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CM . . . .
Volume VI Number 15 . . . . March 31, 2000
Tommy Douglas is the fourth volume in "The Quest Library Collection," a new series
of historical biographies directed toward the older adolescent reader. The idea behind the
series is an excellent one, using the intrinsic interest of an individual life story to convey at
the same time a broader backdrop of social and political history (a relationship that is
effectively portrayed in the final portion of each volume by parallel time-lines
encapsulating the events of the individual's life and those of the larger national and
international world outside).
The goals of the biography series are achieved in an exemplary fashion in this volume. The
author has a particularly engaging writing style that gives the story the quality almost of a
novel, though it is obviously a carefully researched piece of work. The book traces
Douglas' life from his beginnings in Scotland, through his education in Winnipeg, his
ordination as a Baptist minister, and his forty-four year political career in Saskatchewan,
British Columbia and Ottawa. Tommy Douglas was one of the principal architects of
social democracy in Canada, and a founding member of the New Democratic Party
(NDP), and its forebear, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). A succinct
but coherent synopsis is provided of the forces and events behind that movement, and
these are nicely intertwined with Douglas' own life story, the major events of which help
readers to understand the values and concerns that he would subsequently bring to his
political agenda: his grandfather's emphasis on social cooperation; his own health care
crisis as a child, when fiscally-limited access to medical attention almost cost him a leg; the
experience of Depression-era Saskatchewan, with its almost complete deficiency of social
and economic protections; the compelling message of the Social Gospel message received
in the course of theological training at Brandon University, with its emphasis on the
responsibility of the church to reform society; and the naive faith of the nineteen-thirties in
the benign potential of social engineering. All of these forces can be seen to have had an
impact on the programs that Douglas championed: from Medicare to crown corporations;
and they let us understand how those policies derived not from idle speculation, but from
very real human situations. In using Douglas as his vehicle, the author is able to examine
the role of the CCF and NDP both as a catalyst and conscience in the federal parliament,
and as the architect of a different kind of community in the province (Saskatchewan)
which they dominated for so long, and which, in the matter of social and economic
programs, proved to be a forerunner and model for the country as a whole.
The contemporary adolescent reader will in all likelihood have little appreciation of
contrast between social life now and that existing for the ordinary Canadian prior to the
battles over "socialism"; Tommy Douglas will go some distance toward explaining that
contrast, and, with it, a good deal about the nature and origins of Canada's social,
economic and political debate since the nineteen-thirties.
Highly Recommended.
Alexander D. Gregor is a professor of educational history at the Faculty of Education, University of Manitoba.
To comment on this title or this review, send mail to cm@umanitoba.ca.
Copyright © the Manitoba Library Association.
Reproduction for personal use is permitted only if this copyright notice
is maintained. Any other reproduction is prohibited without
permission.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR THIS ISSUE - March 31, 2000.
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