Dwight Lyman Johnson (March 26, 1898 – June 3, 1972) was a physician and a politician in Manitoba, Canada. [1] He served in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba from 1943 to 1945. Elected as a member of the Manitoba Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, Johnson had a tenuous relationship with the party leadership and was expelled from the party caucus in 1945. After leaving the legislature, he became a member of the communist Labor-Progressive Party.
Manitoba is a province at the longitudinal centre of Canada. It is often considered one of the three prairie provinces and is Canada's fifth-most populous province with its estimated 1.3 million people. Manitoba covers 649,950 square kilometres (250,900 sq mi) with a widely varied landscape, stretching from the northern oceanic coastline to the southern border with the United States. The province is bordered by the provinces of Ontario to the east and Saskatchewan to the west, the territories of Nunavut to the north, and Northwest Territories to the northwest, and the U.S. states of North Dakota and Minnesota to the south.
The Legislative Assembly of Manitoba and the Queen of Canada in Right of Manitoba, represented by the Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba form the legislature of the Canadian province of Manitoba. Fifty-seven members are elected to this assembly in provincial general elections, all in single-member constituencies with first-past-the-post voting. The Manitoba Legislative Building is located in central Winnipeg, at the meeting point of the Wolseley and Fort Rouge constituencies.
The Labor-Progressive Party was a legal political organization in Canada between 1943 and 1959.
Johnson was born in Rapid City, Manitoba. His ancestors had moved from Pennsylvania to Ontario in the late eighteenth century. Many were Quakers, and almost all were farmers. He was educated in Rapid City, and at the Brandon Normal School, Brandon College and the Manitoba Medical College. He received a degree in medicine in 1926.
Rapid City is an unincorporated community recognized as a local urban district that also once held town status in southwest Manitoba, Canada within the Rural Municipality of Oakview. It is located about 30 km north of Brandon. Rapid City is a farming community that is developed on the banks of the Little Saskatchewan River. The dam and reservoir in Rapid City were built by the province in 1961, the reservoir stores 200 acre feet (250,000 m3) and provides a water supply and recreational facility for the community.
Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state located in the northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The Appalachian Mountains run through its middle. The Commonwealth is bordered by Delaware to the southeast, Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, Lake Erie and the Canadian province of Ontario to the northwest, New York to the north, and New Jersey to the east.
Ontario is one of the 13 provinces and territories of Canada and is located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province accounting for 38.3 percent of the country's population, and is the second-largest province in total area. Ontario is fourth-largest jurisdiction in total area when the territories of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut are included. It is home to the nation's capital city, Ottawa, and the nation's most populous city, Toronto, which is also Ontario's provincial capital.
He served in the ranks of the 27th Battalion during World War I, and was awarded a Military Medal and recommended for a commission. From 1926 to 1931, he served in the Philippines as a hospital superintendent. On returning to Manitoba, he served on the Brandon School Board and the Brandon Health Unit from 1937 to 1943.
World War I, also known as the First World War or the Great War, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. Contemporaneously described as "the war to end all wars", it led to the mobilisation of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history. It is also one of the deadliest conflicts in history, with an estimated nine million combatants and seven million civilian deaths as a direct result of the war, while resulting genocides and the 1918 influenza pandemic caused another 50 to 100 million deaths worldwide.
The Military Medal (MM) was a military decoration awarded to personnel of the British Army and other arms of the armed forces, and to personnel of other Commonwealth countries, below commissioned rank, for bravery in battle on land. The award was established in 1916, with retrospective application to 1914, and was awarded to other ranks for "acts of gallantry and devotion to duty under fire". The award was discontinued in 1993 when it was replaced by the Military Cross, which was extended to all ranks, while other Commonwealth nations instituted their own award systems in the post war period.
The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Situated in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of about 7,641 islands that are categorized broadly under three main geographical divisions from north to south: Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. The capital city of the Philippines is Manila and the most populous city is Quezon City, both part of Metro Manila. Bounded by the South China Sea on the west, the Philippine Sea on the east and the Celebes Sea on the southwest, the Philippines shares maritime borders with Taiwan to the north, Vietnam to the west, Palau to the east, and Malaysia and Indonesia to the south.
Johnson became politically active during this period. He was a member of the Brandon Reconstruction Club in the 1930s, a local division of the Canadian League for Social Reconstruction. In 1936, he became a vice-president of the Brandon CCF club. Johnson was a vocal proponent of socialism, and criticized others in the party who were reluctant to use the term openly.
The League for Social Reconstruction (LSR) was a circle of Canadian socialist intellectuals officially formed in 1932, though it had its beginnings during a camping retreat in 1931. These academics were advocating radical social and economic reforms and political education. Industrialization, urbanization, war, and the Great Depression provoked formation of the LSR. Industrialization promoted urbanization, and the creation of elaborate bureaucratic systems, and, from the perspective of the LSR, here began the problem. The complexities of economy and society had grown, but government was infused with laissez-faire ideology and did not regulate finance or industry, or, as the LSR believed, government regulations suited private rather than public interest.
Socialism is a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production and workers' self-management, as well as the political theories and movements associated with them. Social ownership can be public, collective or cooperative ownership, or citizen ownership of equity. There are many varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them, with social ownership being the common element shared by its various forms.
He was elected to the Manitoba legislature in a by-election held in the Brandon constituency on November 18, 1943. Along with Beresford Richards, who had been elected for The Pas earlier in the year, he soon became a prominent figure on the party's left-wing. The CCF was the official opposition party during this period, and Johnson distinguished himself in the legislature as his party's health and welfare critic.
By-elections, also spelled bye-elections, are used to fill elected offices that have become vacant between general elections.
Beresford (Berry) Richards was a politician in Manitoba, Canada. He served in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba from 1943 to 1949. Elected as a candidate of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, he was twice expelled from that party during his tenure in the legislature.
Since the 1930s, Johnson had called for cooperation among Canada's left-wing parties. In 1945, this position caused both Johnson and Richards to be expelled from the CCF caucus. Johnson and Richards argued that the CCF should promote friendly relations with the Soviet Union after World War II, and should seek cooperation with other progressive and working-class parties to prevent the Conservatives from returning to power at the federal level. This strategy of cooperation was identical to that favoured by the Labor-Progressive Party in 1945. Many in the CCF believed Johnson and Richards were directly influenced by the LPP, and accused them of disrupting the party. After Richards made their position public in a speech to the legislature, the provincial CCF council suspended both MLAs from the party.
The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 30 December 1922 to 26 December 1991. Nominally a union of multiple national Soviet republics, its government and economy were highly centralized. The country was a one-party state, governed by the Communist Party with Moscow as its capital in its largest republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Other major urban centres were Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, Alma-Ata, and Novosibirsk. It spanned over 10,000 kilometres east to west across 11 time zones, and over 7,200 kilometres north to south. It had five climate zones: tundra, taiga, steppes, desert and mountains.
World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. The major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China. It included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, and the only use of nuclear weapons in war.
The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada (PC) was a federal political party in Canada.
Johnson and Richards sat in the legislature as independent members, and sought re-election as "Independent CCF" candidates in the 1945 provincial election. Richards was re-elected, and later returned to the CCF fold. Johnson faced opposition from an official CCF candidate, however, and finished third. The winner in Brandon was Leslie McDorman from the Liberal-Progressive party. Johnson appealed for reinstatement to the CCF after the election, but was rejected at the party's December 1945 convention.
Unlike Richards, whose motivations in 1945 have been described as "naive and confused"[ citation needed ], Johnson's personal philosophy had shifted to Marxism by this period. He joined the Labor-Progressive Party a few years after his expulsion from the CCF. In 1949, he accused social democratic parties such as the CCF of being traitors to the working-class and of propping up the existing capitalist order.
Johnson ran as an independent candidate in the riding of Brandon in the 1949 federal election. Neither the CCF nor the LPP endorsed an official candidate, leaving Johnson as the de facto candidate of a united left. He finished a distant third, behind Liberal James Ewen Matthews . Johnson later attended the Asia and Pacific Rim Peace Conference in the People's Republic of China in 1952, during the period of the Korean War. [2]
