Linus Van Pelt
Sr. Member
Posts: 2,145
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« on: October 22, 2012, 08:26:24 PM » |
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I never realized this until now, but there are some interesting similarities between Walter Mondale and George McGovern in addition to the obvious.
Both Mondale and McGovern had fathers who were small-town Methodist ministers. Both had mothers whose families were Methodists from Southwestern Ontario: McGovern's mother was born Frances Myrtle McLean in Dundas, ON, and Mondale's mother was born Claribel Hope Cowan and was the daughter of an immigrant from Seaforth, ON - the small town in Huron County where my great-grandfather went to high school from the farm. Quite the coincidence, really, but not a random one - there was significant emigration to the upper plains by the old southwestern Ontario Methodist Clear Grits in the late 19th Century, who at the time were the most radical element in Anglo-Canadian politics.
The founding leader of the federal CCF, J. S. Woodsworth, meanwhile, was a Methodist minister from Etobicoke (then a rural township west of Toronto), and the first leader of the Ontario provincial party, Ted Joliffe, was the son of Methodist missionaries to China from Rockwood, outside Guelph. In some respects all these men were influenced by something of the same tradition.
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