An Interpretation

Secret of Success
by Olive Elliot

Essay introduction: Working behind the scenes, the Citizens' Committee placed its favoured candidates in Edmonton's local government for decades - and few voters recognized its influence. For the better part of four decades, the Citizens' Committee ruled Edmonton.

Today, it is an almost forgotten part of Edmonton's history. Its success was phenomenal, far beyond anything achieved by any of the many other political groups. From 1934 to 1960, 87.5 per cent of successful city council candidates came from the Citizens' Committee (CC) slate, and it always had a majority on the Edmonton public school board.

Between 1945 and 1959, every city council seat was held by a CC candidate or someone it supported. Even at the provincial level, no political party can claim that level of success. Of course, the CC wasn't exactly a political party. In fact, part of its success came from its insistence that it wasn't a party and from its willingness to vigorously denounce any and all challenging groups for injecting party politics into a non-partisan system.

University of Alberta graduate student George M. Betts, in his definitive analysis of Edmonton politics published in 1963, described the CC as a "status quo group." It existed, under various names at various times, to ensure that the "right" people were elected to council -- people who could be trusted to run the city in a businesslike fashion and make sure the interests of business were served. Among other things, this translated into professional management at city hall and an emphasis on public works as opposed to social programs.

The CC was always a fairly small group, made up of lawyers and representatives of commercial, manufacturing, real estate and financial firms. Most were also members of the Chamber of Commerce. They weren't Edmonton's corporate elite, but they, like the candidates they nominated, were men the elite could trust. Betts called them "the key men."

Each election, the CC produced a list of candidates and ensured their campaigns were funded, usually by business. The committee wasn't active between elections and it made no attempt to force unanimity on its councillors. It didn't have to. The councillors were, after all, the "right" people. They might argue over details, but they shared a common goal.

Prior to the First World War, there was no need for a Citizens' Committee. The city was booming and, generally, voters believed that what was good for business was good for Edmonton. Then came the great real-estate bust of 1913 and a depression that really didn't end until the Second World War.

After the First World War, economic conditions and returning veterans whose attitudes had been changed by the war opened the door for labor to became a significant force. Joe Clarke, supported by labor, was elected mayor in 1919, at a time when organized labor in the city was calling for a general strike.

Business roused itself from its preoccupation with the economy and formed the Citizens' Progressive League -- the first incarnation of what was to become the Civic Government Association (CGA) and, in 1936, the Citizens' Committee.

Clarke was defeated in 1920, but labor hung on. It gained control of council several times during the 1920s and won a sizeable victory in 1931. By then, however, Edmonton was in the depths of depression.

There was little money coming in and a huge debt load to support. Voters, looking for someone to blame, blamed their labor-dominated council. While they reinstated Joe Clarke as mayor in 1935, they turned to the CGA slate for their aldermen.

That was the end of labor's meaningful role in civic government and beginning of the Citizens' Committee's domination.

Occasionally, the CC's success made it complacent and vulnerable to hijacking. For instance, while business was quite willing to endorse labor candidates, provided they supported the business goals of the committee, it wasn't pleased when the forces of labor packed the CC nominations meeting in 1954 and inserted two candidates active in the labor movement onto the committee's slate.

Business responded by forming another group, the Committee for Sound Civic Administration (CSCA), and nominating the CC's original slate. Its candidates won the election, the CSCA dissolved and the CC was back in action, purged of its undesirable labor elements.

A more serious takeover was engineered by William Hawrelak. Hawrelak, who was elected as an alderman in 1949 under the CC banner, became the CC's mayoral candidate in 1951. (It is said he was not the CC's first choice, but the group couldn't find a more prominent candidate.) He was enormously successful -- acclaimed twice as mayor -- until it all came crashing down in 1959 with the Porter Inquiry's finding of "gross misconduct" on the part of the mayor. Hawrelak resigned from council, but, by then, he had replaced the corporate elite's key men on the Citizens' Committee with his own key men.

Betts quoted Hawrelak as saying: "I had become their leader, not their puppet and they were unable to do anything with me."

That wasn't entirely true. Businessmen simply abandoned the CC and founded something called the Civic Reform Association (CRA). A year later, it metamorphosed into the Civic Government Association.

The Citizens Committee, by yet another name, was ready to fight another day.

However, Hawrelak's takeover and his disgrace marked the beginning of the end of the committee. Edmonton was changing. The business community was less monolithic, new forces -- community groups, social activism -- were emerging.

The "status quo group," as Betts called it, struggled on through the 1960s, still largely dominating council, but subject to so many name changes and hybridizations that the voters -- and, occasionally, even its candidates -- were totally confused.

In the 1971 civic election, there were no slates. Since then, there have been slates, but only one enjoyed reasonable success -- the Urban Reform Group Edmonton (URGE). Primarily an alliance of groups which had opposed freeway construction, URGE elected two aldermen in 1974 (including the formidable Bettie Hewes, who went on to become a Liberal MLA). Its high point came in 1980, with the election of four aldermen. Gradually, it faded and, when its last alderman -- Jan Reimer -- ran successfully for mayor in 1990, URGE had become merely another footnote in the alphabet-soup history of Edmonton's civic politics.

Absent from that civic history are the real political parties. Only two parties formally ran candidates -- Social Credit in the mid-1930s and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), forerunner of the New Democrats, in the early-1940s. Neither was notably successful.

Given alternatives, Edmontonians seemed to prefer the quiet government provided by the Citizens' Committee.