In his later years, he successfully led the political fight to maintain the prohibition on selling alcohol in a section of Toronto's west end and won three referendums in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.

[2] After completing grade 8, due in part to his father's alcoholism, he took a job as an office boy with the Grand Trunk Railway for $5 a week.

[2] In 1942, during World War II, he was a flying officer on intelligence operations for the Royal Canadian Air Force stationed in Sydney, Nova Scotia and Gander, Newfoundland.

[3][5][6] Temple would regularly encounter Woodsworth, then a member of parliament in Ottawa, on train trips for his sales job.

[5] Arrow moved him and his wife Mary Temple to Regina, Saskatchewan where he met Major James Coldwell, who at the time, was the principal at the school that she taught at.

[7] Coldwell was the leader of the Independent Labour party (ILP), and Temple would drive him to political rallies and events during this period.

[3][6] Temple borrowed $5,000 from his sister and went to England, where he obtained samples of cashmere sweaters, Dack slacks and Burberry coats, and returned to Canada to find retail outlets.

[3] In 1943, Flying Officer Temple, took leave, to become the Ontario CCF's candidate in the west-end Toronto constituency of High Park in the provincial election.

Undeterred by his previous electoral defeats, he ran again in the High Park constituency, this time at the provincial level, in the 1948 Ontario election.

[11] Temple was brought up from Toronto to appear at a political meeting in Richmond, Ontario's Town Hall, where Forsey and Drew were speaking.

[11][13] As a Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP), Temple fought for temperance and for housing for World War II veterans.

[9] His temperance crusades in the legislature put him at odds with the party establishment, including national secretary, David Lewis.

[14] The group opposed what it saw as the "bureaucratization" of the CCF with salaried organizers and a greater emphasis on fundraising taking the place of grassroots volunteers and political education and discussion.

His anti-liquor attitudes formed in his early years as a result of his father's alcoholism as well as his Methodist upbringing and experiences in the military.

[18] Temple and his Temperance League fought for half a century to maintain that regulation despite attempts by the city to reverse it.

[3][6] In the fall of 1973, during a strike by the independent Canadian Textile and Chemical Union at Artistic Woodworking in North York, while on the picket line, he was arrested and charged with assaulting a police officer.