WHO IS EAMON PARK? 

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EAMON PARK (1916 -1975 )

UNITED STEELWORKERS OF AMERICA AND ONTARIO MPP 

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Eamon Park, unionist, legislator and finally Canadian Counsellor in London, England, was born in Monkstown, County Cork, Ireland, in 1916. He spent his youth in England and Wales. When he was 11, his family came to Canada and settled in Toronto where Eamon attended school and graduated from De La 

De La Salle Oaklands in the midst of the great depression. Active in youth and unemployed organizations, he spent some time working as a combination editor-reporter-circulation manager with a Winnipeg labour newspaper. 

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After returning east, he was working at Conroy Manufacturing in St.Catherines, Ontario, when the call came from Kirkland Lake miners for a union publicity man. Park was asked to do the job by then CIO director Charles Millard. After the 1941 -2 strike he went west as CIO organizer. He organized the first CIO-CCL unions on the prairies. 

In 1942 he joined the staff of the United Steelworkers and came back to Toronto to head up the successful organizing drive in the giant John Inglis war plant. A year later he took over the job of public relations director for Canada in the Steelworkers' national office. 

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In 1948 Park was elected CCF MPP for Toronto- Dovercourt. As a Legislator, he introduced the first Private member's bill to provide equal pay for equal work, and was the first Ontario MPP to bring to formal debate a Fair Employment Practices Act. Acknowledged as one of the best -informed MPP's on labour legislation, Park was a natural choice when he lost his seat in a general election to head up the new Steelworkers' Legislative Department to assist locals and staff representatives in their relations with governments. 

In 1954, 1957 and 1963 he represented Canada as a workers' delegate to the ILO Iron and Steel Committee, and at the 1957 and 1963 sessions was elected vice-president of the committee. In 1957 Park was named Assistant to the National Director for Canada, a job that involved him closely in major negotiations, as a "trouble-shooter" and as a spokesman for the union. 

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One of Park's deepest concerns was for human rights. He served on Committees for Human Rights of the CLC, the Ontario Federation of Labour and the Toronto Labour Council. He was chairman of the Civil Liberties Association when it opposed the invocation of the War Measures Act in 1970. 

No union official was more zealous in promoting labour political action. A CCF worker from his youth, Park had an important part in the establishment of the New Democratic Party. In 1961 he was elected federal treasurer and in 1965 president of the NDP. unsuccessfully as an NDP candidate in the federal election of 1968.  In 1972 he was appointed Counsellor to the Canadian High Commissioner in London for the United Kingdom and Sweden. He died in London in 1975. 

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