“Courage, my friends; ‘tis not too late to build a better world.” These inspiring words came from the great mind of Tommy Douglas. Thomas (Tommy) Clement Douglas was the Premier of Saskatchewan and first leader of the New Democratic Party. Throughout his life Tommy Douglas conquered many milestones and achieved many great things. Tommy Douglas is a great Canadian because he was the Premier of Saskatchewan, is the father of medicare, and came up with the idea for a Canada-wide Pension Plan. Tommy Douglas immigrated to Canada from Falkirk, United Kingdom and settled in Winnipeg with his family in 1919. Douglas witnessed much suffering in Winnipeg, as the province had been hard hit by the Winnipeg General Strike, the economic depression, and …show more content…
(Lovick, L.D.) Douglas soon became involved in tending to people's physical and spiritual needs, (Foot, Richard.) while he pursued further academic studies in Christian Ethics. In 1924 he entered Brandon College, to study theology. His fellow students and professors introduced Douglas to the ideas of the social gospel. These ideas would soon become a strong backbone for his life and his political career. Secondly, along with these studies, his experience of the Great Depression led him to think that political action was how he would cure the suffering he saw around him. Douglas achieved many things, by the age of 19, not only had he earned his journeyman's card as a printer, but he was already gaining a reputation as a Baptist preacher at his first church in Austin, Manitoba. It was here that he became friends with J.S. Woodsworth, a Methodist preacher and the future Cooperative Commonwealth Federation leader. Douglas established a local association of the Independent Labour Party, and two years later he attended the first national convention of the newly, acknowledged socialist Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). Lastly, when Douglas saw how many people were suffering, he