Abe
Heaps the
man from Winnipeg's north end is responsible for Canada's Social
legislation like Unemployment Insurance. Today the only reminder of AA
Heaps contributions is in the name of the old bank of Nova Scotia
Building located at Portage and Garry. Heaps had been born in Leeds on
December 24, 1885, of Jewish parents that had fled Russian Poland. He
was educated till age 13 at which time he quit to become an
upholsterer's apprentice. He came to Winnipeg, where he became an
upholsterer in the railway shops. There he became friends with John
Blumberg, and John Queen and active in the union movement.
HEAPS
ENTERS CIVIC POLITICS
Heaps
was a
pacifist and was against conscription during WW1. A popular well read
man, Heaps won a civic seat in 1916 after an earlier attempt against
another Jewish candidate who had won in 1915 by rigging the election.
Heaps wanted to see industry bargain with the unions and was jailed and
tried for treason after the 1919 strike. Heaps provided his own
reasoned defence. He was not a member of the strike committee and in
fact had been too busy as a councillor and working on the civic relief
committee where he saw 100 people a day.
FEDERAL
POLITICS
Heaps
won a
federal seat in 1925 and became an advocate for social reform measures
like unemployment insurance, openness to refugees, old age pensions,
public ownership of public services and abolition of the Senate. Heaps
was not an adversarial or fierce person. He was a man of quiet,
fact-filled speeches and as a result he made many friends in govt, not
the least of whom was Mackenzie King.
THE
PRIME MINISTER'S CHAIR
One
day in 1927
while visiting King, the prime Minister pointed to a ratty scratched up
old chair and told Heaps it had been Sir Wilfrid Laurier's chair. Heaps
offered to take it away and repair it. He returned it, newly
upholstered in black leather with its wooden frame refinished. King was
thrilled and the chair remains today in the parliamentary museum.
AN
ADVOCATE FOR JEWISH REFUGEES
Heaps
was an
advocate for Jewish refugees in the late thirties and during WW2. He
found King to be a total disappointment and suspected his govt was anti
Semitic. One of King's immigration advisors said that none were too
many.
In
the 1930s
Heaps was an advocate for federal aid to the municipalities that were
suffering from the depression. With RB Bennett in power there was
little progress under the control of the man some called the "Iron
Heel."
WHAT
HAPPENED TO HEAPS
Heaps
wife and 2
sons began to winter in California. His wife died of a malignancy at
age 49. Heaps lost in the 1940 election. After politics he pursued a
fine arts interest but later took a job in labour relations in
Montreal. He remarried. In 1954 he went home to Leeds and suffered a
heart attack on April 4. City council sent its condolences. In 1988 an
NDP govt chose to recognise the contributions of this quiet reasonable
socialist who had been called a "servile capitalist lackey" by some of
his own people and renamed the rehabilitated Bank of Nova Scotia in his
honour. Abe Heaps died on April 4, 1954.