David Tough’s recent talk about Parliament’s sojourn in the Victoria Memorial Museum (now the Museum of Nature) from 1916 to 1920 fills a column by Roy MacGregor in the Globe and Mail. He writes:
On Thursday evening, the Victoria Memorial Museum, now known as the Canadian Museum of Nature, held a lecture by David Tough, who grew up not far from the museum and currently teaches political science at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont.
Dr. Tough’s talk, “The Parliamentary Fire and Modern Politics,” argues that “the origins of modern politics” were found in the museum. Parties organized on a left-right spectrum, universal suffrage gained a foothold and, of course, the first income tax was levied.
In Dr. Tough’s opinion – and contrary to any thought currently going through your mind – income taxation was warmly welcomed and cheered by the citizens of Canada.
“It was a time of intense political upheavals of the First World War,” he says. “And there was definitely big change for Canada.
“There was a shift in the power relationships between the elite – the lawyers and businessmen who were representing the Liberals and Conservatives in Parliament – and the people. Power shifted to women and to workers and to farmers, and through the course of the Depression and the Second World War those changes would come to full fruition. That’s when we established modern politics, the belief that politics is of the common person and that governments should help people.”
Read the rest in the Globe and Mail.