The New Democratic Party of Ontario ran a full slate of candidates in the 1977 Ontario provincial election

Ontario general election, 1977

The Ontario general election of 1977 was held on June 9, 1977, to elect the 125 members of the 31st Legislative Assembly of Ontario of the Province of Ontario, Canada....

, Canada, and won 33 seats to become the third-largest party in the legislature. Many of the party's candidates have their own biography pages; information about others may be found here.

Fred Dickson (St. Catharines

St. Catharines (electoral district)

St. Catharines is a federal electoral district in Ontario, Canada, that has been represented in the Canadian House of Commons since 1968.It consists of the part of the City of St. Catharines lying north of a line drawn from west to east along St. Paul Street West, St...

)

Dickson campaigned for the federal New Democratic Party

New Democratic Party

The New Democratic Party , commonly referred to as the NDP, is a federal social-democratic political party in Canada. The interim leader of the NDP is Nycole Turmel who was appointed to the position due to the illness of Jack Layton, who died on August 22, 2011. The provincial wings of the NDP in...

 in the 1974 Canadian election

Canadian federal election, 1974

The Canadian federal election of 1974 was held on July 8, 1974 to elect members of the Canadian House of Commons of the 30th Parliament of Canada. The governing Liberal Party won its first majority government since 1968, and gave Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau his third term...

, and finished third in St. Catharines against Liberal Party

Liberal Party of Canada

The Liberal Party of Canada , colloquially known as the Grits, is the oldest federally registered party in Canada. In the conventional political spectrum, the party sits between the centre and the centre-left. Historically the Liberal Party has positioned itself to the left of the Conservative...

 candidate Gilbert Parent

Gilbert Parent

Gilbert "Gib" Parent, PC was a Canadian Member of Parliament. He is best known in his role of Speaker of the Canadian House of Commons between 1994 and 2001....

. At the time of the election, Dickson listed his occupation as financial counsellor.

He first campaigned for the Legislative Assembly of Ontario

Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The Legislative Assembly of Ontario , is the legislature of the Canadian province of Ontario, and is the second largest provincial legislature of Canada...

 in the 1975 Ontario election

Ontario general election, 1975

The Ontario general election of 1975 was held on September 18, 1975, to elect the 125 members of the 30th Legislative Assembly of Ontario of the Province of Ontario, Canada....

, and finished third against Progressive Conservative

Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario

The Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario , is a right-of-centre political party in Ontario, Canada. The party was known for many years as "Ontario's natural governing party." It has ruled the province for 80 of the years since Confederation, including an uninterrupted run from 1943 to 1985...

 Robert Johnston

Robert Mercer Johnston

Robert Mercer Johnston was an Ontario political figure. He represented St. Catharines in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1967 to 1977 as a Progressive Conservative member....

. In 1977, he finished third against Liberal

Ontario Liberal Party

The Ontario Liberal Party is a provincial political party in the province of Ontario, Canada. It has formed the Government of Ontario since the provincial election of 2003. The party is ideologically aligned with the Liberal Party of Canada but the two parties are organizationally independent and...

 Jim Bradley with 7.556 votes (23.71%).

Dickson also ran for mayor

Mayor

In many countries, a Mayor is the highest ranking officer in the municipal government of a town or a large urban city....

 of St. Catharines

St. Catharines, Ontario

St. Catharines is the largest city in Canada's Niagara Region and the sixth largest urban area in Ontario, Canada, with 97.11 square kilometres of land...

 in the 1977 and 1980 municipal elections (Globe and Mail, 10 November 1980).

He ran for provincial secretary of the NDP in 1982, but lost to Michael Lewis (the brother of former party leader Stephen Lewis

Stephen Lewis

Stephen Henry Lewis, is a Canadian politician, broadcaster and diplomat. He was the leader of the social democratic Ontario New Democratic Party for most of the 1970s. During many of the those years as leader, his father David Lewis was simultaneously the leader of the Federal New Democratic Party...

) by a margin of 1,524 votes to 315. At the time, he was listed as a resident of Niagara Falls

Niagara Falls, Ontario

Niagara Falls is a Canadian city on the Niagara River in the Golden Horseshoe region of Southern Ontario. The municipality was incorporated on June 12, 1903...

(Globe and Mail, 8 February 1982).

Dickson was a Niagara Regional Councillor in the mid-1980s. In 1985, he criticized local police authorities for using hidden video surveillance to
arrest men who had engaged in public sex acts in a restaurant washroom (Globe and Mail, 13 April 1985).