When I Met the Greatest Canadian

Mouseland is a democratic but unhappy country, ruled by cats. When the mice tire of being governed by black cats, they vote them out of office, and vote in white cats, but their happiness does not increase. One brave mouse finally suggests that they try electing mice instead. The other mice brand him as a communist and throw him in jail.
 
Tommy Douglas invented Mouseland and told the story on countless occasions. At the critical moment when the heroic mouse speaks up, he would deliver his trademark line: "My friends, watch out for the little fellow with an idea."

Now the little fellow with an idea has been voted the Greatest Canadian, a puzzling honor, when the short list includes Don Cherry. We can leave aside the trivial questions: is the father of medicare the metaphorical grandfather of waiting lists? Does it count that he's the biological grandfather of actor Kiefer Sutherland, one of several former fiancés of Julia Roberts?

Given the strange nature of the comparisons it's not all that meaningful to ask what it says about Canadians that we chose the creator of universal medical care as our national hero rather than the inventor of the telephone or the man who discovered insulin.

But here's a question: Did the choice of Tommy Douglas have less to do, in the end, with his accomplishments, than with the compelling package, the whole of the little fellow, idea and all? Was there something about the contrast between his physical size and ferocious tenacity that  ultimately tipped the scales?

Defeat snatched

If he hadn't been so short, he might not have been so exceedingly upright in posture, giving the impression that he was being lifted up from inside.

The effect was one of enormous moral force. I remember watching his speech at the end of the 1961 election, the first foray of the NDP into national politics.

Despite optimistic predictions, it was a disaster. Douglas lost his seat in Saskatchewan, and the party elected only 19 members to parliament.

And there he sat, positively twinkling, upright, shoulders broad, announcing that the party had "snatched defeat from the jaws of victory."
 
There is something great about that, the ability to believe that as long as we are still here, principles intact, then losing is just a reason to get up the next morning and keep working at it.

I've tried to find out exactly how short Tommy Douglas was, with no success so far. One source said five foot six, but I have a first-hand reason to doubt that.

'A Douglas for me'
 
In the summer of 1960, I spent four days in Regina, waiting for the CCF convention to be over, so our summer holiday could resume – on to the Manitoba border and then back to Vancouver.

My father was a delegate. I spent most of my time wandering through the Provincial Museum. Admission was free, yet another sign of how pleasant life could be in the socialist paradise of Saskatchewan. I split my time between sitting in front of the dioramas, willing the stuffed animals to move, and visiting the gerbils in their basement cages, and, stuck in my own adolescent cage, feeling sorry for them. I was 12 years old, clumsy, self-conscious, horrified at having suddenly sprouted to five foot six. It didn't help that Madge, the hairdresser who lived down the street, had taken to asking how the weather was up there.
 
On the last evening of the convention there was a social event that my parents insisted I attend, hoping, I think, that politics would rub off on me.

It was in the convention hotel, in an anonymous public room with a table in the middle. As the premier of Saskatchewan, Tommy Douglas was sung into the room to the strains of "A Gordon for Me," lyrics changed, of course, to "a Douglas for me," ending with the triumphant line, "the cocky wee Douglas is the pride of them all."
 
He was hoisted onto a table, so we could see him, and made a short speech, none of which I remember. Then he was helped down off the table right in front of me. He smiled and we shook hands. I have no idea what he said, or what I mumbled by way of reply. But I do remember what I thought, looking down at the tiny, tidy package now known as the Greatest Canadian:

"Oh my God, I'm taller than he is, and I'm only twelve."

Official picture

I have the official convention picture, a roll eight inches high and 20 inches long. From the sea of faces, you can pick out David Lewis, who would later lead the NDP, Hazen Argue, then the leader of the national CCF, and long-time MP Stanley Knowles. Dad is in the second row, farm boy turned car mechanic, looking sharp in his suit and tie, his face alive with his own political dream – a citizen of Mouseland who longed to run for parliament.

Down in the lower left hand corner, Tommy Douglas sits upright, dwarfed by a large woman in a floral dress, the biggest little man in Canadian politics.

Eve Johnson is author of Eating My Words, a collection of essays on food and culture by available from Whitecap Books.