Able to Lead
Disablement, Radicalism, and the Political Life of E.T. Kingsley
Description
Eugene T. Kingsley led an extraordinary life: he was once described as “one of the most dangerous men in Canada.” In 1890, Kingsley was working as a railway brakeman in Montana when an accident left him a double amputee, and politically radicalized. Ravi Malhotra and Benjamin Isitt trace Kingsley’s political journey from soapbox speaker in San Francisco to prominence in the Socialist Party of Canada. They examine Kingsley’s endeavours for justice against the Northern Pacific Railway, and how his life intersected with immigration law and free-speech rights. Able to Lead highlights Kingsley’s profound legacy for the twenty-first-century political left.
Reviews
Able to Lead paints a vivid picture of a fascinating political figure whose oratory one would have liked to have experienced first-hand.
- Giselle Gerolami
...the book provides a rich and lively account of a dynamic period in the history of the Canadian left— and tantalizing glimpses of an extraordinary man who lived in the thick of it.
- John Baglow
...Malhotra and Isitt are to be commended for a book that, besides providing extraordinarily useful information on subjects ranging from the ubiquity of railway accidents in the late nineteenth century to the influence of eugenics on Canadian immigration policies at the same time, recognizes that Kingsley, even though he never spoke or wrote of his disability, likely constantly had to make decisions, whether about the class struggle or where to live, that reflected its existence in an ablist world.
- Neil Dhingra, University of Maryland
Able to Lead... portrays the fractured politics of the B.C. labour left, providing an admiring account of the role of one man in that process… [the book] should achieve its stated goal of encouraging a new perception of the capabilities of disabled people while also prompting a rethink of the early North American left.
- Ron Verzuh, documentary filmmaker
The authors’ focus on this historical figure enriches and widens the lens on BC’s history.
- Janet Nicol