Able to Lead: The life and politics of radical class warrior E.T. Kingsley

In this podcast episode, Nicole O’Byrne talks to Ravi Malhotra about his books Able to Lead: Disablement, Radicalism, and the Political Life of E.T. Kingsley published by University of British Columbia Press in 2021 and Class Warrior The Selected Works of E. T. Kingsley published by Athabasca University Press in 2020, both of which he co-authored and edited with Benjamin Isitt. In October 1890, Eugene T. Kingsley’s life changed irrevocably while working as a brakeman on the Northern Pacific Railway when he was injured in a fall between two rail cars. While recuperating in hospital after the amputation of both legs, he began reading the works of Karl Marx. Joining a popular socialist movement, his activism eventually brought him to Vancouver, B.C. where he founded the Socialist Party of Canada. Able to Lead traces Eugene T. Kingsley’s extraordinary life, and his political journey from soapbox speaker in San Francisco to prominence in the Socialist Party of Canada, highlighting his profound legacy for the twenty-first-century political left. Class Warrior is a collection of Kingsley’s writing and speeches that underscores his tremendous impact on Canadian political discourse. Ravi Malhotra is a professor at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law. He has several postsecondary degrees, including an LLM from Harvard and an SJD from the University of Toronto. An interdisciplinary scholar, his main research interests are labour and employment law, human rights, globalization, and disability rights. He has worked as a researcher for the disability rights organization, Reach, where he contributed to reports about the barriers faced by law students with disabilities. Ravi is a member of the Human Rights Committee of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities, and he is an adjunct professor of Critical Disability Studies at York University. This podcast was produced by Jessica Schmidt. If you like our work, please consider supporting it: bit.ly/support_WTY. Your support contributes to the Champlain Society’s mission of opening new windows to directly explore and experience Canada’s past.