Tommy Douglas

This article is about the Canadian politician. For the American jazz clarinetist, see Tommy Douglas (musician) .

Tommy Douglas in 1945

Thomas Clement "Tommy" Douglas , PC , CC , SOM (born October 20, 1904 in Falkirk , Great Britain , †  February 24, 1986 in Ottawa , Ontario ) was a Canadian social democratic politician . The Baptist pastor, who came from a Scottish immigrant family, was Prime Minister of Saskatchewan Province for 17 years from July 10, 1944 to November 7, 1961 . The government he led was the first socialist in North America and established the public health system in Canada. From 1942 to 1961 he was chairman of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) in Saskatchewan. When the CCF merged with the Canadian Labor Congress to form the New Democratic Party (NDP) in 1961 , Douglas was elected party leader at the federal level; he held this office until 1971. He sat for a total of 24 years (with brief interruptions) in the Canadian House of Commons , from 1935 to 1944 and from 1962 to 1979.

Adolescent years

Douglas was born in the Scottish city of Falkirk . In 1910 the family emigrated to Canada and settled in Winnipeg , the capital of the province of Manitoba . As a child, Douglas injured his leg and developed osteomyelitis . The amputation could only be prevented because a doctor needed a study object for his teaching and agreed to carry out the treatment free of charge. This experience shaped Douglas' later political career as he recognized the need for free public health services.

During the First World War the family temporarily returned to Scotland and lived in Glasgow as the father had volunteered for military service. When the family was back in Winnipeg, Douglas witnessed the 1919 Winnipeg general strike, watching police use guns against demonstrations and a streetcar being set on fire. He was also a witness to the murder of two demonstrators by officers from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police .

At the age of 15 Douglas began a brief career as an amateur boxer . With a fighting weight of 135 pounds, he fought in 1922 for the lightweight championship of Manitoba. After a six-round fight, he won the title; in the process, he suffered a broken nose and sprains on his hand and thumb. The following year he successfully defended his title.

Study and entry into politics

After completing an apprenticeship as a printer , Douglas enrolled at Brandon College in 1924 to study theology. During his studies he was influenced by the social gospel movement, which combined Christian principles with social reforms. He graduated in 1930 and graduated from McMaster University in 1933 with a Masters (MA) in Sociology . In his doctoral thesis, titled The Problems of the Subnormal Family , he described eugenics as a way to solve social problems by sterilizing mentally and physically disabled people and sending them to labor camps. He continued his work for a short time at the University of Chicago , but firmly rejected his own theses after learning about the misery in the slums of Chicago and traveling to the Nazi- ruled German Reich in 1938 . Douglas rarely mentioned his doctoral thesis and his government never ordered eugenic measures (unlike the provincial governments of Alberta and British Columbia, for example ).

After graduating, Douglas became a Baptist pastor at the Calvary Baptist Church in Weyburn , Saskatchewan . This province was particularly hard hit by the consequences of the global economic crisis; Added to this were the effects of the dust bowl , which almost brought the once flourishing agriculture to a standstill. As the negative effects became more felt, Douglas became convinced that he could best serve God by creating a better and fairer society. In 1932 he joined the newly formed socialist Co-operative Commonwealth Federation . In 1934 he ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the legislative assembly of Saskatchewan , but was narrowly elected in the 1935 general election in the Weyburn constituency. In the same year he joined the Freemasons . Douglas stood out in the House of Commons for his captivating and humorous style in debates. He stood out as a vehement defender of civil rights and soon established himself as a leader in his group.

In 1930 he married Irma Dempsey, a music student he had met at Brandon College. The only biological child, daughter Shirley Douglas , later became a well-known actress. The couple adopted a second daughter, Joan, who became a nurse. Shirley Douglas was married to Donald Sutherland for the second time , making Tommy Douglas the grandfather of Kiefer Sutherland .

Prime Minister of Saskatchewan

In 1942 Douglas was elected chairman of the CCF Saskatchewans . He unified the quarreling provincial party and led them to an overwhelming election victory on June 15, 1944. The CCF won 47 out of 53 seats in the Legislative Assembly with 53 percent of the vote. It replaced the previously dominant Saskatchewan Liberal Party from William John Patterson and formed the first socialist government in North America. Douglas himself won the seat in the Weyburn constituency.

Douglas and the CCF Saskatchewans remained the strongest party in four consecutive elections until 1960, with voter shares between 40 and 54 percent. Most of the innovations by Douglas' administration were implemented in the first legislative term, including:

• the formation of the public electricity company Saskatchewan Power Corp. (now the Saskatchewan Electrical Power Commission), which began a long-term program to build power lines to isolated farms and villages;
• the founding of Canada's first public automobile insurance company, the Saskatchewan Government Insurance Office, now known as Saskatchewan Government Insurance;
• the creation of a large number of state-owned companies, many of which competed with private companies (but from 1948 the government limited itself to infrastructure);
• Pass laws allowing state employees to join trade unions;
• a program to provide free medical care in hospitals for all citizens;
• Adoption of the Saskatchewan Bill of Rights, which enshrined and protected numerous civil rights (not only from state interference, but also from powerful private institutions and individuals). The Saskatchewan Bill of Rights was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations ahead by 18 months.

Douglas was the first head of government in Canada to call for a basic declaration of civil rights for the whole country. He first raised this concern in January 1950 at the Conference of Federal and Provincial Governments in Quebec City , but none of the parties involved agreed. Ten years later, Québec Prime Minister Jean Lesage was the first to share his opinion. This started a process that finally came to an end in 1982 with the entry into force of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms .

Thanks to a flourishing post-war economy and prudent financial policies, Douglas' government managed to steadily reduce the huge national debt accumulated by the Liberals and generate surpluses. This allowed Douglas to embark on the most ambitious undertaking in 1961, free healthcare in all areas. Since he resigned as Prime Minister on November 7, 1961 in order to return to federal politics, it was left to his successor Woodrow Stanley Lloyd to complete the ambitious reform project.

In July 1962, the province's doctors, with the support of the American Medical Association, went on strike for more than three weeks for fear of massive income losses. The strike failed because the provincial government flew in doctors from Great Britain to provide emergency care. A representative of the British National Health Service acted as mediator and was able to reach compromises on some contentious points. The success of the health reform initiated by Douglas soon had an impact on federal politics. Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker set up a commission headed by Emmett Matthew Hall , a Saskatchewan-based Supreme Court Justice . Hall recommended the nationwide introduction of the Saskatchewan state health insurance model in 1964. Lester Pearson's liberal minority government implemented this in 1966, with the federal government and the provinces each assuming half the cost.

Chairman of the NDP

In 1961, the CCF merged with the Canadian Labor Congress , from which the New Democratic Party (NDP) emerged. At the first NDP party conference on August 3, 1961, Douglas beat the previous CCF chairman Hazen Argue and was elected first chairman of the new party. He retired three months later from provincial politics and ran in the 1962 general election in the Regina constituency , but was defeated by the conservative opponent. He was finally elected four months later, in a by-election in the Burnaby - Coquitlam constituency in British Columbia .

In the general election of 1963 and 1965 Douglas was confirmed in this constituency, but lost in 1968 with less than a quarter percent difference, because the constituency boundaries had been redefined and this suited his liberal rival. Douglas remained excluded from federal politics for a little over a year until he won a by-election in October 1969 in the Nanaimo — Cowichan — The Islands constituency on Vancouver Island .

Although the NDP performed better in elections than its predecessor, the CCF, the party never achieved the breakthrough it had hoped for. The main reason was that the centrist Liberal Party of Canada often took positions of the NDP and was thus able to cover part of the left spectrum. Nevertheless, Douglas enjoyed support within his party, as the party exerted a great influence on the liberal minority government of Lester Pearson . In 1970 Douglas and the NDP sparked controversy when they vigorously opposed the brief declaration of martial law during the October Crisis in Québec . On April 23, 1971 Douglas resigned as party chairman.

Other activities and honors

In 1962 Douglas received an honorary doctorate in law from the University of Saskatchewan , and in 1980 another from Carleton University in Ottawa . In 1971 he founded the Douglas-Coldwell Foundation, a social democratic think tank , and remained a member of the House of Commons until March 26, 1979. Two years later, Douglas was awarded the Order of Canada , and in 1985 the Saskatchewan Order of Merit .

In June 1984, Douglas was injured when a bus hit him. But he recovered quickly and on his 80th birthday said in an interview with The Globe and Mail newspaper that he walks up to eight kilometers every day. Around this time, memory problems began to emerge and Douglas decided not to be invited to speak, but remained active in the Douglas-Coldwell Foundation. He died of cancer in Ottawa at the age of 81 . He was buried in the Beechwood cemetery.

Aftermath

The CBC viewers voted Douglas on April 5, 2004 on the television program The Greatest Canadian as the most important of all Canadians. His life was filmed in the 2006 CBC miniseries Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story . Critics described the miniseries in which Douglas was portrayed by Michael Therriault as historically incorrect. In particular, the portrayal of James Garfield Gardiner , Saskatchewan's Prime Minister in the 1920s and 1930s, met with unanimous opposition from historians and Gardiner's family. In response, CBC stopped broadcasting any future broadcasts and stopped selling videos for home and school use.

literature

• Gordon L. Barnhart (Ed.): Saskatchewan Premiers of the Twentieth Century (= Trade Books based in Scholarship $ TBS. Vol. 8). Canadian Plains Research Center - University of Regina, Regina 2004, ISBN 0-88977-164-2 .

Web links

• Tommy Douglas ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia .
• Article Tommy Douglas in the Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan
• Tommy Douglas - biographical information on the website of the Canadian Parliament (English)
• CBC Archives: Tommy Douglas and the NDP
• CBC Archives: The Birth of Medicare

Individual evidence

1. ↑ This event influenced Douglas in his determination to establish fundamental rights in a Bill of Rights after his election as Prime Minister in 1944. See the Saskatchewan Bill of Rights in the Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan
2. ^ The problems of the subnormal family , doctoral thesis by Tommy Douglas at McMaster University, Hamilton (Ontario) 1933
3. ↑ A few famous freemason , Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon
4. ^ Barry L. Strayer: Patriation of the Constitution and the Charter: 25 years after . The Timlin Lecture, February 20, 2007, University of Saskatchewan, p. 14.
5. ^ Honorary Degrees Awarded Since 1954 - Senate. carleton.ca, accessed March 12, 2015 . 
6. ^ Douglas is well after accident . In: Globe and Mail , October 26, 1984, p. 8. 
7. ↑ CBC pulls Tommy Douglas movie , CBC. June 12, 2006. Retrieved April 30, 2007. 
8. ↑ James Wood: CBC pulls Tommy Douglas movie , Edmonton Journal. June 12, 2006. Archived from the original on March 12, 2007 Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved April 30, 2007.