Book focused on Tommy's team

Few politicians are more revered anywhere than what Tommy Douglas is in Canada and nowhere in Canada is he more loved than he is in Saskatchewan.

But no politician is an island onto themselves. Their views and careers are influenced and supported by the people around them.

Often those people worked outside limelight of a man like Douglas, but thanks to the efforts of two Saskatchewan authors; Stuart Houston and Bill Waiser, many of those who played a role in Douglas' famous career are being remembered through the book 'Tommy's Team: The People Behind the Douglas Years.

"We did it about the people behind the greatest Canadian," said Houston, who grew up in Yorkton.
"That's what makes this book so different. Tommy's Team: The People Behind The Douglas Years offers an unprecedented look at the people who played a significant, and often influential, role in his life and career up until he decided to step down as Saskatchewan premier in 1961. All of these individuals are interesting in their own right, but it is the connection to Tommy that shapes and informs the collection. The research for the book unearthed a good deal of fascinating, sometimes surprising, information about these people and their relationship with Douglas. The result is a collection of essays that provides a broader, at times more nuanced, perspective on Douglas and helps explain why he was one of the most successful political leaders of his era and why his government left such a lasting legacy," detailed the book's introduction.

Houston said the book was a timely one "because Tommy Douglas is still a household word, and still lauded and venerated."

Tommy Douglas was much more than the "Father of Medicare." He made many other contributions to Canadian life, most of them during his seventeen-year tenure as Saskatchewan's first Co-operative Commonwealth Federation Premier (1944-61). He also did not accomplish all that he did on his own and would have been the first to admit it. Regrettably though, the people who helped make these contributions possible or helped bring them to fruition have been largely overlooked, forgotten, or simply ignored - ironically in large part, because of the tendency to focus on Douglas. The diminutive Tommy tends to cast a large shadow over the CCF government and its accomplishments, as evidenced by the existing biographies or the recent CBC television production, "Prairie Giant", said the book introduction.

Houston said because of the continuing interest in Douglas, at least in Saskatchewan, sales of the book have been good, even as the province's political landscape has moved away from Douglas' familiar socialist grounds.

"Politics is full of paradoxes," he said, adding "the strange thing is Saskatchewan hasn't has an NDP federal MP in the last three elections," making it even more right than Alberta in that regard.

So too has the critical acclaim. The book was a finalist in the history category of the Canadian Author Association awards, an accolade which had Houston in Orilla, Ont. doing a reading at the (Stephen) Leacock Summer Festival.

Houston said he hopes being short-listed will boost interest outside of Saskatchewan for the book.
For Houston the book was one of personal interest as a fan of Douglas himself, "because Tommy had personal skills that were absolutely second to none." He said he recalled being instructed by his father to attend one of Douglas' speeches in Saskatoon regarding the concept of Medicare and being amazed by how Douglas turned opponents to his vision.

So when Houston was doing research for his 2002 book Steps On the Road to Medicare, and stories about Douglas began to emerge it was the roots for Tommy's Team.

During his research for the earlier book Houston said he and his wife spent half a day with Eleanor McKinnon, who spent decades as Douglas' private secretary.

"Eleanor Madeline McKinnon really had no business working for Tommy Douglas. Born in Weyburn in 1912, she was the second daughter of Weyburn storekeeper Norman McKinnon, a rock-hard, congenital Liberal. The party connection was conferred on the McKinnon children at birth," detailed as excerpt from the book.

"It's not known whether Norman McKinnon ever forgave Tommy Douglas for taking his daughter from his Liberal fold. The fault lines in the Saskatchewan political landscape were deeply ingrained. But the CCF provincial leader could not have chosen a more dedicated, more competent, more sensible assistant than he found in Eleanor McKinnon over the next four decades.

"Eleanor, in a word, was unflappable. She had to be. At the premier's office, the phone rang every five minutes. "What a zoo!" she remembered. Tommy breezed in each morning cheerful, always with a big smile. He had an open door policy and tried to see everyone who came to his office. Few people made appointments.

The ever-charming Eleanor was the gatekeeper."We never let anybody go away," she remembered, "if they had a problem."

The way McKinnon made sure people got to see Douglas was part of the Premier's success story, offered Houston.

"People felt empowered. There had never been an open premiership like that anywhere in Canada," he said.

Having heard such stories from McKinnon made Houston recognize there was another story which needed telling.

"We knew we had to do something with it," he said, adding back in 2002 he was not sure what, but the idea of a book about the people helping mold Douglas' world views finally emerged as the obvious vehicle.

"With the exception of Stanley Knowles, Tommy Douglas's competitor for the church pulpit in Weyburn, the book deliberately excludes his political colleagues, who rightly belong in political histories and biographies. Instead, it examines the contributions of individuals who never held political office but were nonetheless important players before and during his years as North America's first social democratic premier. Among them are the Winnipeg doctor who saved Tommy's leg from amputation and provided Douglas with the inspiration for Medicare; the Weyburn storekeeper, an ardent Liberal, who opened the way for Tommy to preach at Calvary Baptist Church; the storekeeper's daughter who turned her back on her family's Liberal leanings and went to work as Tommy's executive secretary for nearly four decades; the Japanese-Canadian evacuee who became Tommy's foremost economic advisor; and the son of the impoverished Ukrainian immigrants who spearheaded the introduction of Medicare in the Swift Current region sixteen years before the provincial plan," states the book's introduction.

Local readers will find special interest in the essay on Bill Burak who grew up on a struggling grain farm at Goodeve.

"In January 1943, Bill Burak was appointed secretary-treasurer of the RM of Pittville, centred on the then-unregistered hamlet of Hazlet, on the eastern edge of the arid and barren Great Sand Hills. The region, in the southwest corner of the province, had been brought to its knees by the Great Depression of the 1930s. The double whammy of low commodity prices and prolonged drought had precipitated a great out-migration as farm families chose to start over to the north or left the province entirely. Those people who remained behind watched helplessly as "the prairies burned - the skies shed not a tear,"," states a book excerpt.

Houston said facing depopulation and hardship the RM began a unique and controversial program to ensure residents access to health care, a program which looked much like Medicare on a localized level, and one Burak embraced.

"The RM of Pittville began to address these problems in 1937 by co-operating with the neighbouring RM to the north (Riverside) and paying part of the salary of a municipal doctor. But when that doctor enlisted in the Canadian army in 1941, Pittville took even more dramatic action by using the RM health tax, already in place, to pay their residents to go to "any physician anywhere any surgeon in Canada stay at any hospital in Canada." This arrangement was unprecedented, if not contrary to the Municipal Act, in that RMs were supposed to strike prior contracts with doctors and hospitals. In fact, one of Burak's first tasks as Pittville secretary-treasurer was to go to Regina in April 1943, and justify this comprehensive but open-ended health plan.

Burak quickly became the scheme's greatest promoter. When the new CCF government hired Dr. Henry Sigerist of Johns Hopkins University to conduct a survey of provincial health services in September 1944, Burak presented a detailed brief, full of impressive facts and statistics. He extolled the merits of the unorthodox Pittville system, noting how it was "very well-liked by the people" and by the serving doctors and hospitals (because they could count on getting paid). Most Pittville mothers, for example, were now able to have their babies delivered in hospital," says an excerpt.
With the idea in place, and a growing list of people to include, Houston said he enlisted Waiser to help with the book.

"I'm a digger, and I'm good at digging, and I'm respected as a digger," he said. "I'm an OK writer, but not a writer like Bill Waiser."