William Aberhart baby found
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.
After that election, the Social Credit Party would govern Alberta uninterrupted until 1971. It was the first of nine consecutive elections the party would win in the province.
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.
Titled ‘First Social Credit Baby,’ the one-paragraph notice announced that a Mr. and Mrs. A.B. Holman gave birth to a child at Griffiths Lake at 10:30 p.m. on the night of the senior Aberhart’s electoral win. The Social Credit-supporting couple decided to mark the moment by naming the baby after Alberta’s new premier.
“Hearty congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. Holman from the Chronicle and all Social Credit Supporters” the short noticed concluded.
A handful of wire stories featured in other newspapers expanded on the story, one reporting that the Holmans had been on their way to the Calgary General Hospital before being “overtaken by the stork 12 miles northeast of the city” and that the baby was born in the farm house of A. L. Griffiths (presumably the namesake of the Griffiths Lake noted in the Chronicle).
“There may have been some doubt as to whether the baby was born with a golden spoon in his mouth or a social credit voucher clutched in his chubby fist, but there is no doubt whatever about his name,” reported the Calgary Herald.
It was such an odd little footnote to a historic election in Alberta that I wondered whether the baby was real or if it was actually birthed from the imagination of the overzealous editor of the partisan Chronicle on the night of his party’s first big win.
I had to know more.
After a year or two of half-heartedly scanning through newspapers and phonebooks that were easily accessible on the internet, a few months ago I came across the ‘Eavesdrop with Eva” column written by Eva Reid in the Calgary Albertan on August 27, 1965.
Writing on the 30th anniversary of the Social Credit Party’s first big win, Reid noted that the baby would then be 30-years old.
“Since the announcement and a subsequent photograph of the bouncing lad with christian names written in large letters pinned to his bib appeared, little has been heard of him,” Reid wrote.
I haven’t been able to locate the photo Reid mentioned, but don’t have a reason to doubt it existed.
Reid was a follower of Aberhart’s Social Credit Party from its early days, even boarded in the Aberhart family home for a time while studying at the Calgary Prophetic Bible Institute. She was a party activist and reporter for the Social Credit Chronicle during the party’s rise to power. She continued working at the paper as a reporter and columnist after, through a series of financial maneuvers, it was merged with the Calgary Albertan newspaper in January 1936.
As already hostile relations between the Aberhart government and most of the press worsened, the Calgary Albertan was purchased by a syndicate of Social Credit supporters and the daily newspaper became an official organ of government propaganda. The Social Credit Chronicle continued to be published as a weekly insert and, for a period of time, staff received half their pay in Social Credit Prosperity Certificates. The financial control of the paper continued to be held by Socred supporters until 1938, when ownership reverted to the son of its previous owner, Max Bell.
Reid continued writing columns and reporting from Calgary’s courthouse for the paper as it drifted away from its previous role as an extension of the Social Credit Party and she retired after a long career in the newspaper industry in 1980 when the Albertan was sold and became the Calgary Sun. At the time of her retirement, Reid was dubbed the Dean of Newspaper Women in Calgary.
While I was hoping to be the person to solve the mystery of the Social Credit Baby in 2023, it turns out that Reid beat me to it 58 years ago in the pages of the Calgary Albertan.
In a column published on October 4, 1965, Reid revealed that she had located the then 30-year old “Social Credit Baby.”
“William Aberhart Holman, now married and with a daughter of his own, is employed with a large meat packing plant in Victoria, and has no difficulty with his name and few recollections of Alberta,” Reid wrote. “He was six when his parents moved to Victoria where, according to his father, little was known at that time of either the Late Premier Aberhart or Social Credit.”
Did Premier Aberhart ever meet his namesake? Yes, Reid wrote.
“Mr. Holman, in a long distance interview, recalled being invited to take his son to Crescent Heights High School when the lad was about two. Here he was lifted onto a desk and introduced to an audience by the former principal who, as everyone news, was Mr. Aberhart,” Reid wrote of Holman’s father.
“I cannot recall the nature of the meeting nor why as premier he was there but my wife and I were accompanied by Clive Wilmott (key figure in the movement) to the school,” Holman’s father told Reid.
So the mystery was solved!
I had hoped that there might be a chance that William Aberhart Holman would be available for an interview in 2023. If he were still alive today he would be 88-years old. But the chances of that appear unlikely.
While I couldn’t 100% confirm it was him, I did discover a November 1997 obituary in the Victoria Times Colonist noting the sudden death of a Mr. William A. “Bill” Holman who was born in Conrich, Alberta on August 22, 1935. It might be too much to believe that there were two Bill Aberhart Holmans born just east of Calgary that night.
The 1935 election was a shock to Canada’s political system. It was a historic win fuelled by Great Depression era desperation and radical politics that reshaped Alberta and Canada’s West for decades to come. While William Aberhart’s big win was the story of the night, the birth of William Aberhart Holman, the “Social Credit Baby,” might be one of its most interesting footnotes.
Note: If you are a relative, friend or acquaintance of William Aberhart Holman, please send me an email at david.cournoyer@gmail.com. I would love to hear from you and learn more about him.
Any Ralph Klein Holmans out there?
While I can’t confirm whether any Rachel Notley Holmans were born in May 5, 2015 or Danielle Smith Holmans on May 29, 2023, we do know how many babies are being given the same name as the current premier in any given year.
Some names are more popular than others.
Here are the number of newborn babies who share the name of the Alberta premier in the year of their birth:
Jason: 38 in 2019, 34 in 2020
Rachel: 41 in 2015, 53 in 2016
Alison: 9 in 2011, 6 in 2012
Ed: 19 in 2006, 25 in 2007
Ralph: 1 in 1992, 1 in 1993
Thank you
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Thanks,
Dave