Tommy Douglas

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The Hon. Thomas Clement Douglas

Premier of Saskatchewan
Rank:	7th
Term of Office:	1944–1961
Predecessor:	William John Patterson
Successor:	Woodrow S. Lloyd
Date of Birth:	October 20, 1904
Place of Birth:	Falkirk, Scotland
Spouse:	Irma Dempsey
Profession:	Baptist minister
Political Party:	CCF/NDP

Thomas Clement Douglas, PC, CC, SOM, MA, LL.D (hc) (October 20, 1904 – February 24, 1986) 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 medicare 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 steadfast 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. Through Shirley, he is grandfather of actor Kiefer Sutherland.

In 2004, he was voted "The Greatest Canadian" of all time in a nationally televised contest organized by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The miniseries Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story, was filmed between February and May of 2005 and aired on CBC in two parts on March 12 and 13, 2006.

Contents 1 Early life and activism 2 Premier of Saskatchewan 2.1 Medicare 3 Federal NDP leader 4 Late career and retirement 5 Artistic depiction 6 Notes and References 7 External links

[edit] Early life and activism

Douglas was born in 1904 in Falkirk, Scotland. In 1910, his family emigrated to Canada, for a better life, where they settled in Winnipeg. As a child, Douglas injured his leg and developed osteomyelitis. The leg would have been amputated were it not for a doctor who saw the condition as a good subject to teach his students. This rooted Douglas's belief that health care should be free to all, as he thought people shouldn't be dependent on generosity in order to get their health in good order. 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, and a man being shot. [2]

In 1924, Douglas attended Brandon College to study for the ministry. While there, Douglas was influenced by the social gospel movement, which combined Christian principles with social reform. He graduated from Brandon College in 1930, and completed his Master's degree (MA) in Sociology from McMaster University in 1933. His thesis entitled The Problems of the Subnormal Family was on eugenics, a way to "solve the problems of the Subnormal Family" by sterilizing mentally and physically disabled Canadians, and send them to camps. [1] He later rejected this theory after a trip to Nazi Germany in 1938. He rarely mentioned his thesis later in his life, and his government never enacted eugenics policies (it may be noted that two Canadian provinces, Alberta and British Columbia, had eugenics legislation in the 1930s, and that the philosophy was not discredited in North America prior to World War II).

Following this, he became a minister at the Calvary Baptist Church in Weyburn, Saskatchewan. 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 foot 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.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Premier of Saskatchewan

Despite being a federal Member of Parliament and not yet an MLA, Douglas was elected the leader of the Saskatchewan CCF in 1942 and did not resign from the House of Commons until June 1, 1944. He led the CCF to power in the June 15, 1944 provincial election, winning 47 of 53 seats in the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan, and thus forming the first democratic socialist government in not only Canada, but all of North America as well.

Douglas and the Saskatchewan CCF then went on to win five straight majority victories in all subsequent Saskatchewan provincial elections up to 1960. Most of his government's pioneering innovations came about during its first term, including:

• the creation of the publicly owned Saskatchewan Power Corp., successor to the Saskatchewan Electrical Power Commission, which began a long program of extending electrical service to isolated farms and villages;
• the creation of Canada's first publicly owned automobile insurance service, the Saskatchewan Government Insurance Office;
• the creation of a large number of Crown Corporations, many of which competed with existing private sector interests;
• legislation that allowed the unionization of the public service;
• a program to offer free hospital care to all citizens—the first in Canada.
  

  

  Leader Post announces CCF victory.
• passage of the Saskatchewan Bill of Rights, legislation that broke new ground as it protected both fundamental freedoms and equality rights against abuse not only by government actors but also on the part of powerful private institutions and persons. (The Saskatchewan Bill of Rights preceded the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations by 18 months).[3]

Thanks to a booming postwar economy and the prudent financial management of provincial treasurer Clarence Fines, the Douglas government slowly paid off the huge debt left by the previous Liberal government, and created a budget surplus for the Saskatchewan government. Coupled with a federal government promise in 1959 to give even more money for medical care, this paved the way for Douglas's most notable achievement, the introduction of universal medicare legislation in 1961.

[edit] Medicare

Douglas's number one concern was the creation of Medicare. In the summer of 1962, Saskatchewan became the centre of a hard-fought struggle between the provincial government, the North American medical establishment and the province's physicians, who brought things to a halt with a doctors' strike. The doctors believed their best interests were not being met and feared a significant loss of income as well as government interference in medical care decisions. Their defenders have also pointed out that private or government medical insurance plans covered from 60-63 per cent of the Saskatchewan population before Medicare legislation was introduced.

An oft-forgotten political fact is that though Douglas is widely hailed as the father of medicare, he had retired from his position as Saskatchewan's premier, turned over this job in 1961 to Woodrow Lloyd and taken the leadership of the federal New Democratic Party.

Many had doubted the feasibilty of Medicare, but the CCF showed Canada how it could work—that the doctors could accept government supervision and that through careful financial planning, enough money could be set aside to set up a universal system. Proving it was possible on the provincial scale cleared the way for a national Medicare program.

The Saskatchewan program was finally launched by his successor, Woodrow Lloyd, in 1962. The success of the province's public health care program was not lost on the federal government. Another Saskatchewan born politician, newly elected Prime Minister John Diefenbaker decreed in 1958 that any province seeking to introduce a hospital plan would receive fifty cents on the dollar from the federal government. In 1962, Diefenbaker appointed Justice Emmett Hall - also of Saskatchewan, a noted Jurist and Supreme Court Justice - to Chair a Royal Commission on the national health system. In 1964, Justice Hall recommended the nationwide adoption of Saskatchewan's model of public health insurance. In 1966, the Liberal minority government of Lester B. Pearson created such a program, with the federal government paying 50% of the costs and the provinces the other 50%.

[edit] Federal NDP leader

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 it in the 1968 federal election. He won a seat again in a 1968 by-election in the riding of Nanaimo—Cowichan—The Islands, British Columbia, 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.

[edit] Late career and retirement

In 1962, Douglas received an honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Saskatchewan. He resigned as NDP leader in 1971, but retained his seat in the House of Commons. He served as the NDP's energy critic under the new leader, David Lewis. He was re-elected in the riding of Nanaimo–Cowichan–The Islands in the 1972 and 1974 elections.

He retired from politics in 1979 and served on the board of directors of Husky Oil, an oil and gas exploration company.

The Douglas-Coldwell Foundation was established in 1971. In 1981, Douglas was made a Companion of the Order of Canada. In 1985, he was awarded the Saskatchewan Order of Merit. In the mid-1980s, Brandon University created a students' union building in honour of Douglas and his old friend, Stanley Knowles.

In June 1984 Douglas was injured when he was struck by a bus but he quickly recovered and on his 80th birthday he claimed to The Globe and Mail that he usually walked up to five miles a day. ^[1] By this point in his life his memory was beginning to slow down and he stopped accepting speaking engagements but remained active in the Douglas-Coldwell Foundation.

He became a member of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada on November 30, 1984. In 1998, he was inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame.

Douglas died of cancer on February 24, 1986 at the age of 81 in Ottawa.

[edit] Artistic depiction

In the two Canadian Broadcasting Corporation mini-series about Pierre Trudeau, Trudeau and Trudeau II: Maverick in the Making, Tommy Douglas is portrayed by Eric Peterson. In the biography mini-series, Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story, which aired on March 12 and 13th 2006, also on CBC, Douglas was played by Michael Therriault. The movie was widely derided by critics as being historically inaccurate. Particularly, the movie's portrayal of James Gardiner, premier of Saskatchewan from the late 1920s to mid 1930s, was objected to by political historians and the Gardiner family itself. In response, the CBC consulted a "third party historian" to review the film and pulled it from future broadcasts, including halting all home and educational sales. [2][3]

Preceded by Edward James Young	MP Weyburn 1935-1944	Succeeded by Eric Bowness McKay
Preceded by George Crane	MLA Weyburn 1944-1961	Succeeded by Junior Staveley
Preceded by William John Patterson	Premier of Saskatchewan 1944-1961	Succeeded by Woodrow S. Lloyd
Preceded by New position	Leader of the New Democratic Party 1961-1971	Succeeded by David Lewis
Preceded by Erhart Regier	Burnaby—Coquitlam 1962-1968	Succeeded by District abolished
Preceded by Colin Cameron	MP Nanaimo—Cowichan—The Islands 1968-1979	Succeeded by District abolished

Premiers of Saskatchewan
Scott | Martin | Dunning | Gardiner | Anderson | Gardiner | Patterson | Douglas | Lloyd | Thatcher | Blakeney | Devine | Romanow | Calvert

	Leaders of the CCF/NDP
Woodsworth | Coldwell | Argue | Douglas | Lewis | Broadbent | McLaughlin | McDonough | Layton

[edit] Notes and References

1. ^ "Douglas is well after accident", Globe and Mail, October 26, 1984, p. 8.

2. This incident influenced Douglas in his commitment to protect fundamental freedoms in a Bill of Rights on his election as Premier of Saskatchewan in 1944. See, Ken Norman, The Saskatchewan Bill of Rights, The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan, 2005, Regina, Canadian Plains Research Center, at page 798.

3. Ibid

[edit] External links

• Tommy Douglas and his Government 1944-1960
• Biography of Thomas Clement Douglas
• CBC Digital Archives - Tommy Douglas and the NDP
• Order of Canada Citation
• Federal Political Biography from the Library of Parliament
• Douglas-Coldwell Foundation - Promoting Eduation and Research into Social Democracy
• Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story
• Tommy Douglas - The Man & The Myth: Tommy Never Let Ideology Get In The Way (.pdf)
• about he T.C. Douglas Centre, Formerly the Calvary Baptist Church
• Weyburn Review's Tommy Douglas website