Able to Lead

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.

The authors' focus on this historical figure enriches and widens the lens on BC's history. - Janet Nicol (BC Studies) Able to Lead... portrays the fractured politics of the B.C. labour left, providing an admiring account of the role of one man in that process… [the book] should achieve its stated goal of encouraging a new perception of the capabilities of disabled people while also prompting a rethink of the early North American left.- Ron Verzuh, documentary filmmaker (The Ormsby Review) Able to Lead paints a vivid picture of a fascinating political figure whose oratory one would have liked to have experienced first-hand.- Giselle Gerolami (Against the Current) ...the book provides a rich and lively account of a dynamic period in the history of the Canadian left— and tantalizing glimpses of an extraordinary man who lived in the thick of it. - John Baglow (Literary Review of Canada) ...Malhotra and Isitt are to be commended for a book that, besides providing extraordinarily useful information on subjects ranging from the ubiquity of railway accidents in the late nineteenth century to the influence of eugenics on Canadian immigration policies at the same time, recognizes that Kingsley, even though he never spoke or wrote of his disability, likely constantly had to make decisions, whether about the class struggle or where to live, that reflected its existence in an ablist world. - Neil Dhingra, University of Maryland (H-Net)

• Introduction1 Incident at Spring Gulch: Disablement, Litigation, and the Birth of a Revolutionary2 California Radical: Fighting for Free Speech and Running for Congress in the Socialist Labor Party3 Crossing the Line: Eugene Kingsley Arrives in British Columbia4 No Compromise: Kingsley and the Socialist Party of Canada5 Kingsley and the State6 The Twilight Years: Kingsley and the 1920s Canadian LeftConclusionAppendix 1: Timeline of the Life and Political Times of E.T. KingsleyAppendix 2: E.T. Kingsley Election ResultsAppendix 3: Partial Record of E.T. Kingsley's Public Speeches and LecturesAppendix 4: Obituary for E.T. KingsleyNotes; Index