Ernest Manning

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Image:ErnestManning.png Ernest Charles Manning, PC , CC , AOE , LL.D (September 20, 1908 - February 19, 1996), a Canadian politician, was Premier of Alberta between 1943 and 1968 for the Social Credit Party of Alberta. He served longer than any premier in the province's history, and was the second longest serving provincial premier in Canadian history (only after George H. Murray of Nova Scotia). For a period of time, Manning was the longest continually serving democratically elected official in the world. He was also the only member of the Social Credit Party of Canada to ever sit in the Canadian Senate.

Manning was born in Carnduff, Saskatchewan in 1908 and was raised on a farm. A devoted listener of the evangelistic radio broadcasts of Alberta Premier William Aberhart, Manning enrolled in Aberhart's Calgary Prophetic Bible Institute in 1927, becoming the first graduate of that institution. In 1930, Manning himself began speaking on the Prophetic Bible Institute Sunday radio hours, which were broadcast to a large audience across Canada, a practice he kept up throughout his life.

In the 1935 provincial election, he was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta as a Social Credit MLA from Calgary. That same year he became Alberta's Provincial Secretary and Minister of Trade and Industry. In 1943, he became premier of Alberta after Aberhart died. Manning sought to purge anti-Semitic influences from the party; anti-Semitism had been a large part of the party's platform for years, but had become less fashionable in the wake of the Holocaust.

Under Manning, the party largely abandoned social credit theories. Manning had been a loyal supporter of Aberhart from the beginning, so it is not clear why he was so willing to ditch his party's traditional ideology. One likely explanation may have been pragmatic; many of Social Credit's policy goals infringed on responsibilities reserved to the federal government under the British North America Act. Manning, however, continued Social Credit's conservative social policies. For many years, airplanes could not serve alcohol while flying over the province.

Manning led Social Credit to seven consecutive election victories between 1944 and 1967, usually with more than 50% of the popular vote. Social Credit's electoral success was based on what was viewed as its good government of the province. However, an ominous sign came during his last victory, when the once-moribund Progressive Conservatives won seven seats, mostly in Calgary and Edmonton. Social Credit was slow to adapt to the changes in Alberta as its two largest cities gained increasing influence. Manning retired in 1968, and Social Credit was knocked out of office three years later.

Upon retirement in 1968, Manning established his own consulting firm, Manning Consultants Limited with his son Preston. In 1970, he was appointed to the Senate and made a Companion of the Order of Canada. He retired in 1983, having reached the mandatory retirement age of 75.

In 1936, Ernest Manning married Muriel Aileen Preston, the pianist at the Prophetic Bible Institute, with William Aberhart giving the bride away. They had two sons, Keith who died in 1986, and Preston who founded the Reform Party of Canada (a Canadian federal political party later known as the Canadian Alliance, and one of the forebears of today's Conservative Party of Canada). Ernest Manning died in Calgary in 1996.

There is a high school in Calgary and a town in Northern Alberta named after Ernest Manning.

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