The embers of a fiery conflict between B.C. and Alberta over the Kinder-Morgan pipeline are still smouldering.

In early February, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley levied a province-wide boycott on B.C. wines after her counterpart, B.C. Premier John Horgan, proposed restrictions that would put the brakes on the pipeline project. Though the wine ban was lifted less than two weeks ago, the war wages on in court. On February 22, Horgan said his NDP government would seek an official ruling on the legality of halting diluted bitumen flows through the province.

The drama encircling Kinder-Morgan is far from unprecedented. In fact, Canada’s earliest major pipeline project started off with one of the biggest rows in Canadian parliamentary history.

In 1956, the smooth-sailing Liberal government hit the rocks for the first time in over two decades.

The government made plans in May of that year to allow the recently founded (and at that time American-owned) TransCanada Pipelines to move natural gas from Alberta to Quebec via what would then be the world’s longest pipeline.

But as Parks Canada recounts, the opposition parties were vehemently against the project, which in their view would subject Canada’s economy to the will of American capital. The Liberals needed a strong parliamentary showing through the spring months in order to stave off the oncoming windstorm of dissent in the house.

Enter Clarence Decatur Howe. The Liberal Party’s Minister of Trade and Commerce was well seasoned, hard-nosed and unabashedly resourceful. In a 2008 blog post, Calgary-based oil historian Peter McKenzie-Brown explained Howe’s unofficial title, “the Minister of Everything.” He was the right-hand man of then Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent, and had sway over much of the Liberal government of his day.

Having introduced a bill to authorize the pipeline, Howe swiftly gained the support of his fellow Liberals. Parliamentary Hansards show that Progressive Conservative opposition leader George Alexander Drew took exception to what he perceived to be a hyper-partisan display. “The anvil chorus is following instructions. The trained seals have now learned to make a sound in unison,” he said in parliament on May 8.

On May 15, Liberal finance minister Walter Edward Harris addressed the ‘trained seals’ label that had become a steady refrain in parliament. Rather than deny the accusation, Harris evoked the classic ‘takes one to know one’ rebuttal.

“Everyone in this house knows that all parties practically invariably follow a single party line,” he said.

In the end, partisan politics would win the day. On June 7, 1956, the bill was signed. While the ink dried, the house mourned the death of Liberal MP Lorne MacDougall, whose death the day before marked the end of the final debate before the deadline.

The pipeline was extended – all the way to Montreal by 1958 – but the Liberals’ term in office was not. Howe’s hardball tactics were topped off by the rarely used closure provision that served to cut short the debate. The move proved to be too forceful, if not undemocratic in the eyes of many Canadians, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia. St. Laurent suffered a surprise defeat to John Diefenbaker’s Conservatives in the 1957 election, ending 22 years of Liberal leadership.

A lesson can by drawn by today’s Liberal Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, who has stood steadfast behind the Kinder-Morgan project. With the national public split in half on the current pipeline debate according to the latest poll by Ipsos Global Public Affairs, too much force either way could mean falling off the tightrope in between.

If nothing else, the events in 1956 proved that Canadian pipelines are about more than the flow of bitumen or natural gas from one province to the next – they also tend to transport votes from one party to another.

Document 1: ‘Ottawa Letter’ by George Bain in The Globe and Mail, 30 May 1956 

Document 2: ‘Opposition Charges Guillotine Methods’ in The Globe and Mail, 16 May 1956