A Prophet in Politics: A Biography of J.S. Woodsworth by Kenneth McNaught (review)

Originally published in 1959, Kenneth McNaught's pioneering biography of Methodist minister, labour activist, left intellectual, and Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (ccf) founder James Shaver Woodsworth has seen numerous reprints and editions. The most recent came in 2001, including a thoughtful introduction by political scientist Allen Mills, himself a scholar of Woodsworth's life and times. This edition is being republished as part of the University of Toronto Press's Canada 150 Collection, which brings together a host of scholarly works from various points in history, and which all speak to the diversity, complexity, and meaning of Canada's sesquicentennial. With this in mind, the inclusion of a biographical analysis of Woodsworth–one of Canada's most outstanding democratic socialists and influential political figures–is a wise choice. While McNaught's analysis is dated, it is nevertheless a worthy representation of the art of Canadian history.

A Prophet in Politics derives its name from McNaught's belief that Woodsworth, through his moral convictions as defined by his socialist Christianity, stood for unpopular positions, which often came to been seen by wide swathes of the populace as correct ones. Put simply, Woodsworth's story for McNaught was one of a "moral courage unsurpassed in Canadian history. To tell that story, in its context, is the purpose of this book" (xv). Although the author thinks highly of his subject, the study is nonetheless rigorous, showcasing Woodsworth's life, intellectual formation, and political development from his boyhood days on the prairie frontier, to his youthful travels to Europe, his ministries in both a respectable middle-class church and among the poor of Winnipeg, his role in the Winnipeg General Strike, his election as a Labour Member of Parliament, his founding of the ccf, and, finally, to his principled but ultimately politically and socially alienating opposition to Canada's involvement in the Second World War. At every step, McNaught provides outstanding detail as to what Woodsworth was writing, saying, and doing. It is a monograph dedicated to a close reading of the primary sources and structured around that reading.

Given that the book was published nearly sixty years ago, it acts as a bridge of sorts between the "old" and "new" Canadian histories. It is a classical history in its broad sweep and rhetorical flourishes. But in its research rigour, its concerns with the historical importance of regular people, and the questioning of some of Canada's well-entrenched liberal and capitalist mythologies, one can see the glimmer of the new social and labour histories that would dictate the field in the 1960s and 1970s.

Still, the book is undeniably outmoded, partially in the direct understanding of Woodsworth but especially in the context surrounding him. In 1991, decades after McNaught, Allen Mills would produce Fool for Christ (University of Toronto Press, 1991) with Woodsworth as the subject, seeking to offer a more nuanced take on the ccf founder, because McNaught's manuscript, however scholarly, was set within a series of earlier works on Woodsworth–including one written by his daughter Grace–that veered toward the hagiographic, setting him up as a man whose morality and conviction lifted him above the corruption of political, social, and economic life. Mills challenged this one-dimensional approach, as well as leftists and ndp centrists who sought to stake themselves as Woodsworth's intellectual successors, when Woodsworth would be likely too anti-Marxist for the new left and too anti-capitalist for many post–Cold War era ccf-ndpers.

Beyond Mills are the works of other scholars who have sought to contextualize Woodworth's meaning in his own era and the value he offers us today. Perhaps the best examination is Jane Pulkingham's 2010 edited collection, Human Welfare, Rights, and Social Activism: Rethinking the Legacy of J.S. Woodsworth (University of Toronto Press), which not only extends some of Mills's critiques but also focuses on...