aberhart High School is located at 3009...
in Calgary.
Ideology
Elliott (1978) argues that the Aberhart’s Social Credit ideology was clearly antithetical to his previous theology, which was highly sectarian, separatist, apolitical, other-worldly, and eschatologically oriented. Elliott challenges the arguments of Mann (1955) and Irving (1959) that there was a definite connection between Aberhart's theology and political program. Elliott reports that Aberhart's political support did not come from the sectarian groups as Mann and Irving suggest, but rather it came from the members of established churches and those with marginal religious commitment.Electoral record
1940 Alberta general election Alberta general election, 1940 The Alberta general election of 1940 was the ninth general election for the Province of Alberta, Canada, was held on March 21, 1940 to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta.... results (Calgary Calgary (provincial electoral district) Calgary was a provincial electoral district in Alberta, Canada that existed from 1905 to 1913 and was recreated from 1921 to 1959. The district returned from one to six members to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta... ) |
font style="font-size: 90%;">Turnout N.A. | |||||||
Independent Independent (politician) In politics, an independent or non-party politician is an individual not affiliated to any political party. Independents may hold a centrist viewpoint between those of major political parties, a viewpoint more extreme than any major party, or they may have a viewpoint based on issues that they do... |
Andrew Davison Andrew Davison Andrew Davison was a Canadian politician.-Early life:Davison was born in 1886 in Moneymore, County Londonderry, Ireland. He arrived in Alberta in 1895 and received his education in both Edmonton and Calgary.... Calgary was a multi-member constituency that elected five MLAs using the single transferable vote Single transferable vote The single transferable vote is a voting system designed to achieve proportional representation through preferential voting. Under STV, an elector's vote is initially allocated to his or her most preferred candidate, and then, after candidates have been either elected or eliminated, any surplus or... electoral method. These candidates were elected. |
12,465 | 27.1% |
Social Credit | William Aberhart | 12,122 | 26.4% |
Independent Independent (politician) In politics, an independent or non-party politician is an individual not affiliated to any political party. Independents may hold a centrist viewpoint between those of major political parties, a viewpoint more extreme than any major party, or they may have a viewpoint based on issues that they do... |
James Mahaffey | 3,645 | 7.9% |
Independent Independent (politician) In politics, an independent or non-party politician is an individual not affiliated to any political party. Independents may hold a centrist viewpoint between those of major political parties, a viewpoint more extreme than any major party, or they may have a viewpoint based on issues that they do... |
John J. Bowlen John J. Bowlen John James Bowlen was a Canadian rancher, farmer, provincial politician and the seventh Lieutenant Governor of Alberta.-External links:*... |
3,447 | 7.5% |
CCF Alberta New Democratic Party The Alberta New Democratic Party or Alberta NDP is a social-democratic political party in Alberta, Canada, which was originally founded as the Alberta section of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation... |
Frederick J. White | 2,846 | 6.2% |
Independent Independent (politician) In politics, an independent or non-party politician is an individual not affiliated to any political party. Independents may hold a centrist viewpoint between those of major political parties, a viewpoint more extreme than any major party, or they may have a viewpoint based on issues that they do... |
Joseph Tweed Shaw Joseph Tweed Shaw Joseph Tweed Shaw was a Canadian politician. He served in the Canadian House of Commons from 1921 to 1925 as an independent Member of Parliament , and later became leader of the Alberta Liberal Party.-Early life:... |
2,685 | 5.8% |
Social Credit | Frederic Anderson | 1,939 | 4.2% |
Social Credit | Edith Gostick Edith Gostick Edith Hannah Gostick was a provincial level politician from Alberta, Canada. She served as a member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta as a represented from the electoral district of Calgary from 1935 to 1940.... |
1,605 | 3.5% |
Independent Independent (politician) In politics, an independent or non-party politician is an individual not affiliated to any political party. Independents may hold a centrist viewpoint between those of major political parties, a viewpoint more extreme than any major party, or they may have a viewpoint based on issues that they do... |
Norman D. Dingle | 1,480 | 3.2% |
Social Credit | Mrs. Howitt D. Tarves | 1,386 | 3.0% |
CCF Alberta New Democratic Party The Alberta New Democratic Party or Alberta NDP is a social-democratic political party in Alberta, Canada, which was originally founded as the Alberta section of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation... |
Robert T. Alderman | 1,298 | 2.8% |
Independent Independent (politician) In politics, an independent or non-party politician is an individual not affiliated to any political party. Independents may hold a centrist viewpoint between those of major political parties, a viewpoint more extreme than any major party, or they may have a viewpoint based on issues that they do... |
Harry Pryde | 576 | 1.3% |
Independent Independent (politician) In politics, an independent or non-party politician is an individual not affiliated to any political party. Independents may hold a centrist viewpoint between those of major political parties, a viewpoint more extreme than any major party, or they may have a viewpoint based on issues that they do... |
Douglas V. Mitchell | 251 | 0.5% |
Independent Independent (politician) In politics, an independent or non-party politician is an individual not affiliated to any political party. Independents may hold a centrist viewpoint between those of major political parties, a viewpoint more extreme than any major party, or they may have a viewpoint based on issues that they do... |
James M. Moodie | 169 | 0.4% |
1935 by-election results (Okotoks-High River Okotoks-High River Okotoks-High River was a provincial electoral district in Alberta, Canada. The district was mandated to return a single member to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta from 1930 to 1971.... ) |
font style="font-size: 90%;">Turnout N/A | |||||||
Affiliation | Candidate | Votes | % |
Social Credit Social Credit Party of Alberta The Alberta Social Credit Party is a provincial political party in Alberta, Canada, that was founded on the social credit monetary policy and conservative Christian social values.... |
William Aberhart | Acclaimed |
Further reading/Other sources
- Aberhart,Ola MacNutt & L.P.V. Johnson, "Aberhart Of Alberta"
(1970)
- Calderola, Carlo. "The Social Credit in Alberta, 1935-1971." In Society and Politics in Alberta, edited by C. Calderola. (1979) 33-48
- Clark, S. D. "The Religious Sect in Canadian Politics." The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 51, No. 3 (Nov., 1945), pp. 207–216 online in JSTOR
- Cook, Ramsay, ed. Politics of Discontent (1967), with article on Aberhart
- Flanagan, Thomas. "Social Credit in Alberta: A Canadian 'Cargo Cult'?" Archives de Sociologie des Religions 34 (1972): 39-48.
- Flanagan, Thomas, and Martha F. Lee, "From Social Credit to Social Conservatism: The Evolution of an Ideology," Prairie Forum 16 (1991): 205-223.
- Irving, John A. The Social Credit Movement in Alberta (1959)
- Neatby, H. Blair; The Politics of Chaos: Canada in the Thirties Macmillan of Canada, (1972) online version
- Thomas, Lewis Herbert, ed. William Aberhart and Social Credit in Alberta (1977) reader with multiple interpretations
- Lefurgy, G.E. (11 May 2011) 'New South Wales Premier, Australian Statesman: The Legacy of John T. Lang', Sydney: Granville Historical Society
Primary sources
- Aberhart, William. "Aberhart On Social Credit: A Radio Broadcast," Alberta History, Oct 2005, Vol. 53 Issue 4, pp 24–30, transcript of a 1935 radio broadcast
- Aberhart, William. Aberhart: Outpourings and Replies, ed. by David R. Elliott, (Historical Society of Alberta, 1991), 1-41.
- Ernest C. Manning. Political Realignment: A Challenge to Thoughtful Canadians (1967)