David Lewis

David Lewis was born into a Jewish family in Svislach in the Russian Empire and emigrated to Montreal in 1921. Winning a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, he became the first Canadian president of the Oxford Union. Returning to Canada as a labor lawyer, he served for two decades as national secretary of the CCF, helping engineer its 1961 transformation into the New Democratic Party (NDP).

Elected federal NDP leader in 1971, Lewis ran his famous 1972 campaign against 'corporate welfare bums'. Holding the balance of power in the 1972-1974 Trudeau minority parliament, he forced the historic creation of Petro-Canada, the Foreign Investment Review Agency, and campaign finance reform limiting corporate election donations.