Good Steward: The Ernest C. Manning Story

by Brian Brennan

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oral-history interviews Manning did for the University of Alberta archives after he left provincial politics; from an unpublished memoir written by his wife Muriel; from interviews with family members, former colleagues and others; and from the various books and articles written about the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 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.

240 pages, Hardcover

First published September 12, 2008

About the author

I’m an Irish-born Canadian writer who has published 15 nonfiction books of biography and social history, and one historical fiction novel. For more information, visit my website at www.brianbrennan.ca

Reviews

[Jim Heninger]

I picked up this book at the library after it finally reopened after the COVID shutdown- and I am glad I did. One of my best friends growing up attended Ernest Manning High School and I was simply curious to learn - who was this man?

I was pleased to have revealed to me such a large chunk of my Albertan heritage.

I am happy to report that the biography stays true to Premier Manning’s mantra that a person’s faith, if it was genuine, had to influence a person’s politics. “And if it did, you ought to say so.”

I am convinced that most of us remain rooted in beliefs and values non-secular. Some may recognize a Christian foundation, others may be founded in Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Indigenous or any one of a host of other spiritual backgrounds. Even those who are agnostic or atheist might even agree that their moral foundations passed down to them from parents and ancestors who believed in something more powerful than themselves are worthy of recognition and even a voice. Our decisions both personal and collective most certainly are and should be influenced as a result. This approach worked very well for Ernest Manning.

Although I am not the type usually to read political biographies i would recommend this book to any Albertan interested in understanding the man who was premier of our province from 1943 to 1968.