Boss Johnson - Johnson As Premier

Johnson As Premier

Johnson's government introduced compulsory health insurance, and a 3% provincial sales tax to pay for it. It expanded the highway system, extended the Pacific Great Eastern Railway, and negotiated the Alcan Agreement, which facilitated construction of the Kenney Dam, the first major hydroelectric project in the province. The government also coped with the devastating 1948 flooding of the Fraser River, declaring a state of emergency and beginning a programme of diking the river's banks through the Fraser Valley. Johnson is also noted for appointing Nancy Hodges as the first female Speaker in the British Commonwealth.

The Liberal-Conservative Coalition government, with the Liberals led by Johnson and the Conservatives led by Herbert Anscomb, won a landslide victory in the 1949 election—at 61% the greatest percentage of the popular vote in BC history. Although Maitland's caucus was crucial to the government's parliamentary mandate, the larger Liberal caucus earned Johnson the Premier's job. After the Conservatives withdrew from the coalition in 1951, Johnson's government collapsed. In the subsequent 1952 election, the Liberals were defeated by W.A.C. Bennett's Social Credit Party, and Johnson lost his own seat to Rae Eddie of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation. With the defeat, the long history of formal coalition government between the Liberal and Conservative parties in British Columbia came to an end, and a new era of a two-party system (CCF/NDP versus Social Credit) emerged.

Johnson returned to private life, and died in Victoria in 1964, aged 73 years. He is interred in the city's Ross Bay Cemetery.