Herschel Hardin

Herschel Hardin (born 1936) is a British Columbia-based writer, playwright, commentator and political activist and consultant best known for having contested the leadership of the New Democratic Party of Canada in 1995.

Hardin grew up in Vegreville, Alberta and attended university at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.web cite| url = http://www.herschelhardin.ca/biography.htm | title = Herschel Hardin: Biography | publisher = herscelhardin.ca | date = 2005 | accessdate = 2007-02-13]

He started his professional career as a playwright following his graduation. His best known play is "Esker Mike and His Wife, Agiluk".

Hardin worked as a freelance radio broadcaster heard over CBC Radio in British Columbia. In the 1970s, he established the Association for Public Broadcasting in British Columbia and the Capital Cable Co-operative in Victoria to lobby for the expansion of public, non-commercial broadcasting. He was also active as a consumer advocate opposing cable rate increases.

In the late 1970s, he worked as a Vancouver-based editorial page columnist for "The Toronto Star" writing on politics and economics.

He also wrote a number of non-fiction books, his first being "A Nation Unaware" (1974), which explored the positive role of public enterprise in Canada's economy. His 1985 book, "The Privatization Putsch", was an attack of privatization of public services. In 1991, he wrote "The New Bureaucracy: Waste and Folly in the Private Sector", a critique of corporations. His most recent book is "Working Dollars: The VanCity Story" (1996), a history of Vancouver's credit union. He has also written about the concentration of media ownership.

Hardin contested the leadership of the federal New Democratic Party in 1995 following the resignation of Audrey McLaughlin. The only candidate in the four person race who had never been an elected politician, Hardin ran a grassroots campaign that emphasized democratic socialist themes. He received 4.78% of the vote in the One Member One Vote national party primaries which was insufficient to allow him to proceed to the delegated NDP leadership convention.

He subsequently was an NDP candidate in Vancouver South—Burnaby placing third in the 1997 general election [ [http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/about/process/house/hfer/hfer.asp?Language=E&Search=Cresdetail&Election=9042 VANCOUVER SOUTH--BURNABY (1997/06/02)] , Parliament of Canada website] and again in the 2000 federal election [ [http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/about/process/house/hfer/hfer.asp?Language=E&Search=Cresdetail&Election=9941 VANCOUVER SOUTH--BURNABY (2000/11/27)] , Parliament of Canada website] .

Hardin served on the board of the publicly-run Insurance Corporation of British Columbia in the 1990s and was chair of the board's Road Safety Committee and then its Product Committee.

Hardin is a member of the Writers' Union of Canada. He has been a longtime environmentalist and is a member of SPEC (Society Promoting Environmental Conservation). Other memberships include the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, Amnesty International, the B.C. Schizophrenia Society, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Co-op Radio, Theatre in the Raw, and the Council of Canadians. His commitment to the B.C. Schizophrenia Society, and especially to its branch on Vancouver's North Shore, has become particularly significant for him in the last couple of decades and has involved everything from major advocacy work to playing Santa Claus at the branch's annual Christmas banquet.

He lives with his wife Marguerite in West Vancouver.

Bibliography

Plays
* "Esker Mike & His Wife, Agiluk", Burnaby, B.C.: Talon Books, (1973)
* "Great Wave of Civilization" (1976)
* "New World Order" (1991)

Non-fiction
* "A Nation Unaware", Vancouver: JJ Douglas, (1974)
* "Closed Circuits: the Sellout of Canadian Television", Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre Ltd., (1986)
* "The Privatization Putsch", Halifax: Institute for Research on Public Policy, (1989)
* "The New Bureaucracy: Waste and Folly in the Private Sector", Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, (1992) [ [http://www.track0.com/ogwc/authors/hardin_h.html online guide to writing in canada:herschel hardin] , Retrieved on 2007-02-13]
* "Working Dollars: The VanCity Story", Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre Ltd., (1996) [ [http://www.writersunion.ca/h/hardin.htm Herschel Hardin] , Writers Union of Canada, Retrieved on 2007-02-13]

References

External links

* [http://www.herschelhardin.ca herschelhardin.ca]
* [http://www.doollee.com/PlaywrightsH/hardin-herschel.html Herschel Hardin, playwright] , doollee.com Playwright Database of Modern Plays
* [http://www.writersunion.ca/h/hardin.htm Writers Union biography]