“Courage, my friends; ‘tis not too late to build a better world.”

Tommy Douglas

Who is Tommy Douglas?

Thomas Clement “Tommy” Douglas was a Scottish-born Baptist minister who became a prominent social democratic Canadian politician. As a child, Douglas injured his leg and developed osteomyelitis. The leg would have been amputated had it not been for a doctor who saw the condition as a good case to teach his medical students and agreed to help for free. This rooted Douglas’ belief that health care should be free to all.

Tommy Douglas’s number one concern was the creation of Medicare. In the summer of 1962, Saskatchewan became the centre of a hard-fought struggle between the provincial government, the North American medical establishment, and the province’s physicians, the latter who brought things to a halt with the 1962 Saskatchewan Doctors’ Strike. The doctors believed their best interests were not being met, fearing a significant loss of income as well as government interference in medical care decisions. Tommy Douglas insisted that his government would pay the going rate for medical services. That summer a public health care program became a reality for Saskatchewan -- leading to recommendations by Justice Emmett Hall, in 1964, of the nationwide adoption of this program which was ultimately created in 1966 by the government of Lester B. Pearson.

As leader of the Saskatchewan Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) from 1942, and the seventh Premier of Saskatchewan from 1944 to 1961, Tommy Douglas led the first socialist government in North America. When the CCF united with the Canadian Labour Congress, forming the New Democratic Party, Tommy Douglas was elected as its first federal leader, serving in that post from 1961 to 1971.

Tommy Douglas left a legacy which lives on in the health of all Canadians who continue to benefit from his determined vision. The overall goal of The Tommy Douglas Fund for Health Studies is to inform and train the next generation of engaged citizens, who are committed to preserving public health care, ending inequalities that result in ill-health for Canadians, and defending the universal human right to access to health.