W.A.C. Bennett built our modern economy
Shrewd populist premier fostered infrastructure, free enterprise
To mark Canada’s 150th birthday, we are counting down to Canada Day with profiles of 150 noteworthy British Columbians. His megaprojects transformed British Columbia from fragmented frontier to an integrated $200-billion-a-year economic behemoth. The province’s 24th premier was a populist visionary. He symbolized both B.C.’s eccentricity within Confederation and its infectious entrepreneurial enthusiasm.
When W.A.C. Bennett took power at midpoint of the 20th century, the province’s biggest employers were company-town mines, log- ging and fishing. Today, the job engines are knowledge-based technology, finance, real estate and construction.
A distant relative of former prime minister R.B. Bennett, William Andrew Cecil Bennett was born Sept. 6, 1900, to a ne’er-do-well father and strong-willed, devoutly Christian mother on a hardscrabble New Brunswick farm.
He grew up poor and left school after Grade 9. In 1919, he followed his father, a returned veteran, to homestead on the Alberta side of the Peace River district.
But he soon had his fill of farming and took a job in an Edmonton hardware store, saving his pay.
In 1930, just as the Great Depression began, he bought a small hardware store in Kelowna. Community booster and business pragmatist — although a lifelong teetotaller, he invested in the region’s first winery — Bennett began to dabble in politics, discovered an aptitude that meshed neatly with his business acumen and was elected to the provincial legislature as a Conservative in 1941.
Twice rejected in bids to lead the Conservatives, he resigned to sit as an Independent in 1951, then joined the Social Credit Party and, when it made a surprise breakthrough in 1952, was chosen to lead the minority government.
Campaigning on a shrewd populist platform of fiscal restraint, fervent free enterprise, anti-socialist zeal, western chauvinism and unrepentant Ottawa-bashing, he developed a chameleon-like ability to adapt policy to either and sometimes both sides of any contentious issue.
He became the longest serving premier in B.C. history. Social Credit went undefeated for 20 years.
Bennett — iconic journalist Bruce Hutchison described his “fixed neon smile, the bustling salesman’s assurance, the relentless torrent of speech” as representing a revolution in provincial political style — spent his time in power remaking B.C.
Under his leadership, highways were built, B.C. Ferries brought coastal communities in from isolation, roads to scattered mainland regions were paved, huge dams generated vast hydroelectric capacity, pulp mills and mines sprang up, electricity came to the most remote regions.
He was “Wacky” to both affectionate supporters and malicious foes.
“Wacky like a fox,” veteran Victoria journalist Peter Murray observed.
Bennett died in 1972.