by bus, train, broken-down car, on foot...

This week some of us are celebrating the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, or CCF, the party that brought us national publicly-funded health care. Here is an excerpt from a story that appeared in the Toronto Star earlier this week:

The delegates crowding around Woodsworth in the photograph had come together both to seize an opportunity and address a need. The opportunity was the Great Depression. Capitalism seemed to have failed. The economy was in a disastrous state, unemployment was at a mind-boggling high, and the world's financial system seemed on the verge of collapse. The need was the lack of a convincing alternative.

Sound familiar? Perhaps in all this doom and gloom an opening exists for people who believe, for example, in equitable and real access to education for all -- even people who test at Level 1 in the IALLS.

Happy birthday CCF and thank you all you faithful 1933 delegates and all you progressive descendants who built on the CCF foundation to try and make our country a fair and humane place to live.