Dowson, Ross, 1917-2002 : Ross Dowson was born at Toronto in 1917. Dowson's father was a skilled printer, while his mother was a stenographer. In early 1935 or thereabouts, while he was attending York Memorial Collegiate, Dowson joined the Workers Party of Canada (WPC), the Canadian Trotskyist party. Dowson quickly became active in the party's youth movement, the Spartacus Youth League, selling newspapers, joining demonstrations, organizing lectures at his school, and working with unemployed youth. Following his graduation from high school in 1936, Dowson worked at a variety of jobs while he continued his political activities amidst growing dissension within the Canadian Trotskyist movement over the issue of dissolving the WPC and entry into the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF).
From 1938 to 1940, as he worked as a white-collar worker at Kodak, Dowson remained active in the Trotskyist movement, then centred in the Socialist Workers League (SWL), which was forced underground following the outbreak of the Second World War. In 1941, as Dowson and a handful of other activists tried to keep the Trotskyist movement alive in Canada, he was sent on a Western tour to communicate with scattered SWL members and sympathizers.
Finding it difficult to obtain industrial work without military-service exemption papers, in 1942 Dowson enlisted in the Canadian Army, assuming that he would be rejected. Instead, his enlistment was accepted. Following his training at Camp Borden, he was soon promoted corporal, serving as a small-arms instructor. In 1943, he completed his officer's training and was assigned as a training officer at Camp Borden. In 1944 he was transferred to Stanley Barracks in Toronto. In 1944 he resigned his commission and was released from the Army in September. Dowson then dedicated himself to relaunching the SWL, organizing a national conference in Montreal, at which he was elected national secretary. Not long after, Dowson was recalled to military service. Re-entering the army as a private, he was stationed at camps in Toronto, Ipperwash, and Niagara, where he engaged in various forms of political agitation. In August 1945, he led a protest against the practice of assigning soldiers to civilian work at Army pay. In October 1945, he was discharged from the Army.
For most of the next three decades, Dowson served as the main leader of the Canadian Trotskyist Movement in its various incarnations: the Revolutionary Workers Party (1944-1955), the Socialist Educational League (1955-1961), and the League for Socialist Action (LSA)/Young Socialists (YS) (1961-1974). As the movement's leading figure, Dowson played an instrumental role in developing the Trotskyist press in Canada (including the papers Labour Challenge, Workers Vanguard, and Young Socialist), managing the group's Toronto headquarters and bookstore, and providing liaison between the Canadian Trotskyists and what were, perhaps, the two most important centres of international Trotskyism, the Socialist Workers Party in the United States and the Fourth International based in Paris. (Within the Trotskyist movement, Dowson often utilized party names: Paul Kane, P. Kane, and P. Kent.) Dowson also directly participated in electoral politics, running twice as a mayoralty candidate in Toronto (1948 and 1959) and later running against Robert Stanfield in Nova Scotia in a 1967 federal by-election.
In addition, Dowson played a key role in the shaping of Canadian Trotskyist theory, policy, strategy, and tactics, particularly in reference to four major questions that proved to be particularly contentious within the Canadian movement, namely, relations with the CCF and later the New Democratic Party (NDP) and Waffle; the true nature of Canada nationalism; the appropriate response to Quebec nationalism; and the Canadian movement's role within the international Trotskyist movement, especially the Fourth International. Dowson also presided over the Trotskyists' response to the widespread youth radicalization in the 1960s and the party's interventions in various New Left struggles, including the anti-war movement, support for the Cuban revolution, the women's movement, the student movement, and the gay-liberation movement. However, as the LSA/YS experienced unprecedented expansion, Dowson's leadership was eventually challenged and many of his political positions questioned. In 1972 he stepped down from the LSA leadership.
Dismayed by the direction of the movement under its new leadership, in 1974 Dowson and a group of his followers left the LSA and formed the Socialist League, which soon became the Forward Group. This new group focussed on work within the left of the NDP and on the publication of a newspaper, Forward (1974-1984), and then a newsletter, Left Caucus Newsletter.
In 1977, Dowson launched a slander suit against the RCMP. The following year, he and lawyer Harry Kopyto formed the Socialist Rights Defense Foundation (SRDF) in an effort to gain support for Dowson's suit. For several more years, Dowson and Kopyto tenaciously pursued various legal actions and other interventions, all designed to shed light on clandestine RCMP activities directed against the Canadian Trotskyist movement. Dowson's case eventually became a cause celebre for civil-rights activists, and the SRDF received support from such international figures as Noam Chomsky and Jessica Mitford, and such notable Canadians as Pierre Berton, Clayton Ruby, Margaret Atwood, and Margaret Laurence.
As a Trotskyist leader and activist, Dowson was a prolific contributor to the movement's public and internal publications. He also contributed to the international Trotskyist press and was the author of several books and pamphlets, including The Power & Dilemma of the Trade Unions (1969), The Socialist Vanguard and the NDP (1976), and In the Federal Appeal Court between Ross Dowson v. RCMP: A Vivid Episode in the Ongoing Struggle for Freedom of Thought and Social Justice in Canada (1980). As well, Dowson amassed one of the largest private collections of left-wing literature in Canada, a collection that was one of the primary private sources utilized by Peter Weinrich in the compilation of Social Protest from the Left in Canada, 1870-1970: A Bibliography (1982).
In 1989 Dowson suffered a debilitating stroke, which brought an end to more than fifty years of political activism. Following Dowson's incapacitation, members of the Forward Group embarked on an archival project devoted to the arrangement and description of Dowson's archives, which included not only Dowson's personal papers, but records of the Canadian Trotskyist movement and the Canadian Fair Play for Cuba Committee, as well as papers obtained by Dowson -- or later by the Dowson archives project -- relating to Art Grey, Richard Thompson, Arnie Mintz, John Darling, Gord Doctorow, Dowson's brother Hugh Dowson, Jerry and Ruth Houle, and other Canadian Trotskyist activists. The Dowson archives project was located in the home of Dowson's sister, Lois Bedard. The archival work was undertaken by Dowson's associate John Darling.
Dowson died at Toronto in 2002.
