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Alberta Elections: 1955 Interest-Free Loan Scandal within Manning?s Cabinet

It seemed like the love affair between the Alberta electorate and the Social Credit Party would never end. Through the 1930?s, forties and fifties, the party won election after election. As historian David Leonard explains, 1955 marked a very special time for the government of Premier Ernest Manning:

1955 was the year that we celebrated our fiftieth anniversary as a province. And the administration of Ernest Manning was going to take advantage of that in the provincial election of that year.

In the cities, urban growth was exemplified, I think, by the development of the province?s first two supermarkets at Bonnie Doon and at Westmount in Edmonton.

The times were prosperous, and with prosperity, we find that more than ever before, young people teenagers are getting out and traveling and spending money like they never did before. And it was not surprising that the number one hit record of 1955 was Rock Around the Clock, the first rock-and-roll hit, because the record manufacturers were seeing that these people were now able to spend money. The affluence was so great during the mid 1950?s. The oil boom spawned a new era of trade in oil and gas. The Trans-Canada Pipeline was completed in 1953. But political opponents charged that government support for the pipeline was unpatriotic.

This was an American-owned venture, the Trans-Canada Pipeline. To control this, the government instituted an Oil and Gas Conservation Board. And Ernest Manning began what would be called the Alberta Gas Trunk Pipeline throughout the province. In other words, the Trans-Canada Pipeline as well as the Interprovincial Pipeline could take Alberta?s gas to markets in the east. However, they would not be allowed to go into the rural areas of Alberta to put gas at the wellhead. This would be the responsibility of the Alberta government-controlled Alberta Gas Trunk Pipeline.

Other rumblings about Manning?s cabinet were beginning to make their way into the editorials of the day. Finally in 1955, the Social Credit Party faced a major crisis. The newspapers charged that cabinet ministers were getting interest-free loans from the Alberta Treasury Branches.

On the Heritage Trail, I?m Cheryl Croucher.

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