Right, Left and Centre: The Politcs of Some Canadians: Chapter 27, Part Two, by Dave Jaffe: This Man Was A Communist.

   This man Was A Communist: Chapter 27, Part Two. by Dave Jaffe


     "Social programs?" Abraham Heller once said. "They didn't exist when I was growing up.  There was very little unemployment insurance, tiny amounts of welfare, no medicare and minute pensions for the aged." At one time in the 1930's, the country's jobless rate stood at near 20 percent. Many jobless young men were herded into work camps where they toiled all day and got tiny amounts of money in return. Right wing governments across Canada, crushed any attempt to form unions. And landlords threw into the street tenants who couldn't afford to pay their rent.
     When he was in his mid-20's, as mentioned, Abe Heller had already seen more conflict than most people to-day see in a lifetime. Yet one group of people fought for the right of tenants, workers and the poor. This group was the Communist Party of Canada. For instance the first elected Canadian to call for a universal medical insurance scheme in Canada was Derise Nielsen who represented the then impoverished area of North Battleford Saskatchewan in the 1930's. She was a communist.
    Communists led marches and demonstrations for social justice. Communist organizers tried to form trade unions. In the beginning they failed in many of their attempts. Yet in the end they succeeded. Abe Heller was of course a Jew who faced daily discrimination. As a young man, he was too poor to go to university. He worked in dress factories owned by his rich relatives who paid him pitifully low wages.
     When he was 16, Heller joined the youth section of sthe Communist Party. Of course he had to do this secretly because Canada in the 1940's was not friendly to Communists. In the 1930's, the Conservative Prime Minister of Canada, millionaire Richard Bedford Bennett promised to crush communist with what he called 'An iron heel." The Liberal Party of Canada didn't sound as repressive as the Conservatives but they were just as ruthless.
     In joining the Communist Party Heller was now launched into a life of conflict and turmoil. He then joined the communist-led Canadian Seaman's Union that organized sailors on the Great Lakes. The Liberal governments of Prime Ministers Mackenzie King and then Louis Saint Laurent brought in an American gangster Hal Banks to smash the Seaman's Union. Aided by the Liberal government and the police forces, Banks succeeded in his task.
     Heller also took part in anti-unemployment demonstrations, and he and other communists forced the federal government to extend and beef up unemployment insurance. Yet by the late 1940's, the Cold War had come to Canada. "Any talk of class conflict or the rights of workers was not encouraged," another former communist party member recalled. Led by the United States of America, the western world confronted communists and the Soviet Union in  a relentless struggle for world domination. Right wing trade unionists, led by United Steelworkers like Bill Mahoney, travelled across Canada ousting Communists from the unions that they'd help form. Progressive teachers and professors were sometimes fired if they spoke up about left wing causes. A great painter like Jack Shadbolt, for instance, quickly put a distance between himself and the communist party which he'd once supported. Dissent was not encouraged.