In the John Hughes’ book it’s mentioned that the
trial took place in what Hughes calls an “Edmonton police Magistrate’s
Court”, which I believe would be lower Court dealing with most ordinary,
less serious charges.
“Major Douglas and
Alberta Social Credit”, Bob Hesketh’s
book, gives the presiding Judge’s
name as being Justice Ives, and relates
that he had previously ruled “The Provincial Securities Act”, a piece of legislation enacted by Aberhart’s Government was ultra vires. After the conviction of Powell and Unwin a Provincial “Order-in-Council” removed
the Judge from office. (This would be
like an ‘Executive Order’ in the USA.)
At the time, Aberhart was also
acting as Attorney-General, his previous A-G, John Hugill,
having resigned. Coming at a time when
the Government was already under heavy fire for its so-called “Press gag”
legislation, the removal of the Judge this way would’ve likely been seen
as an unwarranted interference with the independence of the Judiciary. In the Hesketh book
the charge against the two defendants is called ‘defamatory libel’,
but I have previously seen it referred to elsewhere as ‘seditious libel’.
There apparently had been considerable efforts exerted by Powell to patch-up the internal dissention within the
Social Credit caucus over Aberhart’s failure to
move to bring in ‘social credit’ successfully. As part of this reconciliation and
re-unification MLAs were asked to sign a secret
pledge, which, according to Hesketh,
Hugill,
the Attorney-General, “thought the pledge might be seditious, in that it
referred to Social Credit members being virtually at war.” (with Finance, and in defiance of the Constitution [the BNA
Act of 1867, which established ‘Canada’, and
he believed reserved powers over credit and currency to the Dominion] )
Further to "Banker
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