Distress Call

The story of Canadian Medicare begins with a twelve-year-old boy in Winnipeg who developed a bone infection in his leg. His family could not afford the specialist they needed. A charitable doctor treated him for free, but Tommy Douglas never forgot what it felt like to depend on the goodwill of strangers for medical care. He became a Baptist minister, then a politician, driven by a single conviction: that access to a doctor should not depend on the size of your bank account. Douglas was elected Premier of Saskatchewan in 1944, leading the CCF to the first democratic socialist government elected in North American history. He spent years building the foundation: introducing hospital insurance, training more doctors, constructing clinics in rural communities that had never had a physician. In 1962, he moved to introduce full universal healthcare. The response was ferocious. Doctors staged a 23-day strike. The North American press called it a communist experiment. Douglas called it basic human decency. The strike ended. The plan held. Within years, Lester Pearson's federal government brought Medicare to all of Canada, province by province. Douglas resigned as Premier in 1961 to lead the national New Democratic Party. He never became Prime Minister. But in 2004, when CBC asked Canadians to vote on the greatest Canadian who had ever lived, the man who gave them the right to see a doctor without going bankrupt won by a wide margin. Tommy Douglas. The Greatest Canadian.