The first book-length biography of Ernest Manning, the longest-serving premier of Alberta, who directed the transformation of the province from Depression-era poverty to modern, oil-based affluence."
Brian Brennan traces the story of a poor farm boy from Saskatchewan with little formal education who rose to become one of the most successful politicians in Western Canadian history while simultaneously attaining long-lasting success as the director of" Canada's National Back to the Bible Hour" radio program.
Drawing extensively from a series of oral-history interviews Manning did for the University of Alberta archives after he left provincial politics, from an unpublished memoir written by his wife Muriel, from interviews with family members, former colleagues and others, and from the various books and articles written about the rise and fall of the Social Credit in Alberta, Brennan tells how Manning:
1.) Left the farm as a teenager after hearing William Aberhart preaching the Bible on the radio and moved to Calgary with the intention of becoming a minister of the gospel.
2.) Became Aberhart's full-time assistant, helping run the Prophetic Bible Institute and participating in his radio broadcasts.
3.) Helped Aberhart organize study groups around the province to make Albertans aware of the social-credit monetary reform theories of an English economist named Major Clifford Douglas.
4.) Coordinated the initiative to turn Social Credit from an educational into a political movement when the ruling United Farmers of Alberta refused to adopt its economic policies.
5.) Stage-managed the successful 1935 provincial election campaign that saw Social Credit swept to power with fifty-six of sixty-three seats and, at age twenty-six, became the youngest cabinet minister in the British Empire.