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Alberta Elections: 1952 Oil Boom Continues, Urbanization Gives Manning a Smooth Run

Between the elections of 1948 and 1952, the ruling Social Credit Party enjoyed a relatively smooth run. A burgeoning oil industry fuelled Alberta?s economy. People experienced growing prosperity and looked to the future with hope. As historian David Leonard points out, Alberta had become a have province:

It was debt-free. And that was due primarily to the onslaught of the oil industry in the province. The Leduc strike of 1947 spawned many others: near Redwater, Golden Spike, Fen, Big Valley, Wizard Lake and others. In 1950, we saw the completion of the Interprovincial Pipeline in Alberta, which shipped natural gas to markets in the east. One year later, the Trans-Canada Pipeline was begun. And in 1952, there was a new refinery built at Cloverbar. This would be the first of many in what Edmonton has become to know as Refinery Row.

And other towns were born of this oil age as well: Devon, Redwater, Drayton Valley, Leduc and others. And amongst the cities, Calgary at this time really began to expand as a head office centre for many of these American oil companies or American-controlled oil companies.

During this period, Alberta?s population began to shift from rural to urban. Centres such as Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Red Deer, Camrose and Wetaskiwin grew in size as more people moved off the farms. So by 1951, half of Alberta?s population now lived in urban centres. On the farm, mechanization had come to result in bigger farms, and throughout the province, we see the small family farm gradually give way to the bigger operations, which were heavily mechanized. Rural electrification was coming to Alberta as well.

Many of the people who sold their farms found jobs in the burgeoning oil industry. Coal, however, did go into a decline because diesel was now replacing coal in the trains of the province as well as trucks.

Between the two elections, Premier Manning and the Social Credit Party continued the path of straightforward administration that won them re-election in 1948. Albertans were generally content. So with relative prosperity and no scandals to taint the campaign, the Social Credit Party had few worries entering the election of 1952.

On the Heritage Trail, I?m Cheryl Croucher.

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