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Reactions poured in after the former ONDP leader, UN diplomat and social activist Stephen Lewis died Tuesday in Toronto.<\/p>\n
His death comes just two days after his son Avi,\u00a0a filmmaker and activist, was elected leader of the federal NDP, extending the Lewis family\u2019s legacy in the New Democratic Party.<\/p>\n
The elder Lewis\u2019s fiery advocacy for issues like rent control, workers\u2019 health and safety and the environment helped the NDP rise to official opposition status for Ontario in the 1970s.\u00a0He\u00a0went on to become a major human rights advocate, representing Canada at the United Nations before desperately urging the Western world to take action as the\u00a0UN\u2019s special envoy for HIV\/AIDS in Africa.<\/p>\n
He was known as a great orator who delivered memorable speeches largely off the cuff, with just a few notes to spark his thoughts.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the early hours of this morning, Stephen Lewis died peacefully in Toronto while under hospice care. His loving wife Michele Landsberg, daughters Ilana and Jenny and his sister Janet were with him until the end,\u201d the New Democratic Party said in a statement Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cStephen spent the last eight years of his life battling cancer with the same indomitable energy he brought to his lifelong work: the unending struggle for justice and dignity for every human life. The world has lost a voice of unmatched eloquence and integrity.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A smiling Lewis appears in a 1970 photo from the Star\u2019s archives.<\/p>\n
Boris Spremo\/Toronto Star file photo<\/p>\n
The party said Avi\u00a0will be\u00a0\u201ctravelling to Toronto to be with his family and asks for patience and grace in this difficult time.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his\u00a0victory speech Sunday, Avi said\u00a0his father, \u201cever the political fanatic,\u201d had \u201cdemanded daily updates\u201d about his campaign from his hospital bed,\u00a0despite \u201cnot doing too well.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Award-winning author Naomi Klein, Avi\u2019s wife, said on Saturday that \u201ccontrary to the opinion of a very long line of doctors, Stephen Lewis was not going to miss this weekend for the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
The recipient of dozens of honorary degrees, Stephen Lewis served as a distinguished visiting professor at what was then Ryerson University before recently being renamed Toronto Metropolitan University. Lewis liked to joke that all of his university degrees were honorary, and that he dropped out of law school twice.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was a terrible student,\u201d he told the Hamilton Spectator in 2021 after he donated his archives to McMaster University in Hamilton.<\/p>\n
He spoke with the newspaper after he announced he was diagnosed with inoperable stomach cancer, but he refused to be depressed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m struggling,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I\u2019m still here. It hasn\u2019t got hold of me yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead, Lewis said he was thrilled his archives would sit alongside those of Hamilton\u2019s powerful unions, including CUPE and the Steelworkers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m as tickled as I can be,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m palpitating with joy.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Stephen Lewis and his wife Michele Landsberg, recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Luminary Award at the Daughters for Life Gala Dinner \u201cA Night of Hope,\u201d in Toronto in May 2016.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tom Sandler for the Toronto Star, file photo<\/p>\n
Born in Ottawa on Armistice Day, Nov. 11, 1937, Stephen Henry Lewis was given the Hebrew name \u201cSholem\u201d for \u201cpeace.\u201d<\/p>\n
His father, David Lewis, was national secretary of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), the predecessor to the NDP. His grandfather, Moishe Lewis, was an activist in the Jewish Bund in Russia and the Jewish Labour Committee in Montreal.<\/p>\n
Lewis was married to journalist Michele Landsberg, a longtime Star columnist. The couple had three children, including Avi.<\/p>\n
Lewis\u2019s family moved to Toronto in 1950, and he attended Oakwood Collegiate Institute and Harbord Collegiate Institute, and then the University of Toronto, where he was part of the Hart House debating committee.<\/p>\n
A high point there was when he debated John F. Kennedy, soon to be the American president. What happened next was the stuff of legend, son Avi told the Star\u2019s Mitch Potter.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the fall of 1957, and my dad, then a student leader, had just turned 20,\u201d he recalled. \u201cThe topic was: \u2018Has the United States failed in its responsibilities as a world leader?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Kennedy, then a Massachusetts senator, had the role of defending American policy. \u201c\u2026Everyone knew he was being groomed for the presidency,\u201d said Avi.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy dad was on the other side. At one point, according to legend, he went after Kennedy and summed up America\u2019s emerging nuclear policy of mutually assured destruction by singing \u2018Que Sera Sera.\u2019<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Stephen Lewis, left, stands with then NDP president James Renwick, centre, and his father David Lewis, then an MP for York South, in 1967.<\/p>\n
Tony Bock\/Toronto Star file photo<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was audacious and brilliant, by all accounts. And sitting in this room now, I can just hear it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The elder Lewis wasn\u2019t overly keen on university life and didn\u2019t write his final exams at the University of Toronto. Instead, he headed to Africa, where he taught in Ghana and Nigeria before travelling and eventually landing in a Sudanese jail.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was imprisoned in Sudan for being a \u2018colonial infiltrator.\u201d he told the Spectator in 2021. \u201cI was terrified. But on day four they offered me a Coca-Cola and I knew they were going to let me go.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the urging of federal NDP Leader Tommy Douglas, Lewis entered Ontario politics in 1963 at age 26. He was re-elected four times in his Scarborough West riding.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Stephen Lewis celebrates his election as leader of the Ontario NDP in 1970, which was in part thanks to the union vote.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dick Darrell\/Toronto Star file photo<\/p>\n
In 1970, he became leader of the Ontario NDP at 33.\u00a0Lewis pushed for rent control and workplace safety and urged Ontario Premier Bill Davis to create the Royal Commission on Health and Safety of Workers in Mines, which ultimately led to the creation of the Occupational Health and Safety Act in 1979.<\/p>\n
He was leader of the official opposition in 1975, but stepped down and retired from electoral politics\u00a0after the party lost that status in 1977 to the Liberals.<\/p>\n
At Queen\u2019s Park,\u00a0current Ontario\u00a0NDP Leader Marit Stiles spoke movingly about \u201ca friend and a mentor \u2026 and a sounding board\u201d who was generous with his advice.<\/p>\n
One of the last times Stiles said she spoke to Lewis was in the final days of the February 2025 election. \u201cI remember he talked to me about what it would be like to be waiting for the results to come in on election night and \u2026 how to frame my response no matter what those results were\u00a0\u2014 and how people would be looking to me and my party to show them the way forward no matter what the results were,\u201d Stiles told reporters.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just very glad that he got to see, I hope, his son step into the leadership role in the national NDP.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Lewis, then Canadian ambassador to the United Nations, appears in a 1985 photo from the Star\u2019s archives.<\/p>\n
Boris Spremo\/Toronto Star archives<\/p>\n
Lewis didn\u2019t stop his public work after leaving elected politics.<\/p>\n
In 1984, he was appointed, to great surprise,\u00a0as Canada\u2019s ambassador to the United Nations by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, a Progressive Conservative.<\/p>\n
At the UN, he spoke out against South Africa\u2019s apartheid system, helped develop the first comprehensive policy on global warming, and pushed for economic support for African nations.<\/p>\n
He dedicated much of his later life to urging international action against the AIDS epidemic, co-founding two foundations to tackle the issue.<\/p>\n
Witnessing widespread death at the hands of the crisis left him \u201cricocheting between hope and despair,\u201d he told the Star\u2019s Oakland Ross in October 2005, just months before his term as the UN\u2019s special envoy on the issue ended.<\/p>\n
\u201cI cannot expunge from my mind the heartless indifference, the criminal neglect of the last decade,\u201d he said in a searing Toronto Massey Lecture speech that month.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lewis, an Order of Canada recipient, \u201cmoved millions with his appeals for a compassionate and just society,\u201d Prime Minister Mark Carney said in his condolences Tuesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His influence on his son Avi was also undeniable.<\/p>\n
In a 2021 interview with the Star,\u00a0Avi grew emotional when discussing how his decision to enter politics as an NDP candidate for Parliament dovetailed with a recurrence of his father\u2019s cancer.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy first thought was that I shouldn\u2019t do it,\u201d said Avi, before learning that his decision brought a \u201ctremendous amount of joy\u201d to his dad.<\/p>\n
On\u00a0Sunday, Avi vowed to continue his father\u2019s legacy as he promised a revival for the battered NDP.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt age 88, (dad) is more passionate about the promise of democratic socialism than he has ever been in his life,\u201d Avi said to the party faithful in Winnipeg.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut he told me something kind of heartbreaking that David, his father, said to him once. David said, \u2018Son, not in my lifetime, but maybe in yours.\u2019 And recently, my dad told me the same thing, \u2018Not in my lifetime, maybe in yours.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, dad, I refuse to tell that to my kid. We cannot wait another generation. We\u2019ve got to start winning now.\u201d<\/p>\n
With files from Robert Benzie and Raisa Patel.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Stephen Lewis waves to a crowd in a 1978 photo from the Star\u2019s archives.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Frank Lennon\/Toronto Star file photo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stephen Lewis, a longtime politician and diplomat who rose to prominence as leader of the Ontario NDP in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":573957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-573956","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/573957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}