Tom McLeod, interviewed by Ann Sunahara, 29 March 1990
Abstract
Tom McLeod
discusses the
Tommy Douglas
year with
Tom Shoyama
.
George Cadbury
hired Tom through an introduction by
George Tamaki
who also carried a lot of weight due to his brilliant skills. He found Tom Shoyama
to be articulate, literate. He was also impressed by his Commerce Degree at the
UBC (University of British Columbia)
. He had a good head on his shoulders and was an attractive guy and a good economic
editor. People with good economic backgrounds were rare during and after the war
years. McLeod discusses the positive working environment with Tommy Douglas – independent,
respectful, tremendous sense of freedom, opportunity. Social activities they did
together included the Poker Club or the ‘Bombay Bicycle Club’, Golf and parties at
the home of George Cadbury and Horace Stanley Tim Lee, who set up the Cabinet Secretariat.
This oral history is from the Nikkei National Museum and Cultural Centre's Kage Collection. Accession No. 2021-7-1-1-3. It describes the experience of exile.
00:00:00.000
Ann Sunahara (AS)
Ann speaks into the mic.
So in interview with
Thomas H. McLeod
at
NDP
Headquarters in
Ottawa
. On the 29th I believe it is, of March 1990. My god, time flies.
Ann now speaks to Thomas H. McLeod.
Well, as I told you on the phone,
Tommy Shoyama
has consented to let me write his biography. I uh have already, as you know, have
a book on Japanese Canadians and that’s how I came to first hear about Tommy. Um,
I’ve got of course a great deal of Japanese Canadian research done and I’ve been doing
research on the Saskatchewan years. I’ll warn you I’ve already interviewed uh
Mr. Cadbury
.
Laughs.
And uh I’ve been to the archives once in
Regina
. And so I have samples of kinds of things that the
EAPD (Economic Advisory and Planning Department)
was doing um out of the
Tommy Douglas
papers. And that sort of thing.
Thomas H. McLeod (TM)
Well
Cadbury
’s papers are now there too?
TM
No.
AS
Um but um, I read your book. Which I found quite very, very useful to read because
it puts everything into context right through the whole period. But I still had some
questions and I was wondering if you could help me.
TM
Well...
AS
Which is-
TM
I could probably help find other questions, if nothing helps.
Both give a small laugh.
AS
Well that’s often important. Did you write a thesis on uh-
TM
Crown corporations.
TM
No,
Al Johnson
did the thesis on planning.
AS
Yeah.
TM
You’ve seen that (right)?
AS
I’ve been trying to get a hold of it.
TM
Uh-
AS
I have a phone call with
Mr. Johnson
.
TM
Cough
No
Cough
pardon me.
Cough
(?) with the crown corporations thing.
AS
I understood that he was on a couple of boards but that was about as far as I went.
TM
Mhm. That was after my time there too. See I left there in ‘52 so between the period
‘45 to ‘52 Tom and I worked together.
AS
Oh that’s right. Yes, I remember reading about that.
TM
Yes.
AS
Yes. Um, okay good. You wouldn’t happen to know where I could find this (No’s game
memory?) that you mention in your-
TM
Yes. If you want, I can give you a copy.
AS
Oh good because at least I could photocopy relevant parts of it-
TM
Mhm.
AS
Without offending anybody’s copyright it would be
small laugh
.
TM
Well we never got around the copyright. I was one of those things that got done during
a friendly gather.
AS
Yeah. I figured as much. Okay, um, who hired
Tom Shoyama
?
TM
Well
George Cadbury
would like to take the credit. But as a matter of fact, I did.
Laughs.
As
Shoy
will tell you.
AS
Okay. Do you recall?
AS
Mhm.
TM
And came to stay with
George Tamaki
.
AS
Okay.
TM
And Nana and I guess for that time Mama and Papa Tamaki were there too with the whole
crew. Um, in any event he was footloose and fancy free and as I recall,
George Tamaki
, he invited me over to their house. I know I went to the Tamaki house. Fairly sure
it was George’s invitation to meet Tommy and have a chat with him.
AS
And you were impressed.
TM
Very much so. He was (?) impressed to the extent (?) over 18, 000 dollars a year behind
the firm which he did. He’s never forgotten it and never ceased to mention them, every
opportunity.
Laughs.
AS
What was it about him that impressed you?
TM
Oh gosh a number of things. Of course the guy had a very open personality. There’s
no doubt about that. He had a very interesting record.
AS
Mhm.
TM
Graduated with a Commerce degree I guess from the
University of BC
. And he had his (?) with the Japanese Canadian. I didn’t know all about his other
involvement in the Japanese community until much later. But he did tell me about
his work with the public paper. Obviously the most articulate, literate person.
AS
Mhm.
TM
00:05:03.830
Uh,
Ann interjects: Did you-
he was just a very attractive guy.
00:05:03.830
AS
Did you uh discuss sort of to determine whether he was... had the proper economic
background et cetera for you or?
AS
He actually had both BCom and a BA-
TM
BA, yes.
AS
In Economics as well. Double BA or double bachelors I guess is what they call it.
TM
Double bachelor's degree.
AS
Yeah.
TM
Double baccalaureate.
AS
Quite, quite the phenomenal fellow. Um, I... in doing the research going back over
my Japanese Canadian stuff and rereading the newspapers he edited, I’m amused everytime
I come across
Thomas laughs
Tommy writing on economics as the editor.
TM
The editor.
AS
And I’m going to very carefully correlate those articles with, to see whether he was
already on line as far as what you folks were-
TM
Well of course
Tamaki
(?) recommendation to. George was sort of well established and very highly regarded
in
Saskatchewan
at the time.
AS
Well I yeah-
TM
George was a... Have you talked to George at all?
AS
Yeah, yes. And I’ve also-
TM
Now, he was, you know... He was-
AS
Well he was brilliant like Tommy.
TM
Yup.
AS
In each in their own way.
TM
He was a (?) person than Tom in many ways. George was a very interesting guy but his
recommendations carried a heck of a lot of weight.
AS
Tom... In your book you talk about people who joined the new recruits. Some joined
through their
clears throat
the
Saskatchewan
service through their synthetic sympathy with the
CCF
. But some simply to gain professional experience. How do you classify
Tommy
, on that (?)?
TM
Well I must say at no time, in hearing anybody, did I ever ask what their political
views were.
AS
Mhm.
TM
I wanted to see their professional credentials. Now there were some people like
Grant Mitchell
for example, I don’t know if you’ve run into that name or not.
AS
Yes I have.
AS
Of course it would be reasonably... It would have been reasonable that Tommy would
sort of support the
CCF
if only because the CCF would support Tommy.
TM
Well yeah, yeah.
Both laughs.
My assumption was, if Tamaki recommended him after all the trials and tribulations,
give him a try. And whether he was really enough of a socialist or not. He obviously
had sympathy for the party that had... I hadn’t realized then much later I realized
the extent which those two appointments of
Tamaki
and
Shoyama
(?) important to me. I (?) Japanese community.
AS
Yes, extremely-
TM
Clears throat.
And I really didn’t know the extent to which
Tommy Douglas
(?) to the
British Columbia
crowd and told the go-cut-bait.
AS
Yes, well Winch was equally as unrealistic on French language issues as he was on
Asian issues.
Laughs.
So I think it was a personality problem more than anything else.
TM
A quirk.
AS
David Lewis
put it to me when I asked him about it, Well you know, socialists are human too.
Laughs.
TM
I’m willing to debate that!
Both laughs.
AS
My reply was but publicly they’re not supposed to be that human.
Laughs.
TM
00:10:17.403
The other thing with that of course is that time, it’s got to be admitted at that
specific time. When you were still in the middle of wartime control and all the rest
of that. And people with backgrounds in economics were not easy to come by. They were
very short supply. So that uh you couldn’t spend too much time deciding your political
(curiosity?)
Chuckles.
Or the honest people and I must say, we never, never had the slightest problem rolled
out of this approach. No one ever talked to the schools. Nobody in our crew ever took
advantage of private discussions. And when I look back at our naivety (?) damn lucky.
But uh-
00:10:17.403
AS
Well I get the impression though the atmosphere of that organization you were creating
uh was one that encouraged, shall we say, the professionalism of people in it.
TM
Mhm.
AS
As opposed to-
TM
(?) professional operation.
Cough.
AS
I noted your comments, the quote you had from
Al Johnson
about the tremendous sense of freedom in that people who worked
Thomas interjects: Yeah.
there felt the opportunity to uh-
TM
Well people in (?). I don't think anyone assumed that Burns was ideologically a CCFer.
I’d rather suspect because probably the health program the government had built up
he voted
CCF
.
AS
Mhm.
TM
But I don’t think he had any sort of political charges. And yet he (?) one of those
express you know, his sort of joy, being in a climate, you know, intellectually stimulating
which it was.
AS
Yes.
TM
Very much so. And professionally challenging. And you did have this... thing is, people
were willing to listen. And not only willing to listen, they tried to understand.
It wasn’t like this (?) here where (?) paper and then you make the decision as to
whether to throw away the paper basket or put it in the mail (?) concern. Nothing’s
going to (?) anyway. Nobody listens here.
AS
An intellectually stimulating, professionally challenging and I got the impression
of sort of an independent working environment.
TM
Oh very much so.
AS
Uh, would be something that must’ve appealed very much to Tom.
TM
Cough
Well everybody was given their opportunity to sit down and commit whatever they wanted
to the paper you know. Uh, now, once you did it you had to be willing to sort of deliver
it too.
AS
Yes, defend and uh-
TM
Defend your position. But right up to Clarence Hines you know. Clarence was the greatest
guy. He read every memo you ever put in them. And not only read it but understood
it and was willing to discuss it with you. This carved the whole atmosphere. You knew
ideas went right to the top and if they had any merit at all that’s where you were
going to have a chance to discuss it.
Cough
You weren’t cut off by any, certainly not in our (?), by any (?) bureaucrats.
AS
Having worked in governments I know exactly what you mean.
Both laughs.
Um, in your book you suggest
Tommy Douglas
had close relations with people he worked with but he kept his work life and his family
life completely separate.
TM
Mumbles.
AS
I presume that, therefore-
TM
And I spent more time with Tommy over the years. With the possible exception of
Stanley Knowles
.
Cough
And of course the last two years Stanley was out of it.
AS
Mhm.
TM
But even now I’m finding out things (?) you know. Sharing hours together. All related
to the business at hand.
AS
Mhm.
TM
Very little. He’d make comments about how he was always proud of his daughter for
example.
AS
Mhm.
AS
Small laugh.
TM
Coughs a few times.
And you got these little glimmers of a close-knit family life. But it was one of the
things I talked with (?). I didn’t talk with (?) but I corresponded with her wonderful
(?). Very sensitive girl. But it sort of showed how the family worked. And (?) was
almost the same way.
AS
The family was private. And uh that’s where he kept.
TM
00:15:09.497
He went home when the door was closed and the phone was off the hook. And
Irma
stood at the gates. If she didn’t want you to get in, my god you didn’t get in.
Small laugh.
Just like that.
00:15:09.497
TM
Okay.
TM
Only 5 foot 2. He’s even smaller than Tommy. He was not very big.
AS
The first time I met him I was amazed. I mean, I thought this, you know, this tiny
man, is the Deputy Minister? Then he started to talk. And I had never seen it before.
As he talked he grew
Thomas gives a small laugh
in height. And I’ve never forgotten that. This was sort of his mind. I realized now
he was extremely tired the first time I interviewed him. It was immediately before
budget in the Trudeau years and uh he must’ve been burning the midnight oil.
TM
(?) trying to keep
John Chretien
?
TM
Whispers.
‘76...
AS
So he hadn’t been Deputy Minister all that long.
TM
That would be Turner.
AS
Yeah. And I realize now he was dreadfully tired at the time he made time for me to
interview him.
TM
Mhm.
TM
Well not in a formal sense but-
AS
Nothing recorded?
TM
Sort of chatted in his kitchen.
AS
Oh I see, yeah okay.
TM
The only (?) I’ve ever done on
Shoy
is I wrote on behalf of the Institute of Public Administration citation when he was
awarded the Vanier Medal. Which I took the opportunity (?) raise the curtain a little
(?).
AS
Good. Do you know if that citation is publicly available or?
TM
Well I know if all else fails
cough
it was published
cough
in the um in one of the publications the Institute of Public Administration (?) would
certainly be able to take it out. I’ll have a look in my file. I’ve saved most of
the stuff for one reason or another that I had written. I don’t know why. Um-
AS
Just in case you needed to reuse it?
TM
Yeah, change the names, slip it under the door.
Ann laughs.
I’ll look at my files and see if I have a copy. If I have it I’ll give it to you.
AS
(?) perhaps from the days you were helping
Tommy Douglas
with his speeches and you had to come up with something in 15 minutes?
TM
Right-oh.
Laughs.
AS
I understand
Shoy
helped him a bit too.
TM
Oh towards the end Shoy helped a lot. Probably more than any of us. As a matter of
fact, Shoy worked quite closely with him when... trying to remember which election.
I guess it would be the ‘60 election.
AS
Well he travelled with him in ‘61, ‘62 but-
TM
But that was after he had become the leader of the
NDP
, (?). But I think even in the provincial election of the 60s,
Shoy
was working very closely with (?). It’s too bad (?) isn’t here. She would be able
to give a lot of the
short pause
the picture of that time
cough
. Because she was
Tommy
’s secretary and when Tommy took over the leadership of the national party Eleanor
went with him.
AS
Mhm.
TM
And really his staff who were in some pretty crying time, were (?) and that was it!
AS
Um-
TM
Mhm.
AS
I could try and get in touch with her. ‘Cause I noticed uh-
TM
Well I-
AS
You speak to me making chicken soup and writing speeches but that’s about all the
detail you have for that period.
TM
Well I don’t have much to say for that time. I was in longer, well
mumble
I was in Tyrone.
AS
Mm.
TM
So there’s a whole period there I really have no personal knowledge of whatsoever
because I was sort of cut off for the better part of two years living in the Middle
East.
AS
Whispers
Okay.
TM
Yes!
Laughs out loud.
Or keeping track of anything else by reading the Citizen.
AS
00:20:20.321
Right. Well as my husband puts it, if it doesn't happen within 300 yards of the hill
it doesn’t happen.
00:20:20.321
TM
Something that has even happened in the 300 yard of the hill, it hasn’t happened.
Cough.
AS
Okay. I wanted to... I understand you sat at the budget office.
TM
Right.
AS
When you were, I understand that when it went this way you-
TM
I was Secretary of the
Economic Advisory and Planning Board
before
Shoy
.
AS
And then he went-
TM
Shoy was Director of Research.
AS
Okay.
TM
And I, in the course of all of this, I put together the proposal on the budgeting
operation and it was approved, I found a director by the name of Frank Roberts. Robertson?
Yeah Frank Roberston who was the provincial auditor and he agreed to take over and
he put together the budgeting program. Um, so there was a short period of time when
I was, well I was sort of the father of the operation, I wasn’t part of the operation.
Frank took over as the director and steered it through its early days. And then I
left the
Planning Board
to become uh Deputy Provincial Treasurer. Deputy Minister of Finance these days and
Deputy Minister Provincial Treasurer in those days.
AS
Mhm.
TM
And about that time, Frank left. So uh the government decided to put the budget bureau
as well as the treasury even though they weren’t the same organization to put them
under my wing. So I took both over the budget bureau for a period, more than 18 months
before I went to the University of Saskatchewan.
Cough.
AS
Okay.
AS
Yeah. I actually have a copy of the minute in which
George Cadbury
resigns and they... You were at that meeting actually. It is-
TM
Mhm.
AS
January of 1951. Immediately after
Shoy
’s married, I think it was. Uh and they confirmed Shoy as Secretary and
Tommy Douglas
’ Chairman of the EAPD at that point. And George Cadbury officially resigns and heads
off to
New York
.
TM
Yeah.
AS
You were already running the budget bureau at that time?
TM
Mhm.
AS
Okay-
TM
Yeah, I took over the budget bureau. I was in Harvard. Uh ‘47, ‘48.
AS
Mhm. Good time to be at Harvard.
TM
Best time. We had a very tiny little (?) Republican men. The maximum enrollment allowed
was 70 students.
AS
Mhm.
TM
(?) organization and then they got the job. And then they got
John F. Kennedy
and decided to make another bill out of it. As far as I’m concerned, they lost a great
deal in the process.
AS
You must’ve... you must’ve known then, from your classmates. Your (?) seniors or had
known senior uh public administrators all through the
United States
too.
TM
To the extent I can keep track of. Unfortunately a lot of them have long since left
us.
AS
Mhm.
TM
Yeah, the guy that was the Budget Director for the
City of New York
for a period of time was a classmate of mine.
Bob Solow
, who’s been teaching Economics at Harvard and got the Nobel Prize a couple years
ago was one of my classmates. Hm, there were (?), there were some Canadians in the
crowd too. They're still here in (?). Johnny Dales teaching in Toronto. Brightest
guy in the lot. Unfortunately he died of cancer.
AS
Mhm.
TM
Steven Stickleton few years ago. It was a good operation.
AS
Short pause.
George Cadbury
, when I was interviewing him, expressed the opinion planning should be kept separate
from finance.
TM
Yeah.
TM
And consciously.
AS
Okay.
TM
00:25:20.117
See this is why in order to keep peace in the (family?)
cough
they worked it so
Tommy Douglas
was um the minister responsible and then the chairman of the Planning Board. Whereas
Clarence Fines
was the chairman of the government Financial office.
00:25:20.117
TM
Well he never had it here. And there’s nothing to forget because they never had it.
Not only that, but they split the financial responsibilities in different ways. So,
you know, is it the Treasury Board, is it the Finance, the Bank of Canada, the Economic
Council of Canada? You know? Who? See, the hope was when the Economic Council was
set up, (?) Shoy had (?) as Secretary. The hope was, the Economic Council of Canada
would sort of become the planning agency for the
Government of Canada
. But that just never happened.
AS
I thought... I wondered if that was the motivation for him coming to the Economic
Council. Whether it was-
TM
Well he came down, you know, in the days of
John Deutsch
when it was just being set up.
Ann mumbles.
Well it was, I don’t quite think it was ever indicated within the mandate of the Economic
Council. It would in the sense of the
EAPD
. The sort of simple planning organization within the (?) of government at least it
was assumed that if nothing else, it was sort of going to draft the, draft the grand
strategies and set the move for discussion by government. But uh
cough
from (?) and (?) farther and farther from the actual decision making process. They
wrote, god knows, they wrote enough.
AS
Yeah.
TM
(?) subject they got three volumes on it. And nobody’s ever read them. And I think
Shoy, oh
Shoy
’s not the one to come under any illusions. I don’t know what the devil (?) told him
but it seemed that Shoy at least harboured the hope that the Economic Council of
Canada was going to have some vital part to play in the creation of a national economic
policy. And it just got lost in its awful mess. It is one of those things I kept
thinking about as to when the day should ever come. You know, this is an area the
Socialist government is gonna have to have the guts to step in and say in the (?)
bureaucratic realm (?) because this is the highest level of your (?) politics (?).
AS
People were killed to be on that (?).
TM
Right.
AS
Yes.
TM
It may have (?).
TM
Well, see again, it depends... All these things depend on the attitude of the government
itself. Uh, and this is particularly true in the Socialist government. In any event,
the tone of the whole thing is set by whether or not you have a Cabinet that has programs
that’s a depiction of what it’s doing, and some appreciation of government as government.
Uh, and this is what you had with the Douglas government. You had people who were
this level of commitment when (?) to the top. Let’s put it that way.
AS
Right.
TM
And it's at the tone and planning was an accepted function of the government.
AS
What was the main tenants to theoretically of the Socialist image of the time too.
TM
Right. Today it’s still a critical issue. Everybody gets all wrapped up in this whole
damn business of public ownership which is a lot of fun if you like the sight of blood.
AS
Small laugh.
TM
00:30:06.770
But the critical element of the Socialist government is its commitment to planning.
Then we get that commitment, forget the rest of it.
Missing tape? 00:30:06.770
00:30:06.770
TM
And then we got the (?) organizer et cetera, et cetera. So there was a myth about
our policy comes from below and everything happens because of the great wisdom of
people. And while uh, along with my old prof
Carl Joachim Friedrich
I do believe in common sense in the common men. I don’t think that extends to economic
policy planning.
AS
Well...
both laughs.
I can see that. And at the same time, politicians are not necessarily the best people
to make the decisions either because their goals are often short-term and economic
planning has to be lengthy.
TM
Well this of course was part of the tension the planning board faced all the time.
This is why (?) planning bring in some (?) people because they’re going to have to
carry the can. And the large part of what happened was because you had a pretty high
level of (?), not simply technical, competent (?). Uh-
AS
As (?) impression of the level the of competence in the political arm to-
TM
Who?
AS
You wrote in your book about
Tommy Douglas
’ ability to extract from experts in English the uh the essence of what they meant.
TM
Yup. Well, not only then, the other interesting thing referred to there coming back
to the whole time. Despite Tommy’s greatness and great contributions, it was not a
one man band.
AS
No.
TM
It was a remarkable Cabinet, which you are not likely to see again in a hurry. You
know, he had at least five people there that could’ve been Premier of the province.
And still would’ve been better than almost anybody we'd ever had.
Coughs.
So you were working on this with Tommy with people like John Rofflebank, Woodrow Lloyd
,
Clarence Fines
,
John Corman
. Uh, you know, rational debate and rational debate. You didn’t take positions because
it protected your particular piece of turf or an idea that was honestly examined.
So we were able to actually exert a fair amount of influence on the choices that
were made. Um, but you don’t simply do that simply by setting up another blocks in
the organization charts saying, now we have a planning mechanism. I’m part of a little
group that extends out to Saskatechwan. We’re sort of redoing a (?) piece on the whole
business of
short pause
public management under a Socialist government. And assuming that in any of those
provinces if a gov... if the
NDP party
came to power in
Manitoba
,
Saskatchewan
,
BC
.
AS
That’s possible.
TM
Those are all possible.
AS
It’s not-
AS
You’ll need a change of leadership before anything like that happens in Alberta.
TM
Well and you need more critical circumstances and they’re enjoying at the moment.
They’re sort of enjoying their prosperity (?) way, you know.
AS
No it’s (?)
Thomas coughs
Reform Party was provincial. You get a split between the
NDP
and the Reform Party amongst the voters.
AS
They’ll take most of the Tory votes-
TM
It is not simply a revival of the Social Credit Party under a different name.
TM
No.
AS
And that means the only place the vote can go is really to the... anti-right vote
can go is the
NDP
. And it would really go there particularly if they had good leadership and good candidates.
One of the major weaknesses there has been poor, poor candidates. So many times. Particularly
federally, I had to hold my nose when I voted.
TM
Well so often, you know, we’ve done inexcusable things.
Coughs.
You know, this guy has been honestly crying for 45 years, we should let him try for
49, you know.
Clears throat.
Or had you heard of that?
AS
00:35:00.400
Oh no, I didn’t know that one. I didn't know about that one.
Thomas laughs.
The person who’s practice I kept (?) a category?
00:35:00.400
TM
No, no, no! I hadn’t had a thought in (?) for 25 years.
AS
Or since he left Oxford.
Small laugh.
Yeah, um, I presume therefore if you were there between ‘45 and ‘52-
TM
Two.
AS
That uh, were you a member of the, what was it called now-
TM
42.
AS
Intermittent meetings of the, oh I’ve forgotten the name of it now. It’s basically
the poker club.
TM
The poker club? I was not a charter member. I was there, actually, if you want the
charter member of the poker club, Don Black is your man. He’s here.
AS
Yeah.
TM
He was part of the Bombay Bicycle Club
laughs
whatever it was. Also Frank Fragel. If you get to
Regina
, talk to Frank.
Coughs
Frank is with radio station CKCK. He was one of these oddities, a radio newstype who
was normally very sympathetic with the party but made friends with a lot of the bureaucrats.
He was part of the poker club. But Don Black here in the city can tell you much more
than I. I was only an occasional member. I’ve never been a great enthusiastic card
player. One evening about every 5 months. Exhausts my attention. You know, I feel
that’s all the time I can give it to that.
AS
Well I understand one of the reasons, one of the appeals of Tom is that he’s such
a good poker player. Nobody can tell what he’s thinking.
TM
Oh yes. He’s first rate.
Ann gives a small laugh.
He’s first rate. I can’t tell whether he’s thinking or not. It’s not a matter of what
he’s thinking. Is he thinking at all? Sort of a blankness there. Oh yeah he was...
He also, he loved golf. That was the other thing they had and Don Black was part of
that crew. I played golf with him occasionally but then
Shoy
found it difficult to understand to the extent which he cut himself out (?) hotel
from a good golf course and he carries his club on the back of his cart which he did
for quite a while. But he used to be a very enthusiastic golfer.
AS
Well I understand he still plays out on the west coast. And
Thomas interjects: Oh.
I know he came here and went down to South (?)-
TM
Oh the (?). He's (?) little group of them. They claim they go down to play golf. I
don’t believe it.
AS
Laughs out loud.
TM
Maybe their (?)
laughs
. Go down to play poker and drink beer.
Ann laughs.
And some of the more able bodies may stay (?) golf course from time to time.
AS
Did you uh take part in these party night gatherings? I gather there were often gatherings
at somebody’s house or other uh-
TM
Usually our house. Well we lived there. Oh yeah, there was a very active social life
among (?) group.
AS
Mhm.
TM
Um
coughs
you know, chiefly the planning boarding group uh but the... that’s right and we had
a great house for party giving. So some of the bigger things were held at our place.
AS
I get an impression from a letter I found in the archives written by H. Lee.
TM
H.S.
AS
H. S. Lee
TM
Horace Stanley.
AS
Horace Stanley. Okay. Uh-
TM
Who had been known only as Tim.
Ann laughs.
A long time before I found what the H. S. was. And he was always Tim Lee.
AS
Okay. I’ll-
TM
He’s now retired.
AS
I understand you shared a house or something?
TM
I’m sorry. This is the house.
AS
Ah, okay.
TM
Laughs.
Yup. Oh Tim was a great character. He was, he sat up, you know, as this whole central
machinery bit. Lee is the one that really sat up the idea of Cabinet Secretariat.
AS
Mhm.
TM
In a realsense of a way. And made it a, you know, it was sort of a third piece of
the puzzle in terms of
coughs
a proper set up for the central management of government that the planning board,
the budget bureau and the secretariat-
AS
Was it like a
Privy Council Office
?
TM
00:40:03.152
Yeah, without an awful lot of the doing things that distract the
Privy Council Office
from doing what it should be doing
cough
. Like worrying about who’s going to be the next deputy minister here, there and somewhere
else. All sorts of other stuff. They’ve set up, days have gone by and they’ve set
up a central planning mechanism too.
00:40:03.152
TM
I can't even (?) the body was competent to do it. Uh, no this was... This was strictly
what the (?) implied by this. This was a matter of managing the cabinet agenda. (?)
of information in and out of the cabinet. Monitoring the, putting into the effect
of cabinet decisions. Um, you know, making cabinet work as a corporate entity. Which
again is a necessary part of the planning function. If your cabinet can’t behave
with a corporate entity when the rest of it is ash anyways. So that was a very important
contribution
short pause
to the whole thing.
AS
Yeah I could see that having a body that would monitor.... I mean, the way I see it,
the
EAPD
’s idea was to come up with the ideas.
TM
Yup.
AS
To present them to Cabinet to do the research, answer Cabinet’s questions about them.
But Cabinet would make the decisions. At that point the budget bureaus would have
to come up with money.
TM
Well, the treasury would come up with the money. But the budget bureau would come
up with the priorities. Where does this fall into the pattern of government expenditures?
AS
Right. Okay.
TM
Yeah. Any effect, our view for better or for worse. And I still think it is the correct
view. And that is, the budget is simply a one year element of your plan.
AS
Yeah.
TM
And that’s the way you approach dealing with it. It’s not simply a matter of cutting
up the pie. It’s a matter of continuously reviewing the relationships with programs,
the policy and priorities of the government and the order of priority. And doing your
(?) to avoid constantly being caught in a fire fighting pose. Which of course is one
of the real problems. Every 48 hours (?) claim and resources. Maybe (?) no. 99 percent
of the time probably maybe no.
Coughs.
But again we were blessed with a tremendously strong minister,
Clarence Fines
. Oh he and
George
did not get along well. I think the tremendous conflict in vanity more than anything
else.
AS
Both your-
TM
Maybe I should’ve said that (?) I feel very strongly about that.
AS
No I, I was aware both men had very strong personalities and very determined personalities.
TM
Yeah one thing on that.
Tommy Douglas
had a strong personality too. But he’s not as intent on himself.
AS
Also for Tommy Douglas I also got the impression he was quite content to let somebody
think the idea was his own when Tom was-
TM
Oh that was... he played that game to perfection. I’ve never seen anyone handle it
the way Tommy did.
Laughs.
Very funny in a way. There was a roundtable, the first cabinet (?) of thirteen,
short pause
twelve I guess. But Tommy would start the rabbit going around and say, well I think
(?) your opinions. He never expressed his opinion first. Never ever. He’d start the
roundtable and if there was a guy (?) starting to show up (?). He’d come up to Tommy.
See well, the sympathy with the proposal being put forward. But since everybody else
voted the other way I guess we’ll the majority. So this guy felt he had a friend in
(?). These little tricks of Tommy’s were really marvelous (?).
AS
He would keep a... presumably he would keep (?) from developing or-
TM
Oh yeah.
AS
That way too. In order to keep the cabinet flexible.
TM
To the best of my knowledge, Tommy and I worked very closely with the first cabinet.
Anyways, for the first 8 years. Uh, (?) were not part of the picture. They did not
involve until the
Woodrow Lloyd
period.
AS
I see, mhm.
TM
And then unfortunately the (?) noble character like Tommy had appointed but couldn’t
control people like
Bob Walker
. You know, a very old, vicious character. And they, oh you know some of them (?)
your last fall, denying, they really set
Woodrow
in. Please, please fellas I wasn’t born yesterday.
AS
00:45:00.000
I get the impression that
Tommy Douglas
’ leadership style with people like the planning board et cetera it’s much like the
way I’ve been told
Tommy Shoyama
ran his newspaper. Which is that he basically expected people to do their job but
he didn’t sort of keep a heavy hand on you or anything.
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Title
Tom McLeod, interviewed by Ann Sunahara, 29 March 1990
Abstract
Tom McLeod
discusses the
Tommy Douglas
year with
Tom Shoyama
.
George Cadbury
hired Tom through an introduction by
George Tamaki
who also carried a lot of weight due to his brilliant skills. He found Tom Shoyama
to be articulate, literate. He was also impressed by his Commerce Degree at the
UBC (University of British Columbia)
. He had a good head on his shoulders and was an attractive guy and a good economic
editor. People with good economic backgrounds were rare during and after the war
years. McLeod discusses the positive working environment with Tommy Douglas – independent,
respectful, tremendous sense of freedom, opportunity. Social activities they did
together included the Poker Club or the ‘Bombay Bicycle Club’, Golf and parties at
the home of George Cadbury and Horace Stanley Tim Lee, who set up the Cabinet Secretariat.
This oral history is from the Nikkei National Museum and Cultural Centre's Kage Collection. Accession No. 2021-7-1-1-3. It describes the experience of exile.
Credits
Interviewer: Ann Sunahara
Interviewee: Tom McLeod
Transcriber: Sakura Taji
Audio Checker: Sakura Taji
XML Encoder: Sakura Taji
Publication Information: See Terms of Use for publication and licensing information.
Setting:
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Terminology
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and dispossession. While these are important realities of the history, the Landscapes
of Injustice Research Collective urges users to carefully consider their own terminological
choices in writing and speaking about this topic today as we confront past injustice.
See our statement on terminology, and related sources here.