This Month in
Labour History

Oct 20 1904 – the founder of Canada’s Medicare system is born

Thomas Clement Douglas was born October 20th 1904 in Falkirk, Scotland. But most of his life Canadian’s knew him as “Tommy”. He was an immigrant boy that almost lost his leg to illness but for the charity of a doctor who operated for free to save the limb. That act marked him, and he became committed to making sure Canadian had a medical system that did not rely of the luck of charity.

At 19 Douglas enrolled at Brandon College to study theology. It was there he was introduced to the social gospel, that and time spent in Chicago during the depression, convinced Douglas for the need for social change to address economic inequalities. Douglas became a Baptist minister in Weyburn, Saskatchewan. It was there that he joined the new Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and was elected to the Canadian House of Commons in 1935 in the middle of the great depression.

He established many first in his life; first social democratic Premier of Saskatchewan, first to lead a social democratic government in North America, first leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP) of Canada, but his first that has affected all Canadians was to when as Primer of Saskatchewan he established Canada’s first publicly run Medicare system in 1961. To do so he had to face down a strike by the province’s doctors. In doing so he became the father of universal health care in Canada fulfilling a goal of the labour movement. Within a few years the federal government established a national program.

Douglas became the leader of the Saskatchewan CCF in 1942 and led the CCF to power in the 1944 provincial election, winning 47 of 53 seats. He governed until the founding of the NDP and on 3 August 1961 at the first convention he became the new party’s first leader. He resigned as leader in 1971 and as an MP in 1979. Douglas died on 24 February 1986 in Ottawa.

Other Douglas firsts were:
• the publicly owned Saskatchewan Power Corp.,
• Canada’s first publicly owned automotive insurance service,
• legislation that allowed the unionization of the public service,
• adopting a Saskatchewan Bill of Rights, years before the UN declaration was adopted.

In a 2004 online vote by the CBC Douglas was crowned “Greatest Canadian.”