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32-605: Two of the movement's members, Dorise Nielsen and Walter George Brown , were elected to the federal House of Commons in the 1940 Canadian election and two United Progressives, Alan Carl Stewart and Herman Kersler Warren , were elected to the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan in the 1938 provincial election . The unity movement included Communists, members of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (despite objections from

64-651: A Labor-Progressive Party candidate (the name adopted by the Communist Party after it was banned) and was defeated. The United Reform Movement or United Reform was an attempt in Saskatoon , Saskatchewan , Canada, to create a left wing farmer-labour coalition. It was part of an effort in Saskatchewan and Alberta by the Communist Party of Canada to create a united front bringing together

96-597: A 1939 by-election in the riding of Saskatoon City , and was re-elected in the 1940 general election with the endorsement of the National Government party (as the Tories were called in 1940). He died on April 1, 1940, five days after being re-elected. The URM recruited Agnes Macphail , a longtime Member of Parliament (MP) who had been defeated in the 1940 election to run in the by-election to fill Brown's vacancy. MacPhail had been an MP since 1921, first as

128-678: A job clipping articles for Maclean-Hunter Publishing . In 1957, Nielsen and Godefroy received permission to go to the People's Republic of China , where she lived for the final 23 years of her life until her death in 1980. She spent most of those years working as an English teacher and as an editor for the Foreign Languages Press in Beijing. She became a Chinese citizen in 1962. Dorise and Peter Nielsen had four children, one of whom died in infancy. Their youngest daughter

160-586: A member of the CCF until her riding association was dissolved because of its support of a popular front campaign with the Communists. She was the first member of the Communist Party of Canada to be elected to the House of Commons of Canada , serving during World War II . She was the third woman elected to Canadian Parliament and the first to still be raising young children while holding political office. She won

192-430: A number of its members to local city councils and school boards. In Winnipeg, Jacob Penner was a long-time member of the city council while Joe Zuken sat on the school board. In Toronto, Charles Simms and Norman Freed served as aldermen while Smith was elected to the city's powerful Board of Control . From 1944 to 1947, Helen Anderson Coulson sat on Hamilton's City Council as an Alderman (from 1944–1946) and, after

224-677: A representative for the Progressive Party of Canada and since 1930 as a United Farmers of Ontario - Labour MP, although she was active with the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation . In deference to her nominators, she ran as a "United Reform" candidate in the August 1940 by-election, but was defeated by the Conservative candidate. There was also a "United Reform" candidate in the Saskatchewan riding of Weyburn who ran in

256-514: A seat in the 1940 federal election representing the Saskatchewan riding of North Battleford on the " United Progressives " label, beating the Liberal candidate in a two-way race. Canada banned the Communist Party in June 1940 due to the party's opposition to the war. Nielsen, through indirect contact with Montreal -based Communist leaders who had escaped imprisonment, became a spokeswoman for

288-642: A socialist economy lifted the burdens of child care and housework from the shoulders of individual women would they be able to compete with men on an equal footing. 'It is being tied to all the multitudinous tasks of home and family that robs women of the opportunity to compete with men, not her inferiority." She helped found the Congress of Canadian Women and attended the Women's International Democratic Federation Peace Congress in Budapest in 1948 and helped found

320-408: A teacher and married Peter Nielsen, a homesteader , the same year. Adding an 'e' to her given name on her marriage certificate , she became Dorise Nielsen. She joined the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) in 1934 and was a CCF campaign manager during the 1938 provincial election . By 1937, she joined the Communist Party of Canada but did not disclose her membership until 1943 remaining

352-691: Is generally spelled with a 'u' in Canadian English, and English in the former British Empire , the Labor-Progressive Party used the American spelling as did the Australian Labor Party . In Ontario , two LPP members, A. A. MacLeod and J. B. Salsberg , sat in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1943 to 1951 and 1955 respectively. The LPP also jointly nominated several Liberal-Labour candidates with

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384-585: The 1946 municipal election , as a member of the city's highest decision making body, the Board of Control . She played a significant role in the Stelco Strike of 1946, and paid for her stances in the 1947 election, being shut out of the 4-person body after receiving the second highest number of votes in 1946 . She would unsuccessfully seek election numerous times over the next decade, most prominently opposing Mayor Lloyd Jackson in 1950. Dr. Harry Paikin

416-577: The Canadian Peace Congress the next year. In 1949, she became executive secretary of the Canadian-Soviet Friendship Association and organized national tours and local chapters, distributed films and books, and did most of the organizational work for the association. Frustrated by having to play second fiddle to CSFA president Dyson Carter and being paid a lower salary than him, she resigned in

448-467: The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation , Communists, other leftists and even the populist Social Credit movement against the Liberals and Conservatives. While the movement was opposed and denounced by the leadership of the CCF it succeeded in some areas to bring local CCF activists on board. Clergyman Walter George Brown won election to the House of Commons as a United Reform Movement candidate in

480-422: The Communist Party of Canada and several provincial wings of the party from 1943 to 1959. In the 1940 federal election , the Communist Party led a popular front in several constituencies in Saskatchewan and Alberta under the name Unity , United Progressive or United Reform and elected two MPs, one of whom, Dorise Nielsen , was secretly a member of the Communist Party. After the Communist Party of Canada

512-564: The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and Liberal candidates with 13% of the vote. After her defeat, she and her children moved to Toronto where she worked as an organizer for the Labor-Progressive Party and wrote a weekly column for its newspaper, Canadian Tribune , called "Women's Place is Everywhere". At times she used the column to promote feminist views; for example, as related by her biographer, Faith Johnston, in 1949 she "explained that only when

544-626: The Ontario Liberal Party . Alexander Parent , who was also president of UAW Local 195, was elected as the Liberal-Labour MPP for Essex North in 1945. In January 1946, Parent announced he was breaking with the "reactionary" Liberals and sat the remainder of his term in the legislature as a Labour representative while voting with LPP MPPs MacLeod and Salsberg. He did not run for re-election in 1948. The Manitoba party had amongst its leading members Jacob Penner who

576-520: The " Tim Buck Plebiscite Committees" urging support for conscription in the 1942 referendum . After the vote the committees were renamed the Dominion Communist – Labour Total War Committee and were the main public face of the Communist Party, and became the main wartime activity of the Labor-Progressive Party, helping it raise its profile and encouraging the federal government to release Communist leaders who had been detained early in

608-645: The 1940 general election against Tommy Douglas of the CCF. In the 1940 federal election, William Halina sought election to the Canadian House of Commons in the riding of Vegreville , Alberta under the United Progressive banner. Halina won 2,727 votes, or 19.4% of the total cast, placing third behind the Social Credit and Liberal candidates, but ahead of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation candidate. Halina ran for

640-671: The 1950s. An almost fatal blow for the party was the crisis that enveloped it following Nikita Khrushchev 's Secret Speech to the Twentieth Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary , the first event shattered the faith many LPP members had in the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin while the second caused many to doubt that the USSR had truly changed. Aggravated as well by revelations of widespread antisemitism in

672-727: The CCF leadership), supporters of the Canadian social credit movement , and other populists and reformers opposed to the Liberal and Conservative parties. Dorise Nielsen was elected in North Battleford under the Unity label, and Walter George Brown was elected as a United Reform Member of Parliament in Saskatoon City . Nielsen was a supporter of the Communist Party and ran for re-election in 1945 federal election as

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704-576: The Communist Party through speeches made in the House of Commons. When the Labor-Progressive Party was officially formed in 1943 as a legal front for the still banned Communist Party, Nielsen declared her affiliation with the party and was elected to its national executive committee. She ran for re-election in the 1945 election for the Labor-Progressive Party (the name the Communist Party would use until 1959), but came in third behind

736-498: The Soviet Union (a serious blow to Jewish members of the LPP such as Salsberg and Robert Laxer ), the party underwent a serious split with more than half of its membership including many in the leadership, including Salsberg, Stewart Smith , Harry Binder, Sam Lipshitz and other prominent LPP leaders, ultimately leaving with the remaining party being a remnant of what it once had been. The United Jewish Peoples' Order , which had been one of

768-550: The communist Labor-Progressive Party in the 1945 election. Dorise Nielsen Dorise Winifred Nielsen (30 July 1902 – 9 December 1980) was a Canadian Chinese communist politician, feminist and teacher. She was the first member of the Communist Party of Canada to be elected to the House of Commons of Canada . Born in London , England , Doris Webber arrived in Canada and settled in Saskatchewan in 1927 to work as

800-472: The largest organizations allied with the LPP, broke with the party in December 1956 as a result of Salsberg's revelations after his fact-finding mission to the USSR to investigate reports of systemic antisemitism and repression of Jewish culture . The LPP last ran a federal candidate in a December 1958 by-election and ran nine candidates in the 1959 Ontario election . Shortly thereafter, it renamed itself

832-717: The summer of 1953. She ran again for the LPP in the 1953 election , this time in Brantford, Ontario , but came in last place with 216 votes. Finding it difficult to find work outside of the party due to her age and possibly blacklisted due to her Communist allegiance, she found a job in the mid-1950s working in the office of the United Electrical Workers but found it dull, and left Canada in 1955 for London, England with her partner, Constant Godefroy (she had been estranged from husband Pete Nielsen since 1940). They returned to Canada in 1956, and Nielsen found

864-641: The war. The LPP faced repression during the Cold War as anti-Communist sentiment increased in Canada , particularly after the revelations of Igor Gouzenko following his defection from the Soviet embassy in Ottawa. Gouzenko's revelations led to the downfall of Fred Rose. Nevertheless, the party continued to elect a handful of members to provincial legislatures, city councils and school boards across Canada well into

896-406: Was Thelma Nielsen, known as Sally (born 1931), who in 1980 married Dyson Carter, Dorise Nielsen's former superior at the Canadian-Soviet Friendship Association. There is a Dorise Nielsen fonds at Library and Archives Canada . Archival reference number is R4012. Labor-Progressive Party The Labor-Progressive Party ( French : Parti ouvrier-progressiste ) was the legal front of

928-751: Was a popular aldermen in Winnipeg , Manitoba, as well as Bill Kardash who was a Manitoba Member of the Legislative Assembly . The party also ran candidates in Quebec general elections from 1944 to 1956 as the Parti ouvrier-progressiste . The LPP had strong pockets of support in working-class neighbourhoods of Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg as well as in the Crowsnest Pass mining region of Alberta and British Columbia [1] elected

960-432: Was banned in 1940, under the wartime Defence of Canada Regulations , it established the Labor-Progressive Party (LPP) as a front organization in 1943 after the release of Communist Party leaders from internment. Nielsen declared her affiliation to the LPP when it was founded in August 1943. She was defeated in the 1945 election when she ran for re-election as an LPP candidate. Only one LPP Member of Parliament (MP)

992-669: Was elected a school trustee on the Hamilton Board of Education in 1944 and remained in office for three decades, until his death in 1985, including ten years as chair. Following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union , the Canadian Communist Party reversed its earlier position urging Canadian neutrality in World War II and instead urged full support for the Soviet, not Canadian, war effort. The party formed

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1024-564: Was elected to the House of Commons under that banner, Fred Rose , who was elected in a 1943 by-election in Montreal , sitting with Nielsen. Rose was re-elected in 1945. In 1947, he was charged and convicted for spying for the Soviet Union , and was expelled from the House of Commons. The leader of the party was Tim Buck . Other prominent members were Margaret Fairley , Stewart Smith , Stanley Ryerson and Sam Carr . While "labour"

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