Home Social Landscape Featured Articles Community Political Organization in the Rimbey District, 1930-35

Community Political Organization in the Rimbey District, 1930-35

by Robin Hunter

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We do have a record of one of FUL's activities, in a terse report in the Hoadley local column of The Rimbey Record for  May 5, 1933: "The Farmers' Unity League held a Mayday parade, flying the red flag, and when it was known they intended to circle the town, the Canadian flag was hoisted and led the procession by team and wagon. We made our homes under harder conditions than we have today, and we intend to stay by the old flag." This reporter's sympathies are obvious, and raise the question why the only acknowledgment of the FUL's existence was this rather censorious remark and the November description cited above. One possibility might be that the presence of FUL represented the first implantation the Communist Party had been able to achieve in the area, and that up to 1935 there was nothing else to be noted. Another possibility is that the local reporters for The Record, either through personal bias or lack of interest, simply did not not deem FUL worthy of mention.

The most concrete information we were able to find on Liberty Hall comes from a regional history, Tributaries of the Blindman (1967), which reveals that the hall had been founded in May 1922 (very close to the original settlement of the district), by a group composed mainly of settlers of Scandinavian origin, as a non-profit endeavour. Construction, funded by public donations, was begun in June, and the first social function, a dance, was held in the middle of that month, under the stars, since the roof was not yet built. From this community-based origin, ownership and control of Liberty Hall was formally handed over to the "Sunrise local" of the UFA in 1927. The end of the UFA's stewardship is not specified, but the organization underwent substantial changes in the next few years. After 1940, for a period of at least 20 years, the hall seems to have reverted to mainly local uses — weddings, dances, and similar events — but in the mid-1960s life appears to have picked up a little for Liberty Hall. The executive board was replenished, new shingles installed, the grounds tended, electricity connected and a functional coffee urn installed, which meant that a provincial grant could be secured for what was now referred to a "community centre." By 1969, mass community involvement was achieved with a successful fund-raiser, the "Walk-A-Thon" from Hoadley to Rimbey.

That the UFA took control of Liberty Hall in the 1920s is symptomatic of the peculiar nature of that extremely interesting organization, and its particular place in most rural communities in Alberta. The UFA was a complex, even contradictory, organization. At the start of the century, it had been exactly what the name implied, a general service and co-operative organization for the agrarian population. It sponsored a range of educational, economic and cultural services designed to promote awareness of effective agricultural techniques and methods and to make community life in the farming districts more social. Its membership was from the last wave of original settlers to "the Last Best West," populist in attitude, and rather dissatisfied with the status quo. The UFA generally functioned as a political and social interest group on behalf of farmers by expressing the generally rationalist and zealously reforming outlook which characterized frontier farmers at the end of the 19^th century. In 1921 the UFA had taken the huge step — whether backwards or forwards was debatable — of becoming a political party. It did so as part of a periodic Great Revolt against the Canadian party system, by contesting most of the provincial ridings in a provincial general election, winning a majority of the seats, and forming the government. The Ponoka riding, in which Rimbey is situated, voted 63 per cent in favour of the UFA candidate. In doing so, it anticipated the entire Prairie West, which later that year, in the first post-war federal election, put an end to the Eastern-based, two-party system by electing the Progressive Party across the prairies, and even rural Ontario, to hammer at the gates of office in Ottawa.

Alberta, as the westernmost prairie province, was the last recipient of a large influx of settlers, not only from Europe, but also from the United States. At the close of the 19^th century the entire North American continent had been the scene of intensive debate on a flurry of radical or utopian theories which had as their goal the reconstruction or reformation of society. Rural society on the western plains was one of the most receptive arenas for these ideas and ideologies. It became a testing-house of reformist schemes for group and community living. The Victorian century had seen a great flowering of this speculative pastime, as debates on these matters had been incorporated into the popular recreational culture: novels such as Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward; reform movements like the People's Party; projects ranging from the socialist experiments of New Harmony and Brook Farm to various religious colonies striving to attain the true Christian life; and any number of larger, more secular "schemes" to enable the whole of society to realize its potential more fully. Examples of this secular type include the Single Tax on land advocated by followers of Henry George (long a hot item on the western plains), women's suffrage, the old age pension, "direct legislation," temperance and prohibition, and an entire range of projects based on, or rationalized in terms of, the "Social Gospel."

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