Funny Money: A family memoir of the Social Credit era by Sterling Haynes
My father died poor. My legacy was a safety deposit box full of Alberta’s Prosperity Certificates. My dad had been a dentist and later in his career had received a Master of Dental Surgery degree. He spent a lifetime repairing maxillas, mandibles, and fractured zygomas, removing impacted wisdom teeth, as well as doing general dentistry. He and the Dean of Dentistry at the University of Alberta were the only two dentists in Edmonton doing this type of work until much later when plastic surgeons started doing it. Dad was one of the first to have an x-ray machine. The wide scattered rays of the cathode tube gave him exfoliative dermatitis of the hands and later lymphatic leukemia.
Horses are plentiful on Alberta farms in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Iron cranks were used to start cars and tractors. Those were hazardous times – if a shod hoof didn’t hit your jaw, the kick-back from the crank could strike you in the face during motor start-ups. Facial fractures were common.
In the days before endo-tracheal anesthesia, it was safer to do these facial surgical repairs under anesthetic. Dad performed surgery at night and I was the teenage assistant. He taught me the anatomy of the head and neck while he did the three hour surgery. After placing arch wire splints for fractured mandibles, reducing and immobilizing broken maxillas, he was exhausted and the patient was worn out. Dad was usually paid in kind – chickens, sauerkraut, salt pork. Sometimes, if he was unlucky, the farmers paid him with Alberta funny money.
Funny money was produced under social credit Premier Bill Aberhart in 1936. Aberhart was a Calgary high school principal and a disciple of God and an English Civil Engineer, Colonel C.D. Douglas, Bible Bill adopted Douglas’ dictates: the A plus B theorem (the producer of goods A would receive less than the cost of goods B).
Bible Bill, citing The Statute of Westminster, declared that Alberta was a sovereign entity, and could control credit and produce Alberta currency to pay for all Alberta made goods (part B of the theorem). These theories were promoted by the farmers of Alberta.
As an election incentive in 1935, Bible Bill promised all adult Albertans twenty-five dollars. It was no wonder the Socreds were elected. Bible Bill put purchasing power in the hands of the people.
The Alberta Treasury Boards (ATB’s) were established and funny money put into circulation. A discount of five percent was given by ATB’s for goods and services made in Alberta. “What Alberta Makes, Makes Alberta” was the battle cry of the Socreds.
Everything was paid for in Prosperity Certificates of one dollar denominations. The kicker was that every time the certificates were cashed, a very small one cent stamp was to be glued to the back of the certificate, which was marked into one hundred small grids. The stamp glue was poor and the bills large. Over time, with flour and water depression glue, the stamps and bills developed a patina of flour. As these “certs” become heavier and heavier, the stamps become loose and straight pins and small gold safety pins were taken from women’s lingerie to secure the stamps. After two years, (the declared life of the bill) they could weight six ounces. As the glue aged, the certificates become brittle and the funny money could break and shower the floor with stamps.
In Edmonton, the money could be cashed in only a few places – the ATB, Alberta liquor stores, the University of Alberta Tuck Shop and the Army and Navy Department Store. Nobody wanted cracked money, that had to be carried in a shoe box, or to give change in good Canadian coin. Finally, the Supreme Court declared the monetary system illegal.
Part of the money my Dad received for difficult dental surgery remained in his safety deposit box until he died. A reminder from Bible Bill that Dad’s skillful work, performed in the “dirty thirties” had been paid for with illegal money produced and signed by Aberhart and the Social Credit fundamentalists.
My father never recouped his losses.