40 years ago: Lorne Reznowski's election as leader of Social Credit party of Canada shows that some things have changed--and some haven't

Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD; Psalms 33:12a

Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people. Proverbs 14:34

On May 7, 1978, the Social Credit Party of Canada, meeting at the Winnipeg Convention Centre, elected Lorne Reznowski, 49, a professor of English literature at the University of Manitoba, as its new leader. Mr. Reznowski obtained 356 of the 471 votes required (583 delegates attended) to defeat Martin Hattersley, a lawyer from Edmonton. Social Credit had 9 members in the House of Commons, but hadn't elected anyone from outside Quebec to the House since 1965. Mr. Reznowski appeared to have the support of Quebec delegates, and his election as leader was an attempt to regain support in western Canada.

As reported by Andy Blicq in the Winnipeg Free Press, May 8, 1978:

At a press conference after his victory announcement, Reznowski...called Prime Minister Trudeau a "spoiled brat millionaire's son" who has treated the economy like a toy.

"Trudeau has broken that toy," Reznowski said.

Reznowski claims that Trudeau has created a degenerate country plagued by homosexuals, abortion mills, sterilization, euthanasia and high finance.

Lorne Reznowski obtained less than 3% of the vote in a by-election in the Manitoba riding of Saint Boniface in October 1978, and resigned as party leader in February 1979. Under new leader Fabien Roy of Quebec, Social Credit elected 6 MPs in the May 1979 federal election. By December, one MP had defected to the governing Progressive Conservatives, and the remaining five were defeated in the February 1980 federal election. Mr. Hattersley led the party from 1981-1983, but resigned after his decision to expel several notable anti-Semites was reversed. The Social Credit Party of Canada never elected another MP, and the number of candidates they ran diminished until Elections Canada deregistered the party in September 1993, a month before another federal election. The Social Credit Party of Canada continued to exist as an incorporated entity until at least 2006.

As for Mr. Reznowski, he disappeared from the public eye so completely that this blogger, in a Google search 10 years ago, failed to discover if he was dead or alive, although there was a comment somewhere claiming that he had died in 1992. While reading the Winnipeg Free Press in November 2011, I came across a death notice for Lorne Reznowski that appeared legitimate.

Lorne Reznowski's comments about Pierre Trudeau were, and are true. 40 years later, Canada is governed by Pierre Trudeau's son Justin, and Mr. Reznowski's comments about Pierre are true of Justin, except that Trudeaupia (a more accurate name for the country, which remains "Canada" in name only) is even more of a degenerate country than it was in 1978, and way more than it was when Pierre Trudeau took office as Prime Minister in 1968. It's worth pondering that while Mr. Reznowski's opinions on the Canadian society produced by Pierre Trudeau were out of fashion by 1978, such views could at least be expressed in public. If Mr. Reznowski--the leader of a national political party that still had a few members of Parliament--were to express such opinions today, he'd probably be arrested as a "hate criminal," or, even worse, be subjected to an inquisition from a "human rights" commission.

See my posts: 50 years after Pierre Trudeau introduced a bill to legalize perversion, Justin Trudeau apologizes to perverts (December 23, 2017)

50 years ago: Canada goes under permanent foreign occupation (April 27, 2018)