Thomas Clement
"Tommy" Douglas, PC, CC, SOM (20 October 1904 – 24 February 1986)
He was a Scottish-born Baptist minister who became a prominent Canadian social democratic politician. As leader of the Saskatchewan Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) from 1942 and the seventh Premier of Saskatchewan from 1944 to 1961, he led the first socialist government in North America and introduced universal public healthcare to Canada. When the CCF united with the Canadian Labour Congress to form the New Democratic Party, he was elected as its first federal leader and served in that post from 1961 to 1971. He is warmly remembered for his folksy wit and oratory with which he expressed his determined idealism, exemplified by his fable of Mouseland.
In 1930 Douglas married Irma Dempsey, a music student at Brandon College. They had one daughter, actress Shirley Douglas, and they later adopted a second daughter Joan, who became a nurse. His grandson is the actor Kiefer Sutherland.[1]
He was voted "The Greatest Canadian" of all time in a nationally televised contest organized by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 2004.
The miniseries Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story, was filmed between February and May 2005 and aired on CBC Television in two parts on March 12 and 13, 2006.
Early life
Tommy Douglas was born in Falkirk, Scotland in 1904. In 1910, his family emigrated to Canada, where they settled in Winnipeg. Just before he left Scotland, Douglas fell and injured his knee. Osteomyelitis set in and he underwent a number of operations in Scotland in an attempt to cure the condition. Later however, in Winnipeg, the osteomyelitis flared up again and Douglas was sent to hospital. Doctors there told his parents his leg would have to be amputated. Fortunately, a well-known orthopedic surgeon took an interest in his case and agreed to treat the boy for free if his parents would allow medical students to observe. After several operations, Douglas's leg was saved. This experience convinced him that health care should be free to all. "I felt that no boy should have to depend either for his leg or his life upon the ability of his parents to raise enough money to bring a first-class surgeon to his bedside," Douglas told an interviewer many years later.[
During World War I, the family returned to Glasgow. They came back to Winnipeg in 1919, in time for Douglas to witness the Winnipeg General Strike. From a rooftop vantage point on Main Street, he witnessed the police charging the strikers with clubs and guns, a streetcar being overturned and set on fire. He also witnessed the RCMP shoot and kill one of the workers.
At the age of fifteen, Douglas began an amateur career in boxing. Weighing 135 pounds, Douglas fought in 1922 for the Lightweight Championship of Manitoba; and after a six round fight won the title. Douglas sustained a broken nose, a loss of some teeth, and a strained hand and thumb. Douglas successfully held the title the following year.
[edit]Education
Tommy Douglas started elementary school in Winnipeg. He completed his elementary education after returning to Glasgow in 1914, then entered high school where, among other things, he studied elocution. While his father fought as a poorly paid soldier in World War I, Douglas supplemented the family income by taking a variety of part-time jobs. He worked as a soap boy in a barber shop, rubbing lather into tough whiskers, then dropped out of high school at 13 after landing a good-paying job in a cork factory. The owner offered to pay Douglas's way through night school so that he could learn Portuguese and Spanish, languages that would enable him to become a cork buyer. However, the family returned to Winnipeg when the war ended and Douglas entered the printing trades. He served a five-year apprenticeship and worked as a linotype operator finally acquiring his journeyman's papers, but decided to return to school to pursue his ambition to become an ordained minister.
M.A. thesis on eugenics
Douglas graduated from Brandon College in 1930, and completed his Master's degree (M.A.) in Sociology from McMaster University in 1933. His thesis entitled The Problems of the Subnormal Family endorsed eugenics.The thesis proposed a system that would have required couples seeking to marry to be certified as mentally and morally fit. Those deemed to be "subnormal" because of low intelligence, moral laxity or venereal disease would be sent to state farms or camps while those judged to be mentally defective or incurably diseased would be sterilized.
Douglas rarely mentioned his thesis later in his life and his government never enacted eugenics policies even though two official reviews of Saskatchewan's mental health system recommended such a program when he became premier and minister of health.By that time, many people questioned eugenics after Nazi Germany had embraced it to create a "master race".Instead, Douglas implemented vocational training for the mentally handicapped and therapy for those suffering from mental disorders.(It may be noted that two Canadian provinces, Alberta and British Columbia, had eugenics legislation that imposed forced sterilization. Alberta's law was first passed in 1928 while B.C. enacted its legislation in 1933. It was not until 1972 that both provinces repealed the legislation.
PhD research in Chicago
In the summer of 1931, Douglas continued his studies in sociology at the University of Chicago. He never did complete his PhD thesis, but was deeply disturbed by his field work in the Depression-era "jungles" or hobo camps where about 75,000 transients sheltered in lean-to's venturing out by day to beg or to steal. Douglas interviewed men who once belonged to the American middle class --- despondent bank clerks, lawyers and doctors. "There were little soup kitchens run by the Salvation Army and the churches," Douglas said later. "In the first half hour they'd be cleaned out. After that there was nothing...It was impossible to describe the hopelessness." Douglas was equally disturbed that members of the Socialist Party sat around quoting Marx and Lenin, waiting for a revolution while refusing to help the destitute. "That experience soured me with absolutists," Douglas said. "I've no patience with people who want to sit back and talk about a blueprint for society and do nothing about it."
From pulpit to politics:
Two months after Douglas graduated from Brandon College, he married Irma Dempsey and the two moved to the small town of Weyburn, Saskatchewan where he became an ordained minister at the Calvary Baptist Church. Irma was only 19, while Douglas was a young-looking 25. With the onset of the Depression, Douglas became a social activist in Weyburn, and joined the new CCF organization. He was elected to the Canadian House of Commons in the 1935 federal election.
After the outbreak of World War II, Douglas enlisted in the wartime Canadian Army. He had volunteered for overseas service and was on a draft of men headed for the Winnipeg Grenadiers when a medical examination turned up his old leg problems. Douglas stayed in Canada and the Grenadiers headed for Hong Kong. But for that ailment, he would have been with the regiment when its members were killed or captured at Hong Kong in December 1941.
Federal NDP leader
Tommy Douglas, circa 1971
When the CCF allied with the Canadian Labour Congress to form the New Democratic Party (NDP) in 1961, Douglas defeated Hazen Argue at the first NDP leadership convention and became the new party's first leader. Douglas resigned from provincial politics and sought election to the House of Commons in the riding of Regina City in 1962, but was defeated. He was later elected in a by-election in the riding of Burnaby—Coquitlam, British Columbia.
Re-elected as MP for that riding in the 1963 and 1965 elections, Douglas lost the redistricted seat of Burnaby—Seymour in the 1968 federal election. He won a seat again in a 1969 by-election in the riding of Nanaimo—Cowichan—The Islands, following the death of Colin Cameron in 1968, and represented it until his retirement from electoral politics in 1979.
While the NDP did better in elections than its CCF predecessor, the party did not experience the breakthrough it had hoped for. Despite this, Douglas was greatly respected by party members and Canadians at large as the party wielded considerable influence during the minority governments of Lester Pearson. In 1970, Douglas and the NDP took a controversial but principled stand against the implementation of the War Measures Act during the October Crisis.
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