Donald Cameron MacDonald CM OOnt (December 7,1913 – March 8,2008) was a Canadian politician. Referred to in the media as the "best premier Ontario never had," [1] he represented the provincial riding of York South in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1955 to 1982. From 1953 to 1970 he was the leader of the social democratic Ontario section of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and its successor,the Ontario New Democratic Party. [2]
MacDonald was born in Cranbrook,British Columbia,and moved with his family to Tullochgorum,Quebec in 1923 and then earned a bachelor's and master's degree from Queen's University. [1] He supported the Conservative Party of Canada in his youth,but became a democratic socialist after witnessing the social problems of the Great Depression. He worked for several years as a teacher and journalist,and was employed by the Montreal Gazette in the mid-1930s. [2]
MacDonald joined the Royal Canadian Navy in 1942,and served in Canada during World War II as secretary of a top-secret intelligence committee,the main responsibility of which was to transmit enemy submarine positions to the Royal Canadian Air Force. He later became editor of Canadian Digest,a magazine published by the military that provided a cross section of articles from Canadian periodicals and newspapers,and was the host of Serviceman's Forum,a regular series of broadcasts on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that were also aired by the British Broadcasting Corporation. Members of the military and civilian experts discussed issues of concern in these broadcasts. [2]
MacDonald joined the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) while serving in Ottawa,Ontario in 1942. In 1946,he joined the national CCF staff and travelled the country as a party organizer. He was a candidate in the August 1953 federal election for the British Columbia riding of Kootenay East,and finished a strong third against Liberal Jim Byrne with 28% of the vote. He was persuaded to run for the Ontario CCF leadership later in the same year,and defeated Fred Young and Andrew Brewin for the position. [3]
MacDonald took over the party in the middle of the Cold War and at the height of McCarthyism,when socialism was viewed with suspicion. [3] The CCF had almost won power in Ontario ten years earlier,winning 34 seats in the 1943 provincial election,but by the time MacDonald became leader it held only two seats in the legislature. MacDonald was himself without a seat until the 1955 provincial election,when he defeated Progressive Conservative incumbent William Beech by 1,426 votes in York South. [3] His victory increased the CCF's legislative standing to three seats,and MacDonald quickly became known as one of the most vocal members of the legislature. He fought for issues such as prison reform and universal public healthcare,and emphasised pragmatism over doctrinaire socialism as he tried to appeal to voters as a moderate reformer. Some Toronto newspapers described him as the de facto opposition leader against Leslie Frost's Progressive Conservative government. [3] His pursuit of the Northern Ontario Natural Gas scandal led to the resignation of three members of Frost's cabinet. [3]
MacDonald slowly rebuilt the party during his tenure as leader,and provided it with a benevolent public face. The CCF grew to five seats in the 1959 provincial election. Following the founding of the federal New Democratic Party in 1961,he was acclaimed as the first leader of the Ontario NDP in October 1961. [3] The new party won seven seats in the 1963 election,and MacDonald later expressed disappointment that a larger breakthrough did not occur. [3]
As the province's population became more urban and as social issues came to the forefront of political discussion,the NDP had a major breakthrough in the 1967 election rising from seven seats to 20. [3] This new success led to increasing pressure for new leadership,as the party was seen as a potential victor and many activists felt a younger leader was needed to catch the mood of the times. Jim Renwick challenged MacDonald for the party leadership in 1968,but lost. [3] In 1970,Stephen Lewis was able to marshall support among the Steelworkers union with which his family had strong links. [3] (His father,David Lewis,had represented the steelworkers as a labour lawyer for many years.) MacDonald decided not to seek re-election as leader in order to avoid a divisive fight. At the leadership convention that fall,Stephen Lewis defeated Walter Pitman and succeeded MacDonald as Ontario NDP leader. [3]
MacDonald was officially neutral in the 1970 leadership contest,but tacitly favoured Pitman. [3] In his autobiography,MacDonald notes that he was initially skeptical about the younger Lewis's leadership abilities,and believed that his election "fitted conveniently into the Tory plans" for the next election. [2] The Progressive Conservative government was able to rally business support by depicting Lewis as dangerously left-wing,and the NDP did not gain seats in the 1971 election. MacDonald has also argued that the party's breakthrough under Lewis in the 1975 election was made possible by Lewis's decision to moderate his more strident views. [2]
At the federal level,MacDonald attended the 1971 NDP Federal Leadership Convention and ran for party president. [4] The 1960s youth-quake was moving into federal politics,and a group of New Left academics and activists called The Waffle presented the fiercest opposition to MacDonald and other "establishment" members. [4] He was up against Carol Gudmundson —of the Saskatoon,Saskatchewan Waffle —in the battle for the party presidency. [4] With the help of the union delegations,and the party's establishment,MacDonald was victorious on April 23,1971 and became the president during the same convention that saw Tommy Douglas pass the leadership torch on to David Lewis. [4] He got 885 votes to Gudmundson's 565,and started the trend that day that saw Waffle candidates getting defeated at almost every federal council and executive position. [4]
MacDonald supported Ian Deans's unsuccessful bid to replace Lewis as party leader in 1978,and helped to draft Bob Rae for the leadership in 1982. He then resigned as an MPP in 1982,to give Rae an opportunity to enter the legislature. MacDonald served as chair of the NDP caucus from 1982 to 1985,and was chair of the Ontario Election Finances Commission from 1986 to 1994. [2]
MacDonald's autobiography,Happy Warrior:Political Memoirs,was published in 1988 and the second edition in 1998,to add the Rae years as the first NDP Ontario government. [2]
He became a Member of the Order of Canada in 2003 and also holds an Order of Ontario. [5]
By the early 2000s,the NDP was near the bottom of their decline in MacDonald's home riding. Rae had held the riding for 14 years before it fell to the Liberals in 1996. The riding's name was changed to York South—Weston for the 1999 provincial election and it became a much larger riding than it was when he represented it.
In 2004,MacDonald supported a young NDP Provincial Executive member named Paul Ferreira in his campaign to be the area's MPP. Ferreira would raise the NDP's vote substantially from 3.7% to over 21%. While not good enough for a win,it allowed him to eventually,after four elections in two and half years,win the seat February 8,2007. Donald MacDonald supported him through all these campaigns and was there to publicly congratulate Ferreira and pass on the generational torch at the victory party.
MacDonald died in 2008 of heart failure at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. He was 94. [1]
Howard George Hampton is a politician who was a member of Provincial Parliament for the province of Ontario. He served in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario,Canada,from 1987 to 1999 in the electoral district of Rainy River,and from 1999 to 2011 in the redistributed electoral district of Kenora—Rainy River. A member of the Ontario New Democratic Party,he was also the party's leader from 1996 to 2009. Hampton retired from the legislature at the 2011 Ontario provincial election and subsequently joined Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP as a member of the law firm's corporate social responsibility and aboriginal affairs groups.
The Ontario New Democratic Party is a social democratic political party in Ontario,Canada. The party sits on the centre-left of the political spectrum and currently forms the Official Opposition in Ontario following the 2018 general election. It is a provincial section of the federal New Democratic Party.
David Lewis was a Canadian labour lawyer and social democratic politician. He was national secretary of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) from 1936 to 1950 and one of the key architects of the New Democratic Party (NDP) in 1961. In 1962,he was elected as the Member of Parliament (MP),in the House of Commons of Canada,for the York South electoral district. While an MP,he was elected the NDP's national leader and served from 1971 until 1975. After his defeat in the 1974 federal election,he stepped down as leader and retired from politics. He spent his last years as a university professor at Carleton University,and as a travel correspondent for the Toronto Star. In retirement,he was named to the Order of Canada for his political service. After suffering from cancer for a long time,he died in Ottawa in 1981.
The Waffle was a radical wing of Canada's New Democratic Party (NDP) in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It later transformed into an independent political party,with little electoral success before it permanently disbanded in the mid-1970s. It was generally a New Left youth movement that espoused both Canadian nationalism and solidarity with the Quebec sovereignty movement.
The Nova Scotia New Democratic Party is a social democratic political party in Nova Scotia,Canada. It is the provincial section of the federal New Democratic Party.
Edward Bigelow Jolliffe was a Canadian social democratic politician and lawyer from Ontario. He was the first leader of the Ontario section of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and leader of the Official Opposition in the Ontario Legislature during the 1940s and 1950s. He was a Rhodes Scholar in the mid-1930s,and came back to Canada to help the CCF,after his studies were complete and being called to the bar in England and Ontario. After politics,he practised labour law in Toronto and would eventually become a labour adjudicator. In retirement,he moved to British Columbia,where he died in 1998.
Michael Morris Cassidy is a Canadian politician. He served in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1971 to 1984,and in the House of Commons of Canada from 1984 to 1988. Cassidy was the leader of the New Democratic Party of Ontario from 1978 to 1982.
John Paul Ludger Harney,also known as Jean-Paul Harney,was a Canadian professor and former politician.
The Ontario New Democratic Party elects its leaders by secret ballot of the party members and/or their delegates at leadership elections,as did its predecessor,the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. The party leader can be challenged for the leadership at the party's biennial convention. The Ontario New Democratic Party is a social democratic political party in Ontario,Canada.
Walter George Pitman was an educator and politician in Ontario,Canada.
The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation –The Farmer-Labor Party of Ontario,more commonly known as the Ontario CCF,was a democratic socialist provincial political party in Ontario that existed from 1932 to 1961. It was the provincial wing of the federal Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). The party had no leader in the beginning,and was governed by a provincial council and executive. The party's first Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) was elected by voters in the 1934 Ontario general election. In the 1937 general election,no CCF members were elected to the Ontario Legislature. In 1942,the party elected Toronto lawyer Ted Jolliffe as its first leader. He led the party to within a few seats of forming the government in the 1943 general election;instead,it formed the Official Opposition. In that election,the first two women were elected to the Ontario Legislature as CCFers:Agnes Macphail and Rae Luckock. The 1945 election was a setback,as the party lost most of its seats in the Legislature,including Jolliffe's seat. The party again became the Official Opposition after the 1948 general election,and defeated the Conservative premier George Drew in his seat,when Bill Temple unexpectedly won in the High Park constituency. The middle and late 1940s were the peak years for the Ontario CCF. After that time,its electoral performances were dismal,as it was reduced to a rump of two seats in the 1951 election,three seats in the 1955 election,and five seats in the 1959 election. Jolliffe stepped down as leader in 1953,and was replaced by Donald C. MacDonald.
Fred Matthews Young was a politician in Ontario,Canada. He was a New Democratic member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1963 to 1981 who represented the riding of Yorkview. He was an ordained minister and long time organizer for the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF).
Murray Cotterill was a Canadian trade union activist and organizer for the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF).
Elie Walter Martel is a former politician in Ontario,Canada. He served in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1967 to 1987,as a member of the New Democratic Party (NDP).
Paul Ferreira is a Canadian politician and one of the first openly gay politicians elected to provincial office in Canada. He also has the distinction of being the very first Azorean-Canadian MPP. He was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as a member of the Ontario New Democratic Party (NDP) in the February 8,2007 York South–Weston by-election,but was narrowly defeated in the 2007 general election. He subsequently served as chief of staff to party leader Howard Hampton until Hampton's retirement from that position in 2009. He later worked as a special assistant to leader Andrea Horwath. On Feb. 8,2011,Ferreira was acclaimed as the Ontario NDP's candidate in York South-Weston in the 2011 provincial election.
The New Democratic Party is a federal political party in Canada. Widely described as social democratic,the party sits at the centre-left to left-wing of the Canadian political spectrum,with the party generally sitting to the left of the Liberal Party. The party was founded in 1961 by the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC).
The 1971 New Democratic Party leadership election was a leadership convention held in Ottawa from April 21 to 24 to elect a leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada. Tommy Douglas retired as federal leader,and David Lewis was elected as his successor. At this convention the Waffle faction was at the zenith of its popularity and power. Donald C. MacDonald,the former Ontario NDP leader,was elected as the party's president. The major non-leadership issues were what stance would the party take in terms of Quebec sovereignty and whether policy initiatives calling for the nationalization of the oil,gas,and mining industries would pass.
Walter Kenneth (Ken) Bryden was a Co-operative Commonwealth Federation/NDP member of the Ontario legislature from 1959 to 1967,an economist,academic,civil servant and author.
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