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CELPIP Practice Reading: Reading for Information ID: #63088 Medium Tommy Douglas: preacher, premier and a thesis he later rejected

Read the following passage.

A. Thomas Clement "Tommy" Douglas was born in Falkirk, Scotland, on October 20, 1904, to a religious, working-class family that encouraged him to debate politics and religion. As a young boy he followed his father to Winnipeg, Manitoba. During the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike he witnessed "Bloody Saturday," when mounted police fired into the crowd, and the experience strengthened his commitment to civil liberties. He trained as a Baptist preacher and became an ordained pastor in Weyburn, Saskatchewan. Over time he came to believe that political action was the best way to improve people's lives.

B. His record also includes ideas that he later turned away from. In 1933 he earned a master's degree in sociology from McMaster University with a thesis called "The Problems of the Subnormal Family," based on a study of 12 women and their families in Weyburn. The thesis proposed a medical certificate for couples who wanted to marry, separate classes and communities for people labelled "subnormal," and sterilization of "mental defectives and those incurably diseased." Such eugenic ideas had other supporters in Canada at the time. By the time he became premier in 1944, however, he had lost faith in them, and his government rejected two reviews that recommended sterilization, choosing therapy and job training instead.

C. Douglas helped found the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) in 1933 and won a federal seat for the party in 1935. After two terms he moved to provincial politics, and in 1944 he became premier of Saskatchewan, leading the first CCF government in Canada. He went on to win five elections. In 1947 his government introduced a publicly funded hospital insurance plan open to everyone, the first of its kind. A later plan to pay for doctors' services worried many physicians, and a doctors' strike in 1962 delayed it. A compromise was reached, and both programs set a standard for other provinces.

D. In 1961 Douglas returned to federal politics as the first leader of the newly created New Democratic Party, a post he held until 1971. As a third party in Parliament, it used its influence on minority governments to push for national programs such as medicare and old age pensions. During the October Crisis of 1970, the government invoked the War Measures Act, which suspended civil liberties and gave the police greater powers of arrest. Most Canadians backed this hard line, and his opposition drew a storm of protest. Even so, he became the most vocal critic of the move, arguing, "The government, I submit, is using a sledgehammer to crack a peanut."

E. Not given in any of the above paragraphs.

Decide which paragraph, A to D, has the information given in each statement below. Select E if the information is not given in any of the paragraphs.

- 1.
The walkout by doctors in Saskatchewan lasted a little over three weeks.

- 2.
Within a few years of first taking office as premier, he brought in public hospital insurance.

- 3.
His early academic research called for controls on who could get married.

- 4.
A church group paid for the family's journey from Scotland to Canada.

- 5.
When emergency powers were used during a national crisis, he spoke out strongly against them despite public anger.

- 6.
Reports of how his early research proposals were being used in other countries led him to drop them.

- 7.
Something he saw as a teenager deepened his support for individual freedoms.

- 8.
Resistance from the medical profession held up a program to pay for visits to the doctor.

- 9.
Once he was premier, he favoured treatment and work skills over an idea he had once backed.

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