William Cecil Ross

Who was William Cecil Ross?

William Cecil Ross was a politician in Manitoba, Canada, and the leader of that province's Communist Party from 1948 until his retirement in 1981.

Ross was raised in a secular Jewish family that moved from the Ukraine to Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1917. He was originally named Cecil Zuken, but legally changed his name in 1936. His brother Joseph Zuken also became a Communist politician, and was for many years a prominent alderman from Winnipeg's working-class North End.

With the editorial backing of Dos Yiddishe Vort, Ross was elected to the Winnipeg school board in 1936 and served in that capacity until 1939. He was also active in labour organization outside the city, and was imprisoned for six months on sedition charges after leading a strike in Flin Flon. In 1940, Ross campaigned for Leslie Morris in the federal riding of Winnipeg North, and thereby contributed to the defeat of Co-operative Commonwealth Federation incumbent Abraham Albert Heaps, the most prominent Jewish politician in the city.

Ross first ran for provincial office in the 1945 election, campaigning for the "Labor-Progressive Party" in the riding of Assiniboia. He finished well behind the winner, Ernest Draffin of the Manitoba CCF.