University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for Winter 2011 THE AMERICAN IMPRINT ON ALBERTA POLITICS Nelson Wiseman University of Toronto Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the American Studies Commons, Cultural History Commons, and the United States History Commons Wiseman, Nelson, "THE AMERICAN IMPRINT ON ALBERTA POLITICS" (2011). Great Plains Quarterly. 2657. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/2657 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. THE AMERICAN IMPRINT ON ALBERTA POLITICS NELSON WISEMAN Characteristics assigned to America's clas­ the liberal society in Tocqueville's Democracy sical liberal ideology-rugged individualism, in America: high status was accorded the self­ market capitalism, egalitarianism in the sense made man, laissez-faire defined the economic of equality of opportunity, and fierce hostility order, and a multiplicity of religious sects com­ toward centralized federalism and socialism­ peted in the market for salvation.l Secondary are particularly appropriate for fathoming sources hint at this thesis in their reading of Alberta's political culture. In this article, I the papers of organizations such as the United contend that Alberta's early American settlers Farmers of Alberta (UFA) and Alberta's were pivotal in shaping Alberta's political cul­ Social Credit Party.2 This article teases out its ture and that Albertans have demonstrated a hypothesis from such secondary sources and particular affinity for American political ideas covers new ground in linking the influence and movements. Alberta came to resemble of Americans to Alberta's exceptionalism in Canadian politics, the province where federal and provincial conservative parties have been strongest and where resistance to federal intru­ Key words: political culture, ideology, immigration, sions has been the most vigorous in English populism, religion Canada. Alberta has been Canada's "maverick" province, more receptive to neoliberalism (or Born in Bucharest, Nelson Wiseman is an associate what many term neoconservatism) than the professor in the Department of Political Science at the Canadian norm. University of Toronto where he specializes in Canadian government and politics. Choice designated his book, In Search of Canadian Political Culture, as an THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: IDEOLOGICAL Outstanding Academic Title in 2009. He has appeared FRAGMENTATION AND FORMATIVE EVENTS as an invited witness at committees of the Canadian House of Commons and Senate. In Louis Hartz's scheme, the ideological path of a new society is determined at the point [GPQ 31 (Winter 2011): 39-53] of its departure from the mother society.3 From 39 40 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, WINTER 2011 this perspective, the new society reflects only In Alberta, liberalism has been hegemonic, one slice of the older society's total ideological its cultural face more American than British. spectrum. America's liberal Puritan found­ Tory and socialist touches have been more ers, for example, split off from the totality of marginal in Alberta's political culture than in Britain's broader ideological spectrum, escaped English Canadian political culture as a whole. its Old World toryism and its later socialism. Evidence on the federal partisan level in the The dialectical dance between Old World clas­ 1990s was the undoing of the older federal sical conservatism and upstart revolutionary Progressive Conservative Party, identified by liberalism eventually produced socialist visions its tory touches, by the Alberta-based neo­ in Europe that were not replicated in the United liberal Reform Party. At the provincial level, States because its founding and reigning ideol­ Alberta is notable as the only province west ogy, liberalism, congealed at America's point of Quebec where the social democratic NDP of departure from Europe. Lockean liberalism (New Democratic Party) has not formed a gov­ became a national cult-the civil religion-of ernment. the United States. In this ken, the collectivism To be sure, Alberta has not been wholly of both toryism and socialism contrasts liberal­ bereft of tory and socialist tinges in its political ism's primacy of place for the individual and culture. As with the rest of English Canada, market competition. English Canada's found­ Alberta represents an ideologically impure ers, the Loyalists, were essentially American liberal fragment. Toryism and socialism in liberals but were infected with a "tory touch," small measure have inevitably leaked into the and embedded in their toryism was the seed for provincial political culture through Alberta's socialism to emerge in Canada later.4 early connection with British institutions This article applies Hartz's theory of ideo­ and its continuing cultural ties to the rest of logical fragmentation at the provincial level, Canada. Toryism in Alberta, however, has to Alberta. It makes no connection, however, always been much weaker than in eastern between toryism and socialism in Alberta Canada, and its socialism has been less robust except insofar as the toryism of the larger than elsewhere in western Canada.6 The first English Canadian political culture inevitably prime minister based in Alberta, R. B. Bennett, influenced Alberta. Highlighted are Alberta's had something tory and un-American in his Americans as founding settlers and their influ­ outlook. He became prime minister, however, ential ideas. The argument here also draws despite Alberta; his Conservatives captured on Seymour Upset's idea that a formative only a third of the province's votes and only event shapes a new society's political culture four of its sixteen seats in the 1930 election and applies the idea at the provincial level. in which half the national electorate voted For Upset, the formative event for both the Conservative and anti-Americanism was an United States and Canada was the American issue. Loyalist toryism had little purchase Revolution as it led directly to the creation of in Alberta. Nevertheless, viewed from an Upper Canada (now Ontario) by America's out­ American perspective and in comparison to cast tories.5 The Revolution had no relevance, states south of it such as Montana, Idaho, and however, to Alberta's settlement, which came Utah, the provincial political culture evinces more than a century later. The contention here some nonliberal elements. is that Alberta's political culture congealed Connections to the rest of Canada have in conjunction with the province's formative meant that socialism has also had some pres­ event at the turn of the twentieth century­ ence in Alberta politics. Socialism did not the disappearance of good, cheap agricultural completely fade out in Alberta as it did in the land in the United States and the emergence United States, where it appeared as a largely of Alberta and western Saskatchewan as North foreign blip at the turn of the twentieth cen­ America's "Last Best West." tury and soon vanished. British, particularly THE AMERICAN IMPRINT ON ALBERTA POLITICS 41 Scottish, socialists helped turn Calgary into grants were generally urban born and bred and an early hotbed for labor radicalism; the city more inclined to support labor-socialist causes served as the birthplace of both the syndical­ as they had in Britain. They headed to politi­ ist One Big Union and the NDP's predecessor, cally underrepresented cities such as Calgary, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and this lessened their influence in shaping (CCF). Like toryism, however, the socialist provincial politics. touch in Alberta's political culture has always Manitoba in the 1880s, according to W. L. been relatively weak, and socialist fortunes in Morton, represented "the triumph of Ontario the province pale in comparison to those in the democracy," and the 1890s made it "a British neighboring provinces. and Canadian province" as more Britons Some surveys of popular values indicate that arrived.lO Parallel descriptions of Alberta in the Albertans' attitudes on many issues are similar twentieth century's first and second decades to those of other English Canadians, but many could be "the triumph of populist democracy" other surveys point to Alberta as an outlier. and "an American and Canadian province." Certainly, the political behavior of Albertans Unlike Manitoba and Saskatchewan where and their governments has been notably dis­ Ontarian settlers were first on the scene after similar in a comparative provincial context. Confederation, the various national groups They have often adopted more extreme pos­ constituting Alberta's pioneers arrived almost tures and policy positions at odds with most simultaneously. Unlike English Canadian provinces-on provincial rights, language political culture as a whole, which developed rights, multiculturalism, medicare, gun con­ over much time and from a variety of sources, trol, capital punishment, same-sex marriage, Alberta's particular political culture congealed and the environment.7 Many of these positions in its formative years and coincided with the have been more in harmony with neoliberal American influx. preferences common in the United States. American homesteaders and their political ideas enjoyed