Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story
Recently Laura and I watched Prarie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story, which I must say is a rather inspiring film for a lefty. The film is 3 hours long, and obviously quite low-budget, but the acting is good and the story is excellent and important. It is worth the 3 hour committment to get to know what made canada’s greatest citizen ever (according to CBCers…) tick. I was also amazed to learn of the other progressive and foresighted policies and programs that the TD government brought in besides public healthcare. For example:
- a bill of rights (preceding the Canadian Charter of rights and freedoms by 35 years, and the UN Charter by 18 months)
- public automobile insurance
- rural electricity
- public energy corporation
the list goes on and on these are just a few….a full list is here.
I was also struck by a quote of his, near the end of his life:
The only test of our character that matters is how we look after each other, not how we look after ourselves.
Seems obvious, but well-put.
Tags: Canada, movies, socialism, tommydouglas
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