During the summer of 2025, I drove 6,000 kilometres around western Canada.
I visited the World’s Largest Beaver in Beaverlodge, stood on the Canada-US border at the International Peace Garden, walked along The Great Wall of Saskatchewan then explored the Twisted Trees of Alticane.
On one particularly hot day, I stopped in at the community of Weyburn in southern Saskatchewan.
I was here with only one purpose.
I parked my car, got out into the sweltering heat and walked over to my destination.
I was here to see a man.
As I got closer, I noticed he was a bit shorter than me… and then…. I said hello.
I got nothing in response.
That’s because statues tend to be the strong, silent types.
At his feet there were maple leaves and one was stuck to his pant leg.
There was a smile on his face, and his hand was outstretched.
As cars drove by, I placed my hand on his shoulder and thanked him for what he did for our country.
At the base of the statue, I read three words inscribed there.
“The Greatest Canadian”
I don’t know many who would argue with that.
I’m Craig Baird and this is Canadian History Ehx!
Today we are showing our appreciation for the man who gave us universal healthcare.
This is the story of Tommy Douglas!
Back in 2004, a nationwide contest was held and over 10,000 names were submitted for consideration.
Tommy Douglas won the competition, but ironically his road to becoming The Greatest Canadian did not start in Canada.
It began in Falkirk, Scotland on Oct. 20, 1904.
He was the first of three children born to Thomas Douglas and Annie Clement and would share his name with his father and grandfather.
They worked as iron moulders, and the family expected the youngest Thomas to follow in their footsteps.
But as we know… that’s not exactly what happened.
Growing up, Tommy had three major influences, politics, religion and Robbie Burns.
Tommy’s grandfather was a supporter of the Liberal Party, and his father was a passionate follower of the new Scottish Labour Party which supported unions and socialism as a cure for society’s problems.
Tommy’s grandfather saw his son’s choice of a left of center party as a betrayal to the Liberal Party, so he kicked Thomas and Annie out of the house they were renting from before Tommy was born.
As Thomas became estranged Tommy leaned on his maternal side.
Annie was the daughter of a Baptist preacher.
Tommy said his mom became the overwhelming religious presence in the home and instilled in him a love of public speaking that would serve him well throughout his life.
His maternal grandfather was Andrew and although he was a preacher he introduced Tommy to the poetry of Scottish literary icon Robbie Burns who was a known womanizer, alcoholic and some even said a heretic.
But all Andrew cared about was that Burns was a Scottish nationalist and the greatest poet in history.
This was a sentiment shared by Tommy’s paternal grandfather who, despite the estrangement from Tommy’s dad, would recite Burns’ poems to the young lad throughout childhood.
Those poems would be part of Tommy’s DNA and would often be heard when he mentored young people years later. By 1910, Tommy was seven, and that’s when his uncle Willie persuaded the family to move to Canada.
He had spent a few years in Winnipeg and encouraged them to relocate there.
He wasn’t wrong.
At the time it was called The Chicago of the North.,
Winnipeg was the third largest city in Canada, and a major railway hub for North America.
It was also home to a large manufacturing industry, perfect for Tommy’s father who had spent his life working with iron.
The sea voyage from Scotland to Halifax took 17 days and it would take the family another five days on a train colonist car to make it to Winnipeg.
Tommy said of the journey,
“We cooked our meals in a little kitchen at the end. The cars were pretty dilapidated. We slept on the hard boards.”
Tom quickly found a job at a local ironworks and the family began to live well.
But for Tommy the move was a major culture shock.
He was homesick for Scotland as he was thrown into a multicultural tapestry with classmates that were born around the world that spoke dozens of other languages.
As he began to acclimate to life in Canada, a dark cloud lingered over him because he had a medical condition that could threaten his ability to walk.
That fear and pain would drive him to change Canadian history.
As a child Tommy Douglas had been diagnosed with osteomyelitis.
This infectious inflammation of the bone was typically caused by a bacterial infection, and it was very painful.
Prior to leaving Scotland he underwent three operations to treat the condition, and he found relief but upon his arrival in Winnipeg, the condition returned.
Tommy was tormented by the constant pain in his leg, and he often missed school to get treatment at the local children’s hospital.
Crutches became his constant companions, making him the subject of ridicule by the neighbourhood boys.
Tommy said that 1911 to 1914 were the worst years of his life.
At the time, there was no social safety net which meant that every single one of Tommy’s treatments had to be paid out of pocket.
The Douglas family suffered financially while Tommy suffered physically. Eventually, they were told by doctors that there was only one option left.
Amputation.
The family was devastated at this news.
Losing a leg would make Tommy’s life extremely difficult.
Artificial legs were primitive, and having only one leg greatly limited his future employment opportunities.
It was the bleakest moment in those dark years.
But then, a bit of light appeared in a most random way.
Dr. R. Smith, a respected orthopaedic surgeon, happened to walk through the children’s ward one day.
He examined Tommy and knew he could save his leg.
But there was one major problem.
The cost.
The surgery would be incredibly expensive.
While Tommy’s family had been doing well, there was no way they could shoulder the cost.
The doctor offered them a lifeline.
He believed the surgery could be an excellent teaching opportunity and said he would do it for free, if his students could observe.
Tommy’s family couldn’t have said yes fast enough.
The surgery was a success, and Tommy’s leg was saved.
Being able to keep his leg was incredibly important.
You could even call it a profound moment in Tommy’s life.
And the way in which the doctor offered to help the family did something else.
It planted a seed in the young mind of Tommy Douglas.
Years later he said.
“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.”
If you’re a long-time listener you know that on June 28, 1914. Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie Chotek, were assassinated by Bosnian Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip lighting the match of what would become the First World War.
In Winnipeg, it triggered something else.
Tommy’s father was a Boer War veteran, and he traveled back to Scotland to re-enlist.
Except, now he was an avowed pacifist, and refused to hold a gun so instead of betraying his beliefs he worked with the 12th Field Ambulance.
The family came with him and moved in with Anne’s parents in Scotland and during the war Tommy quit school to work odd labour jobs to help the family.
He fully anticipated that he was never going to return to Canada.
His father saw things differently.
He wanted a brighter future for his son and didn’t want him working the same menial jobs he had.
He believed there were more opportunities in Canada.
On Jan. 1, 1919, Anne and her children began their journey back to Winnipeg.
Tom would not join them for several months, so Anne worked as a seamstress, while Tommy worked as a labourer.
It had only been a few short years, but Winnipeg had changed since they had last been there.
After the Panama Canal was completed in 1914, rail traffic that once crossed the continent and through Winnipeg diverted through the canal.
The few jobs that were left became even more scarce once soldiers returned home from the war. This happened as the cost of living rose six time faster than the average wage.
To say it was bleak would be an understatement.
Maybe Tommy’s dad had been wrong about the opportunities Canada could offer.
This meant that there were simmering tensions in Winnipeg and them…. were about to boil over.
Through the spring of 1919, Winnipeg’s construction and metal trade workers negotiated with their employers to get better wages, working conditions and for the right to unionize.
I’m sure you will be very surprised to find out that the employers refused all the worker’s demands.
The employees staged several small strikes at the beginning of May, but when that didn’t work, they decided to swing for the fences.
On May 15, 1919, the Winnipeg Trades and Labor Council called a general strike.
Within a few hours, 30,000 people joined in and marched off the job.
Police, firemen, telegraph operators, utilities workers, postal workers and the people who worked in factories, shops and on trains, all stopped working.
The entire city ground to a complete halt.
The Winnipeg General Strike lasted for weeks.
It also turned bloody.
On June 21, 1919, workers were marching in a silent parade when the Royal North-West Mounted Police charged into the crowd, swinging clubs and firing their guns.
The melee left 30 people injured and two dead.
It became known as Bloody Saturday, and the strike ended four days later.
But there was one young man who witnessed the brutality that day and it left an impact.
Tommy Douglas was walking with his Scout leader Mark Talnicoff through public parks jammed with protesters when he heard yelling and a commotion.
Tommy climbed up to the top of a nearby roof overlooking Market Square. From that vantage point, he saw police charge into the crowd.
What he witnessed as a teenager left a deep impression on him, and it solidified his commitment to protecting fundamental freedoms. He said years later,
“Whenever the powers that be can’t get what they want, they’re always prepared to resort to violence or any kind of hooliganism to break the back of the organized opposition.”
As he looked towards his future Tommy was undecided.
He had been apprenticing as a printer, but he didn’t want it to be his career.
So, he acquired his journeyman papers but then went back to school to pursue something much different.
Much to his mother’s delight, he was going to become an ordained minister.
In 1924, he enrolled at Brandon College. T
Founded by the Canadian Baptists of Western Canada thirty years earlier, it would be Tommy’s home for the next six years.
He spent the first three years completing the high school education he left unfinished in Scotland, followed by another three years working towards his degree.
To pay for his education, he worked as a relief preacher during the summers in rural communities in Manitoba for $15 a week.
Adjusted for inflation, which is about $270 a week.
Imagine paying for your education today with $2,160 that you made over the summer.
While at the college, he was mentored by Harris Lachlan MacNeill.
He encouraged Tommy to reject the literal interpretation of the Bible and said it was simply made up of letters, poems, drama and historical accounts.
MacNeill said to focus on the message which could change with the times, rather than be cemented in the time it was written.
Or in Tommy’s words, it was a bull fiddle that could play any tune you wanted it to.
While at Brandon College, Tommy thrived and finished first in his class through high school and earned gold medals for academic performance in the following three years.
The school also helped Tommy hone his debating skills, which would come in handy years later…. But we’ll get to that.
In six years at Brandon College, he lost only one debate.
It was in his fourth year, and it was to a visiting team headed by a young woman from Carberry, Manitoba.
Her name was Irma Dempsey.
About two years after she beat Tommy in the debate, he was in her hometown serving as a relief preacher at the local Presbyterian Church.
Tommy was a Baptist, and he pointed that out to the church leaders who had no problem with it and before long he became known for his lively sermons.
He also organized evening youth programs that included plays, music and more than a few renditions of Robbie Burns’ poetry.
Irma was a Methodist, but she attended the Presbyterian Church after hearing about the new preacher with the energetic sermons.
Soon, she was visiting his evening music programs as well and before long the two fell in love.
In 1928, she moved to Brandon to be closer to Tommy and they became engaged.
On Aug. 30, 1930, exactly two months after Tommy graduated from Brandon College, the couple got married and after a brief honeymoon in Winnipeg, it was off to Weyburn, Saskatchewan where Tommy had been hired as the new preacher.
There, the couple settled into a happy routine.
Tommy preached while Irma played the piano in the church and helped with the various social groups her husband had established.
On April 2, 1934, their daughter Shirley was born.
While doing all of this Tommy was also furthering his education. He enrolled at the University of Chicago, to study sociology.
This involved field work at camps where thousands of transient men lived.
These men only a few years earlier, had been bankers, lawyers and doctors, but were now unemployed and trying to survive in The Great Depression.
They were victims of capitalism, and Tommy came to hate the greed had led so many into destitution.
He also criticized the Communists in the camps who talked more of a coming revolution than trying to help those who needed assistance.
He said,
“That experience soured me with absolutists. I’ve no patience with people who want to sit back and talk about a blueprint for society and do nothing about it.”
Tommy then went on to pursue a Master of Arts degree in sociology at McMaster University.
Now, forgive me for my side tangent here.
Whenever I make a post about Tommy Douglas on my social media, commenters always come along with what they think is a “gotcha” moment by telling me Tommy supported eugenics.
Eugenics is terrible, AND there is much more to this story.
The reason people mention eugenics comes from Tommy’s 43-page thesis, titled The Problems of the Subnormal Family.
In his thesis, he stated “Subnormal family presents the most appalling of all family problems.”
His argument was that individuals with mental handicaps, or questionable morals, created children who had the same.
He believed the best option was to have a system in which engaged couples had to be certified for mental and moral fitness before they married.
In his thesis Tommy did endorse eugenics, which is a terrible philosophy that has no place in a civilized society.
But social media commenters cherry-pick the facts to suit their narrative and ignore that Tommy Douglas abandoned the idea of eugenics soon after he wrote this thesis.
And there’s evidence of this.
Because when Tommy was Premier of Saskatchewan, two official reviews of the province’s mental health system came across his desk.
They recommended adopting eugenics laws.
Tommy refused them and focused on providing vocational training for the mentally handicapped, along with therapy to help those dealing with mental illness.
Let me repeat that.
Under his watch, Saskatchewan never adopted eugenics as a policy.
Unlike the province’s neighbour to the west, Alberta, which sterilized 2,832 people against their will from 1928 to 1972.
As I mentioned earlier during the early years of The Great Depression, Tommy was exposed to the plight of the needy and became committed to social activism.
This led him towards a new party on the Canadian scene, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation.
Founded in 1932 in Calgary, the CCF was focused on expanding democratic socialism in Canada to encourage the idea of people over profit and Tommy quickly became one of its most energetic new members,
He was chosen to run in the Weyburn riding in the 1934 Saskatchewan election.
This was Tommy’s first foray into politics, and he ran the campaign like a university professor who was giving a course in sociology.
He led120 meetings where he advocated for crop insurance and provincial tokens to increase the purchasing power of farmers.
His speeches were informative but lacked the flair and passion he used in his sermons, and it showed.
On June 19, 1934, the CCF won five seats, Tommy’s was not one of them.
He finished third, 900 votes behind the Liberal winner Hugh Eaglesham.
After the loss, he went back to the life of a preacher, but he wouldn’t be there for long because destiny had other plans for Tommy Douglas
As the 1935 federal election approached, Canadians were looking for a change.
Five years earlier, the Conservatives under R.B. Bennett had roared to victory on the promise of fixing The Great Depression.
Spoiler…they didn’t.
Now Canadians were ready to cast the Conservatives out.
The CCF was also heading into its first federal election and hoped to win where the Conservatives lost.
Tommy Douglas was approached by the party to run for Parliament.
He gave them a firm no.
He was happy and had no desire in a political career.
But then two church officials then told him, he was forbidden from running.
One of them said quote.
“Leave it. If you don’t leave it, and if you don’t stay out of politics, you’ll never get another Church in Canada and I’ll see to it.”
Tommy replied defiantly
“You have just given the CCF a candidate.”
Tommy then campaigned tirelessly.
Now he was more relaxed and sociable, and brought the same energy from preaching to politics.
In the end…while the CCF hoped for a breakthrough in 1935 it didn’t happen.
The Liberals under William Lyon Mackenzie King won a then-record 173 seats.
The Conservatives lost an astounding 98 seats from the previous election and wouldn’t return to power for 22 years.
And the CCF only picked up seven seats.
Two of them were from Saskatchewan.
And one belonged to Tommy Douglas.
Tommy Douglas was a rising star in the CCF.
In 1936, he was elected the president of the Co-operative Commonwealth Youth Movement and travelled Geneva for the World Youth Congress as a chaperone for the Canadian delegates.
The three-month trip was an eye-opening experience because it included a stop in Nuremberg, Germany where he attended an annual festival put on by the Nazi Party.
He said,
“It was frightful. I came back and warned my friends about the great German bombers roaring over the parade of self-propelled guns and tanks, Hitler standing there giving his salute, with Goering and the rest of the Nazi bigwigs by his side.”
When he returned to Canada, he gave speeches that Germany had to be stopped before it was too late.
He spoke about the need to have some sort of collective security against the growing Nazi threat.
He did this in sharp contrast to the CCF’s policy of pacifism and neutrality.
The party’s leader and founder, J.S. Woodworth proposed a resolution in Parliament that Canada remain neutral in the event of war.
Tommy saw this as dangerous and said in Parliament,
“If you accept the completely absolutist of the pacifist, then you are saying that you are prepared to allow someone else who has no such scruples to destroy all the values you’ve built up.”
In 1939, Tommy was proven right when Germany invaded Poland and started the Second World War.
Tommy tried to enlist but he was denied due to his previous leg problems.
If he had been accepted, Tommy likely would have been placed with the Winnipeg Grenadiers which fought the Japanese at the Battle of Hong Kong in December 1941.
The battle was a disaster and left 130 Grenadiers dead while the rest were prisoners of war in Japan.
Tommy’s past health issues kept him at home where he would make history and change Canadians lives forever.
Because the CCF was starting to make waves.
Tommy was a star in Parliament and the party in Saskatchewan had just become the official opposition by winning 10 seats in 1938.
But not everyone was onboard with the leader George Hara Williams.
His style was abrasive to some, and the fact he supported the Soviet Union style of Communism rubbed a lot of CCF party members the wrong way.
He had also resigned his seat in the Legislature to serve in the Canadian Army in 1941.
Now the party was leaderless as another provincial election fast approached.
Rather than wait for Williams to return, the party looked to Tommy Douglas.
The idea of returning to live in Saskatchewan full-time appealed to him, and throughout 1941 and 1942, Tommy campaigned around the province and by the 1943 leadership convention he easily defeated the absent Williams.
As a thank you to his years of service to party leader, Tommy offered Williams any cabinet post he wanted if the CCF ever took power in the province.
It turned out that reality was a lot closer than anyone expected.
A year after he became leader of the CCF he resigned his seat in the House of Commons
On June 1, 1944, Tommy Douglas began a two-week campaign in Saskatchewan.
He appealed to rural farmers, and promised them ownership of their farms, rather than being indebted to mortgage companies.
This resonated with many voters who were only a few years removed from The Great Depression, when hundreds of farms were taken by banks. Tommy worked day and night and everywhere he went huge crowds were there to greet him.
He had stiff competition.
The Liberals were no slouches The party had won every election since Saskatchewan’s creation in 1905 except for 1929.
The Klu Klux Klan had something to do with that election loss, but that is a story for another episode.
The Liberals had no intention of losing power in this election either.
They called the CCF a group of communists who would bring ruin to Saskatchewan.
Unfortunately for the Liberals, the winds of change were blowing, and Tommy was riding that wave.
On June 15, 1944, the CCF ousted the Liberals from power.
The party won 47 seats and achieved a huge majority.
The Liberals were decimated to only five seats and it would take them 20 years to rebuild, Saskatchewan had just elected the first social democratic government in the history of North America, and it would change the province forever.
Often when a party comes to power, they promise big changes but usually deliver on very little.
Tommy had the top job in Saskatchewan, and he was ready to show what a social democratic government could do when given the chance.
As the first social democrat in office Tommy felt the pressure and expectations on him not just from Saskatchewan but from all of North America.
So, he built a very strong cabinet around him.
Big changes were going to need a lot of money, and Saskatchewan was still recovering from The Great Depression.
He appointed Clarence Fines as Minister of Finance.
Fines was a former teacher but became known as the Financial Wizard because in only five years from 1944 to 1949, he balanced budgets and decreased the province’s debt from $218 million to $70 million.
By 1953, the province was out of debt.
Tommy chose Woodrow Stanley Lloyd, a former teacher as Minister of Education, and he led a complete overhaul of the provinces’ education system.
He turned thousands of local school boards into 56 larger school units.
Tommy then kept his promise to former leader George Hara Williams and gave him the Minister of Agriculture portfolio.
Sadly, Williams was in ill health and resigned only a few months later.
He died on Sept. 12, 1945.
Tommy then took on the biggest task for himself.
He would oversee the Health Minister portfolio, as we know he had vested interest in health care but more on that later. Tommy also encouraged people to move to Saskatchewan to work with his government’s expanded civil service.
Hundreds answered the call including Japanese Canadians who had lost everything in British Columbia’s internment camps.
There were also administrators who implemented Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies in the United States in the 1930s, and socialists from across the country.
They helped Tommy’s civil service, the strongest in Canada and became known as the Saskatchewan Mafia.
With his bedrock foundation Tommy got to work. (BEAT)
First, he brought electricity to rural residents for the first time, and paved thousands of kilometres of roads to make travel easier for everyone.
His government constructed schools and hospitals and brought in major labour reforms including legalizing the unionization of the public service.
Several Crown Corporations were created so residents could benefit more from resources and services including a first-of-its-kind auto insurance plan that required a $6 yearly premium paid by every driver.
While insurance firms across Canada hated it, Saskatchewan residents loved it.
His government also encouraged cooperatives which encouraged many Cree, Dene and Metis residents to form their own fishing and fur cooperatives to control their futures.
One of Tommy’s biggest accomplishments during those early years as premier was the Saskatchewan Bill of Rights in 1947.
It was inspired by what he saw during the Winnipeg General Strike thirty years earlier.
The new bill would protect fundamental freedoms and provide equal rights for residents.
Saskatchewan’s Bill of Rights was the first of its kind in the Commonwealth of Nations since England enacted its own in 1689.
It also predated Canada’s Bill of Rights by a decade, and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms by almost 40 years.
Tommy’s early accomplishments were incredible.
But his next task would cement him as The Greatest Canadian.
Biggar, Saskatchewan is mostly known for two main things.
One, it’s the hometown of Sandra “The Curler” Schmirler, who won Olympic gold for Canada in 1998.
Two, it has the best town slogan in Canada which was painted on its sign as a prank by a drunk survey crew in 1914.
No one painted over it, and it eventually became the town’s motto so when you drive in it reads “New York is big, but this is Biggar”.
I really love that little tidbit of small-town Saskatchewan history.
But…something else happened there that few remember.
On May 14, 1944, during Tommy’s campaign for leadership of the CCF, he made a speech in support of a local candidate where he publicly promised for the first time that if his government were elected, he would bring in universal healthcare to the province.
Immediately, the Saskatchewan College of Physicians and Surgeons called Tommy Douglas and the Co-operative Commonwealth a dangerous element.
When Tommy became premier, he knew he had a promise to keep but that it would take time.
So, he first focused on those who needed help the most and expanded from there.
Within a few months, the CCF began providing medical care, paid by the province, to people suffering from cancer, the mentally ill and anyone who had a venereal disease.
Three years later, Tommy’s government created the Saskatchewan Hospital Services Plan, the first of its kind in Canada.
It provided hospital care for 93 percent of the population and was funded by an increase in provincial sales tax, A per capita tax of $5 per family member was implemented and resource royalties were also funnelled to the plan.
It was a massive success.
Provinces that had previously criticized the idea as foolhardy now sent representatives to Regina to speak with Tommy’s government.
Within a year, British Columbia had their own plan, followed by Alberta and Nova Scotia.
Tommy wasn’t done yet.
He wanted free medical care beyond hospital visits, for all of Saskatchewan.
On July 1, 1946, the first comprehensive regional health care plan was implemented in Swift Current.
This small community in southwestern Saskatchewan became the Birthplace of Canadian Medicare because here coverage included hospital visits, AND dental care, immunizations and doctor services.
This trial run was massively successful, and extremely popular among everyone.
Well…everyone except doctors.
After that first provincial election win in 1944, Tommy and the CCF won another four elections, achieving a majority every time. Because of those wins Tommy was able to continue working towards universal healthcare despite intense opposition by doctors.
The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Saskatchewan fought back through a massive, and very expensive, publicity campaign.
The American Medical Association and Canadian Medical Association joined them out of a worry that if Saskatchewan was successful the plan could spread across North America.
Doctor worried that universal healthcare could impact their livelihood, and lead to a reduction in their salaries.
When the CCF won the 1960 provincial election, Medicare was the dominant issue,
Tommy knew his mandate was to finish what he had started years earlier.
In October 1961, Tommy Douglas presented the Saskatchewan Medical Care Insurance Act in the Legislature. He said during the debate,
“When we’re talking about medical care we’re talking about our sense of values. Do we think human life is important? Do we think that the best medical care which is available is something to which people are entitled, by virtue of belonging to a civilized community?”
A month later, it was given Royal Assent and became law.
Saskatchewan now had the first single-payer, universal health care program in North America.
Tommy had finally achieved his dream.
One that had been inspired by the fear of losing his leg because his family couldn’t afford an expensive procedure.
But by the time legislation passed Woodrow Lloyd was Premier of Saskatchewan.
Only days beforehand, Tommy resigned from the top post.
He had a new job ahead of him.
And it would take his message nationally.
While Tommy was fighting against the doctors of Saskatchewan the federal Co-operative Commonwealth Federation was going through a massive change.
In 1958, after years of failing to breakthrough on the federal level, the Canadian Labour Congress and CCF decided to form a new democratic political party,
They named it The New Party.
That name was eventually ditched during the 1961 convention in favour of the New Democratic Party of Canada.
And a month earlier Tommy Douglas agreed to run for leadership.
He was by far the most famous and successful socialist politician in Canada.
His supporters believed he could lead the party to greatness on the federal level.
Maybe not as the government, but surely the Official Opposition.
Up against Hazen Argue for the leadership Tommy won with 78.5 percent of the vote.
After 15 years away from Ottawa, he was making his triumphant return… except it turned out to be more difficult than he expected.
In the 1962 federal election, Tommy ran in what was believed to be a safe riding of Regina.
Unfortunately, the medical community, still hurting over universal healthcare, colluded against him and Tommy lost by 10,000 votes.
He refused to have another NDP Member of Parliament give up their seat for him, so it seemed like his time as leader would be cut short.
Except Erhart Regier gave up his seat in the British Columbia riding of Burnaby-Coquitlam.
Tommy won the by-election by 8,000 votes and was back in Parliament.
Over the next few years as NDP leader, Tommy helped prop up the minority Liberal governments led by Lester B. Pearson.
While Pearson gets a lot of the credit for bringing in a new Canadian flag, the Canada Pension Plan and Medicare, some of that credit goes to Tommy.
He ensured the Liberals did not suffer a defeat in the House of Commons and forced an election.
This dynamic worked well until Pearson resigned at the end of 1967.
He was replaced by the dynamic Pierre Trudeau, and the Liberals soon won a huge majority in the 1968 election.
Tommy, running in the new riding of Burnaby-Seymour, lost his re-election Liberal Ray Perrault by a mere 140 votes.
Once again, he was forced to run in a by-election to have a seat in Parliament and was parachuted into the riding of Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands, where he won by 2,000 votes.
But it was the beginning of the end as NDP leader.
After 1968, Tommy was not only starting to slow down with age, but the party was failing to break through in a significant way.
That being said, after 1968, when Bill C-150 was put through the House of Commons to legalize homosexuality and abortion in 1969, Tommy voted in favour of it.
Although it is important to point out that Tommy believed homosexuality was something that could be fixed. He didn’t think it was a criminal act to be gay.
He believed homosexuality was a mental illness that could be treated.
Not great, but at least he helped decriminalize same sex couples.
And one of his biggest battles was yet to come.
In 1970, October Crisis erupted.
The FLQ, a militant separatist group in Quebec, kidnapped a British diplomat James Cross and Deputy Premier of Quebec Pierre Laporte.
Laporte had been taken from his front yard, and a week later his body was found in the trunk of a car.
He was only the third Canadian politician in history to be assassinated.
Thomas D’Arcy McGee in 1868 and George Brown in 1880 were the other two.
Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was asked by a CBC reporter how far he was willing to go to deal with the FLQ crisis.
He famously responded with “Just watch me.”
Days later, he implemented the War Measures Act.
The act was first introduced in 1914 as Canadian federal law granting the Cabinet sweeping emergency powers to suspend civil liberties, censor media, and detain individuals without charge during “war, invasion, or insurrection Prior to 1970, it had only been used during the First and Second World Wars.
Since it greatly limited civil liberties it
While some supported it as what was needed to deal with the crisis.
It was seen by many including Tommy and the NDP as massive government overreach and they voted against the implementation of the Act.
Tommy said
“The government, I submit, is using a sledgehammer to crack a peanut.”
A few years later, many Members of Parliament praised his stand against it.
Progressive Conservative leader Robert Stanfield, who voted for the Act in 1970, went so far as to say he admired Tommy and the courage he displayed in voting against it.
Voting against the war measures act was one of his last major moments in parliament by1971, Tommy resigned as leader of the party.
He had spent nearly 40 years in politics, and he was happy to take a backseat for the next few years until he finally departed the House of Commons in 1979
By the early-1980s, he was content just to spend his time with his wife Irma and daughter Shirley, as well as his grandchildren.
His memory had started to fade as he reached his 80s, but he continued to walk seven to eight kilometres per day.
That presented problems when he became hard of hearing. In June 1984, while out for one of those daily walks, he stepped onto the road and was hit by a bus.
He was not seriously hurt and told the press,
“If you think I’m in bad shape, you should see the bus.”
There seemed to be no stopping the man who changed Canada, but those close to him knew the truth.
He was dying of cancer.
, Tommy remained optimistic, even telling his friend Tom McLeod that when he was over the cancer business, they would do a membership drive for the Douglas-Coldwell Foundation.
But then Feb. 26, 1986, Tommy Douglas died.
I could list all the ways Tommy Douglas has been honoured in Canada, but honestly who has that kind of time?
Whatever honours we bestow on him pale in comparison to what he did for Canadians.
We tend to define ourselves by our universal healthcare.
It is one of the things that separates us from Americans.
It is also something I am most proud of.
That is why it is so hard to live in Alberta and see how Tommy’s legacy of Universal Healthcare is being dismantled in a push towards privatized healthcare.
While I have never broken a bone or spent a night in the hospital, I’ve known many people who have benefited from it.
My stepfather died of cancer when I was 10, but universal healthcare ensured he got the care he needed in those difficult years while fighting the disease.
I may not have needed it, but I know I will… it’s the one thing that unifies us all.
We only have one life, and we will all need care so no one should suffer bankruptcy simply because they got sick or injured.
I don’t like to get political in my show, but the legacy of universal healthcare is too important for us to allow a few at the top to destroy.
Itchy rash, broken leg, or even cancer.
All of it is covered because of what Tommy Douglas did.
That is why he is the greatest Canadian who ever lived.
And his legacy lived on… in other ways.
Tommy’s daughter Shirley Douglas didn’t go into politics.
Acting was her passion.
After attending the Banff School of Fine Arts, followed by the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, England, she embarked on a successful career.
But her father instilled the importance of community and civic life, and she became an activist involved in the American Civil Rights Movement.
She established the fundraising group Friends of the Black Panthers, an organization that paid the legal expenses of the Black Panthers and provided a breakfast-for-children program in Los Angeles.
It attracted the ire of the United States government, who raided her Los Angeles home to intimidate her in 1969.
When the press asked Tommy about it, he said,
“I am proud that my daughter believes, as I do, that hungry children should be fed whether they are Black Panthers, or White Republicans”.
From 1966 to 1970, Shirley was married to fellow Canadian actor Donald Sutherland.
They had two children, Rachel and Kiefer.
Yep, that Kiefer Sutherland.
He would go on to star in The Lost Boys and Stand by Me and would go on to star in the award-winning role as Jack Bauer on 24
Kiefer has been a part of our TV and movie screens for decades.
Although for me, nothing beats his role as Dr. Daniel Schreber in Dark City.
Seriously, see that movie if you haven’t.
He has also always been a big supporter of his grandfather’s legacy and universal healthcare.
In September 2010, when a statue was erected of Tommy Douglas in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, his grandson Kiefer was there to unveil it.
As he rested his hand on the statue, he said,
“I’ve waited a long time to hold my grandpa’s hand again.”
*sources*
- The Life and Political Times of Tommy Douglas by Walter Stewart
- Tommy Douglas [Canadian Encyclopedia] https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/tommy-douglas
- Douglas, Thomas Clement [Parks Canada] https://www.pc.gc.ca/apps/dfhd/page_nhs_eng.aspx?id=15195&i=83162
- Thomas Clement “Tommy” Douglas [Government of Canada] https://www.canada.ca/en/parks-canada/news/2019/03/thomas-clement-tommy-douglas-19041986.html
- Douglas, Thomas Clement [Dictionary of Canadian Biography] https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/douglas_thomas_clement_21E.html
