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The Conservatives under McBride and his successor William John Browser held power for thirteen years until they were defeated by the Liberals in 1916. The Tories returned to power in 1928 under Simon Fraser Tolmie, the last time the Conservatives would form a majority government in the province. The Tolmie government had been unable to deal with the Great Depression and was racked by infighting and indecision. The party was in such dissaray that, despite being the government, the Conservative provincial association decided not to run any candidates in the 1933 election.
In the election of 1941 the Conservatives scraped themselves up to 12 seats compared to 21 for the Liberals and 14 for the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (which became the New Democratic Party in 1961). The Liberals and Conservatives formed a coalition government and went to the extent of merging their parties. The business community feared the growing strength of the socialist CCF and supporters of both the Liberals and the Tories argued that a united free market party was needed to keep the CCF from taking power.
The tensions between conservative and liberal factions mounted over time and after ten years the coalition disintegrated. The Conservatives refounded their party in 1951 calling themselves the Progressive Conservatives as the federal party had changed adopted the progressive prefix in 1942.
W. A. C. Bennett, an MLA ran for the leadership of the Tories and lost. He left the party and joined the small Social Credit League becoming its leader and moving it to a populist conservative platform. The coalition government whose raison d'etre had become keeping the socialist CCF out of power, had introduced a Single Transferable Vote system for the 1952 election in hopes that Conservatives and Liberal supporters would list the other party as their second choice and keep the CCF out of power.
This worked to the benefit of Social Credit who were able to take advantage of divisions between the Liberals and Conservatives as well as the desire for change and Bennett's party was able to win a slim minority government with 19 Social Credit MLAs compared to 18 CCFers, 1 Labour, 6 Liberals and 4 Tories.
It was clear to those who wanted to keep the CCF out of power that only the Social Credit Party would be able to accomplish that task and, in the 1953 election, Liberal and Tory supporters transferred their support to Bennett's party sweeping it to power with 28 out of 48 seats. Having a majority government the Social Credit governemnt changed the electoral system back to first past the post in order to cement their base. Social Credit became, in effect, the new capitalist coalition party and both the Liberals and the Tories became marginalised.
The Progressive Conservatives elected only four MLAs in 1952, one in 1953 and were completely shut out of the legislature between 1956 and 1972 as conservative minded voters moved to Social Credit. The Tories managed to elect two MLAs in the 1972 and 1975 elections but have been not elected a single representative since then.
In 1991, the party changed its name to the BC Conservative Party but they were unable to take advantage of the collapse of Social Credit that year and have remained a fringe party.