1921 Alberta general election

The campaign

Liberals and the AGT scandal

The Liberal Party, which had governed the province since 1905, were led into the election by its third Premier and leader, Charles Stewart.

The Alberta Government Telephones scandal broke before the election. Albertans learned that the Liberals had tried to garner support and votes by directing the government-owned Alberta Government Telephones company to buy telephone poles and have them crated and shipped in big stacks to remote communities. This was intended to give the impression that if the Liberal government was re-elected, AGT would install phone lines there, when the government had no such plan.

United Farmers

The United Farmers of Alberta under the leadership of President Henry Wise Wood was contesting its first general election. The UFA's political wing, as a party, had come into being after the UFA had voted to no longer be content with being a lobby group. It merged with the Non-Partisan League of Alberta, which had formed before the 1917 general election and had two sitting members. Non-Partisan League activists were significant within the political machinery of the United Farmers.

The political strength of the merged party grew significantly after deciding to participate in elections directly. It won its first victory with the election of Alexander Moore in the Cochrane district in 1919 and achieved a coup when Conservative leader George Hoadley crossed the floor. The two Non-Partisan League MLAs, despite not changing their affiliation, caucused with the two new United Farmers MLAs.

Wise Wood knew midway through the election campaign that his party was going to form government. In a famous speech he gave in Medicine Hat on July 8, 1921, he was quoted as saying "Farmers may not be ready to take over government, but they are going to do it anyway". He also said in that speech that he would have preferred that only his 20 best candidates were elected, to form the opposition, but he said he expected there would be a lot more than that elected.

The UFA's sitting MLAs - George Hoadley, Alexander Moore and James Weir, formerly of the NPL - were re-elected in 1921.

Split in the Labour forces

The campaign was contested by two provincial labour parties: a main party named the Dominion Labor and a separate group in Edmonton named the Independent Labor Party.

The Dominion Labor Party ran candidates in the primarily urban ridings of Calgary, Edmonton, Lethbridge and Medicine Hat. Its President Holmes Jowatt declining to seek office himself, instead devoting his energies help other candidates.

At the beginning of the election Independent Labor Party offered to nominate Edmonton area candidates at a joint convention with the DLP, to prevent the splitting of the labour vote and use the co-operative good-will to eventually unite the parties. The Dominion Labor Party declined the offer, stating that to do so would divide its own ticket.

Among the ILP candidates was pioneer photographer Ernest Brown, soon after to lead meetings of the Communist Party, which had been formed in May 1921.

Conservatives

The Conservative Party, which had been the primary opposition in the province since it was created in 1905, had suffered a split in the ranks under the leadership of George Hoadley. The caucus divided into two separate Conservative caucuses. Then Hoadley left the Conservative party to sit as an Independent and then won the UFA nomination in Okotoks. The party replaced Hoadley by selecting Albert Ewing, an Edmonton area Member of the Legislative Assembly, as party leader.

Conservative candidates spent the campaign criticizing the wasteful and extravagant spending of the Liberal government. They also reminded Alberta voters of the Alberta Government Telephones telephone pole scandal. The Conservatives campaigned for reforms to the provincial tax code, provincial resource rights and voter list reforms in the Election Act.

Despite the split in the party the Conservative campaign attracted some high-profile support. Former Liberal Premier Alexander Rutherford a big supporter of Ewing, led the campaign for the five Conservative candidates contesting for Edmonton seats.

The Conservative party was a long time recovering from the split in the party. Supporters of Hoadley and their rural base moved to the United Farmers. The change caused by amalgamating the districts in Calgary and Edmonton to a city-wide district in each city did not help Conservative candidates. Nor did the block voting system that was imposed. In Edmonton the Liberal block, although just a minority of the votes cast, dominated and all five seats were captured by Liberal candidates. The only Conservative to return was Lethbridge MLA John Stewart. Albert Ewing went down to defeat in Edmonton.

[[Socialist Party of Canada]]

The Socialist Party had been in decline in Alberta since Charles O'Brien lost his seat in the 1913 general election. Two Socialist candidates ran in this election, under the banner Labour Socialist, Frank Williams in Calgary and Marie Mellard in Edmonton. Marie Mellard joined the new Communist Party within the year.

Calgary, Edmonton and Medicine Hat voters cast multiple votes

Liberal candidates won a larger share of the votes cast than the UFA (about 34%, compared to 29% for the UFA). But the popular vote numbers exaggerate the actual number of Liberal party supporters.

Urban voters in Calgary and Edmonton were allowed to place five votes and Medicine Hat voters 2 votes, as the block-voting system was used in the cities and Edmonton and Calgary contained 5 seats each and Medicine Hat 2 seats. Voters in the other constituencies, most of which were contested by the UFA, only had one vote each under the first past the post electoral system. The United Farmers ran no candidate in Calgary and only a single candidate in Edmonton. Thus it did not benefit from the multiple city vote.

This over-representation of big-city voters was so significant that more than 120,000 more votes were counted than there were voters voting. This is significant as no single party received more than 102,000 votes. The Liberal Party received 28,000 votes in Edmonton and 20,000 votes in Calgary, almost half of their total across the province, under this system where each big-city Liberal voter could lodge five votes for the party. If you give the Liberal Party only one-fifth of their vote tally in Edmonton and Calgary, the Liberal Party total vote count decreases to well below the UFA total. Now it could be that each voter in Edmonton gave one of his/her votes to the Liberals (but not likely), but even so the Liberal candidates in Edmonton received 8,000 more votes in Edmonton than there were voters who voted. This 8,000 is more than half the difference between the Liberal's and the UFA's tallies province-wide.

As well, in Calgary 17,000 voters cast about 76,000 votes. As none of these went to UFA candidates (none ran in Calgary) this massive multiple voting going elsewhere gave the UFA a lower proportion overall.

It was also noted by defenders of the government that the UFA's percentage of total seats (62 percent) was identical to the percentage of votes it received in the constituencies in which it did run candidates.

Aftermath

The result of the election radically and forever altered the political landscape of the province. The United Farmers won a majority government, mostly with rural MLAs predominantly from the south of the province, while the Liberals, formerly in power, were moved to the opposition side of the Chamber with MLAs in the cities of Calgary and Edmonton and some northern strongholds. The Liberals have never won power again; the closest they have come since then was winning 39 seats and opposition status in 1993.

As well from 1921 to 1971, the Alberta provincial government was not the same as either of the two largest parties in the House of Commons. From 1917 to 1979 the Alberta provincial government and the House of Commons were not controlled by parties of the same name. (This made for interesting meetings between premiers and the Prime Minister, later conducted under the name First Ministers' Conference.)

The 38 MLAs who attended the first United Farmers caucus meeting voted unanimously for UFA President Henry Wise Wood to lead the government as premier. Wood declined becoming premier saying he was more interested in operating the machinery of the United Farmers movement rather than crafting government policy. He had actually opposed the UFA becoming a political party for fear that political in-fighting would break up the movement. He said he feared that the UFA would repeat what had happened elsewhere when farmers movements engaged in electoral politics, rose to power and tore themselves apart. He said he wanted to remain focused on the farmers movement as a non-partisan movement and as an economic group instead of as a political party.

The UFA vice-president, Percival Baker, had won his riding with a majority of votes, but had been badly injured in a tree-falling accident during the campaign. He died the day after the election. It was speculated he would have had at least a place in the cabinet if he had lived.

The United Farmers caucus finally chose Herbert Greenfield, a UFA executive member who had not run in the election, to become premier.

Results

Members elected

|- |Acadia | |James C. Cottrell 906 22.58% || |Lorne Proudfoot 3,106 77.42% | | | | | | ||

| |Theodore H. Currie 282 11.38% || |Peter J. Enzenauer 2,195 88.62% | | | | | | ||

| | | |John Angelo 438 29.57% | | | | ||

| |H. Montambault 943 37.67% | | | | | | ||

| |George A. Love 649 27.70% | | | | | | ||

| |George P. Smith 2,391 44.03% || |Vernor W. Smith 3,040 55.97% | | | | | | ||

| |Martin Woolf 615 31.46% || |George Lewis Stringam 1,340 68.54% | | | | | | ||

| | | |Louise McKinney 763 48.54% | | | | || |Thomas Charles Milnes (Ind.) 809 51.46% ||

| | | | | | | |Robert G. Campbell 117 20.97% |- | |O.T. Lee 147 26.34% | | | | | | | |S.W. Chambers 60 10.75% |- |Cochrane | |A.S. McDonald 541 36.02% || |Alexander Moore 961 63.98% | | | | | | ||

| |Arthur M. Day 960 20.44% || |George Norman Johnston 3,736 79.56% | | | | | | ||

| |George H. Webber 1,734 40.69% || |Austin Bingley Claypool 2,528 59.31% | | | | | | ||

| | | |John Diamond 959 42.06% | | | | ||

| |Harry Scott 1,065 40.49% || |John C. Buckley 1,565 59.51% | | | | | | ||

| |Henry George Dimsdale 702 42.16% | | | | | | ||

| |Robert Berry Eaton 1,583 27.13% || |Gordon A. Forster 4,252 72.87% | | | | | | ||

| |J.V. Drumheller 867 46.09% || |Samuel Brown 1,014 53.91% | | | | | | ||

| |Daniel J. Morkeberg 741 30.85% || |Donald Cameron 1,661 69.15% | | | | | | ||

| |C.J. Stiles 837 32.98% || |Charles Milton McKeen 1,574 62.02% | | | | | |J.H. Mackay (Ind.) 127 5.00% ||

| |William Franklin Puffer 1,539 42.14% || |Mary Irene Parlby 2,113 57.86% | | | | | | ||

| |D.S. Muir 1,341 49.81% | | | | | | ||

| | | | | | | |John Marsh 1,374 37.89% || |John S. Stewart (Ind.) 2,252 62.11% | | |- |Little Bow | |James McNaughton 856 35.52% || |Oran Leo McPherson 1,554 64.48% | | | | | | ||

| |George Skelding 620 46.03% || |William H. Shield 727 53.97% | | | | | | ||

| |Oliver Boyd 2,278 18.9% H. H. Foster 2,013 16.7% || |Perren E. Baker 4,165 34.5% | | || |William G. Johnston 3,602 29.9% | | ||

| |John M. Glendenning 458 38.65% || |Daniel Harcourt Galbraith 727 61.35% | | | | | | ||

| |Ernest Austin Daggett 390 25.67% || |George Hoadley 1,129 74.33% | | | | | | ||

| |Duncan Marshall 1,238 39.50% || |Nelson S. Smith 1,896 60.50% | | | | | | ||

| | || |Donald MacBeth Kennedy 3,291 62.69% | | | | | | ||

| |J.H. Phillips 540 21.40% || |George MacLachlan 1,838 72.85% | | | | | |F.D. Armitage (Ind.) 145 5.75% ||

| |Harvey Bossenberry 471 34.43% || |Earle G. Cook 572 41.81% | | | | | |A.E. Cox 192 14.01% Donald Randolph McIvor 133 9.72% ||

| |William A. Campbell 815 36.94% || |P. Baker 1,391 63.06% | | | | | | ||

| |John J. Gaetz 1,146 34.66% || |George Wilbert Smith 2,160 65.34% | | | | | | ||

| |Charles S. Pingle 1,387 41.56% || |William C. Smith 1,950 58.44% | | | | | | ||

| |James Gray Turgeon 909 29.31% || |Charles O.F. Wright 2,192 70.69% | | | | | | ||

| |Alexander M. Morrison 1,143 35.08% | |Wallace James Sharpe 811 24.89% | | || |Philip Martin Christophers 1,304 40.02% | | ||

| | | | | | | | ||

| |Lucien Boudreau 1,000 44.76% || |Telesphore St. Arnaud 1,234 55.24% | | | | | | ||

| |Prosper-Edmond Lessard 984 41.66% || |Laudas Joly 1,378 58.34% | | | | | | ||

| |Edward H. Prudden 1,608 34.11% || |Albert L. Sanders 3,106 65.89% | | | | | | ||

| |Jacob Miller 647 32.33% || |Willard M. Washburn 1,001 50.02% | |Frederick W. Lundy 306 15.29% | | | |Dan Brox (Ind.) 47 2.35% ||

| |John Robert Boyle 7,310 72.20% || |Samuel Allen Carson 2,815 27.80% | | | | | | ||

| |Archibald J. McLean 1,991 46.30% || |Lawrence Peterson 2,309 53.70% | | | | | | ||

| |Joseph S. McCallum 1,325 30.31% || |Archibald Malcolm Matheson 3,047 69.69% | | | | | | ||

| |Arthur W. Ebbett 939 24.11% || |Richard Gavin Reid 2,955 75.89% | | | | | | ||

| |Francis A. Walker 1,288 47.90% || |Wasyl Fedun 1,401 52.10% | | | | | | ||

| |Harcus Strachan 913 28.10% || |John Russell Love 1,877 57.77% | |George LeRoy Hudson 459 14.13% | | | | ||

| |Frank S. Leffingwell 490 39.36% || |Maurice Joy Conner 755 60.64% | | | | | | ||

| |Hugh John Montgomery 1,216 44.64% || |Evert E. Sparks 1,508 55.36% | | | | | | ||

| | | | | | | | ||

10 by-elections were held in the months after the election. Some were held to sit several UFA MLAs and one Labour MLA in the new cabinet. Herbert Greenfield after being chosen to serve as premier ran for a seat in a by-election. John Brownlee after being chosen to serve as a cabinet minister ran for a seat in a by-election. Another was held after a Liberal MLA (Andrew Shandro) was thrown down for taking a seat under suspicious circumstances. All were successful for the UFA (and one Labour).

Calgary

Edmonton

Notes

References

References

1. (July 8, 1921). "President Wood of U.F.A. Wants But 20 Farmers In The Next House". Edmonton Journal.
2. (July 8, 1921). "Futile Effort To Unite Branches Of Labor Party". Edmonton Journal.
3. Monto, Tom. "Protest and Progress, Three Labour Radicals in Early Edmonton". Crang Publishing, Alhambra Books.
4. (July 13, 1921). "Conservatives Stand For Alberta Controlling Her Own Natural Resource". Edmonton Journal.
5. (July 12, 1921). "Old Party Lines Completely Shattered". Edmonton Journal.
6. A Report on Alberta Elections, 1905-1982
7. Leslie Young McKinney. (September 3, 1921). "Henry Wise Wood The Man Who Would Not Be Premier". The Lethbridge Daily Herald.
8. (July 20, 1921). "Member-elect Ponoka riding died as result farm accident". Edmonton Journal.