William Andrew Cecil Bennett (September 6, 1900 – February 23, 1979) was a Canadian politician who served as the 25th premier of British Columbia from 1952 to 1972. With just over 20 years in office, Bennett remains the longest-serving premier in British Columbia history. He was a member of the Social Credit Party (Socreds).
Notable achievements by the Bennett government included the adoption of BC's first provincial flag, the establishment of the second Bank of British Columbia, and the creation of BC Hydro and BC Ferries. Bennett led the Socreds to a total of seven consecutive election victories. Though he led the party to defeat in the 1972 election, his son Bill Bennett led it to victory in the 1975 election and served as premier until 1986.
William Andrew Cecil Bennett was born on September 6, 1900, in Hastings, New Brunswick, Canada, one of five children of Andrew Havelock Bennett and Mary Emma Burns. His father was a third cousin of Richard Bedford Bennett, eleventh Prime Minister of Canada.
Bennett left formal school in grade nine, during the First World War, to take a job in a hardware store. As an adult, he pursued correspondence courses to improve his knowledge and job potential. He joined the Air Force, but the war ended before he saw active duty. At the age of 18, he and his family moved to Edmonton, Alberta, and then to Westlock, Alberta, where Bennett's father operated a hardware store.
In 1927 Bennett married Annie Elizabeth May Richards. In 1930 they moved to Victoria, and then Kelowna with their two children, Anita and R.J. A third child, William, was born in 1932. In Kelowna, Bennett joined such fraternal organizations as the local Gyro Club, Masonic Lodge, and the Kelowna Club, and was active with his family in the United Church of Canada.
He was usually referred to as W. A. C. Bennett, although some referred to him either affectionately or mockingly as "Wacky" Bennett. To his close friends, he was known as "Cece".
Bennett opened a hardware store in 1927, in partnership with another man, and married May Bennett soon afterwards. Bennett was able to sell his interest just before the 1929 Stock Market crash. He decided to leave the tough Alberta economic conditions and moved with his family to the Okanagan Valley, in the interior of British Columbia, settling in Kelowna. There he opened his own hardware store, known as Bennett's Hardware. A successful merchant, he served as President of the Kelowna Board of Trade from 1937 to 1939.
In 1932 Bennett, Giuseppe Guezzi, and Pasquale "Cap" Capozzi established a wine-making company to produce wine from the vast surplus of Okanagan apples that were going to waste during the Depression. Three years later Bennett and Capozzi, both teetotalers, concluded that there was no market for their apple wines. They switched to making wines from California grapes. In 1936 they established Calona Wines, the name a phonetic spelling of Kelowna. Bennett departed the company in 1940 to enter politics.
Bennett joined the British Columbia Conservative Party. He ran for the South Okanagan nomination for the 1937 provincial election for the British Columbia Legislative Assembly, but was unsuccessful. In 1941, he won the Conservative Party nomination and the general election. Following that election, the Conservative and Liberal parties voted to govern in coalition.
As a coalitionist, Bennett was re-elected in 1945. He resigned the seat in 1948 in order to run as Progressive Conservative candidate in the Yale federal by-election of that year, but did not win. Regaining the Coalition nomination for the South Okanagan seat, Bennett was returned to the British Columbia Legislative Assembly in the 1949 provincial election.
After failing in his bid to become leader of the provincial Progressive Conservative Party in 1951, Bennett left the party to sit as an independent member. In December of that year, he took out a membership in the Social Credit League.
Commencing with the 1952 provincial election, the province used an alternative vote system designed by the Conservative and Liberal parties to keep the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation out of power. However, the Liberal and Conservative parties were not at all as popular among voters as expected. The combined Liberal and PC vote total was 120,000 fewer votes than in the previous election, while the Social Credit party received almost 200,000 more votes than in 1949. Even if Liberal and Conservative voters had given their second choices strictly to the other party, the old coalition still would not have taken a majority of seats. Only in eight districts did supporters of the two parties together form majority. In the election, often Liberal and Conservative voters' second preference was marked for Social Credit candidates. As well, the CCF's second preferences were overwhelmingly for Social Credit candidates.
The Social Credit party won 19 seats of the total of 48, and became the largest party represented in the Assembly and formed a minority government. The Socreds (as they were informally known) convinced an Independent Labour Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) to support them as well.
Not even the Socreds had expected to win the election. They entered the campaign without a full-time leader; their nominal leader was Ernest George Hansell, a federal MP from Alberta. Party president Lyle Wicks convened a meeting of the newly elected MLAs to elect British Columbia's new premier. Bennett, one of only three Socred MLAs who had any previous experience in the legislature, was elected party leader and premier-designate on July 15, 1952. Of the 19 votes cast, Bennett received 10, another candidate received 2, and two more (including Philip Gaglardi) one vote each.
On August 1, Bennett was sworn in as Premier of British Columbia; he was repeatedly reelected and served for 20 years. In order to get a stronger mandate, Bennett deliberately engineered the defeat of his initial minority government; he forced an election for June 1953 based on a school funding proposal. After Social Credit was re-elected with a clear majority in 1953, Bennett abandoned the preferential voting method.
The Social Credit Party won seven consecutive elections during W. A. C. Bennett's involvement and leadership: 1952, 1953, 1956, 1960, 1963, 1966, and 1969. The only election Bennett lost as a member of Social Credit was in 1972, the last election in which he was a candidate.
As premier during election season he would often warn the public "the socialist hordes are at the gates, my friend."
While the Social Credit party was founded to promote the social credit theories of monetary reform, these could not be implemented at the provincial level, as the Alberta Social Credit Party had learned in the 1930s. Bennett quickly converted the provincial party into a populist conservative party. It was devoted to keeping the CCF out of power. But, as leader of the Social Credit Party of Canada's second most powerful provincial branch, Bennett spoke for the party in federal election campaigns. During the 1957 election, he spoke for the party at a rally in Regina, Saskatchewan. In the 1965 election, Bennett and his cabinet ministers toured BC to encourage voters to elect Social Credit MPs to promote BC's interests.