", "University of Regina Honorary Degree Recipients", "UBC Archives - Honorary Degree Citations 1981-1988", "Finding aid to Tommy Douglas fonds, Library and Archives Canada", "T.C. The success of the province's public health care program was not lost on the federal government. This page was last edited on 5 August 2020, at 14:44. In 1980, Douglas was awarded a Doctor of Laws degree honoris causa by Carleton University in Ottawa. Coupled with a federal government promise in 1959 to give even more tax money for medical care, this paved the way for Douglas's most notable achievement, the introduction of universal health care legislation in 1961. They had one daughter, actress Shirley Douglas, and they later adopted a second daughter, Joan, who became a nurse. 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—the Royal Commission on Health Services. [27] He was not a pacifist, unlike his party's leader, J. S. Woodsworth, and stated his reasons: If you accept the completely absolutist position 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. For [Paul] Martin, whose plan would have transferred to the provinces $5 billion over five years, the national program was what Canadianism was all about. [41] Coldwell did not trust Argue, and many in the CCF leadership thought that he was already having secret meetings with the Liberals with a view to a party merger. Douglas was awarded many honorary degrees, and a foundation was named for him and his political mentor M. J. Coldwell in 1971. He was re-elected in the riding of Nanaimo–Cowichan–The Islands in the 1972 and 1974 elections. He was noted as being the main opposition to the imposition of the War Measures Act during the 1970 October Crisis. The adoption of public health care across Canada ended up being the work of three men with diverse political ideals – Douglas of the CCF, Diefenbaker of the Progressive Conservatives, and Pearson of the Liberals. This article is about the Canadian politician. [62], Douglas Provincial Park near Saskatchewan's Lake Diefenbaker and Qu'Appelle River Dam was named after him. Many years later, Douglas told an interviewer: "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. [30], Despite being a federal Member of Parliament and not yet an MLA, Douglas was elected the leader of the Saskatchewan CCF in 1942 after successfully challenging the incumbent leader, George Hara Williams, but did not resign from the House of Commons until 1 June 1944. The medical establishment claimed that Douglas would import foreign doctors to make his plan work and used racist images to try to scare the public. In 1964, Justice Hall recommended a nationwide adoption of Saskatchewan's model of public health insurance. [7] He held the title the following year. [65] The Tommy Douglas Secondary School in Vaughan, Ontario, Canada named in his honour opened in February 2015. legislation that allowed the unionization of the public service; a program to offer taxpayer-funded hospital care to all citizens—the first in North America. In the biography mini-series, Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story, which aired on 12 and 13 March 2006, also on CBC, Douglas was played by Michael Therriault. -- Tommy Douglas . Internationally the former National Labor College in Silver Spring, Maryland, was renamed the Tommy Douglas Center after its purchase by the Amalgamated Transit Union in 2014. His cabinet was the first democratic socialist government in North America and it introduced the continent's first single-payer, universal health care program. This experience convinced him that health care should be free to all. [55][59][60][61], In a national TV contest, conducted by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in 2004, he was crowned "Greatest Canadian" by viewers in an online vote. Another Saskatchewan politician, newly elected Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, decreed in 1958 that any province seeking to introduce a hospital plan would receive 50 cents on the dollar from the federal government. [10] He came first in his class during his first three years, then competed for gold medals in his last three with a newly arrived student named Stanley Knowles. #Opponents #Underestimate #Forget “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,”-- Tommy Douglas . est édité par la société Fondamenti, société à responsabilité limitée au capital de 20.000 € dont le siège social se situe 7 rue Paul Baudry - 75008 Paris, immatriculée au RCS de Paris sous le numéro B 451 698 682. But, there is no information that there was unintended, or apprehended, or planned insurrection, which alone, would justify invoking the War Measures Act. [52] Instead, he and his friend and political mentor M. J. Coldwell were honoured by the party with the creation of the Douglas–Coldwell Foundation in 1971. He completed his elementary education after returning to Glasgow. Thomas Clement Douglas was born in 1904 in Camelon, Falkirk, Scotland, the son of Annie (née Clement) and Thomas Douglas, an iron moulder who fought in the Boer War. Despite this, Douglas was greatly respected by party members and Canadians at large as the party wielded considerable influence during Lester Pearson's minority governments in the mid-1960s. As Premier, Douglas opposed the adoption of eugenics laws. He left federal politics to become Leader of the Saskatchewan Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and then the seventh Premier of Saskatchewan. [31] He led the CCF to power in the 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. However, the family returned to Winnipeg when the war ended and Douglas entered the printing trades. His thesis, entitled The Problems of the Subnormal Family, endorsed eugenics. [75], Douglas received honorary degrees from several universities, including. "What if, decades ago, Tommy Douglas and my father and Lester Pearson had considered the idea of medicare and then said, 'Forget it! "Think about it this way," [Martin] said. [17] Instead, Douglas implemented vocational training for the mentally handicapped and therapy for those suffering from mental disorders. Douglas interviewed men who once belonged to the American middle class—despondent bank clerks, lawyers and doctors. 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. [29] Woodsworth had suffered a stroke earlier in the year and he needed someone to hold his notes, and Douglas still held him in very high regard, and dutifully assisted his leader. Douglas stepped down as premier and as a member of the legislature the previous year, to lead the newly formed federal successor to the CCF, the New Democratic Party of Canada (NDP).[35]. He never completed his PhD thesis, but was deeply disturbed by his field work in the Depression-era "jungles" or hobo camps where about 75,000 transients sheltered in lean-tos venturing out by day to beg or to steal. [7] Douglas sustained a broken nose, a loss of some teeth, and a strained hand and thumb. Notre base intègre en continu les baselines, quel que soit leur support d'exploitation. [40] Coldwell stepped down as leader, and Argue replaced him, becoming the party's final national leader. [56] 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. [67] In March 2019, a plaque commemorating Douglas as the "Father of Medicare" was revealed in Regina, Saskatchewan. [30] Douglas stayed in Canada and the Grenadiers headed for Hong Kong. He served as the NDP's energy critic under the new leader, David Lewis. “For [Stephen] Harper, a national daycare plan bordered on being a socialist scheme, a phrase he had once used to describe the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Those deemed to be "subnormal", because of low intelligence, moral laxity, or venereal disease would be sent to state farms or camps; while those judged to be mentally defective or incurably diseased would be sterilized. For other people of the same name, see. While the NDP did better in elections than its CCF predecessor, the party did not experience the breakthrough it had hoped for. [5] From a rooftop vantage point on Main Street, he witnessed the police charging the strikers with clubs and guns, and a streetcar being overturned and set on fire. Some police services, from outside of Quebec, took advantage of it for their own purposes, which mostly had nothing even remotely related to the Quebec situation, as Lewis and Douglas suspected. [24] Irma was 19, while Douglas was 25. Douglas fonds, Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan", "The Left: From Hope to Sneers in 25 Years", "A Canadian Paradox: Tommy Douglas and Eugenics", Tommy Douglas and his Government 1944–1960, CBC Digital Archives – Tommy Douglas and the NDP, Tommy Douglas – Parliament of Canada biography, Members of provincial/territorial assemblies, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tommy_Douglas&oldid=971342235, Members of the House of Commons of Canada from British Columbia, Members of the House of Commons of Canada from Saskatchewan, Members of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada, Members of the Saskatchewan Order of Merit, Saskatchewan Co-operative Commonwealth Federation MLAs, Royal Canadian Geographical Society fellows, Persons of National Historic Significance (Canada), Short description is different from Wikidata, All Wikipedia articles written in Canadian English, Articles with unsourced statements from July 2020, Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WorldCat identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, the creation of Canada's first publicly owned automotive insurance service, the. I'm not proud of it."[48]. He won a seat again in a 1969 by-election in the riding of Nanaimo—Cowichan—The Islands, following the death of Colin Cameron in 1968, and represented it until his retirement from electoral politics in 1979. [50] Lewis, speaking for the party at a press scrum that day: "The information we do have, showed a situation of criminal acts and criminal conspiracy in Quebec. [1] In 1910, his family immigrated to Canada, where they settled in Winnipeg. [citation needed], "The Cream Separator" is a fable, written by Douglas, which aims to explain the inherent injustices of the capitalist system as it relates to the agricultural sector by making the analogy that the upper class gets the cream, the middle class gets the whole milk, and the farmers and industrial workers get a watery substance that barely resembles milk. [29], After the outbreak of World War II, Douglas enlisted in the wartime Canadian Army. [9], In 1924, the 19-year-old Douglas enrolled at Brandon College, a Baptist school affiliated with McMaster University, to finish high school and study theology. In the first half-hour they'd be cleaned out. 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. You want a fundamental difference between Mr. Harper and myself? Douglas took a course in socialism at Brandon and studied Greek philosophy. This view of homosexuality was mainstream at the time, but has since raised questions about how historical figures are remembered. )", "Douglas Leads New Party, 'Democratic' Tag in Name", "Avalanche of Votes Sweeps PCs Into Most One-sided Victory Since Confederation", "M.J. Coldwell: Tribute to a true politician", "Speculation Rife Argue To Desert New Party Ranks", "Canada's swift shift from criminality to acceptance of homosexuality", "Tommy Douglas NDP Hero and Legendary Icon on Homosexuality", "Top Ten Greatest Canadians – Tommy Douglas", "Douglas-Coldwell Foundation has come a long way in 10 years", "Tommy Douglas, the Greatest Canadian: All Roads Lead Back to Brandon College", "Historical Alphabetical List since 1867 of Members of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada A–E", "Prentice designates Beechwood a 'national' cemetery", "The Greatest Canadians from the CBC Archives", https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/kiefer-sutherland-unveils-tommy-douglas-statue-1.873041, "Transit Union names new training center in honor of Rosa Parks and Tommy Douglas", "Tommy Douglas honoured as person of national historic significance | CBC News", "The story of Mouseland: A political allegory", "The Honorable Thomas Clement Douglas, BA, M.A.