Who would get your vote...

...for the greatest Canadian of all time? Alexander Graham Bell?

How about Wayne Gretzky?

Lorne Greene?

Yeah; Lorne Greene. You got a problem with that?

Well, in 2004, The Greatest Canadian, a television show, selected Tommy Douglas, the former premier of Saskatchewan. Who? (That's what I said.)

Douglas (above) is widely considered to be the father of Medicare, the Canadian health care system. Apparently, as recently as 2004, Canadians were so happy with the system they voted Douglas the "Greatest Canadian."

I'm reminded of all this by the news in the Times this morning of the death of Allan Blakeney. Again, who?

Allan Blakeney (above), the health minister of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan helped start North America’s first tax-financed universal health care system in 1962.

In 1946, the government of Tommy Douglas, then Saskatchewan’s premier, enacted universal insurance coverage for hospitalization. Mr. Douglas’s successor, Woodrow Lloyd expanded the program in 1962 to include the costs of medical care provided by doctors.

Nine out of 10 doctors responded by going on strike, people demonstrated in support of the doctors and newspapers editorialized in their favor. Mr. Blakeney, as the health minister in Mr. Lloyd’s government, became the main negotiator with the physicians. He succeeded in keeping the new system — partly by emphasizing its lower cost — but compromised to give doctors the right to charge fees for services, rather than going on salary.

Mr. Blakeney later called the brouhaha the “the greatest social conflict I was involved in.” By 1966, universal medical coverage had been extended to all Canadians. Opposition to the plan in Saskatchewan, however, helped the Liberal Party defeat Mr. Lloyd’s government in 1964.
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Mr. Blakeney watched the United States’ debate on health care, which resulted in the Affordable Health Care for America Act of 2009, with keen interest. He called the American law “a painfully small step.”
 
(All emphasis mine.)