W.A.C. Bennett
The Honourable William Andrew Cecil Bennett,
PC,
OC (
September 6,
1900 –
February 23,
1979) was a
Premier of the
Canadian province of
British Columbia. He was born in
Hastings,
New Brunswick,
Canada. He is usually referred to as
W.A.C. Bennett, and both affectionately and mockingly by many as
Wacky Bennett.
At the age of 18, Bennett moved to
Edmonton, Alberta. He later moved to
Kelowna, British Columbia and entered the retail hardware business. A successful merchant, he served as President of the Kelowna Board of Trade from
1937 to
1939. He entered provincial politics in the
October 21, 1941 provincial election when he was elected as the
Conservative member of the British Columbia
Legislative Assembly for South
Okanagan. He was re-elected in the
1945 and
1949 provincial elections.
After failing in his bid to become leader of what was now the Progressive Conservative Party in
1951, he left the party to sit as an Independent Member. In December of that year, he took out a membership in the
Social Credit League.
In the
1952 provincial election, the province used an
alternative vote system that had been designed to enable the Conservative and
Liberal parties to keep the socialist
Co-operative Commonwealth Federation out of power. Unexpectedly, this enabled Social Credit to win the largest number of seats with the benefit of second-preference ballots from CCF voters.
Social Credit fell short of holding a majority, however. Bennett had succeeded in convincing a Labour
Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) to support the party, and so the Socreds were able to form a
minority government.
The party had no leader, however. In a vote of the newly elected
caucus, Bennett defeated
Philip Gaglardi for the position of party leader and premier-elect on
July 15,
1952.
On
August 1, he was sworn in as Premier of British Columbia, an office he held for twenty years until
1972. Bennett engineered the defeat of his minority government with a school funding proposal, and forced an election in
1953. Social Credit was re-elected with a clear majority. Alternative voting was not used in BC again.
A conservative, he served also as the Minister of Finance, keeping tight control over government spending while leading his province into an era of modernization and prosperity.
While the Social Credit party was founded to promote the
social credit theories of
monetary reform, these could not be implemented at the provincial level, as the
Alberta Social Credit Party had learned in the 1930s. Bennett quickly converted the provincial party into one advocating a mix of populism and conservatism, and it became a vehicle for those who sought to keep the CCF out of power. However, he did actively campaign for the
Social Credit Party of Canada in federal election campaigns. During the
1957 election, he spoke for the party at a rally in
Regina, Saskatchewan. In the
1965 election, Bennett and his cabinet ministers toured BC to encourage voters to elect Social Credit
Members of Parliament to promote BC's interests.
Following his party's defeat in the
1972 election by
Dave Barrett's revitalized
New Democratic Party (the successor to the CCF), he served as Leader of the Opposition until resigning his seat as Member for South Okanagan in June of 1973.
His son,
Bill, won the South Okanagan by-election in September, and W.A.C. Bennett retired as leader of the Social Credit Party on
November 15. William was elected leader of the BC Social Credit Party on
November 24,
1973, and in the provincial election of
1975, the Socreds were re-elected with a majority. Bill Bennett became the new Premier of British Columbia.
In 1976, he was made an Officer of the
Order of Canada.
W.A.C. Bennett died in
1979, and was interred in the Kelowna Municipal Cemetery, in
Kelowna, British Columbia.
In
1998, the Government of Canada honored W.A.C. Bennett with his portrait on a
postage stamp of Canada. The
W.A.C. Bennett Dam near
Hudson's Hope, built under the
Two River Policy, is named after him. The library at the Burnaby campus of
Simon Fraser University also bears his name. He was featured in
Time Magazine on
September 30,
1966.
*"The finest sound in the land is the ringing of cash registers."
*"The Socialist Hordes are at the gates of British Columbia!"
*"I couldn't give it away, so we decided to build it and run it." - On the
British Columbia Railway.
*"We are a young country; we must build on the solid rock of sound economic policies and balanced budgets. But, we must be prepared, as a nation, to step from the solid rock onto new ground. The path of ease, the path of tradition alone, is not the path of a greater Canada." - Addressing the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in 1962.
*"I'm plugged into God" - On the reason for his political successes
*"It's the smell of money." - To residents complaining of the smell of a local pulp mill
*"They couldn't run a peanut stand." - On the New Democratic Party
W.A.C.: Bennett and the rise of British Columbia,
David J. Mitchell (ISBN 0-8889-4395-4) - the most authoritative biography
*
Jack Wasserman interviewing W.A.C. Bennett about the 1952 election, CBC Archives TV clip
