An Interpretation

The Invincible Mayor: Edmonton's Roller Coaster Ride with William Hawrelak
by Olive Elliot

Biographical information :

Olive Elliott is a free-lance writer with an in-depth knowledge of Edmonton, its government and its politics. While with the Edmonton Journal, she spent five years as a city hall reporter and more than seven years as a full-time civic affairs columnist.

On March 11, 1965, Social Credit members of the Alberta Legislature bowed their heads and prayed for Edmonton.

Were they seeking divine help for the city in the aftermath of some dreadful calamity?

In a way. But it wasn't a natural disaster. It was the end of yet another chapter in an on-off political career that spanned more than three decades and made Mayor William Hawrelak the most memorable municipal politician in Edmonton's history.

Earlier that March day Chief Justice C.C. McLaurin disqualified Hawrelak from holding office. In declaring the mayor's chair vacant, he found that Hawrelak had violated the City Act through his involvement with a development company that had done business with the city.

For many ordinary Edmontonians, Hawrelak's disqualification was a genuine calamity. They were devoted to the man. He was capable of great charm, and they had heard stories -- or had experience -- of his personal generosity. Moreover, he understood their problems, they thought, because he was one of them, with the difference that he had achieved the success to which they merely aspired. For others, the praying Socreds represented just another humiliation inflicted on them by Bill Hawrelak. Edmonton, with its enduring affection for a mayor of dubious ethics, had become a national joke.

This was, after all, not the first time Hawrelak's business interests created problems. In 1959, he resigned after a judicial inquiry presided over by Justice M. M. Porter found there had been "gross misconduct" on the part of the mayor and cited numerous examples of land deals in which the mayor was, at best, inappropriately involved. Fan or foe, both sides were partly right. Hawrelak defied categorization. He had the ambition, energy and ability to become a wealthy businessman and an effective mayor.

The son of Ukrainian immigrants who homesteaded northeast of Edmonton, Hawrelak's business success and political manoeuvrings won him the backing of the powerful Citizens' Committee (CC) a group of largely Anglo-Saxon business and professional men who controlled the city's government for decades. Elected as a CC alderman in 1949, on his second attempt, Hawrelak became the committee's choice for mayor in 1951 and, at a time when annual elections were held, was re-elected seven times -- twice by acclamation -- before his wheeling and dealing in land brought him down in 1959.

While there is no doubt Hawrelak's political career benefited from the oil boom that began in 1947 when Leduc No. 1 blew in, he used the money to build the kind of city Edmontonians wanted -- a city of new parks and recreational facilities, new public buildings, even a new hospital. And he did it all while maintaining the CC's objective of a businesslike city hall. But Hawrelak, who approached politics like a 19th Century American party boss, had a fatal flaw. He simply never understood that serving his own interests didn't necessarily serve the city's interests.

He insisted that his 1965 disqualification was based on a "technicality" and, in March 1975, when the Supreme Court of Canada upheld his appeal of a lower court decision ordering him to reimburse the city for profits he supposedly made from the land deals involved in the disqualification, Hawrelak insisted he had been vindicated. In fact, an earlier Supreme Court decision upheld his disqualification. The 1975 decision merely ruled that he had not made any profits.

Even after the damning Porter Inquiry report in 1959, Hawrelak failed to see what he had done wrong. In the statement to city council in which he announced his resignation, Hawrelak said: "I categorically deny that there was any improper conduct on my part in regard to any of the matters under investigation...." Considering that the Porter Inquiry revealed, among others things, two attempts by Hawrelak to influence the rezoning of land he owned, his denials seem particularly hollow.

It might appear as if Hawrelak acknowledged his wrongdoing when he paid $100,000 to the city in 1960 to settle a civil action brought by city council to recover profits he had made in the land deals. But if he hadn't settled the case, he couldn't have run for election again.

And he did, in 1963. It was the dirtiest election campaign in Edmonton's history -- smear campaigns by both sides, vilification, threats and violence. In the end, Hawrelak defeated his opponent, Stanley Milner, by more than 7,000 votes and returned triumphantly to city hall. His triumph was marred, however. A week after four men from the University of Alberta were arrested and charged for disrupting Hawrelak's first council meeting by demands for his resignation, a small group of students marched to city hall to peacefully protest the election outcome. They were met by a mob, estimated at anywhere from 300 to 1,000 people, some armed with rocks and eggs. The protesters, at least one of whom had to be rescued by the police, were kicked, shoved, spat upon and cursed.

It would be naive to assume the mob appeared spontaneously. As the Edmonton Journal, admittedly no fan of Hawrelak since the Porter Inquiry, wrote in an editorial two days after the incident: "Who can believe the attack of the truculent mob upon the students was a spontaneous affair? There is good reason to believe it was organized by goon-minded men whose weapons are lawlessness and violence.... Were the rowdies who gathered in front of the city hall Monday night the same ones who toured meetings during the recent election campaign with the sole purpose of preventing anti-Hawrelak candidates from speaking?"

There's no evidence that Hawrelak personally organized the goons. But his supporters included the kind of people who would. And the reception the protesters received was simply a variation on the Hawrelak approach. Hawrelak believed in rewarding his friends and punishing his enemies. If he was thwarted, he bullied and intimidated. The Hawrelak era appeared to be over in 1966, when he lost the mayoral election to Vince Dantzer, the alderman chosen by city council to replace him in 1965. Even Hawrelak said he was done with city politics.

He missed politics, though, and in 1974, the omens seemed right. The city had gone through a massively inconvenient transit strike and city council was embroiled in its own judicial inquiry. Hawrelak easily defeated incumbent mayor Ivor Dent and two aldermanic challengers.

Even in that last term, Hawrelak played some of the old games. He put -- or tried to put -- his friends on city boards and commissions (not that he was unique in that), he appointed a disbarred lawyer as executive assistant, he allowed city property taxes on his many holdings to fall significantly in arrears and, when questioned, responded with anger and described the nonpayment as "an oversight."

In the 1970s, however, Hawrelak was facing a different kind of city council. It was no longer a monolithic body backed by the Citizens' Committee. It included a socialist, urban reformers and the ever-suspicious Ed Leger, whose investigations led to the Porter inquiry and who also claimed to be behind the court challenge which resulted in Hawrelak's 1965 disqualification. For all his political skills, Hawrelak couldn't maintain the tight control he had once enjoyed. Fifteen months after the election, he died of a heart attack.