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

Eugene T. Kingsley led an extraordinary life: he was once described as one of the most dangerous men in Canada. In 1890, Kingsley was working as a railway brakeman in Montana when an accident left him a double amputee, and politically radicalized. Ravi Malhotra and Benjamin Isitt trace Kingsley’s political journey from soapbox speaker in San Francisco to prominence in the Socialist Party of Canada. They examine Kingsley’s endeavours for justice against the Northern Pacific Railway, and how his life intersected with immigration law and free-speech rights. Able to Lead highlights Kingsley’s profound legacy for the twenty-first-century political left.