The 1962 battle over Canadian health care: Labor pains

Whole Earth Review, Winter, 1995 by Steven A. Lyons

What the government called "universal coverage" the doctors called "compulsory state medicine." The doctors in Saskatchewan received publicity kits with the reminder: "The concept of universal medical coverage is not new and the approach by government to seek support is just the same as when first enunciated by Karl Marx in his Communistic theories...." The kit contained a "personal letter which you may wish to send to your patients." The canned letter informed the patient that the doctor's office would be closed until "the government will allow me to treat you, as I have in the past, without political interference or control."

"We used threats and so on, which incidentally worked very well," Barootes recalls. "The KOD was formed because so many doctors said they would leave. You're a mother with kids or you're pregnant and expecting your doctor to deliver you, and all of a sudden the doctor you've been attending with for years says 'I'm leaving.'. . . Another fear tactic we used, and I may have been part and parcel of it, was directed at the Roman Catholics and the Evangelicals. We said' The way this act is structured, the government could order us to do sterilizations and abortions.' We made a political cartoon about it."

July 1 came and, except for a few emergency centers, doctors withdrew their services.

Allan Blakeney, later to become the premier of Saskatchewan, was a minister in the cabinet at the time: "I have never seen anything approaching this level of public hysteria about an issue," he remembers. "It lasted from late June to mid-July. People were enormously upset. The hysteria was further whipped up by our newspapers. At that moment in time I would guess that 75 percent of the people would have wanted us to suspend the Medical Care Act. We felt we had a mandate to let the people look at it in operation, so we went forward."

Going forward was certainly an act of courage. Six days after the strike began, the Keep Our Doctors committees held a rally. Father Murray, a seventy-year-old priest, gave the most sensational of the speeches. "There has been death, there will be violence, and there could be bloodshed," he cried. Tearing off his coat and clerical collar, Father Murray shouted, "You Communists may think we're naive and hollow-chested, but we gave a hundred thousand boys fighting for the freedom you're fighting against." Now in full stride, he stormed, "Tell those bloody Commies to go to hell when it comes to Canada. I loathe the welfare state and I love the free-swinging freedom." The priest warned: "I wouldn't be surprised if someone put a bullet in me -- I am as likely to get it as Woodrow Lloyd." (Lloyd was the new premier. Tommy Douglas had left Saskatchewan to join the party in Ottawa.)

On July 11, thousands of demonstrators marched on the legislature, carrying effigies of Premier Lloyd and Tommy Douglas, with the caption "Down With Dictators."

Meanwhile the government had initiated an emergency airlift of doctors from England to mitigate the crisis. In response, the acting chairman of the KOD wrote to Premier Lloyd ". . . We do not want doctors you and your commission can find in distant lands. We do not want card-carrying Communist doctors. . . ." One KOD committee sent a telegram to the United Nations, concluding: "Our freedom is at stake. Urgent."