Tom McEwen (politician)
| Thomas Alexander McEwen | |
|---|---|
| Born |
February 11, 1891 Stonehaven, Scotland |
| Died | May 11, 1988 (aged 97) |
| Other names | Tom |
| Occupation | Blacksmith |
| Organization | Labor-Progressive Party (Canada) |
Thomas Alexander "Tom" McEwen (February 11, 1891 – May 11, 1988) was a Canadian labour organizer and Communist politician.
McEwen was born in Stonehaven, Scotland, south of Aberdeen, to Agnes and Alex McEwen. His father fought and died in the Boer War, several years after his mother died of tuberculosis. McEwen was raised by a guardian, Annie Wishart, until he was nine when he went to live with his aunt and uncle in the fishing village of Catterline.
When he was 13, he left the village for Aberdeen to find work, first as a baggageman on the Great North of Scotland Railway, then working with horses as a hostler and variously as a farmhand before apprenticing as a blacksmith.
At 19, McEwen married Isobel Taylor and, following the birth of their first child, emigrated to Canada in May 1912 where he began his career as a blacksmith in Moren, Manitoba. The family moved to Winnipeg the next year where McEwen joined the Blacksmiths and Horseshoers union and then to Swift Current, Saskatchewan in 1914.
The family grew to include two daughters and two sons by 1920 when Isabel died in the Spanish Flu epidemic.
McEwen joined the Socialist Party of Canada in 1920. In the fall of that year the family moved to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan where McEwen joined the Saskatoon Workers Party which subsequently became a branch of the newly formed Communist Party of Canada. McEwen was branch secretary and leader until 1927 when he moved to Winnipeg to work full-time as the party's organizer for Manitoba an Saskatchewan. In 1929, he moved to Toronto to become the party's industrial director.
He helped form the Workers' Unity League and became its general secretary. The WUL was the Communist Party's "red union" centre and focussed on organizing and building revolutionary industrial unions. At its height the WUL consisted of 40,000 workers organized in the mining, lumber, fishery, textile and hotel industries amongst others. In 1930, McEwen led a WUL delegation to Ottawa where he met Prime Minister R.B. Bennett to demand the institution of a system of Unemployment Insurance. Bennett refused, saying "Never will I or any government which I am a part, put a premium on idleness or put our people on the dole." In 1935, McEwen was a lead organizer of the On-to-Ottawa Trek of unemployed people which was violently broken up in Regina, Saskatchewan.
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