Politics
Factor was elected to the Toronto School Board in 1923 and 1924 before winning an aldermanic seat representing Ward 4 on Toronto City Council where he served from 1926 until 1928.
In 1930, he was elected to the House of Commons as the Liberal MP for Toronto West Centre, a riding that was home to much of Toronto's Jewish population as well as many other recent immigrants. He defeated former Mayor of Toronto Tommy Church in what had been a Conservative riding bucking a national trend in the 1930 federal election that saw the Conservatives defeating the incumbent Liberal government of William Lyon Mackenzie King. He was the only Liberal elected from Toronto in that election. Factor was re-elected in the 1935 election for the newly created riding of Spadina. He was again re-elected in 1940 and, with the loss of two other Liberal MPs in Toronto, was again the city's only representative in the Liberal caucus
With two other MPs, A.A. Heaps of Winnipeg and Sam Jacobs of Montreal, Factor fought against quotas on Jewish immigration and anti-Semitism.
While serving in Parliament during World War II, Factor enlististed with the Royal Canadian Air Force, retiring in 1944 with the rank of Squadron Leader.
Read more about this topic: Samuel Factor (Canadian Politician)
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“The trouble with Nixon is that he’s a serious politics junkie. He’s totally hooked ... and like any other junkie, he’s a bummer to have around: especially as President.”
—Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)
“The newspaper reader says: this party is destroying itself through such mistakes. My higher politics says: a party that makes such mistakes is finished—it has lost its instinctive sureness.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The differences between revolution in art and revolution in politics are enormous.... Revolution in art lies not in the will to destroy but in the revelation of what has already been destroyed. Art kills only the dead.”
—Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978)