Jane Fonda, Tommy Douglas…and Me

OK, OK, spare me the thumbscrews and water boards: Yes, I admit it, I did have dinner with Tommy Douglas.

Several times.

Tommy was then MP for Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands in British Columbia, and whenever he was at a loose end in Nanaimo we’d have dinner at the Villa Hotel, now poshed up as the Best Western Dorchester Hotel. We talked about Vietnam – just after Tommy had talked with Jane Fonda, a.k.a. Hanoi Jane about the war – and about poverty, health care, and the homeless in between visits from fellow diners eager to shake Tommy’s hand, beaming as they told him how they or their parents or grandparents had met him in Saskatchewan where it all began.   

I’m astonished Tommy’s RCMP dossier has only 1,142 pages; even if the Mounties had used the smallest font available, a list of the people I witnessed greet Tommy and wish him well would have filled every one of those pages. I wonder if there were Mounties at tables in the dark corners of the restaurant, sneaking photos over cold spaghetti dinners for security files on the well-wishers? 

Probably. In a story in The Globe And Mail (February 23, 2011) the Mountie who signed off on Tommy’s dossier said “we were looking at people who we thought were trying to overthrow the government – through working with the Communists, or the anarchists, the Trotskyists, the whole crew…we sent people out to watch protest movements.” And after all, who was more dangerously subversive than Tommy? The father of medicare, a provincial premier who introduced public auto insurance, guaranteed hospital care, and a provincial bill of rights?

I may have unwittingly added to Tommy’s RCMP dossier since apart from being a dinner companion of Tommy and a federal NDP candidate, my subversive antics included running an Anti-Poverty Group with other “subversives” who were, I’m sure, encouraged by my connection to Tommy. One “subversive” was a dentist in Departure Bay, then the most “desirable” and  pretentious neighbourhood in Nanaimo, who treated people – mainly children – who couldn’t afford a visit to a dentist on condition he received no publicity. I suppose there’s an RCMP dossier on him to, but if there isn’t, I’ll never fink on him to the Mounties, thumbscrews or no thumbscrews.