at a time when the Communist world was being convulsed by Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms in the Soviet Union. He was leader of the Canadian party when the USSR and the Soviet bloc collapsed. The Communist Party of Canada had long been relatively uncritical supporters of Moscow, not least Hewison himself, and was severely disoriented by the collapse of Soviet Communism in Eastern Europe. As a major discussion about the causes for the collapse of the Soviet Union and the significance for Communists in Canada and internationally opened, the leadership of the party under Hewison's leadership began to increasingly question the legacy of Stalinism within the Party. The group was eventually challenged by a pro-Leninist faction, led by previous leader William Kashtan and future leaders Miguel Figueroa and Elizabeth Rowley among others, who accused him of "revisionism." Hewison was unanimously re-elected leader at the party's next convention in 1992 which produced a new manifesto called "Communists and the New Decade" (1990s) and the slogan "Its a good time to be a communist". A critical faction, however, was also elected by convention to the Party's Central Committee, but were defeated in elections to top positions in the Party. They nevertheless continued to resist the direction the Hewison leadership was heading, which was opposed by a significant number of the Party membership especially in the Atlantic, Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia, with Hewison's main supporters in Quebec and Alberta. Party split Long-standing financial support from the Soviet Union to the Communist Party of Canada was discontinued, and later other business arrangements such as cultural-exchange deals from which the Party benefited helped created financial pressures on the party in terms of its ability to continue to finance a large staff, headquarters, maintain a print shop, a publishing house and two weekly newspapers (Canadian Tribune and Pacific Tribune). The leadership led by Hewison argued the Party was in financial crisis. As the confrontation exploded in the Party, the pro-Leninist faction (led by Elizabeth Rowley) forced the Hewison group into court. Meanwhile the provincial conventions of the CPC in BC, Manitoba and Ontario voted-out the Hewison leadership. After strained years for the CPC an out-of-court settlement took place between the two sides, in which those siding with Hewison surrendered the Party's name, but not the newspaper. In the meantime, hundreds of party activists, frustrated with the paralytic debate between the factions, had left the party. During