Herschel Hardin (born
1936) is a British Columbia
-based writer, playwright, commentator and political
activist and consultant best known for having contested the
leadership of the New Democratic
Party of Canada
in
1995.
Hardin
grew up in Vegreville
, Alberta
and attended
university at Queen's
University
in Kingston
, Ontario
.
He started his professional career as a playwright following his
graduation. His best known play is
Esker Mike and His Wife,
Agiluk.
Hardin worked as a freelance radio broadcaster for both CBC Radio
and Radio-Canada (the CBC's French-language network).
In the 1970s, he
established the Association for Public Broadcasting in British
Columbia and the Capital Cable Co-operative in Victoria
to lobby for the expansion of public,
non-commercial broadcasting. He was also active as a
consumer advocate opposing cable rate increases.
In the
late 1970s, he worked as a Vancouver
-based editorial page columnist for The Toronto Star writing on politics
and economics.
He also wrote a number of non-fiction books, his first being
A
Nation Unaware: The Canadian Economic Culture (1974), which
explored the key role of public enterprise in the development of
Canada's economy and the country's distinctive interregional
redistribution. This was followed by
Closed Circuits: The
Sellout of Canadian Television (1985), an exposé of television
politics and how power works in Canada, and
The Privatization
Putsch (1989), a debunking of the privatization movement. A
subsequent major work, The New Bureaucracy: Waste and Folly in the
Private Sector, detailed the bureaucratic character and excesses of
the corporate world (including finance and marketing) and how this
"new bureaucracy" had become entrenched behind what he called an
"ideological screen," in this instance, the ideology of free
enterprise. Also of note:
Working Dollars: The VanCity
Story (1996), a history of Vancity Savings Credit Union, the
large credit union in Vancouver and now also in Victoria.
Hardin contested the
leadership of the federal New
Democratic Party in 1995 following the resignation of
Audrey McLaughlin. The only candidate in
the four person race who had never been an elected politician,
Hardin ran a grassroots campaign that emphasized
democratic socialist themes. He
received 4.78% of the vote in the
One Member One Vote national party
primaries which was insufficient to allow him to proceed to the
delegated
NDP leadership
convention.
He subsequently was an NDP candidate in
Vancouver South—Burnaby
placing third in the
1997 general election and
again in the
2000
federal election.
Hardin served on the board of the
publicly-run Insurance Corporation
of British Columbia in the 1990s and was chair of the board's
Road Safety Committee and then its Product Committee.
In the 1990s he returned briefly to playwriting with
The New
World Order, a political play about what the United States had
in store for the world following the first Gulf War.
Hardin is a member of the Writers' Union of Canada. He has been a
longtime environmentalist and is a member of SPEC (Society
Promoting Environmental Conservation). Other memberships include
the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, Amnesty International, the
North Shore Schizophrenia Society, the Canadian Centre for Policy
Alternatives, Co-op Radio, Theatre in the Raw, and the Council of
Canadians. His commitment to the North Shore Schizophrenia Society
has become particularly significant for him in the last couple of
decades and has involved everything from major advocacy work to
playing Santa Claus at the society's annual Christmas
banquet.
He lives
with his wife Marguerite in West Vancouver
.
Bibliography
Plays
- Esker Mike & His Wife, Agiluk, Burnaby, B.C.:
Talonbooks, (1973)
- Great Wave of Civilization Burnaby, B.C.: Talonbooks
(1976)
- New World Order (1991)
Non-fiction
- A Nation Unaware, Vancouver: JJ Douglas, (1974)
- Closed Circuits: the Sellout of Canadian Television,
Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre Ltd., (1985)
- The Privatization Putsch, Halifax: Institute for
Research on Public Policy, (1989)
- The New Bureaucracy: Waste and Folly in the Private
Sector, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, (1991)
- Working Dollars: The VanCity Story, Vancouver: Douglas
& McIntyre Ltd., (1996)
References
- VANCOUVER SOUTH--BURNABY (1997/06/02),
Parliament of Canada website
- VANCOUVER SOUTH--BURNABY (2000/11/27),
Parliament of Canada website
- online guide to writing in canada:herschel
hardin, Retrieved on 2007-02-13
- Herschel Hardin, Writers Union of Canada, Retrieved on
2007-02-13
External links
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