I was born and raised on the left. One side of the family was prairie populists, the other socialists and union activists. My forebearers believed that, united, working people could win a better life. They attended meetings, they baked for fundraisers, they marched on the picket line, they sang songs of struggle out of Sing Out, they helped each other through strikes, they educated, they campaigned in the workplace, in elections, and they voted, oh, yes, they voted! They did what it took to win, for me and my generation, that better life.

And they succeeded.

It was something I never questioned, not even when I was questioning everything, because the proof was all around me. We have a duty to help each other. We can make a difference, working together, we can make a better world for all. I saw it happen.

And, I saw it taken away. Not by the right, they came later. By the left. By the party that Canadian working people had created to represent them.

I remember clearly the moment I understood where the left was going. When I moved Back East for graduate school, I joined the local NDP. An election having been called, and a nomination meeting duly convened, I went.

The first thing I noticed, entering the hall, was that, while the floor was packed with working people, the table was entirely taken by academics. Well, okay, Kingston is a University town. But it got worse. Nominations were called. Individuals on the floor stepped forward to make nominations. Every single nominee was sitting at the table. And, wait for it! Every nominee declined because he had already agreed to work on someone else'e campaign.

I forget his name. But I have never forgotten his pedigree: he had defected from the Conservatives only a few months before. His nominator stressed that, above all else, the NDP had to win, and this was a man who could win. (In fact, he was thumped by Flora McDonald.)

I tore up my party card on my way out.

Thus began a wandering in the wilderness. Not that I was without socially useful work. I went home to the West and made a career in the arts, fighting the powers-that-be, who like it when artists starve for their art because it keeps the ticket prices down. Nor did I give up politics. At one time or another I have joined every major, and a couple of minor, political party in the country. And, shortly thereafter, left in a hurry.

I remember, too, what brought me back to the left.

Once again, I had moved Back East, to be with my belovéd. A year later, there was a provincial election. With 45% of the vote, the Mike Harris Conservatives won a whomping majority of the seats. Immediately, they began a sustained attack on the poor, working people, the young, the old, the unions, in short, everyone who was not very, very wealthy.

At first, I did not realise what was going on: we were posted abroad shortly after the election. It hit home when I phoned friends in Ottawa. They were classic examples of Harris-designated enemies of the state: young people who had run away from seriously dysfunctional families, got into drugs, found each other, got out of drugs, and were, when I met them, living on welfare while going to school to become employable members of the mainstream.

In a stroke, Mr. Harris's government killed the programme that paid for their schooling, and had then cut them, and thousands like them, off welfare. Just like that. "Get a job, you lazy bums." Never mind that, without an education, any job you could find would pay just enough for rent or food, but not both. Never mind that they were bright, hard-working people doing their damnedest to overcome terrible backgrounds. They were costing the taxpayers money.

That was only the beginning. I watched in horror, from my safe haven several thousand miles away, as a growing number of extreme right provincial governments set about systematically destroying all the things my parents' and grandparents' generations had suffered and fought for and won. Welfare programs were gutted, health funding slashed, education programs annihilated, university tuition skyrocketted, labour legistlation revised out of existence, public health and safety privatised.

When we returned, people were homeless in greater numbers than ever recorded in Canadian history. Some took the initiative to go into business as squeegie kids: they were declared outlaws. Food banks could no longer keep up with the need. Shelters were overwhelmed. Landlords evicted tenants just to raise rents. Hospitals couldn't cope with the demand.

People are dying. In Waterton, the privatised water company cut corners in the name of profitability: seven people died. Homeless people freeze to death in the winter. Kimberly Rodgers was convicted of fraud for collecting welfare and getting tuition assistance at the same time and was sentenced to house arrest in a 40 degree heat wave. She, and her eight-month foetus, died. The hospitals admit that people are dying because they simply haven't got the resources to save them.

It isn't over. In September, 2001, the Harris government passed new labour legistlation. Forget the 60 hour work week: it guts workplace health and safety standards that generations of working people fought, and died, to achieve. Workers can no longer refuse to work in unsafe conditions. Inspection staff have been cut 25%, but that's okay, because now an inspector need not to come to the site -- s/he can do it all by phone.

In the 1970s, the left drove me away. But the right drove me back. Tonight, I attended a public meeting of activists discussing new initiatives to take the struggle to the offensive. There were union officials, anti-poverty activists, anti-globalisation activists, students, and the whole riffraff of the poor.

It was not a romantic homecoming. The organisers were thrilled with the turnout: forty years ago, those numbers would have generated despair. The NDP wasn't there: no one had bothered to invite them. When asked about political parties, the speakers gave no endorsements. It was clear from the podium that, in the past generation, we had lost so much ground that, in some areas, we were back where my grandparents had started.

I am no longer a stuggling young union brat: I have more spending money in a week than many in that hall survive on in a month. But I also have generations of bred-in-the-bone fighters standing over my shoulder, urging me to attend meetings, bake for fundraisers, march on the picket line, sing out, educate, campaign, do what it takes to win, for this and future generations, a better life.

They did it before. Can we do it again?