I found a handy website on the weekend (I think Andrew Coyne may have tweeted it). It’s a library for every political party election platform in Canada: http://www.poltext.org/en/part-1-electronic-political-texts/electronic-manifestos-canadian-provinces

The B.C. section is great – although it hasn’t been update yet with the 2013 platforms. It even includes the 1945 CCF platform, and pretty much everything since.

It includes newspaper articles for the 1952 election where the Socreds broke through, and their 1953 platforms when they finally secured a strong majority.

There’s the 1972 Davey Barrett NDP platform, promising a “new deal for people,” as part of their “new era.” And then the 1975 Socred platform promising to “get B.C. moving again.”

In the 1991 section, there’s Mike Harcourt’s NDP promising a “better way,” and in 1996, Glen Clark’s noting the NDP are “on your side.”

In that 1996 election, Gordon Campbell and the BC Liberals had asked voters to muster up “the courage to change,” but the NDP still won. The “new era” moniker was dusted off for the 2001 election, when the Liberals won their 77-2 landslide.

It’s good stuff, and if you’re a political junkie, you’ll lose hours of your life reading through this stuff.