With another long work week coming to an end, it’s time to Meet (another) Mayoral Candidate! And this one’s for you, Sonny Yeung, our favourite commenting candidate for mayor.

Today: Douglas Campbell!

Just like his old school socialist politics, Mr. Campbell is not that current when it comes to technology either. And since we here at All Fired Up in the Big Smoke aren’t particularly savvy (or just plain ass lazy) when it comes to tracking down our subjects, well, we’re just going to have to deliver you his candidacy purely second hand. Citations will be duly noted. It’s like we’re channeling the spirit of Douglas Campbell through the diligence of others.

Now an octogenarian, Douglas Campbell has been running for public office since 1962, first as an independent candidate in that federal election for the Toronto riding of St. Pauls and subsequently in almost every other race that has come up. He ran for the provincial NDP leadership in 1970 and the federal NDP leadership in 1975. During this same period, Campbell was also running for various positions at the municipal level in Mississauga. He first faced off against Mel Lastman for mayor in the North York election of 1988 before turning back to the federal NDP scene in 1989 with a run to succeed outgoing leader Ed Broadbent. 2010 marks the fourth time he has thrown his hat into the ring for the mayoralty of Toronto where, in 2000 in a second showdown with Lastman, Campbell placed 4^th with more than 8500 votes.

The other Douglas Campbell.

Douglas Campbell’s professional resumé is as eclectic as his political career. He’s been a seaman, a coffee house proprietor, a student, a teacher and high school principal and a cabbie. But it’s been a work life imbued by politics. He took part in the Great Lakes Seamen strike of 1946, fighting for reduced working hours. As a U. of T. student in the `60s, he protested involvement in the Vietnam War and took to the streets in the anti-nuclear movement. In 1968 as a high school principal, Mr. Campbell brought sex education into Newfoundland classrooms. There’s no mention how long it remained there. Or Douglas Campbell for that matter.

At this point, it’s probably not necessary to point out that Campbell’s your dyed-in-the-wool outsider’s outsider. A socialist when it was almost fashionable, he remains one to this day despite the label having become a short form to signify a relic, a historic artifact, and used by those who’ve dishonestly repackaged their 18^th-century political beliefs into something seemingly new and shiny but just as punishing and equal as it was 300 years ago. I mean, Campbell was part of the movement who thought the Lewis led NDP was too centrist! That is hard core left wing.

“I’m a fighter for the working class. I’d like to see the profits of labour (taxes) go to pay for hospitals and schools. Now the taxes go to the people who put the politicians in power,” Campbell has been quoted saying.

He wants free education for everyone right up through university. “The sooner we get to that level, the sooner we might preserve this planet,” Campbell figures. Having grown up in Toronto during the Dirty 30s “where tens of thousands of [were] unemployed,” Campbell thinks things are just as bad here now. “To see people now lying in the streets is evidence things are getting worse.”

How would a Mayor Douglas Campbell fix the problem of homelessness and inequality? “My only concern is that we should have public ownership of everything,” he informed CP24. “Either we get rid of capitalism or the working class will be resolved to nuclear dust.”

Yeah!! What’s not to like about such a fidelity to an ideology that has so fallen out of favour? It’s like the political version of being a Toronto Maple Leafs fan. At least, his heart is in the right place.

Except for the odd flare up of racial and religious intolerance. In an interview with blogTO earlier this year, Campbell called Harry Truman “that lunatic-Jewish president” for ordering the end of the Canadian Merchant Marines. A Jewish president?! And because Premier McGuinty is Roman Catholic, somehow this means that George Smitherman is “a puppet of the Pope”.

OK. So let’s call him a man of his time and not necessarily discard the message because of the messenger. Maybe out there somewhere is a young person, raised in an environment where socialism, so totally and not entirely justifiably discredited, was never mentioned. They see this post and wonder, what is this thing this old, slightly bigoted man speaks of, socialism? Maybe they’ll discover that it wasn’t nearly as bad a notion as they had been raised to believed. That can’t be all bad.

While not going out and getting the opportunity to ask Douglas Campbell the question we’ve been asking of all the candidates we’ve profiled, we’ll use his own words to answer for him. If the current mayor would like to see his legacy as that of the Transit Mayor, what would a Mayor Douglas Campbell like to see as his legacy?

A Mayor Douglas would “keep up the revolution”.

— dutifully submitted by Cityslikr