The previous scholarship on British Columbia politics has mentioned but not adequately
explained that province's populist culture. My paper responds to this deficiency by exploring
the history of British Columbia populism. It examines the northwest (where populist culture
was especially strong) as a case study of provincial politics and employs a political discourse
analysis that compares language in the inter-war years with that of the post-war years. It also
correlates voting and occupational statistics in polling districts in an effort to position language
within a socio-economic context. The findings of this study emphasize the neighbouring
northwest constituencies of Skeena and Omineca as representative of the dynamic nature of
British Columbia political culture in the 1950s: in Skeena, a culture of class polarization
dominated politics and led to an initial CCF provincial victory while Omineca had a culture of
protest politics that supported Social Credit provincially and the CCF federally. These two
differing kinds of politics (i.e. class versus populist politics) came from the same prodevelopment
ethos that, while always dominating British Columbia culture, was especially
significant in the post-war period. In Skeena, post-war corporate development attracted
numerous unionized workers to the region and contributed to the CCF's class politics. The
populism of Omineca was also a function of post-war development. It was not (like other
populist traditions) connected to localistic or co-operative inclinations but in fact, was almost
1 exclusively anti-elitist. This populism integrated the anti-elite labeling of "the People" with a
language that promoted the elite-controlled development of the 1950s, for the integration
alleviated anxieties over that elite-control without actually threatening the existing pattern of
development. The northwest's populist language was a function of a "non-populist" culture.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/10768 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Price, Anthony Daio |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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