LEWIS, DAVID

LEWIS, DAVID (1909–1981), Canadian lawyer and socialist politician. Lewis was born in Svisloch, Belorussia. His father, Morris, was an active member of the bund and maintained his involvement after the family immigrated to Montreal in 1921. In 1931 Lewis earned a B.A. from McGill and won a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford, where he became president of the Oxford Union. On his return to Montreal he was admitted to the Quebec Bar and became a founder of the largely western-based social democratic Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). He became the party's national secretary in 1936 and for many years the party's sole paid employee. Through the 1940s he ran for a seat in the House of Commons but was defeated on each occasion. In a 1943 by-election in Montreal's Cartier riding he lost to fred rose , who became Canada's first and only Communist member of Parliament. Lewis resigned as national secretary of the CCF in 1950 and moved to Toronto to practice law. He became legal advisor to several major unions including the United Steel Workers of America's Canadian division, and assisted the union in its battles with the Communist-led Mine, Mill union. But he also remained active in the CCF. He was successively vice chairman, chairman, and president of the CCF. He also helped organize the New Democratic Party (NDP), the more urban-based successor to the CCF, and in 1962 won a seat in the House of Commons for the NDP in a Toronto riding and represented the NDP in Parliament from 1965 to 1974. In 1971 he was chosen leader of the NDP, the first Jewish leader of a major Canadian political party, and in the 1972 election became head of the 31-member NDP caucus which held the balance of power between the governing Liberals and the opposition Conservatives. He propped up the Liberals, holding them to a very progressive legislative agenda. Lewis was defeated in the 1974 election and stepped down as NDP leader and took up a teaching post at Carleton University in Ottawa. Lewis was active in Jewish affairs and was vice president of the Jewish Labor Committee of Canada, sat on several Canadian Jewish Congress committees, and was on the board of the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews. Although raised in a Bundist home, Lewis warmed to Zionism and the State of Israel after the Holocaust. He helped forge good relations between the Canadian labour movement and Israel. Lewis was honored with the Order of Canada, Canada's highest civilian award. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: D. Lewis, The Good Fight: Political Memoirs, 1909–1958 (1981); C. Smith, Unfinished Business: The Lewis Family (1989). (Ben G. Kayfetz)