Rebels, Reds, Radicals: Rethinking Canada's Left History

John Stanley is a senior policy advisor in the Corporate Policy Branch
Management Board Secretariat, Government of Ontario. He is co-editor of
Nation and History: Polish Historians from the Enlightenment to the
Second World War.

This thought-provoking work profits from the author’s many years of
pondering the history of Canada’s left and provides a new
conceptualization and periodization of an important phenomenon in
Canada’s political life. While always giving Marx his due, McKay
attempts to ground his discussion in the day-to-day struggles for a
broadening of possibility, which he terms “realms of freedom.”
However, in order for reform to be considered leftist, McKay posits that
it must translate the individual’s needs to those of society at large.

McKay wisely opts for a broad definition of the left, including
Canadian Communists as well as feminists. Given this broad canvas, it is
odd that he has not included the left wing of the Liberal Party of
Canada. Perhaps this strategy is a result of his condemnation of the
contradictory “liberal order,” but it does appear to violate the
inclusiveness that is a strength of this book. While he acknowledges the
importance of the links to Britain and “a decaying empire,” in his
discussion of Canada’s leftist history, he does not seem to recognize
that this same strain—the constitutional monarchy and
Westminster-style representative democracy—has been a powerful
impediment to the American-style xenophobia that he opposes.

Among his greatest contributions is his periodization of Canada’s
leftist history. While he begins with leftist prehistory—the
establishment in the 1820s of Bright’s Grove, a utopian socialist
settlement near Sarnia—he sees the real beginning of Canada’s
leftist movement in the period from 1890 to 1919 dominated by classical,
Marxian scientific socialism. The next period, 1917–29, is symbolized
by the Communist Party of Canada, followed by a statist social
democratic party, the CCF, from 1935 to 1970. The period 1965–80 is
dominated by various attempts at social liberation, the establishment of
the NDP, and the significant contribution of Quebec’s New Leftists,
while the period 1967–90 is marked by the women’s movement. This
division into five periods distinguished by a distinct “formation”
provides a useful frame for discussing what may seem to be a fragmented
history.

Although Canada’s left has never formed a national government, it has
exerted a powerful influence. Nonetheless, while each leftist movement
has typically lasted no more than 25 years, the Canadian left as a whole
has survived by achieving a balance of pragmatism and ideology that has
escaped all other leftist movements in the Western hemisphere. At a time
when leftists have been written off as old-fashioned, McKay’s work
invigorates the discussion, not only of history but of the possibilities
present today.