Tommy Douglas

Thomas Clement Douglas, PC, CC, SOM, MA, LL.D (1904-10-20 – 1986-02-24) was a Scottish-born Canadian Baptist minister who became a democratic socialist politician. As leader of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) from 1942 and the eighth Premier of Saskatchewan from 1944 to 1961, he led the first socialist government in North America.

Sourced

• I am proud that my daughter believes, as I do, that hungry children should be fed whether they are Black Panthers or White Republicans"
  • Ottawa Journal, October 5th 1969

• In Washington they have their hawks and doves and in Ottawa we have our parrots.
  • In response to Canadians policy on the Vietnam War, House of Commons, "Debates", 13 February 1967

• I am still a little fellow.Mr. Tucker is big enough to swallow me, but if he did, he would be the strangest man in the world. He would have more brains in his stomach than he does in his head.
  • To Liberal leader of the time Walter Tucker, quoted "Star Pheonix" July 14 1947

• One year ago men could be seen riding the rods on freight trains across Canada. Today hundreds are in His Majesty’s uniform. Most of us know some of these young men personally. Theses men are going to fight for a society that could not even give them a job. What do we propose to do with them when they come back on the rods? God forbid.
  • Statement in a debate (23 May 1940)

• I went around to the little schoolhouses, talking like a professor, explaining our platform. We were lucky if the collection gave us enough for gas to get to the next place. We encouraged questions, and people asked us if it was true we were going to take their farms, like the Soviets in Russia, and did we believe in God.
  • On his earliest political campainging, quoted in Tommy Douglas (1983) by Doris French Shackleton, p. 68

• If ever we needed in this country to adopt a new attitude towards homosexuality, this is the time. Instead of treating it as a crime, and driving it underground, we ought to recognize it for what it is: it's a mental illness, it's a psychiatric condition which ought to be treated sympathetically by psychiatrists and social workers.
  • Said in the 1968 Leaders debate on the proposed Omnibus bill to decriminalize homosexuality

Disputed

• Courage, my friends; 'tis not too late to build a better world.
  • This is merely an adaptation of the lines from Alfred Tennyson's "Ulysses" (1842) : Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

• The [Liberal] federal government's trouble is that they have a wishbone where they should have a backbone.
  • This is merely an adaptation of a popular witticism which has been circulated with slight variant since at least 1913 :ie: "Some people have a wishbone where they should have a backbone." "Some people have a wishbone where their backbone ought to be."