An Outpouring of Love and Esteem for Stephen Lewis

On Saturday, environmental icon David Suzuki got to spend one last hour with his good friend, Stephen Lewis, at a Toronto hospice. The former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations and former Ontario NDP leader was nearing the end of his eight-year battle with abdominal cancer.

After news came yesterday that Lewis had died at the age of 88, Suzuki shared his final words to a man he considered “the greatest public speaker” in Canada. Suzuki told Lewis, “I love you. Your legacy will live on.”

It was a remarkable legacy, built in politics and solidified through diplomacy and humanitarianism.

Born in Ottawa, Lewis was first elected as a New Democrat member of the Ontario legislature — at the age of 26 — in 1963. Seven years later, he became the provincial NDP’s leader, a year before his father, David Lewis, became the federal party’s leader.

Lewis lived long enough to see his son, Avi Lewis, elected the federal NDP’s ninth leader on Sunday.

“Ever the political fanatic,” Avi Lewis told the crowd at the NDP leadership convention in Winnipeg, “Dad has demanded daily updates about our organizing delivered to his hospital bed — a veritable IV drip of campaign data.”

As Suzuki told The Tyee: “When Avi won, I thought, holy shit, Stephen’s going to rally and campaign for him. He was so engaged right up to the end.”

“He was just hanging on until Avi got the victory. I was sure he was going to die very quickly after that.”

Crafter of Canada’s anti-apartheid public stance

Suzuki remembered Lewis as a social democrat who earned respect beyond partisan lines.

He said the person who recommended Lewis to become Canada’s permanent representative to the United Nations was former Ontario premier Bill Davis, a Progressive Conservative.

Davis had faced Lewis when he was official Opposition leader at Queen’s Park from 1975 to 1977 (the first social democrat to hold that position in Ontario since 1948).

Brian Mulroney, then the PC prime minister, named Lewis as ambassador to the global body in 1984. He served until 1988, when Mulroney addressed the General Assembly and called for the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa.

The speech was initially written by government bureaucrats, but Mulroney rewrote it after Lewis recommended that the prime minister take a harder stance against the racial segregation regime. Canada’s ambassador told the prime minister, “You will get a standing ovation” with the revised speech, “and he did,” said Suzuki.

‘A giant in the AIDS response’

Lewis went on to serve as special adviser on African affairs to then-UN secretary-general Javier Pérez de Cuéllar and, later, as deputy executive director of UNICEF from 1995 to 1999.

In 2001, Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general at the time, named Lewis special envoy for HIV-AIDS in Africa, a position the Canadian diplomat held until 2006.

Anurita Bains, currently the associate director of UNICEF’s HIV-AIDS program, who worked closely with Lewis as his special adviser, recalled travelling with him throughout Africa to support his advocacy work.

“He had such a tremendous impact,” she told The Tyee.

“It’s the end of an era. He was really a giant in the AIDS response and all the work around social justice that he fought for.”

Even when quite ill, at age 88, Lewis last June was rallying Canadians to the global cause of fighting infectious diseases, and he didn’t mince words in criticizing the decision by the United States under Donald Trump to fold its USAID international development agency. (That Vancouver speech is captured in the video below.)

Bains said that Lewis always had time for everyone.

“It didn’t matter how busy or packed his schedule was to meet so-called decision-makers and political leaders and UN heads of agencies, he always made a point of making sure he met with people living with HIV. He wanted to hear directly from them of the impact and the effect it was having on their lives.”

For instance, stories from grandmothers in Tanzania who told Lewis about looking after their grandchildren after their parents died of AIDS were shared in meetings he had with African presidents or prime ministers “to make sure those voices were brought into those rooms where decisions were being taken,” said Bains.

Lewis had time, as well, for a fledgling news site. In 2005 he sat down for an interview with The Tyee’s Chris Tenove and expressed his frustration at slow action against AIDS in Africa. “What makes it so unbearably frustrating,” he said, “is that these deaths are not necessary. We can do something about them.” His passionate appeal sparked a Tyee series called “Making the Connections Between Canada and Africa.”

Hanging on to see his son become NDP leader

When Bains last saw Lewis in late January, she said, they talked about the NDP leadership race and that he was “determined to hold on” long enough to see his son win the contest.

“He was schooled in the principles and work from social justice movements, and that was the thread his entire life,” said Bains. “So, to know that was passed on to the next generation meant a lot to him.”

“He touched many, many people. I was so fortunate that he shaped a big part of my life.”

In 2003, Lewis and his daughter Ilana Landsberg-Lewis established the Stephen Lewis Foundation “to work hand-in-hand with Africans struggling against the AIDS epidemic,” according to the organization’s website.

The Canadian Press reported that as of last year, the foundation had raised more than $200 million for grassroots organizations fighting AIDS on the ground in Africa.

‘Greatest premier Ontario never had’

As the federal NDP said in a statement, Lewis was a game-changer on both the domestic and international stages.

In Ontario as official Opposition leader, “he brought the struggles of working Ontarians to the forefront of political debate, leading to the establishment of rent control and the Occupational Health and Safety Act. He was the greatest premier Ontario never had.”

Through his work at the UN and UNICEF, “Stephen was a voice of moral clarity, especially against the racist apartheid regime in South Africa,” and “saved countless lives working to address the AIDS epidemic.”

Prime Minister Mark Carney called Lewis “a pillar of compassionate leadership in Canadian democracy and a renowned global champion for human rights and multilateralism,” in a statement released on Tuesday.

In announcing Lewis’s passing, his family said in a statement that “the world has lost a voice of unmatched eloquence and integrity.”

Two years ago, Suzuki began recording Zoom conversations he had with Lewis and ended up with 22 hours’ worth of their chats that covered current events to personal memories.

By then they were close friends after bonding during a 2019 five-city tour to make climate change a top federal election issue.

“I approached him because I knew he was dying, and I thought maybe this would give him some energy — and it did,” recalled Suzuki.

Struggling to speak last Saturday, Lewis told his friend, who had just turned 90 days before, “I just wish we had met so much earlier,” Suzuki remembered. “And he kept saying what a terrific team he and I could have been.”

In a National Observer op-ed last year, Gideon Forman, a former climate change and transportation policy analyst at the David Suzuki Foundation who interviewed Lewis last year, wrote about the pair’s “remarkable friendship.”

Two aging men “increasingly radical, in the original sense of that word [who] address the world's problems at their root,” Forman wrote. “Suzuki argues we need to phase out fossil fuels and challenge the very notion of economic growth. Lewis is adamant we must dismantle capitalism.”

For his part, Suzuki stressed that Lewis’s legacy is an important one.

“I don’t want Canadians to forget this man because he’s such an icon and inspiration for young people,” said Suzuki.

“I think we will see him live on in Avi.”