Talk:David Lewis (Canadian politician)/Archive 1

Biography assessment rating comment

The article may be improved by following the WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article. More references and information regarding the forming the NDP, his years at Oxford and as a CCF organizer. -- Abebenjoe 09:21, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Major update

I added a major update today, mostly on David's life up until 1961. Will add more in the next week or so.Abebenjoe 11:33, 10 April 2007 (UTC

Items that still need more work

1968–1971 the Douglas/Lewis transition

Further updates are needed on the period between 1968 and 1971. This was the period of rising tensions between Tommy Douglas and David Lewis. Since Lewis was the leader in the house for over seven months between June 1968 and February 1969, he was also effectively in charge of the party. Stephen Lewis, repeating a similar deed performed on Ontario Leader Donald C. MacDonald, asked Douglas to step down.

Added to the intrigue between Douglas and the two Lewis's, was the creation of the Waffle in 1969. How the party handled them would cause plenty of disagreement within the establishment, including T.C. Douglas and David Lewis' differing approaches. This is detailed in Walter Stewart's books and in the McCleod's book on Douglas.

1971-1974 Leader

More detail is needed about the '72 election and its aftermath. Also, ther relationship between David and his wife Sophie got very complex during this period. A little more information about Stephen's leadership during the Waffle's expulision and its effect on the federal wing should also be explored. The McCleods, Smith, and Stewart cover this period.

1975–1981 Retirement and death

David Lewis went back to his boyhood shtetl Svisloch in 1978, only to find that the Nazi's killed everyone he knew and destroyed the town during the Holocaust. Smith details this section of his life. Once these sections are filled in, i think the article is ready to be nominated as a GA category article. Abebenjoe 09:05, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Good Article (GA) review

This article has a lot of good, detailed information but it has too many problems to make Good Article at this time:

• The intro needs to be expanded to two or three paragraphs. It should summarize the entire article, at least covering more of what's contained in the article than it currently does.
• The grammar has some major problems. Example: "...meant there were factory workers that could be mobilized into Labour organizations. Which is why the Jewish Labour Bund, or Bund for short, ..." Please ask another editor or editors who edit similar article subjects to copyedit/scrub the article for you.
• Avoid one-sentence paragraphs.
• I think the article is divided into too many subsections. For example, the "Life in Canada" section doesn't need to be subdivided. If a section only contains one paragraph, it can probably be combined with adjacent sections.
• Combine many of the citations. You can do this by either combining them all into a single inline citation at the end of each paragraph, or using the "ref name =" format. If you need to see an example here's an article that uses them: [1]. This will greatly reduce the length of your footnotes section.
• Separate the footnotes and references into different sections. See the same article that I linked to above for an example.
• The "See also" section doesn't have any links in it, so it can be deleted.
• The same information is repeated in the infobox at the top as in the infobox at the bottom of the article. Unless the bottom infobox contains new information, it doesn't need to be there.
• Some of the reference titles are italicized and some are bolded and italicized. The boldings need to come out.

Although I'm not approving this article as a Good Article, it doesn't mean I don't think good work hasn't been done on it. Like I said, the article is filled with excellent information and is well on its way. If the issues I found can be addressed, then I think the article should be resubmitted for GA review and should have a good chance for approval the next time. If you have any questions, please list them here or ask on my talk page. CLA 08:54, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I've used the strike-thru feature to indicate which items have been addressed. The time-consuming edits are still under revision.--Abebenjoe 18:08, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Ok, even though I failed the article and removed it from the GA candidate listing, let me know when you've completed the corrections and I'll relook it without making the article go to the end of the line. CLA 00:36, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

I think the article is improved enough now that I'm passing it for GA, but it could still use some work on the grammar and encyclopedic language. Nevertheless, the article is very informative, well-referenced, properly formatted, well-organized, and neutral. Nice work. Cla68 20:59, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Voting results for Lewis in the 40s

The only campaign that he fought that needs the detail of the votes is his defeat in the 1943 by-election, because it really affected him. The other elections in 1940, '45, and '49 were more or less an exercise of putting a name on a ballot: he did not put his heart and soul into those campaigns, like he did the Montreal campaign. Also, and this a big also, for practical reasons, the article is getting way too long with all the tables (with them in it, it is at the 60K mark, which is considered too long). So, I am keeping the election result tables here, and maybe there might be a better way to integrate them, either into this article or in another article, because it certainly looks like Winshevsky put a lot of effort to create the tables.--Abebenjoe 07:14, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Lewis first ran for the CCF in the 1940 federal election as the party's candidate in York West where he placed a poor third.

{{CanElec5|1940}} 
|-
{{Canadian elections/Conservative}}
|[[Rodney Adamson]]
|align="right"|12,728||align="right"|
{{Canadian election result|CA Liberal|Chris J. Bennett|12,117 ||align="right"|}}
{{Canadian elections/CCF}}
|'''David Lewis'''
|align="right"|3,787||align="right"|
{{end}}
<br>
{{CanElec5|1945}}
{{Canadian election result|CA Liberal|[[Colin W. G. Gibson]]|11,439||align="right"|40.15  }}
{{Canadian elections/Progressive Conservatives}}
|Chester William New
|align="right"|9,260 ||align="right"|32.50
{{Canadian elections/CCF}}
|'''David Lewis'''
|align="right"|'''6,728'''||align="right"|'''23.61''' 
{{Canadian elections/LPP}}  
|Sam Sniderman
|align="right"| 1,063 ||align="right"|3.73
{{end}}

In the 1949 federal election, Lewis stayed in the area running in the riding of Wentworth.

{{CanElec5|1949}}
|- 
{{Canadian elections/Progressive Conservatives}}
|Frank Exton Lennard  
|align="right"|16,443 
{{Canadian election result|CA Liberal|Henry Arnott Hicks| 13,312 }}
{{Canadian elections/CCF}}
|'''David Lewis''' 
|align="right"| '''11,638''' 
{{Canadian elections/LPP}}
|[[Stanley Ryerson]]  
|align="right"|1,028 
{{Canadian elections/Independent}}
|Charles Giles 
|align="right"|562    
|}

<br>
{{CanElec5|1968}}
|-
{{Canadian_politics/party_colours/NDP/row}} 
|[[New Democratic Party]]
|'''David Lewis'''
|align="right"|'''12,357'''||align="right"|'''43.28''' 
{{Canadian_politics/party_colours/Liberal/row}}  
|[[Liberal Party of Canada|Liberal]]
|[[Ron Barbaro]]
|align="right"| 11,693  ||align="right"|40.95  
{{Canadian_politics/party_colours/Progressive Conservatives/row}}  
|[[Progressive Conservative Party of Canada|Progressive Conservative]]
|Cy Townsent
|align="right"| 4,499  ||align="right"|15.75  
{{end}}

RCMP Keeping an Eye on Lewis

Seems that David Lewis was followed by the RCMP for five decades - this is the write up - if anyone has a tape of it to milk:

http://www.cbc.ca/whodoyouthinkyouare/stories/ext_avi2.php

The wording in the article is very awkward - it seems as if the person who wrote it sees a bunch of different types of Marxism. David Lewis was very anti-communist because his father was threatened by the Soviets for Union organizing. I would like to see comparisons/contrasts between the Bund movement and the social gospel - whether they are basically the same thing or not. I would like to see more on the role human rights played the the philosophy of both the organizations David Lewis associated himself with and his own actions. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.77.37.48 (talk) 09:42, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

York South election results

I removed most of the election results and placed them here, since they are increasing the size of the article, and more prose is needed to fill in some other areas.

{{CanElec5|1963}}
|-
{{Canadian_politics/party_colours/Liberal/row}}  
|[[Liberal Party of Canada|Liberal]]
|Marvin Gelber
|align="right"| 21,042 ||align="right"| 43.76
{{Canadian_politics/party_colours/NDP/row}} 
|[[New Democratic Party]]
|'''David Lewis'''
|align="right"| '''17,396''' ||align="right"| '''36.18'''
{{Canadian_politics/party_colours/Progressive Conservatives/row}}  
|[[Progressive Conservative Party of Canada|Progressive Conservative]]
|William G. Beech
|align="right"|9,648||align="right"|20.06 
{{end}}

{{CanElec5|1965}}
|-
{{Canadian_politics/party_colours/NDP/row}} 
|[[New Democratic Party]]
|'''David Lewis'''
|align="right"|'''21,693'''||align="right"| '''46.94'''
{{Canadian_politics/party_colours/Liberal/row}}  
|[[Liberal Party of Canada|Liberal]]
|Marvin Gelber
|align="right"| 18,098  ||align="right"| 39.16
{{Canadian_politics/party_colours/Progressive Conservatives/row}}  
|[[Progressive Conservative Party of Canada|Progressive Conservative]]
|Maxwell Rotstein
|align="right"| 6,427   ||align="right"| 13.91
{{end}}

{{CanElec5|1972}}
|-
{{Canadian_politics/party_colours/NDP/row}} 
|[[New Democratic Party]]
|'''David Lewis'''
|align="right"|14,225||align="right"|'''46.87'''   
{{Canadian_politics/party_colours/Liberal/row}}  
|[[Liberal Party of Canada|Liberal]]
|Lucio   Appolloni
|align="right"|9,551||align="right"|31.47   
{{Canadian_politics/party_colours/Progressive Conservatives/row}}  
|[[Progressive Conservative Party of Canada|Progressive Conservative]]
|[[John Oostrom]]
|align="right"| 6,401||align="right"|21.09    
{{Canadian_politics/party_colours/Independents/row}}  
|Unknown 
|Keith Corkhill
|align="right"|172||align="right"|0.05     
{{end}} --[[User:Abebenjoe|Abebenjoe]] ([[User talk:Abebenjoe|talk]]) 01:03, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Comments from Steve Smith

I'm belatedly taking a detailed look at this article, especially the prose. I'm doing some copyediting throughout, but in some cases I think the needed changes are more fundamental. Some comments:

• In general, the prose is bloated and sometimes colloquial ("The only problem was...", "Politics was in David Lewis' soul...", etc.). There's also a tendency to overuse nouns at the expense of pronouns; trying to reduce noun use can also force you to improve sentence structure and flow, as you rearrange to avoid repeating the same noun over and over. Have a look at some of the changes I've made and see if you can make similar changes
• Ideas sometimes don't flow well. For example, before my edits we were told that the Bund was critical to the formation of Lewis's political views, that Moishe was its chair, that Lewis was immersed in its philosophy, and that the shetl's receptiveness towards social democracy was embodied by it all before we're told what the Bund actually is. In many places, the article appears to be a list of accurate facts gleaned from sources without much attempt at integration.
• Incidentally, we're told twice that Moishe was the Bund chair; ideally, facts should only be dealt with once in the body of an article.
• The fourth paragraph of the lede is badly disjointed, saying that that the Lewis family has been active in socialist politics since nine years before David's birth, and then jumping to a mention of Stephen Lewis, the jumping to David Lewis's retirement and death. I'd lose the first sentence entirely and dispense with David's life, including his retirement and death, before discussing Stephen.
• What's with International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers being wikilinked as "Mine, Mill"?
• The lead doesn't deal with his leadership of the NDP, or indeed with his time as an MP, at all - surely that's one of the most notable aspects of his career?
• "To understand David Lewis's political activism requires an examination of his roots in the shtetl he lived in from 1909 until 1921." is a subjective judgment. When quoting sources' subjective judgments, we need to attribute them rather than adopting them as our own.
• "The Bund's membership, although mostly Jewish, was actually secular humanist in practice." Unclear on what this means: were the members not Jewish in the religious sense (only in the cultural one), or were its member religious Jews who did not transmit their religious beliefs on the organization.
• There are some very short sections; consider merging them.
• There's probably too much foreshadowing - mentioning Stephen Lewis in a section about David Lewis's early life in Russia doesn't seem helpful, and discussion of the Bund's spirit of compromise should probably be limited at that point to its influence on David Lewis, rather than on the CCF and NDP as a whole (that can be addressed when we get to the part about the NDP).

I don't want to come across as being too critical - the research in this article is plainly excellent, and we'll get this to FAC - but I'm naturally focussing on what needs to be improved, rather than what's already good. I'll go through more of the article as time allows. Steve Smith (talk) 06:53, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Good, expurgate and rearrange where you can.--Abebenjoe (talk) 16:20, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

• The section dealing with secular humanist philosophy and the Bund was meant to convey, that although most of its members were ethnically Jewish, they weren't necessarily in the religious sense, i.e. David's father was a secular Jew, as were most Bundists. The article may have presented that idea in an awkward way, but it attempted to dennotate that the Bund's focus was not on religion, or one's religious affiliation, but rather their class and living/working conditions.

• Maybe Mine, Mill is too much "inside baseball", but that is how the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (IUMMSW) is usually referred to by unionists, and people familiar with labour issues. Most of the sources listed discuss the IUMMSW in the shortened Mine, Mill form, not in an acronym.

• Some of the repetition is due to my media training: I've been trained on the "Thalberg Rule of Three": meaning, display an idea once for the folks in the front seats, a second time for the people in the middle seats, and finally, a third time for the folks at the back. I know in strictly scholarly work this usually is not the preferred methodology for presenting information, as it is assumed that the people reading the work are smart enough to get it in one try. Prune where you see fit.

• This article's original purpose was to be a supporting article for the Stephen Lewis article. But as I learned more about Moishe and David, my interest switched to them and waned for him. Two years later, and I still haven't done a substantial rewrite of the Stephen Lewis article. So this article might, especially at the beginning, jump to Stephen, rather than follow a more linear temporal flow. I still think that Stephen played an important role in David's later career, so it probably needs some tweaking as to when Stephen comes into the article. Although the point about the Lewis family being a multi-generational political family, should still be in the opening paragraphs, as they are now on their fourth generation and still continue to make their mark on left-wing politics both in Canada and abroad.--Abebenjoe (talk) 16:55, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

• Just wanted to note that I think what you've done with the lead is perfect. I'll make more comments later. Steve Smith (talk) 21:04, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

More items:

• "He barely escaped with his life." Is this related to the events of 1920, or the subsequent imprisonment?
• Who are Charlie and Doris? Why do they merit mention?
• Beginning in the "Early life in Canada" section, Moishe is given the last name Lewis. Did he change it immediately on arrival in Canada?
• If the teacher had a Welsh accent, he was probably rather more than "of Welsh descent", no?
• "It was ghetto-like because Jews from outside the school district were not allowed to go to other high schools, like Montreal High." But weren't these students from inside Montreal? Also, why mention Montreal High specifically?

More later. Steve Smith (talk) 06:25, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

• Charlie and Doris are David Lewis' younger brother and sister. So his mother, and the three children emigrated from Russia in the summer of 1921.

• In fact, his teacher was a Welshman, having emigrated from the UK in adulthood.

• Montreal High was located in a Jewish-Anglo neighbourhood, however, Jews were not allowed to go there. Jews in the 1920s, even though they lived in Montreal, were restricted, because of their ethnicity/religion, as to where they could go to school by the local municipal government. At University, there were quotas for Jews, i.e. quotas to restrict how many Jews would be allowed into the university, and then even more quotas to limit how many Jews could go into specific fields of study, such as Medicine and Law. Being Jewish in that period meant that they faced systemic, institutional racisim, and was not like it is today. Despite these barriers, Jews, and David Lewis in particular thrived in this environment, because for all its problems, it was still a much better place to live than in the Pale of Settlement.--Abebenjoe (talk) 22:18, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

• "He lectured at this..." I have the impression that the club wasn't an actual location; is there a better preposition than "at" here? Maybe "He lectured to..." or "He lectured at meetings of..."?
• I assume Leacock taught economics? The subject matter should probably be mentioned one way or another.
• The bit about his supporting the Russian revolution is kind of jarring, since we're told that he's hates communism and that the revolutionaries caused his father to fear for his life. Is there some explanation of why he supported it?
• The Isis quote doesn't mention Lewis specifically; do we know that it was "noting Lewis' leadership abilities"?
• By what measure was Haw-Haw's speech "foiled"?
• What, if anything, was Lewis's involvement in the Blackshirt street fighting? Steve Smith (talk) 06:17, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

• Labour Club lectures may have been in the club or in a larger debates hall.
• Leacock taught Economics.
• Even Moshe supported the overthrowing of the Czar. Both Lewis's had problems with the way the Bolsheviks administered the state after the revolution.
• Lewis was the President of the Labour Club in 1934, when the Isis wrote the article.
• Lord Haw Haw's speech was foiled because people couldn't hear him with the constant distruptions, so he stopped trying to give the speech.
• Lewis and Jolliffe were both involved in the steet-fight that broke out after the speech, as noted in the citations.--Abebenjoe (talk) 04:15, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

• In view of the obvious advantages to staying in the UK, do we know why Lewis returned to Canada?
• "Fabianism mainly influenced him in terms of policies that could be implemented, and in procedures that underlined democratic practices, not in his determination to lay siege to the power structure." - I cannot for the life of me figure out what this means.
• Was Sophie with him in Oxford, as implied by the "Back to Canada" section? What was she doing there? Should that be mentioned earlier?
• File:David Lewis.jpg - this is not in the public domain in the United States, and therefore should be deleted from Commons; in any case, it won't clear FAC. Steve Smith (talk) 13:17, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

• Yes, Lewis knowingly threw away certain success and that's what makes him, and M. J. Coldwell, such interesting characters: both threw away a chance to be Prime Minister. Lewis could possibly have been the Labour Prime Minister in the UK in the 1960s, while M.J. could have been William Lyon MacKenzie King's successor in 1948: both men had deep convictions that made them pick love of country, and principles over personal success. In Lewis' case, he felt he owed his success to his adopted country, Canada. M.J., did not cross the floor and become a Liberal when King offered him the chance to be in Cabinet, with the explicit understanding that he would be King's successor. M.J. couldn't turn his back on his party nor his political beliefs, and that also explains one of Lewis' main motives as well.
• The Fabianism influence was to make him less radical. His father was more radical in the shtel and to a lesser exent in Montreal. The Bundists felt an overpowering need to overthrow non-socialist governments, in a democratic way ,that it was a more urgent strain of socialism than Fabianism. Fabiansim was incrementalist, where as the Bundists were revolutionary in their approach. From his British experience, he muted his revolutionary tendancies, and became, in essence, an incrementalist, i.e., if Labour or the CCF could get old-age pensions passed, but not Universal Healthcare in the same parliamentary session that was fine. If it were Bundists in power, or opposition, they would have wanted their whole programme implemented immediately.
• Sophie was with him the whole time he was in Oxford. They had an apartment off-campus. She also accompanied him, during the summer before he entered Oxord, on his only pre-WWII visit to Svisloch in 1932, to meet his extended family. They all perished in the Holocaust, and when he returned to Svisloch in 1978, there was barely a trace that this shtel had a thriving Jewish community, which before the war, made up three quarters of its population. So, Sophie played an important role in his life almost immediately from the time they meet in high school, and would be literally his life-partner. Her influence on him cannot be overestimated, as she was the singular, most important, person in his adult life. I met both of them only once, when I was a child in 1974. What I remember, and it is the only reason why I even remember meeting them, is that they were constantly bickering, and having "lively" arguments at my uncle's farm in Cape Breton. Apparently, that was how they were throughout their relationship, but I don't believe that belongs in the article. So, maybe mentioning that they lived off-campus should be mentioned earlier. At times it's hard to figure out what to leave in and out, because I do have so much information, and so little space to exhibit it in.
• Delete the M.J./Lewis photo from the article, but you may as well leave it on wikipedia, as it's copyright expired in Canada. I found two or three photos of him and M.J. that are from the early 1940s in the LAC, that will pass the the test of copyright expiration in both countries.

The article is reading better, thanks to you Steve. Keep paring away at it.--Abebenjoe (talk) 03:08, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

• Might it be worth saying something about how the 1937 Ontario election demonstrated the need for an image change for the CCF? I assume it's because they didn't do very well; is there anything more conclusive to demonstrate that it was seen as too far left (even if there isn't, that comment can stay, because it's sourced to a reliable secondary source; I just think it would help the reader's comprehension to see what the evidence was that it needed an image change).
• "Lewis emphasized organization over ideology and forging links to unions." The modifier is unclear here; did he emphasize "[organization over ideology] and forging links to unions", or " organization over [ideology and forging links to unions]"?
• "that even large business could have a place in the party – if they behave." Is this from Smith directly, or is he quoting some primary source? Steve Smith (talk) 07:56, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
• What was the Underhill/Woodsworth House incident, and how did it relate to internal criticism?
• Why are there no results tables for the 1940, 1945, 1963, 1965, 1968, and 1972 elections?
• On what basis was 1945 the most important election for Canada in the 20th century? I note that John Duffy, in his book about critical Canadian elections, devotes chapters to 1925/1926, 1957/1958, 1979/1980, and 1988, but not 1945, which he summarizes in two paragraphs. Not that Duffy's opinion is conclusive, but it seems odd that 1945 wouldn't even make his shortlist if it's a candidate for the most important of all. Steve Smith (talk) 10:09, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

• 1937 Ontario provincial election is where the CCF managed to lose their only seat. This election was the last to vote in a Liberal government until the accord coalition between Bob Rae's NDP and David Peterson's Liberals in 1985. Basically, the CCF cratered in the 1937 election.
• Lewis was an organization man first and foremost. He also saw advantages of wooing labour, because in England, Labour Unions and democratic socialists, combined, were electrorally effective, unlike the CCF and the Canadian Labour movement of the 1930s and early 1940s.
• I believe it is Smith summorizing the party's new position on monopolistic captialism. The full quote from page 292, is "A year after the publication of Make THis YOUR Canada, — two years after the Beveridge Report — the party took a giant step in redefining what it meant by socialism, a step in which David played a major role. It said even large businesses could have a place in the party — if they behaved."
• Professor Underhill, a noted University of Toronto professor, was in charge of the CCF's Woodsworth House, which was sort of an intellectual workshop for socialists. Unfortunately, it was financially mismanaged by Underhill and the rest of the board of directors that ran that institution. The mismanagement was so bad, that they were about to sell the builiding. When Lewis fired the board, and blamed Underhill, who was a mentor to Lewis in the 1930s, all hell broke out within Canada's academic and intelligentisia communities. During the fifties, the CCF did not have the massive numbers of scholars and writers promoting the party, as they had during the 30s and 40s, directly because of this incident.
• 1945 was a watershed year, politically, in Canada, England, and the USA. Both Morton, and Granestein would agree to this, because it is the year that the welfare state was born in these countries. In particular, 1945 in Ontario, saw the true beginning of the Big Blue Machine, when the Conservatives won seven consecutive majority governments, and governed the province for the next forty years. It also marked the beginning of a dramatic decline in support for democratic socialist parties at all levels of government in Canada, for which, nationally, they still haven't recovered to this day. Most of the major welfare policies, with the exception of Medicare, arose out of these elections to begin the post-war boom that would last approximately thirty years. That is why it is the most significant year policitically in Canada, in the late Twentieth Century, for both democratic socialists, and arguably the country, because it was the turning point for so many different causes, parties, policies, and the starting point for the backlash that was mounted against them starting in the 1980s.

• "June 4, and June 11, 1945, proved to be black days in CCF annuals" annals, surely?
• What did the Liberals bring to the Liberal-communist alliance? We see that the LPP deliberately split the vote to elect Liberals, but what was the Liberal contribution?
• If Local 598 was not under communist control, why did Lewis and Millard target it as part of their purge of communists?
• "The attacks on the Sudbury CCF were even more costly..." More costly than what? We haven't been told anything about the Local 598 stuff being costly.
• "In essence, Carlin became a causality of Steel's plans to raid Mine, Mill." This should probably be attributed; I presume it would be denied by Millard & Co. Steve Smith (talk) 14:15, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

• Annals it is
• It was pretty-much a one-sided alliance: the LLP declared it unilaterally. Where the Liberals helped out, was in their ability to deny the CCF potential funds from the craft unions, which the Liberals controlled, and the LLP also had significant representation. Formally, the MacKenzie-King Liberals never endorsed, nor opposed this alliance of convenience.
• Mine,Mill -- in general -- was under communist control, especially out in Western Canada. However, Local 598 was an anomaly, in that communists did help build the local, but they weren't involved in significant numbers, nor were they in anyway in control of that local. It was obviously the "opening shot" of a twenty-year war waged by Steel to takeover the local. Lewis, in the 1950s and early 1960s, was Steel's legal council, and would be involved over that period in the hostile takeover of the union. I haven't fully read up on what he thought about the whole mess, from the perspective of his later years, in the way he did in his re-evalution of the Douglas/Argue leadership succession fight in 1960-61. I've recently talked to Elie Martel about Local 598, but it would be unacceptable for Wikipedia, as that truly would be original research, but the summary of his comments were that is was an unabashed power grab on Steel's part, in his opinion, and many of the miners involved with this unfortunate incident. Certainly not one of the CCF's brighter moments.
• It was electorally and financially costly. The CCF lost what should have been a stable and reliable seat, which it has proven since the war between Steel and Mine Mill ended, It cost them in money, both in legal fees and in political donations, especailly when money was in short supply in the 1950s.
• Millard et al didn't deny what they did to Carlin. I'll look it up in either Smith, Auzoly or Boyko to get a reference for it. In Horowitz, page 131 notes, he notes that

"Mine Mill in British Columbia was solidly Communist. Mine Mill in Ontario, however, was headed by a CCF MPP, Robert Carlin; it contained a substantial number of CCFers; Carlin represented it on the CCL-PAC and it followed the CCF rather than the LPP line on political action. Nevertheless, Carlin depended on Communist as well as CCF support within his union, and he was also tied to the Communist leadership of the international [union]. Before the CCL began its anti-Communist drive this caused few difficulties. Carlin left the Communists alone, and they permitted him to support the CCF. The international even contributed to CCF funds. (C. C. Ames to Lewis, Dec. 13, 1946, NDP files). In 1948, when Carlin was forced to choose between joining the CCL's anti-Communist drive and retaining his loyalty to the Communist-dominated international, he threw in his lot with the Communists. (Special Executive Meeting of the Ontario CCF Caucus and Executive with Robert Carlin, April 13, 1948, ibid.) The CCF refused to endorse his candidacy in the provinicial election of 1948; he ran as an "independent CCFer," lost, and was subsequently expelled from the party."Abebenjoe (talk) 18:38, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

• "Diefenbaker's government had to call an election sometime in 1962" I don't believe this is accurate: the last election was 1958, so the Parliament could have persisted into 1963.
• "Since Tommy Douglas lost in his seat, Lewis was considered the front-runner to become house leader..." Did he actually become house leader?
• The article says that Lewis wanted to stop propping up Trudeau as soon as possible; that being the case, why did he do so for two years?
• "recognition of the contributions he has made to Labour and social reform and the deep concern he has had over the years for his adopted country." Is "labour" capitalized in the original? It seems odd.

I've completed my first run through. I want to do a second, which should be much quicker, to deal with your responses to my points and to also address a few organizational issues. After that, I'd suggest that you list it at peer review, after which I think it should be close to ready for FAC. Great work so far. Steve Smith (talk) 16:11, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Peer Review March 2010

It's a minor point but it seemed strange to me that the section on Rhodes Scholarship and Oxford makes no reference at all to the Rhodes Scholarship. Maybe mention it in passing around Lincoln College and/or change the title to de-emphasise it. FunkyCanute (talk) 18:34, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment FunkyCanute. I believe most of the information about him being selected for the Rhodes Scholarship is located at the end of the McGill section, since it seems to flow with that section. The title reflects why he was at Oxford, but I take your point, I'll add something in the first sentence or two that his Scholarship allowed him to be at Lincoln College or something to that effect.Abebenjoe (talk) 00:14, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

I elected to move the Rhode Scholarship paragraph, that dealt with his selection, to the main section dealing with Oxford while he was on the scholarship.Abebenjoe (talk) 06:55, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

It works well there FunkyCanute (talk) 10:04, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing it out.Abebenjoe (talk) 15:11, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:David Lewis (Canadian politician)/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

==Good start== It's a good start, but references are sparse. I've added the Cameron Smith book, which is a biography of the Lewis clan. Add catergories and more detail, and this article will be able to be classified as a GA or higher article.Abebenjoe 09:23, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Last edited at 09:23, 2 March 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 14:38, 1 May 2016 (UTC)