Tommy Douglas is generally remembered as the father of Canada’s Medicare, the first universal health care system in North America. Since his death in 1986, the former premier of Saskatchewan and first leader of the social-democratic New Democratic Party (NDP) has ascended to the status of national icon — even being voted “the greatest Canadian” in a widely watched 2004 poll conducted by Canada’s public broadcast network.

But Douglas’s consecrated status has come at a cost, with his avowedly socialist politics either stripped away or cast aside altogether. It is a testament to his legacy that one reason for this is the continued popularity of Canada’s health care system: now such an integral part of the country’s political consensus that even most conservatives have abandoned dreams of its outright abolition. Nevertheless, few these days remember Douglas for who he really was: a populist radical who spent his life as an outspoken critic and adversary of capitalism. So depoliticized has Douglas become that a cabinet minister in Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s hard-right government recently evoked him in a farcical effort to justify austerity.

His legacy deserves better, not only for its own sake but because of what it teaches us about the nature of political and social progress.