son out of his house and for over a year the two didn’t speak.
But after little Tommy’s birth, the proud grandfather couldn’t stay away long. One day there was a knock at the door, and there stood the elder Thomas Douglas, “come to see the boy.”
Over the next few years, each of the old man’s other seven sons “went Labour,” and eventually he too made the switch, so Tommy Douglas, who would become the head of the first socialist government in North America in 1944, came by his politics honestly.
The town of Falkirk, about midway between Glasgow and Edinburgh, lies close to the site of a decisive battle in 1297 between British troops and Scottish forces led by William Wallace. The great iron works that was established there, fuelled by coal from nearby mines, made cannons for Wellington during the Napoleonic Wars. The men of the Douglas clan had worked at the iron works for several generations. It was a large and loving family, and little Tommy, as the first grandson and because he was always a bit sickly, was particularly loved. Although his father was a working man, he made a comfortable living by Falkirk standards, and Tommy enjoyed a happy childhood, except for his health problems.
The Douglas clan lived in two stone houses owned by Grandfather Douglas at the foot of a brae, the Scottish word for hill. At the time of Tommy’s birth, the houses still had thatched roofs, though later the thatch was replaced with slate, and they were heated by fire-places. There was a lot of reading done in those houses and a lot of arguing, about politics, religion, philosophy. It was a stimulating environment for a bright, observant boy like Tommy, a daydreamer who chafed at the limits placed on him by his poor health.
His grandfather Douglas had the large callused hands and broad shoulders of an ironworker, but he was a Sunday painter. In addition to introducing Gladstone, he had painted a portrait of the great man. And, most significantly for his young grandson, he was an amateur orator with a wide reputation – Tommy remembered him as “one of the finest speakers I ever heard”– and had committed to memory hundreds of verses of Robert Burns, Scotland’s beloved national poet. Tommy’s earliest memories were of sitting on the old man’s knee by the fireside as he recited lines from “Tam o’ Shanter” and other famous Burns poems.
Young Tommy absorbed Scottish history and the nationalism, egalitarianism, and religious fervour of Burns. A boyhood hero was Robert the Bruce, a thirteenth century Scottish king who battled the British. Years later, after losing his first election, Tommy would remind his supports that Robert only won a decisive victory after having first been beaten six times.
Tommy’s dad was a big, burly man who, nevertheless, liked to grow roses in his small Falkirk garden. He’d stopped going to church after a falling out with the minister. He associated the Presbyterians with the rich and Liberals; that party, he said, was made up of “conniving hypocrites” and was no friend to working people, a view Tommy adopted himself. Tom Douglas had left school at thirteen to begin work and, just as he had been the first in his family to change politics, for his son he aspired to something different from an iron moulder’s life. He wanted an education for the boy, and freedom from the restrictions of Great Britain’s rigid class system. He began to think about life in “the colonies.”
The Douglases hadn’t been in Canada for more than three years before the First World War broke out and Tom, as a British reservist, was called back to duty, joining an ambulance unit. The rest of the family, rather than stay in Canada without a breadwinner, sailed back to Scotland on the Pretoria, travelling without lights through U-boat-infested waters – a thrilling trip for a ten-year-old boy. They took up residence in Glasgow with Annie Douglas’s parents, the Clements.
Tommy’s grandfather Andrew Clement was a teamster who drove a delivery wagon for a co-operative market and was a great supporter of the co-op movement that, years later, the grandson would champion in Saskatchewan.
Tommy’s future as an amateur boxer began to make itself evident when he began school.
Like many boys around the world, he had to contend with bullies. On his first day, he set off for the Scotland Street School decked out in gartered knickers and a little porkpie hat, regular attire for Canadian schoolboys of the day. As he passed a corner that was the territory of a tough gang, he was met with gales of laughter. “Hey, Canuck,” the boys yelled, and one of them knocked off his hat. Tommy was small but his years in an out of hospital had made him somewhat immune to pain – and pugnacious as hell. When a big boy called Geordie Sinclair told him to jump, Tommy refused.
“Do it or I’ll belt you,” Geordie said, but Tommy stood his ground – and got a bloody nose.
Although Tommy punched Geordie right back, in the tussle that followed he was no match for the bigger boy.
Just the same, the next day, after school, Tommy went looking for Geordie and his chums. Taking a deep breath, he issued a challenge: “If you haven’t had enough, I’ll give you some more. Are you ready?”
Sometimes bluff works. And grit.
Instead of kicking the tar out of Tommy, or bursting into laughter, Geordie Sinclair was impressed. “You’ve had enough, Canuck,” he declared.
Tommy wasn’t bothered anymore, and he and Geordie became pals.
His leg healthy and pain free, Tommy was able to fully enjoy his childhood for the first time. Though he was no great shakes at his studies, after graduating from elementary school he enrolled in a private high school academy. He became close to his grandfather and spent many hours helping him on his rounds and caring for his horses. In his spare time, Tommy would often go to church, not because he was particularly religious, but to listen in fascination to the preachers. And he and a pal, Tom Campbell, loved nothing better than a Sunday afternoon jaunt to Glasgow Green, where they would listen to a succession of socialists and other soapbox speakers railing against the establishment.
But he was an obedient boy himself. “I didn’t rebel because there was nobody to rebel against,” he recalled.
With his dad away in the war, money was tight and Tommy took a series of part-time jobs to pay his way at school. What he really wanted to do was go to sea as a sailor, but he was too young. One of his best jobs was as a soap boy in a barbershop, working evenings and all day Saturday, rubbing soap into the bristly whiskers of men waiting for a shave, for which he earned six shillings a week plus tips. He was a likable boy and did well with the tips – at Christmas, he made an extra two pounds, a lot of money for a thirteen-year-old.
The next summer, he got a job in a cork factory, for thirty shillings a week. The owner took a liking to Tommy, and soon he was promoted to office work, at three pounds a week, more than his father had ever earned in the iron works! Tommy was getting on so well at the factory that he didn’t bother going back to school in the fall, which made his father blow his top when he came home on leave.
But the war was almost over, and Canada was calling to the family again. On New Year’s Day 1919, with Tommy just having turned fourteen, the family set sail once more. This time, they would be in Canada for good.
Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library from Maclean’s, June 1952
From a rooftop, Tommy Douglas and a friend watch the violence that marks the end of the Winnipeg General Strike on “Bloody Saturday,” June 21, 1919.
