Liberals win fifth straight federal election
Always fond of big statements, B.C.’S Social Credit Premier W.A.C. Bennett predicted the Liberals would be obliterated provincially by the Socreds in the 1953 federal election.
“There won’t be a single federal Liberal elected in B.C.,” thundered Bennett at a Social Credit rally at the Georgia Auditorium on Aug. 6, 1953. “We will elect more Social Credit candidates than all the other parties put together!”
Bennett had reason to be confident — the Socreds had won B.C. provincial elections in 1952 and 1953. But when the results came in on Aug. 10, the Socreds had won only four of B.C.’S 22 federal seats — half the eight taken by the Liberals. Even Bennett’s mortal enemies, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, won more seats in B.C., with seven.
Liberal Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent won the party’s record fifth-straight election, taking 171 of the 265 seats in Parliament. But it was a substantial reduction from the 193 seats the Liberals had won in 1949.
The Conservatives became the official Opposition by taking 51 seats, followed by the CCF (the NDP) with 23 and Social Credit with 15. All the Socred seats came in B.C. and Alberta.
Bennett blamed “a last-minute smear campaign” for Social Credit’s inability to sweep the province.
“Politics sank to a new low,” he told The Sun.
He was just trying to save face — it was a tame election. The Sun polled its 75 correspondents around the province, who dubbed it “the dullest yet.”
Still, the election ads were fabulous. The Liberals had a giant ad with photos of all the Vancouver candidates arranged around a very crudely drawn telephone dial, with only six round dials instead of the usual 10 or 12.
“Dial these numbers for transportation to the polls,” said the ad, pointing to candidates like James Sinclair in North Vancouver (whose phone number was N 1990) or Elmore Philpott in Vancouver South (KE 8200).
Sinclair was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s grandfather. He went by Jimmy Sinclair in election ads that proclaimed he was “Your Powerful Voice in Ottawa.” (He was the minister of fisheries in the Liberal government.)
Philpott was a longtime Vancouver Sun columnist. He was elected, but when he didn’t make the cut for a cabinet post, he continued to write a Sun column.
St. Laurent was 71 years old when he led the Liberals into the election. The Liberal campaign promoted St. Laurent as a grandfatherly figure who would stay the course that had led Canada out of the “hungry ’30s” and “flashed a green light on the road of Canada’s progress.”
“Safety First!” blared a giant St. Laurent ad on Aug. 8. “Don’t Gamble With Your Future!”
Just like today, pipelines were an issue in the election. A Conservative ad claimed that in 1949-50 the federal Liberals favoured pipeline companies “proposing to pipe natural gas and oil from Alberta into Idaho, Washington and Oregon first — WITH ONLY SMALL STUB
LINE BACK INTO BRITISH CO LUMBIA at Vancouver.”
The ad says that the Conservatives fought for a B.C. pipeline, and they succeeded — an investment of over $200 million in B.C.
The CCF’S pledge in election ads was that it was “For Humanity First.” Two prominent Ccfers were elected in Vancouver in 1953 — former provincial leader Harold Winch and Angus Macinnis, a principled politician who argued against the deportation of Japanese-canadians during the Second World War.