Rural Electrification in Alberta

By the end of the First World War, electricity was well established in Alberta. The province was home to the first municipally-owned power utility in the country; Edmonton, Calgary and Lethbridge all enjoyed the benefits of modern, electric streetcar systems; and the Bow River had been harnessed to generate power at the Horseshoe Falls Dam, with plans for future hydroelectric development well underway. There was just one group that had not yet enjoyed the benefits of electricity—the majority of the population that lived in rural, rather than urban, Alberta.

Up through the 1920s, there was little pressure to extend electricity into rural Alberta. Electricity was still viewed as something of a novelty rather than as a necessity, and the cost of rural electrification was prohibitive, both for the companies that would have to pay for the new infrastructure necessary to deliver it, and by the farmers themselves who would have to add the monthly cost of electricity to already tight operating budgets. By the early 1920s, however, a third option was being discussed throughout the province—a publicly-owned utility. The province would assume financial responsibility for the

cost of the infrastructure and regulate prices to ensure a fair deal for farmers. Public utilities were well established at the provincial level in Manitoba and Ontario, and momentum seemed to be moving Alberta in that direction after the First World War. In addition, a new government, the United Farmers of Alberta (UFA), took power in Alberta.

The UFA began as a grassroots populist movement and entered politics for the first time with great success in the 1921 provincial election, winning a majority government. Resolutions at UFA conventions across the province had called for rural electrification and public ownership, resolutions that were supported by the women’s auxiliary of the movement, the United Farm Women of Alberta. The UFA government explored the possibility of rural electrification in the 1920s, but the estimated cost—$200 million—was deemed prohibitively expensive. Still, advocates pushed for rural electrification and public ownership through the 1920s until the Great Depression shelved any possibility of such a major public investment. In short, the government could not afford to pay for the infrastructure, and farmers certainly couldn’t pay for the monthly cost in the ravaged agricultural economy.

Pressure for rural electrification resumed after the Second World War. Electricity was no longer viewed as a frivolous luxury, either by farmers (who increasingly viewed it as essential to the operation of their farms) or by their wives (who wanted access to labour-saving electronic appliances that were increasingly available after the Second World War). Alberta certainly stood out as lagging far behind in rural electrification; in 1945, less than four percent of Alberta farms had electricity, a number far behind most other provinces and the American Midwest. Further, the cause of rural electrification (and public utility ownership) received political support from the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, one of the opposition parties challenging Social Credit’s hold on power in Alberta. Against the forces calling for rural electrification and public ownership were the power companies, who resisted delivering power to rural areas because of the cost; urban dwellers, who did not want to bear the cost of the necessary infrastructure; and the Social Credit premier, Ernest Manning, who recognized the pressing need for rural electrification, but was staunchly opposed to public ownership. The issue was finally decided in a heated 1948

plebiscite, when the voters of Alberta rejected public ownership by the narrowest of margins (the ‘no’ side won by 151 votes out of a total of 279,831 cast).

With the idea of government ownership now dismissed, the cost of rural electrification would fall to the farmers, who turned to a solution typical of the rural West—the co-operative. Farmers across the province organized into co-ops to raise half the necessary money for electricity in their districts; the government provided the rest of the money in the form of loans. By the late 1960s, a total of 416 co-ops (known as Rural Electrification Associations, or REAs) had been established. The REAs would own the power distribution system in their districts, while the power companies provided the electricity and the maintenance. Many REAs even played a significant role providing labour for building the infrastructure, lending a hand with preparing and raising power poles. The results were extraordinary; while only a tiny minority of Albertan farmers enjoyed the benefits of electricity at the end of the Second World War, 87% of rural Alberta had access to electricity by 1961.