Social Credit supporters named election night baby after radical Alberta premier
This is a story I’ve wanted to write for a long time.
“Social Credit Sweeps Into Power” is the headline on the front cover of the Social Credit Chronicle on August 23, 1935. The official newspaper of Alberta’s radical Social Credit movement trumpeted the huge electoral victory of the party led by Calgary preacher, radio evangelist and Bible school dean William Aberhart.
The front cover of the widely circulated partisan newspaper beamed with headlines like ‘ALBERTA FIRST PROVINCE IN THE WORLD TO RETURN SOCIAL CREDIT TO GOVERNMENT’ and “Alberta Casts Record Vote.”
Headshot photos of Aberhart and early Social Credit luminaries like Edith Rogers, who unseated sex-scandal-embattled-former premier John Brownlee in Ponoka, and Peter Dawson, who defeated an equally embattled former Speaker Oran McPherson in Little Bow, were splashed over the cover of the broadsheet.
Amidst the celebratory headlines, a tiny box on the bottom right corner of the front page noted a milestone for another William Aberhart – William Aberhart Holman. It was a birth notice.
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