Into the Hurricane: Attacking Socialism and the CCF

Extract

Into the Hurricane: Attacking Socialism and the CCF, John Bokyo, Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing, 2006, pp. 199.

In these days when national voter support for the New Democratic Party (NDP) seems to be under pressure, it is salutary to recall the lasting legacy forged under greater pressures of its precursor, the Canadian Commonwealth Federation (CCF). John Boyko's fine but flawed book exploring the fierce struggles of that earlier period begins by invoking the choice of CCF icon Tommy Douglas as the “greatest Canadian” in a 2004 CBC television survey. How is it possible that, like medicare which he pioneered, what had been so savagely attacked in ideological terms as a threat to what Canada stood for was now embraced nationwide as mainstream as motherhood?