Tommy Douglas: The Road to Jerusalem

Robert B. Jaeggin was a history teacher and a librarian with the Toronto Public Library.

The political career of T.C. (Thomas Clement) Douglas spanned an amazing half-century of social change and economic development. Rev. Tommy Douglas, a Baptist minister of Scottish ancestry living in Weyburn, Saskatchewan during the depression years of the 1930s, experienced first-hand the hardships, economic inequities, and political alienation of small-town western Canadians. Like many others shocked by the apparent failure of a capitalist market economy, Douglas easily combined the socialist values of his British working-class mentors with the missionary zeal of the “Social Gospel” movement to fashion a viable alternative to mainstream political thought. Perhaps more than any other individual, Tommy Douglas, first as premier of the CCF (Co-operative Commonwealth Federation of Canada) for two decades in Saskatchewan and later as the first leader of the federal NDP (New Democratic Party of Canada), helped to establish the credibility of “democratic socialism” in Canadian political life.

Tommy Douglas: The Road to Jerusalem, a joint father-son effort by Thomas H. McLeod, Harvard-trained economic advisor to the Saskatchewan government in the 1940s, and T. Ian McLeod, a Calgary-based journalist, is a scholarly and interesting study of one of this country’s best-liked leaders. Acknowledging the inevitable dilemma of all historians in the selection and orientation of their material, the McLeods have more than adequately succeeded in “telling it as it was.”

Clearly, this biography represents a work of great respect for the memory and political legacy of Tommy Douglas. To its commendable credit, therefore, this well-researched work objectively and critically examines the bare and sometimes unpleasant facts and contradictions in Douglas’s own thinking, and the less-than-ennobling side of party politics both in the CCF and its successor the NDP. Casual observers of socialist politics may be surprised, but Tories and Grits alike will relate without difficulty to the internecine struggles between the left and right wings of the CCF and NDP parties, and the inevitable rivalries for leadership.

The McLeods have woven not only an excellent biographical study on a remarkable individual but have also outlined a much broader context of the development of socialism in Canada. The eternal debates among CCF and NDP members on fundamental principles and political pragmatism are as relevant today as they were then. Readers of all ideological persuasions will profit from the fascinating depiction of Premier Douglas’s often frustrating attempts to implement the ambitious program of North America’s first avowedly socialistic government. The disillusionments and disappointments are all portrayed, providing an educational primer on the limits of political power in the transformation of social and economic goals.

While this work might very well have been titled The Life and Times of a Socialist Politician or, indeed, The Trials and Tribulations of Tommy, its actual subtitle, The Road to Jerusalem, does accurately convey the fundamental religious motivation of the early CCF political “missionaries.” Along with fellow ministers of the faith and colleagues such as J.S. Woodsworth and Stanley Knowles, Douglas exemplified the social gospel’s fervent belief in universal brotherhood. Despite his many defeats and disappointments in the wilderness of federal politics, he steadfastly maintained an optimistic view of human potential and practised the Christian dictum: “I am my brother’s keeper. “ In an age of widespread cynicism, the example of T.C. Douglas shines on most brightly indeed.