The Pothole on the road to Jerusalem

In 1987, Thomas H. McLeod and Ian McLeod published probably the most thorough examination of the career of Tommy Douglas ever to make it to a Canadian bookshelf.

Titled, “The Road to Jerusalem” it examined everything from his boyhood days in North Winnipeg, though his studious period at Brandon College, on to his life as preacher, a politician and in remembrance the social conscience of a country.

Douglas’ life was the beacon for socialism in the sixties and seventies, his early days with the CCF and then the NDP resonated with a calm and serene sense of the road ahead not only for his party but for his country.

While the leaders of the socialist NDP have come and gone, from power brokers to eunuchs in the shadow of the more powerful mainstream, other than J. S. Woodsworth and perhaps the Lewis dynasties, none have seemingly captured the Canadian imagination as much as Douglas’ life and times did.

He’s become a growth industry for columnists, authors, booksellers and the CBC. He has probably appeared in more documentaries on the Mother Corp in one form or another than most of our political class.

He even became the subject of a much anticipated two part docu-drama which aired back in March, titled Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas story. When it aired it met with mixed reviews, many praising it for it’s portrayal of Douglas’ contribution to Saskatchewan and Canada, but others were a bit disappointed in some of the fact checking skills employed.

And as it turns out, they may have been correct in their concern, the CBC today announced that it will pull the program from any further exhibition on television, on DVD and if possible from any educational sources. It seems that the folks at the Mother Corp. did a bit of research on their own and discovered that some of the key points made during the program regarding former Saskatchewan Premier James Gardiner were inaccurate, key among them the portrayal of the tee-totaling Premier as a drinker and a scene in which Gardiner apparently berates striking miners in Estevan, Saskatchewan with a blistering radio address, the only problem it seems is that Gardiner wasn’t the Premier at the time. And obviously couldn’t be making speeches about miners for the radio if he had no platform.

Those two troublesome issues and a few other stumbling points have the CBC putting the program back into the CBC Vault. The say that they hope to one day resolve the character issues regarding Gardiner before they plan on re-releasing the program to the public. But it’s rather doubtful that you’ll be seeing Prairie Giant anytime soon, the Gardiner sections were pretty well key to the underlying themes of the show, he was like the evil foil to the good works of Douglas, the show probably won’t have the same gravitas if they turn the Gardiner character into just another politician filling in space between Douglas close ups.

The creators of the program claimed that they were not creating a documentary, but instead were offering up a program that required a bit of dramatic license. In this instance the CBC has decided it was time to revoke the license before any more violations were recorded.