M. J. Coldwell

Coldwell was born in Seaton, England on December 2, 1888.[2] While Coldwell attended Exeter University (then called Royal Albert Memorial College), he met Norah Gertrude Dunsford in 1907, and in December 1909, they became engaged.[3] Norah was born in 1888 and was the daughter of a wealthy newspaper proprietor, John Thomas Dunsford.[3] Coldwell left in February 1910 to teach in Canada's Prairie provinces in 1910. He became a school teacher in New Norway, Alberta, and returned to the United Kingdom during his 1912 summer break.[4] They were married at the Wembdon Church in Bridgwater, Somerset, England, on July 22.[4] They honeymooned in England for two weeks and then sailed to Canada, where he continued teaching in Sedley, Saskatchewan.[4] He then became known nationally as a leader of teachers' associations from 1924 to 1934.

He first ran for the Canadian House of Commons as a Progressive candidate in Regina in the 1925 federal election but was defeated. He was elected as a city councillor for Regina City Council and developed links with labour and farmers' organizations.

In 1926, Coldwell organized the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in Saskatchewan.[5] In 1929, The Farmers' Political Association and the ILP nominated three candidates for the provincial election, under the joint banner of the Saskatchewan Farmer–Labour party, with Coldwell leading it.[5] The party fought the 1934 provincial election under Coldwell's leadership, and it won five seats in the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan, making it the official opposition to the Liberal government. Coldwell was defeated in his election bid. After the election, the party affiliated itself with the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and became the Saskatchewan CCF.

In 1934, he became the CCF's first national secretary.[6] In the 1935 federal election, Coldwell was elected to the House of Commons as Member of Parliament (MP) for the riding of Rosetown-Biggar.[6] Coldwell also served as the CCF's national chairman from 1938 to 1942.[6] He split with CCF leader J. S. Woodsworth when World War II broke out in 1939.[7] Woodsworth, a pacifist, opposed the war effort, while Coldwell and the rest of the CCF caucus supported the war, and Coldwell's view was the party's official position.[7]

Following Woodsworth's stroke in 1940, Coldwell was appointed parliamentary leader of the CCF in October 1940 while Woodsworth remained the party's honorary president (or leader). Coldwell was unanimously elected the party's new national leader at the party's July 1942 convention, three months following Woodsworth's death.[8][6] He led the party through five general elections. After an upsurge of support for the party in the mid-1940s, the party embarked on a long decline during the Cold War.[9] The Liberals, appropriating many of the CCF's policies, made them government policy.[9] Liberal governments implemented unemployment insurance, family allowances, and universal old age pensions, which stole much of the CCF's thunder with the electorate, which helped cause the party's electoral fortunes to turn downward during the prosperous 1950s.[9] Coldwell cared much more that his party's policies were becoming law than that he and the rest of the CCF received little credit for the policies.[10]

In 1945, Prime Minister Mackenzie King offered Coldwell a Cabinet post in his government.[11] When Coldwell refused, MacKenzie King made another offer, which would have made him the next Liberal leader and, by extension, the Prime Minister of Canada.[11] Again, Coldwell refused, mainly out of loyalty to his party and its principles and he stated that "if the country needed me in the Prime Minister's chair, then it would be at the head of a Co-operative Commonwealth Federation government and not as a member of a party with views and politics contradictory to those in which I believed."[11] Rumours that King made Coldwell an offer became public during the 1946 by-election campaign in the Parkdale electoral district.[12] On October 11, while attending a rally for the CCF's by-election candidate, Ford Brand, at Parkdale Collegiate Institute, a partisan audience member asked him about the rumour that he had been offered the leadership of the federal Liberal Party.[12] Coldwell responded by stating that there had been no official offer and that "the Liberals thought they could buy Coldwell. Coldwell is not for sale."[12]

In 1964, he became a member of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada, thereby allowing him to be referred to by the honorific "The Honourable" for the rest of his life.[28] Also in 1964, he was appointed to the House of Commons Advisory Committee on Election Finances chaired by Liberal cabinet minister Judy LaMarsh.[10][29] In 1966, Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson appointed him to the Royal Commission on Security (the "Mackenzie Commission"), dealing with the RCMP and security issues that arose from the Munsinger Affair.[11][30][31] When Douglas retired as the NDP's leader in April 1971, the party established the Douglas–Coldwell Foundation in Ottawa as its parting gift to both Douglas and his aging friend and political mentor, Coldwell.[32] The foundation's mandate was to be an intellectual thinktank that incubated ideas and policies for the NDP.[32] On November 5, 1972, Coldwell was honoured by St. Francis Xavier University with a Doctor of Laws degree.[33]

On July 6, 1967, he was appointed a Companion of the Order of Canada.[34] He was invested into the order on November 24, 1967, for "his contribution as a Parliamentarian."[34] It is noteworthy that his Order of Canada medal was sold at auction in 1981, the first time the Order of Canada is known to have been sold.[35] It ended up in auction due to his will not specifying what to do with his various medals, so his son sold them to a private collector, who then put them up for auction.[32] That same year, the Douglas-Coldwell Foundation purchased the medals back for about $10,000 so that they could be displayed in the Tommy Douglas House museum in Regina.[32]

In his final years, his health was deteriorating. He was living alone in his home in Ottawa, with the assistance of his housekeeper, Beatrice Bramwell.[36] He died at 85 in the Ottawa Civic Hospital after he had suffered two heart attacks on August 25, 1974.[36] He had given specific orders not to perform "heroic measures" to keep him alive.[36]

He is portrayed in the 2006 CBC Television special Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story by Aidan Devine.

There is a M. J. Coldwell fonds at Library and Archives Canada.[37] Archival reference number is R4291.

• Boyko, John (2006). Into the Hurricane: Attacking Socialism and the CCF. Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing Inc. ISBN 1-897289-09-X.
• Caplan, Gerald (1973). The Dilemma of Canadian Socialism: The CCF in Ontario. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. ISBN 0-7710-1896-7.
• Horowitz, Gad (1968). Canadian Labour in Politics. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-1902-1.
• McHenry, Dean Eugene (1950). The Third Force in Canada; the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation 1932–1948. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• McLeod, Thomas; Ian McLeod (2004). The Road to Jerusalem (2 ed.). Calgary: Fifth House. ISBN 1-894856-48-1.
• McNaught, Kenneth (2001) [1959]. A Prophet in Politics: A Biography of J.S. Woodsworth (2 ed.). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-8427-3.

• Shackleton, Doris French (1975). Tommy Douglas. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. ISBN 0-7710-8116-2.
• Smith, Cameron (1989). Unfinished Journey: The Lewis Family. Toronto: Summerhill Press. ISBN 0-929091-04-3.
• Smith, Cameron (1992). Love & Solidarity. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. ISBN 0-7710-8209-6.
• Stewart, Walter (2000). M.J.: The Life and Times of M.J. Coldwell. Toronto: Stoddart Publishing Co. Ltd. ISBN 0-7737-3232-2.
• Stewart, Walter (2003). Tommy: the life and politics of Tommy Douglas. Toronto: McArthur & Company. ISBN 1-55278-382-0.
• Young, Walter D. (1969). The anatomy of a party: the national CCF 1932–61. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-5221-5.

• Dexter, Grant (1943). "Coldwell the Man". Maclean's. Vol. 56, no. 17. Toronto. pp. 12–13, 51–53. Retrieved 31 May 2019.

• M.J. Coldwell biography (circa. 1953)
• M. J. Coldwell – Parliament of Canada biography