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:
“Until politics are a branch of science we shall do well to regard political and social reforms as experiments rather than short-cuts to the millennium.”
—J.B.S. (John Burdon Sanderson)
“All you can be sure about in a political-minded writer is that if his work should last you will have to skip the politics when you read it. Many of the so-called politically enlisted writers change their politics frequently.... Perhaps it can be respected as a form of the pursuit of happiness.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“From the beginning, the placement of [Clarence] Thomas on the high court was seen as a political end justifying almost any means. The full story of his confirmation raises questions not only about who lied and why, but, more important, about what happens when politics becomes total war and the truth—and those who tell it—are merely unfortunate sacrifices on the way to winning.”
—Jane Mayer, U.S. journalist, and Jill Abramson b. 1954, U.S. journalist. Strange Justice, p. 8, Houghton Mifflin (1994)