Tommy Douglas Wins Again

June 8, 1960 - Saskatchewan General Election

Tommy Douglas and his Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, or CCF,  party rolled to its 5th consecutive majority victory on June 8, 1960.  The CCF elected 37 members of the 54 seat legislature with Ross Thatcher's Liberals electing the remaining 17 seats.  Douglas, a Baptist minister, was the premier of Saskatchewan from 1944 until he retired from Provincial politics in 1961.  

Innovations under his visionary leadership included:

• the creation of the publicly owned Saskatchewan Power Corp., successor to the Saskatchewan Electrical Power Commission, which began a long program of extending electrical service to isolated farms and villages;
• the creation of Canada's first publicly owned automobile insurance service;
• the creation of a large number of Crown Corporations, many of which competed with existing private sector interests;
• legislation that allowed the unionization of the public service;
• a program to offer free hospital care to all citizens—the first in Canada.
• passage of the Saskatchewan Bill of Rights, legislation that broke new ground as it protected both fundamental freedoms and equality rights against abuse not only by government actors but also on the part of powerful private institutions and persons. (The Saskatchewan Bill of Rights preceded the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations by 18 months).  Wikipedia

Canadian Medicare

Douglas won the 1960 election on the promise of a Province-wide medical care system.  The Provincial program put in place in Saskatchewan became the model for the National medicare program implemented by Lester Pearson later in the decade.

Social Gospel
Tommy Douglas was a man of spiritual faith.  His political activism and his passion for human rights, social justice, and freedom were born of the powerful impulse of human compassion and the resultant desire to alleviate suffering.  

It would be nice to see some political leadership along those same lines today!

Remembering and reflecting... Rob; in Vancouver

“The religion of tomorrow will be less concerned with the dogmas of theology and more concerned with the social welfare of humanity.”  Tommy Douglas