“My dad promised he’d live to see my victory”: NDP leader Avi Lewis on the recent death of Stephen Lewis
The new face of the Canadian left pays tribute to his father, promising voters that he will build on the man’s achievements
Avi Lewis was born into an orange crib and an enduring political legacy. The new leader of the federal NDP is the son of Stephen Lewis, an activist, diplomat and politician who died on March 31 after a years-long battle with cancer. Losing a parent is a universal hardship. But, for Avi, losing his father, a lion of the Canadian left, less than 48 hours after being elected to lead the progressive party, feels brutally poignant. “If you wrote it as a screenplay, it’d be shot down in the first meeting as too clichéd,” he says. Here, Avi pays tribute to Stephen, promising Canadian voters that he will build on his father’s legendary achievements.
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Since my dad passed away, a lot of people have suggested that maybe he held on to see my win. I can confirm that he was explicit in that respect. Around this time last year, I was thinking about running for the NDP’s leadership. My dad was adamant: he would live to see my victory. This was a pretty audacious thing to say, both because he had been ill for quite a while and because, at that point, we had no idea what my chances were. But my dad was always a person of incredible will—I think that’s a quality that came from the clarity of knowing what he was fighting for.
The night of the leadership victory in Winnipeg, when all the meetings and interviews were done, I took my team to dinner to celebrate. It was the first chance we’d had to actually let it sink in: our seven-month journey was over, and we had won. We were having a lovely time, even putting all our phones in a pile at the end of the table so we could really be together in that moment. Eventually, we gave in and allowed ourselves a phone check.
Then came an email from my mom, Michele. In it, she recounted the conversation she’d had with my dad after the results came in, when she’d held her phone to his ear: “Avi won! Can you hear his voice?" My dad managed to open his eyes a little bit, give a tiny smile and whispered, “Yes.” In my mom’s email, she wrote, “And I think that ‘yes’ will be his last word.” I read her message to my team amid the remains of that beautiful meal. We all hugged at the table and cried together. I went back to my hotel, and despite a feeling of foreboding, slept deeply for the first time in I don’t know how long. When I woke up, my dad was gone.
My parents had me in 1967, the Summer of Love, but they weren’t dancing around in buckskin. They were grown-ups committed to building a more inclusive and humane society, where every life was valued equally. My dad became the leader of the Ontario NDP in 1970 and, within five years, the leader of the Opposition. It was a breakthrough: the first time our party had achieved such a standing.
My father and his team ushered in unprecedented policies like real rent control for Ontarians. The move raised the quality of life for a huge group of people over more than two decades—and then the Mike Harris Conservatives came to power in the ’90s and it was slash, slash, slash. I think that moment 30 years ago is how it has felt for a lot of progressives over the past few decades, watching the world go to shit as the promise of the post-war golden years has fallen apart piece by piece. After his leadership, my dad continued to fight, doing incredible work to combat the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa.
It’s been difficult to see so many of my father’s achievements undone, lost to a time of austerity for the public and endless boons for corporations. To know that he was able to spend his final hours with a restored sense of hope is the gift of a lifetime for me.
Right now, I’m sitting in my dad’s old office, in his chair, looking at some of the tchotchkes he accumulated over a life of travel and struggle: the honorary diplomas, the framed photos, the stupid antisemitic political cartoons from the ’70s and ’80s. Of course, what most people will remember are his speeches and his oratory gifts. Even Bill Clinton once said he never wanted to take the stage after my dad.
As his son, I struggled a little to find my voice as a public speaker. I was too aware of Dad in my head, the echo of his oratorical pyrotechnics rendering me mute. Then, in the early 2000s, I got my first paid speaking gig, a keynote for what I believe was the Alberta Teachers’ Association. I decided to just go with the guy in my head, so I started with a light and silly impression of Stephen, channelling his cascading cornucopias of polysyllabic exuberance. Then I stopped to joke, “No, you won’t get that from me. I’m the plain-spoken one.”
It was a weak schtick, but it set me free as a public speaker. It was like I had to let my dad all the way in before I could find my own voice onstage. Today, it’s when I’m on a podium that I feel closest to him. It sounds weird, I know—but he could cast a spell, craft an argument and then cry over what he was describing in front of thousands of people. That’s how comfortable in his own skin he was at the front of a room.
My dad did have this one nervous habit when he was onstage, though, where he would jingle the change in his pocket. Maybe it was a way to help manage the enormous stress he was under. I’m not sure, but it’s something I do now too. Not with actual money—who carries coins anymore? But, when I’m delivering a speech, I will often have my hand in my pocket, just like Dad, jingling the memory.
