An unidentified announcer introduces an episode of the biographical programme, "Looking Backward." It features James Thorn who recounts some highlights of his life and career.
He was M.P. for Thames 1935-1946, New Zealand High Commissioner to Canada 1947-1950 and the author of a biography of Peter Fraser.
He was born in Christchurch in 1882 and talks about his parents' background. His gardener grandfather worked planting trees near Rakaia for a Mr Eugene [sic.] Wason, who later represented the Shetland Islands in the House of Commons. [This would have been Cathcart Wason, who established Barrhill near Rakaia.]
He recalls in 1887 there was an unemployment crisis in Christchurch and remembers as a child seeing the old wooden flour mill on an island in the Avon turned into a doss house for the unemployed.
Ben Kendrick was an American citizen who was caretaker on his father's farm. He was a veteran of the American Civil War and had fought at Bull Run.
He was educated at Christchurch Boys High School, which was then on Worcester Street, near the museum. He recalls the boys seeing author Mark Twain who visited the museum, wearing a sombrero-style hat and a drooping moustache.
He was apprenticed as a moulder at P.and D. Duncan's agricultural implement works. He was first introduced to trade unionism there but then went off to the Boer War, where he had a narrow escape in an incident near Rastenberg in which two other Canterbury men were killed. Lieutenant Bradbury and Trooper Perram from Akaroa are remembered on a plaque in the Christchurch Cathedral.
There was no rehabilitation after the war, just a five pound payment, known as 'blood money." He found work as a furnaceman at the foundry at the Addington Railways Workshops on his return. He met Hon. J.A. McCulloch, who was then a leading tinsmith. He introduced him to the unions, the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants and the Metalworkers' Assistants, of which he became secretary.
He says he was 'ripe' for Labour politics and became a foundation member of the party when it was formed in 1904 and then its first candidate for Christchurch South in 1905. He recalls an article written against him in The Lyttelton Times, which cost him the election. He remembers Christchurch Labour candidate selections for the 1908 elections, including Dan Sullivan.
He ends with an anecdote about his time as High Commissioner to Canada when he visited Whitehorse in Yukon Territory. He was astonished to see the sign "Whare o te Kiwi" on the side of a building on an isolated airfield and discovered it had been occupied by New Zealand airmen undergoing air training in Canada during World War II.
He also met New Zealanders in other unexpected Canadian locations, including two professors of English at Dalhousie University in Halifax and Fredericton, New Brunswick.
He ends by saying his only regret in life was the wiping out of the Thames electorate by the Boundaries Commission.