Tom McEwen

Thomas Alexander McEwen (February 11, 1891 – May 11, 1988) was a Canadian labour organizer and Communist politician.

Early life McEwen was born in Stonehaven, Scotland, south of Aberdeen, to Agnes and Alex McEwen. His father fought and died in the Boer War, several years after his mother died of tuberculosis. McEwen was raised by a guardian, Annie Wishart, until he was nine when he went to live with his aunt and uncle in the fishing village of Catterline.

When he was 13, he left the village for Aberdeen to find work, first as a baggageman on the Great North of Scotland Railway, then working with horses as a hostler and variously as a farmhand before apprenticing as a blacksmith. McEwen won 32% of the vote, coming within 162 votes of being elected.

Subsequently, McEwen moved to Vancouver, British Columbia where he was appointed editor of the party's west coast newspaper, the Pacific Tribune, which he edited until his retirement in 1970. In 1974, he published his autobiography, The Forge Glows Red.

Electoral record