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Tommy Douglas

**The Hon. Tommy Douglas**

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 (October 20, 1904 – February 24, 1986) was a Scottish-born Canadian Baptist minister and democratic socialist politician. As Cooperative Commonwealth Federation 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 organized labour to form the New Democratic Party, he was elected its first federal leader, serving 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 2004, he was voted The Greatest Canadian of all time in a nationally televised contest.

He is the father of actress Shirley Douglas, and the grandfather of actor Kiefer Sutherland.

Contents

1 Early life and activism

2 Premier of Saskatchewan

2.1 Medicare

3 Federal NDP leader

4 Late career and retirement

5 External links

Early life and activism

Douglas was born in 1904 in Falkirk, Scotland. In 1910, his family immigrated to Canada, where they located in Winnipeg. As a child, Douglas injured his leg and developed osteomyelitis. The leg would have had to have been amputated were it not for a doctor who saw Tommy's leg as a good subject to teach his students, rooting his belief that health care should be free to all. During World War I, the family returned to Glasgow. They came back to Winnipeg in 1919, the year of the Winnipeg General Strike, which Douglas witnessed.

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 attended McMaster University, completing his MA. Following this, he won a position as minister at the Calvary Baptist Church in Weyburn, Saskatchewan. With the onset of the Depression, Douglas became a social activist in his community (Weyburn), joined the new CCF party, became a freemason, and was elected to the House of Commons in the 1935 federal election.

Premier of Saskatchewan

Douglas was an active Member of Parliament, but he also maintained an interest in provincial politics, and became the leader of the Saskatchewan CCF in 1942. He led the CCF to power in the June 15, 1944 provincial election, taking 47 of 53 seats in the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan.

As World War Two continued through his first term as premier, the Government of Canada continued its policies of discrimination against Japanese Canadians. In addition to the Japanese Canadian internment, the government deported almost 4,000 Japanese immigrants and Canadians of Japanese descent back to war-torn Japan. In 1945 in response to a personal letter written to him, Douglas revealed that he did not object to the deportation of those Japanese Canadians who spoke their native tongue. Douglas was a lifelong defender of civil liberties and would later deplore the way that the Japanese Canadians had been treated. The letter in which his feelings in the 1940s towards Japanese Canadians were revealed remains an inexplicable aberration.

Douglas and the Saskatchewan CCF then won five straight majority victories. Most of his government's pioneering innovations were concentrated in its first term, including:

the assembly of the publicly-owned utilities Sask Tel and Sask Power ;
the creation of Canada's first publicly owned automobile insurance service, the Saskatchewan Government Insurance Office ;
legislation that allowed the unionization of the public service; and
a program to offer free hospital care to all citizens – the first in Canada.

Through careful financial management, the Douglas government slowly paid off the huge debt left by the previous Liberal government, and created a budget surplus for the Saskatchewan government. This paved the way for Douglas's greatest achievement, the introduction of universal medicare legislation in 1961.

Medicare

Douglas's number one concern was the creation of Medicare which was contested by the North American Medical Establishment. Saskatchewan became the center of a hard fought struggle between the government, the above organization and the province's physicians who brought things to a head with the Doctor's Strike. The Doctors believed their best interests were not being met and they feared a steep drop in wages. Despite these setbacks Douglas managed to resolve the strike, clearing the way for Medicare in Saskatchewan. Many had doubted the feasibilty of Medicare but Douglas showed Canada how it could work: that the doctors could be brought onside 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 stage enabled the national program to get up and running. While Douglas is often described as the "father of medicare" in Canada, the Saskatchewan program was finally launched by his successor, Woodrow Lloyd, in 1962. After seeing the success of the Saskatchewan experiment, Prime Minister Lester Pearson and the other provinces agreed to the creation of a national medicare program in 1967.

Federal NDP leader

When the CCF allied with the Canadian Labour Congress to form the New Democratic Party 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 Regina in 1962, but was defeated. He was later elected in a by-election in the riding of Burnaby–Coquitlam , British Columbia.

Re-elected in 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 Nanaimo–Cowichan–The Islands , British Columbia.

While the NDP did better in elections than its predecessor, the party did not experience the breakthrough it had hoped for. Despite this, Douglas was greatly respected by both 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.

Late career and retirement

Douglas resigned as NDP leader in 1971, but Douglas kept 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 Nanaimo–Cowichan–The Islands in the 1972 and 1974 elections.

He retired from politics in 1979. In 1981, he 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 old friend Stanley Knowles.

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

Douglas died of cancer in 1986 at the age of 81.

External links

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09-23-2007 01:00:40
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