Tommy Douglas: Defining what it means to be Canadian

Tommy Douglas


If you were to ask me what makes Canadians distinct from Americans, I would say that it is in our commitment to the common welfare. The man who led us to this commitment was a politician from Saskatchewan named Tommy Douglas. In 2004, he was voted the ‘Greatest Canadian of All Time’ by the CBC and the votes of the public. He was the leader of the Saskatchewan Co-operative Commonwealth Federation from 1942 and the Premier of that province from 1944 to 1961. That government was the first in North America to introduce universal healthcare. The party later united with the Canadian Labour Congress to form the New Democratic Party. Tommy Douglas became the leader of that party from 1961 to 1971.

Like many other great Canadians, he was not born here. He was born in Scotland in 1904 and immigrated to Canada in 1910. His leg was injured before his family left Scotland and he developed osteomyelitis. After a number of surgeries in Scotland the condition flared up again in Winnipeg where doctors believed that the leg would need to be amputated. Happily, a well known orthopedic doctor offered to take on his case for free. This pivotal experience shaped his belief in universal health care. He is known for the following quote: “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.”

The family returned to Scotland during WW1 but returned in 1919. During the war, Douglas dropped out of school at 13 to help support his family and then got a good paying job as in a cork factory. Once back in Canada, Douglas experienced the Winnipeg General Strike where he saw the police brutalize the strikers and an RCMP officer shoot and kill a striker. Around the same time, Tommy became an amateur boxer and he won the Lightweight Championship of Manitoba in 1922. He served an apprenticeship as a linotype operator but returned to school with the goal of becoming a minister. At the age of 19, he went to Brandon College to finish high school and study theology. He embraced the social gospel movement. Stanley Knowles, another minister and left wing politician attended classes with him. Douglas financed his own education by performing Sunday Services at several rural churches. He often preached about building a society and institutions that would uplift mankind. During one of these preaching sessions, he met his future wife, Irma whom he married in 1930 and with whom he had one daughter, Shirley (mother of Kiefer Sutherland) and they later adopted a second daughter, Joan.

In 1930 he graduated and continued his education at McMaster where he earned an MA in Sociology in 1933. His thesis “The problems with the subnormal family’ is controversial in that it endorsed eugenics. (One of the blights on Canadian history is legislation in Alberta and British Columbia that enacted similar eugenic policies). Douglas studied for a PhD at the University of Chicago but did not complete his thesis. IN 1935 Douglas was elected to the Canadian House of Commons. Douglas enlisted when WW2 broke out but his old leg injury kept him from active service. Douglas and the Saskatchewan CCF then went on to win five straight majority victories in 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;

• 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.

• passage of the Saskatchewan Billl 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).

Premier Douglas was the first to propose a Canadian Bill of Rights but it was not enacted until April 17th, 1982, with the proclamation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Douglas's number one concern was the creation ofMedicare. 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 the Saskatchewan Doctor’s 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 even though Douglas agreed that his government would pay the going rate for service that doctors charged.

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. The newly elected Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, also from Saskatchewan, decreed in 1958 that any province seeking to introduce a hospital plan would receive 50 cents on the dollar from the federal government. In 1964, Justice Hall recommended the nationwide adoption of Saskatchewan's model of public health insurance. In 1966, the Liberal minority government of Lester Pearson created such a program, with the federal government paying 50% of the costs and the provinces the other half. So, the adoption of healthcare across Canada ended up being the work of three men with diverse political ideals - Tommy Douglas (NDP), John Diefenbaker (Conservative) and Lester Pearson (Liberal).

He retired from politics in 1978 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’s Order of Merit. He became a member of the Queens’s Privy Council for Canada on 30 November 1984. In 1998, he was inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame. Douglas died of Cancer on February 24th, 1986 at the age of 81 in Ottawa.