Social Credit: Socred wife remembers

Edmonton Journal

Socred wife remembers frenzy, disillusionment

Widow, 98, looks back on husband's tumultuous years with Aberhart

By Darcy Henton, June 22, 200

Kathleen Bourcier reminisces about the role her husband, Albert, played in the 1937 backbenchers' revolt against then premier William Aberhart.

Photograph by: Chris Schwarz, Edmonton Journal

When the Social Credit movement erupted in Alberta in the 1930s, Kathleen Bourcier got swept up in the frenzy.

She baked pies for William "Bible Bill" Aberhart and members of his cabinet when they passed through the hamlet of Glenevis, where she and her husband lived.

During those early visits, her oldest of three daughters, Lois, would climb into the "grampa-like" premier's lap.

In later years, the Saskatchewanborn Bourcier would join the Social Credit MLA wives as they knitted socks for the Canadian troops at war.

Bourcier's Franco-Albertan husband, Albert, had been hand-picked by Aberhart to run in the constituency of Lac Ste Anne.

The campaign trail in those days was literally a trail.

Albert, a Massachusetts-born school teacher, had one particularly hellish journey down a muddy road one night in 1935, employing three different means of transportation to get to a town hall meeting where he had promised to speak.

He started out in a jalopy, but road conditions were so bad he switched to a horse-drawn wagon and eventually to a truck before it, too, landed in the ditch.

"It was impossible to go on," Albert told a CBC documentary producer before his death on Feb. 8, 1982.

"I climbed a high wire fence onto the railway tracks and walked four miles (6.4 kilometres) in the rain, arriving at 10 p. m. at a meeting scheduled for 8 p. m. But everyone was there.

"That was the spirit that existed at the time. They knew that a Social Credit speaker would come."

Kathleen, who turns 99 in two weeks, said that first campaign took a toll on her husband.

"I remember when he got home. He went to bed and slept for two days. He believed everything that Social Credit stood for and he worked hard on the trail."

The couple met at a small school near Wadena, Sask., where Kathleen was teaching and the handsome Albert was hired to be her principal. Lois was already born when they moved to Alberta in 1931.

Albert had got a job teaching at a school in Rich Valley, near Whitecourt. But four years later, he entered politics and joined the new government that roared into power on August 22.

Aberhart unseated the United Farmers of Alberta, seizing 56 of the province's 63 seats, largely on his promise to Depression-stricken Albertans that within 18 months he would build a new economic system that would provide each Albertan $25 a month.

The first year passed fairly swiftly as the radio evangelist set about downsizing government. But soon some Albertans started to worry that Aberhart might not keep his promise of a$25-per-month dividend.

The premier didn't seem too worried about it. According to historian Harold J. Schultz, justone week after the election, the premier remarked:

"Seventyfive per cent of those who voted for me don't expect any dividend, but hope for a just and honest government."

That's not what Bourcier and other backbench MLAs were hearing. But 16 months after Aberhart took office, the MLAs were finding it tough to face their constituents.

Experts were brought in to instruct the government on the Social Credit economic formula, but they soon threw their hands up in despair, saying the government didn't seem committed to Social Credit principles.

By the time the spring session of the legislature opened in February 1937, some MLAs began to speak openly against the government.

A group of more than 20 MLAs led by Dr. Harry Brown, Bourcier and others began to meet regularly in the basement of Edmonton's Corona Hotel to complain about the state of affairs and plot strategy to force Aberhart to start implementing the Social Credit policies he promised. When the March budget failed to bring any sign of that happening, the backbenchers launched a revolt.

They refused to support the budget until it included the Social Credit measures. The divided caucus met several times in an unsuccessful bid to resolve the issue, but Bourcier launched the filibuster in a lengthy speech that branded the budget "a complete denial of Social Credit."

According to Schultz, in his article The Social Credit Back-Benchers' Revolt, 1937, Bourcier said he was always opposed to "the hush-hush policies and secret caucus methods of government," but "there's nothing secret about what has been done in the last 18 months. ... The government has done nothing."

The dispute lasted all spring. At one point it seemed the Lieutenant-governor would have to either appoint insurgent leader Harry Brown as premier or dissolve the government and call an election, but Aberhart and his cabinet eventually resolved the crisis by creating a special Social Credit Board to advise the government and to implement the Social Credit principles. Bourcier was among the last to end the filibuster.

"My husband, being a Frenchman, had quite a temper and he was very unhappy with what they were trying to pass," recalls his wife.

According to Schultz, Bourcier eventually rose, white-faced, from his seat in the legislature, slammed his chair against a nearby desk and strode from the House "like a French deputy leaving the Parisian legislature battleground."

Bourcier went on to serve four terms of office, including two under Premier Ernest Manning when Aberhart died in 1943.

During the Depression he chaired a committee that investigated what the province was doing for Albertans on relief, and recommended improvements to the programs. When he lost his seat in 1952, he returned to teaching Grades 1 to 8 in Jasper Place.

Kathleen, one of the last survivors of that era, says her husband had a genuine interest in helping his fellow Albertans. "He was interested in people and in anything that would better the lives of people."