Skip to main content Skip to search Skip to search

Social Science People With Disabilities

Able to Lead

Disablement, Radicalism, and the Political Life of E.T. Kingsley

by (author) Ravi Malhotra & Benjamin Isitt

Publisher
UBC Press
Initial publish date
May 2021
Category
People with Disabilities, Social History, Disability, People with Disabilities
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780774865791
    Publish Date
    May 2021
    List Price
    $125.00
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780774865760
    Publish Date
    May 2021
    List Price
    $89.95
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780774865777
    Publish Date
    Dec 2021
    List Price
    $34.95

Add it to your shelf

Where to buy it

Description

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.

About the authors

Ravi Malhotra is a professor in the faculty of law at the University of Ottawa.

Ravi Malhotra's profile page

Benjamin Isitt is a historian and legal scholar specializing in the political and legal history of British Columbia’s working class, with previous works including From Victoria to Vladivostok (UBC Press, 2010) and Able to Lead (UBC Press, 2021). He also serves as a city councillor and regional director in Victoria, BC.

Benjamin Isitt's profile page

Editorial Reviews

...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.

Literary Review of Canada

The authors’ focus on this historical figure enriches and widens the lens on BC’s history.

BC Studies

Able to Lead paints a vivid picture of a fascinating political figure whose oratory one would have liked to have experienced first-hand.

Against the Current

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.

The Ormsby Review

...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.

H-Net

Other titles by

Critical Conversations in Canadian Public Law

edited by Jena McGill, Karen Drake, Kyle Kirkup, Anne Levesque & Joshua Sealy-Harrington
contributions by Efrat Arbel, Andrée Boisselle, Nathalie Chalifour, Yin-Yuan Chen, Allison Christians, Gordon Christie, Ruby Dhand, Lorena Fontaine, Véronique Fortin, Ashleigh Keall, Lisa M. Kelly, Lisa Kerr, Harry Laforme, Jamie Chai Yun Liew, Ravi Malhotra, Meenakshi Mannoe, Aaron Mills, Avnish Nanda, Mona Paré, Kim Pate, Dayna Scott, Samuel Singer, Kerry Sloan, Reakash Walters, Vincent Wong & Donna Young

Class Warrior

The Selected Works of E. T. Kingsley

by (author) E.T. Kingsley
edited by Benjamin Isitt & Ravi Malhotra

Class Warrior

The Selected Works of E. T. Kingsley

by (author) Eugene Thornton Kingsley
edited by Benjamin Isitt & Ravi Malhotra

Vulnerable

The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19

edited by Colleen M. Flood, Vanessa MacDonnell, Sophie Thériault & Sridhar Venkatapuram
contributions by Jane Philpott, Katherine Fierlbeck, Lorian Hardcastle, Aimée Craft, Deborah McGregor, Jeffery Hewitt, Michelle Giroux, David Robitaille, Amir Attaran, Adam R. Houston, Bryan Thomas, Carissima Mathen, Alexandra Flynn, Mel Cappe, Grégoire Webber, Tim Caulfield, Jeffrey Simpson, Paul Daly, Marie-France Fortin, Jennifer A. Quaid, Kumanan Wilson, Teresa Scassa, Kelly Bronson, Jason Millar, Vardit Ravitsky, Daniel Weinstock, Terry Skolnik, Martha Jackman, Delphine Nakache, Yves Le Bouthillier, Martine Lagacé, Linda Garcia, Leilani Farha, Kaitlin Schwan, Adelina Iftene, Jamie Chai Yun Liew, Y.Y. Brandon Chen, Anne Levesque, Kwame McKenzie, Jennifer A. Chandler, Mona Gupta, Yasmin Khaliq, Simon Hatcher, Olivia Lee, Tess Sheldon, Ravi Malhotra, Pat Armstrong, Hugh Armstrong, Ivy Bourgeault, Katherine Lippel, Louise Bélanger-Hardy, Vanessa Gruben, Sarah Berger Richardson, Anis Chowdhury, Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Sam Halabi, Chidi Oguamanam, Steven J. Hoffman, Patrick Fafard, Céline Castets-Renard, Eleonore Fournier-Tombs, E. Richard Gold, Jeremy de Beer, Matthew Herder & Jason W. Nickerson

Labour and Employment Law 9/e

Cases, Materials, and Commentary

by (author) Labour Law Casebook Group
contributions by Pnina Alon-Shenker, Bruce Archibald, Kevin Banks, Tim Bartkiw, Stephanie Bernstein, Adelle Blackett, Bruce Curran, Gillian Demeyere, David Doorey, Brian Etherington, Brian Langille, Michael Lynk, Michael Mac Neil, Ravi Malhotra, Sarah Marsden, Claire Mummé, Kerry Rittich, Supriya Routh, Sara Slinn & Gilles Trudeau

Disabling Barriers

Social Movements, Disability History, and the Law

edited by Ravi Malhotra & Benjamin Isitt

Other titles by