So many lawns on Nanaimo’s Nicol Street sported Tommy Douglas signs during the 1969 federal byelection that everyone was re-naming it Douglas Avenue, says former campaign manager Joyce Scotton.
“It is really an NDP riding and to have the leader of our party here running and the calibre of the leader at that time, it certainly invigorated New Democrats,” she said.
A new memorial plaque will be put up in Nanaimo to honour the service of Douglas, the first leader of the NDP and known for his role in bringing in public health care, but who also represented Nanaimo for three terms as a member of Parliament and was named Freeman of the City, Nanaimo’s highest civic honour.
The plaque will be paid for by an anonymous donor who has asked for it to be placed on city land downtown, a staff report shows. Council agreed to move ahead with the plaque during a closed meeting in March and the city’s community vitality committee is just now deciding where to put it.
Coun. Gord Fuller, chairman of the committee, said Douglas has quite the name for himself through Canadian history and a lot of people don’t realize he represented Nanaimo. One location the committee will consider is to put the plaque near Seacrest Towers where Douglas lived.
Leonard Krog, Nanaimo MLA, calls the plaque long overdue and absolutely fitting, while Coun. Diane Brennan, though not part of the original decision, was happy to hear it and said she’d like to see it in a prominent place like city hall.
“He is a pretty important man and I don’t think we do enough to celebrate that he was our MP,” she said.“Many, many thanks to whomever it is who said they would pay for this. I think that’s an incredible offer to the city to memorialize a man like him.”
So how did the former premier of Saskatchewan and leader of the NDP end up in the Harbour City?
Douglas had been defeated in his own riding of Burnaby-Seymour, according to the Library of Parliament’s history of federal ridings, while the NDP’s Colin Cameron celebrated a victory in Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands.
Scotton, who was Cameron’s campaign manager, said the riding went from Parksville, almost to the boundary of Victoria, including part of the Sooke area and all the Gulf Islands.
There was a caucus meeting and Douglas wanted no one to resign, but would take a natural byelection, said Scotton, adding no one expected that to happen within 30 days. Cameron died in July, 1968.
Douglas, nominated to run in the riding for the New Democrats, and his wife Irma rented an apartment in Nanaimo’s Seacrest Towers and Scotton said there was discussion about who his campaign manager would be. She remembers working in the apartment and got a call from Douglas, who was in Vancouver at a labour conference.
He couldn’t find his plane ticket for Ottawa and asked her to look through his jackets.
She remembered when he’d arrived home he had been wearing his brown Harris Tweed and when she learned he had it with him, she told him to look in the inside right pocket, where most men put their plane tickets.
“He said just a minute, he came back and he said ‘I found the ticket where you said it would be, will you be my campaign manager?’” she said, with a laugh.
That year, Douglas won the byelection with just over 57 per cent of the vote. He also won in 1972 and 1974.
Scotton recalled capital punishment as one big issue nationally and locally at the time and that it generated a lot of questions and time in the office because it was such an emotional issue. Douglas had run on the basis he was not in favour of capital punishment and it made it difficult for a lot of people who were in favour, but had supported him, she said.
She said Douglas was open to different ideas, concepts and people and never seemed to rush.
“Like if someone wanted to talk to him he seemed to have the time even if we were rushing to catch a plane,” she said.
She said it’s lovely someone will put up a plaque.
“I think that’s a good idea. I hope they pick a nice place to put it.”
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