Alberta was declared a province in September of 1905, and the first provincial election was set for November of that year. As historian David Leonard explains, the ruling federal Liberals virtually guaranteed they would win the new provincial government too:

And together with Frank Oliver, they drew up the electoral boundaries, recognizing that the southern portion was more Conservative and the northern dirt farmers were more Liberal, they did some little gerrymandering. And the larger city of Calgary was presented with one riding. However, in the smaller northern city of Edmonton, six ridings were made to come in to be a part of it. And in the election of November 1905, the Liberals took fifty-eight percent of the vote to forty-two for the conservatives, and walked away with twenty-three of the twenty-five ridings.

In the provincial election of 1905, even R. B. Bennett, the future Prime Minister of Canada, went down to defeat in Southern Alberta.

So there was this great rivalry between Edmonton and Calgary, Edmonton being the home of Frank Oliver and the party of the immigrants who were flooding into northern Alberta at this time. The election of 1905 saw Alberta as a land of many strangers. We are a society of newcomers, Sir Wilfred Laurier said when he proclaimed Alberta a province at the sports grounds in Edmonton in September of 1905. And the newcomers were keen on continued openness. They wanted their relatives to someday be able to come to Alberta. They wanted lower tariffs so that they could sell their wheat south of the border, whereas the Conservatives wanted high tariffs so they could sell southern beef to the eastern provinces. So the northern areas simply outnumbered the southern interests.

And so the first government of Alberta was headed by Liberal Alexander Cameron Rutherford. And even though Rutherford resigned a few years later, the Liberals held the province for the next sixteen years.

On the Heritage Trail, I?m Cheryl Croucher.