Early Life
Dowson joined the Trotskyist movement as a teenager during the Great Depression. The Canadian Trotskyist movement collapsed at the beginning of World War II as leaders such as Jack MacDonald, Maurice Spector and Earle Birney dropped out due to factional disputes. Dowson reorganized the movement near the end of World War II with the founding of the Revolutionary Workers Party.
Dowson ran for mayor of Toronto several times in the 1940s, campaigning openly as a Trotskyist, and garnered over 20% of the vote in 1949. He ran for mayor a total of nine times in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.
Read more about this topic: Ross Dowson
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