Able to Lead: Disablement, Radicalism, and the Political Life of E.T. Kingsley - Softcover

Malhotra, Ravi; Isitt, Benjamin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0774865776 ISBN 13: 9780774865777

Publisher: UBC Press, 2021

Synopsis

Eugene T. Kingsley led an extraordinary life. Born in mid-nineteenth-century New York,y 1890 he was a railway brakeman in Montana. An accident left him a double amputee and politically radicalized, and his socialist activism that followed took him north of the border where he eventually was considered by the government to be “one of the most dangerous men in Canada”.

Able to Lead traces Kingsley’s political journey from soapbox speaker in San Francisco to prominence in the Socialist Party of Canada. Ravi Malhotra and Benjamin Isitt illuminate a figure who shaped a generation of Canadian leftists during a time when it was uncommon for disabled men to lead. They examine Kingsley’s endeavours for justice against the Northern Pacific Railway, and how Kingsley’s life intersected with immigration law and free-speech rights.

Able to Lead brings a turbulent period in North American history to life, highlighting Kingsley’s profound legacy for the twenty-first-century political left.

About this title

About the Author

Ravi Malhotra is a professor in the Faculty of Law and cross-appointed to the School of Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Ottawa. He is the co-author, with Morgan Rowe, of Exploring Disability Identity and Disability Rights through Narratives: Finding a Voice of Their Own. Benjamin Isitt is a historian and legal scholar based in Victoria, British Columbia. He is the author of From Victoria to Vladivostok: Canada’s Siberian Expedition, 1917–19 and Militant Minority: British Columbia Workers and the Rise of a New Left, 1948–1972, among other publications. Malhotra and Isitt are also co-editors of Disabling Barriers: Social Movements, Disability History and the Law.

Edition details

• Publisher: UBC Press
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0774865776
• ISBN 13: 9780774865777
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320