Canada Has Lost An Icon: A Reflection On Stephen Lewis

The former Ontario NDP leader and human rights champion might have been one of a kind, but that shouldn't stop any of us from striving to be more like him.

Lewis speaking in 2009. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Photo by: Gordon Griffiths.

Stephen Lewis was a Canadian icon. Such people are rare, but less common still are those whose status was earned entirely in the service of others. You can read any number of obituaries celebrating Lewis, highlighting his lifetime advocacy for human rights, social justice, economic fairness, and global multilateralism. You can read of his accomplishments, including leading Ontario’s New Democratic Party to official opposition status in the 1970s, advocating for those living with HIV/AIDS, co-founding the Stephen Lewis Foundation, serving as Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations — under Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, no less — and fighting apartheid in South Africa. You can read of his unmatched capacity and eloquence as an orator; he spoke in the way I imagine Cicero might have.

You can read of all this, and so much more. Everyone should.

I heard of Stephen Lewis for the first time during a high school social studies class, or perhaps from an English teacher who taught his course as if it were one. Among the progressive educators in that Catholic school, he was a legend, and I could see why. Even then, what struck me above all was Lewis’s relentless sense of moral clarity. I never met him, but Lewis seemed to me at once human and yet somehow set just above us mere mortals. I don’t mean above in a patrician sense; I mean above in such a way that even at a distance you’d be inclined to trust him immediately, certain that he was above reproach.

To know what is right and what ought to be done and to speak of each with a conviction that exists in your soul is to be blessed. Lewis was so blessed. Every time I read him or heard him speak, I felt the sense that he at once expected more of us all and worried that we might not be up to the task. But that didn’t stop him from putting in the work, which is the mark of an enlightened and selfless human being, one who sets high standards but doesn’t let the gap between hope and expectation become an unbridgeable chasm that induces one to walk away from building bridges altogether.

Lewis was a democratic socialist, and a proud one. Today, the word “socialist” is still suspect in many circles, including on the left. So, too, is the program of structural reform it carries. As a political leader, Lewis advocated for a program premised on justice and fairness, including a democratic distribution of political and economic power that would underwrite commitments to each. Having such a prominent and respected figure use the word while identifying the maladies of our time and their cures was a welcome exception. It was no small thing to have someone in the national spotlight reminding us that if we wanted to change things, we would have to change them. We could use a lot more of that.

The news of Lewis’s death has been met simultaneously with national grief over the loss and ecumenical celebration of his life. You’d have to look long and hard to find anyone saying anything but a kind word. The reactions speak to what Lewis meant to the country, but also what he represented, including a belief that one can fight like hell for what they believe in while encouraging even one’s opponents to live up to the prospect of becoming their better selves.

I’m sad that Lewis is gone. In part, I must admit to a selfish aspect to my sadness. Along with the loss of the man is an anxiety that we might not have many more like him. It’s a cruel twist of fate, of irony in the make of a Greek tragedy, that this absence comes precisely when we need so many more of him. Truly.

There’s never a bad time to have someone like Stephen Lewis in the world, but by God we need so many more people like him right now. Amidst my anxiety, however, is the hope that his life and legacy will continue to inspire others to do more and better, and to do it in service of others. There couldn’t be a more fitting tribute to the man than that.