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Medicare founder Tommy Douglas voted greatest Canadian
Terry Fox ranks second and Pierre Trudeau third in CBC competition
 Toronto
- The late Tommy Douglas, the father of Canada's universal health-care
system, has been voted The Greatest Canadian in a national competition
sponsored this fall by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC).
Terry Fox, who inspired the country by running half way across it on
one leg before dying of cancer, placed second while Pierre Trudeau,
the prime minister who gave Canada its Charter of Rights and Freedoms,
was third.
"Tommy Douglas is getting the recognition he deserves," declared TV
host George Stroumboulopoulos, who served as the advocate for Douglas
during the series. "When we started this campaign in the summer, folks
had never even heard of Tommy Douglas."
The remaining finalists, in order, were Nobel Prize winner Sir
Frederick Banting (co-inventor of insulin), environmentalist and
science broadcaster David Suzuki, former prime minister and Nobel
Peace Prize winner Lester Pearson, CBC hockey broadcaster Don Cherry,
the country's founding prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald,
telephone pioneer Alexander Graham Bell and hockey great Wayne
Gretzky.
A total of 1.1 million votes were cast by Canadians via telephone,
e-mail or text messaging. The only change triggered by impassioned TV
debate shown nationally on Sunday night was that both Pearson and
Trudeau enjoyed 37% increases in their tallies.
Douglas was born in Scotland in 1904 and moved to Canada with his
family in 1919. An ordained minister, his first church was in Weyburn,
Sask., where he witnessed the suffering caused by the Great Depression
and decided that political action was needed.
He was a member of Parliament from 1935 until 1944. Then he led the
CCF, the forerunner of the NDP, to power in Saskatchewan and founded
the provincial medical insurance plan that became the blueprint for
Canada's national medical care system in the 1960s. NUPGE
Web posted by NUPGE:
30 November 2004
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