Sid Stevens died Aug. 17 at the age of 85 from untreatable pancreatic cancer.Sun Youth/Supplied
If there was a fire, a flood, kids in need of skates or a hungry family in Montreal, Sid Stevens could be counted on to organize help.
For seven decades, his name was synonymous with Sun Youth, the community organization he founded with his friend Earl De La Perralle when they were both barely into puberty.
Except his official name wasn’t Sid Stevens, the name he chose to sound more like the reporter he once aspired to be and to dodge the antisemitism rife at the time.
He was born Sydney Stavitsky in Montreal on June 25, 1940, to Sam Stavitsky, who immigrated to Canada with his Polish parents in 1929, and Doris Weiner, a Montrealer with Polish roots.
Sid Stevens died Aug. 17 at the age of 85 from untreatable pancreatic cancer. He had suffered from Parkinson’s disease for a few years before being admitted to hospital in the spring.
He grew up with his younger brother, Ted Stavitsky, in a one-bedroom apartment on Saint-Cuthbert street in a Montreal neighbourhood where many now well-known Montreal Jews, such as Mordecai Richler and Leonard Cohen, hung out. He attended Devonshire Elementary School, Baron Byng High School (which, once closed, became the Sun Youth headquarters in 1981) and Sir George Williams University, now known as Concordia University.
Sid was very protective of his brother, but there were times when Ted would end up being the target of teasing.
When the brothers were away at Camp Wooden Acres in the Laurentians, Sid, a camp counsellor and barely into his teen years, would arise early and yell over the loudspeaker “Wakey, Wakey! Everybody!” Since the weary campers couldn’t get to Sid, they picked on his sibling.
The family moved in 1973 to a house with more space in the Côte-des-Neiges district. Soon afterward, Ted married his girlfriend, Marilyn Rosenberger. Sid remained in the house and cared for his parents.
“When I went on my first date with Marilyn, Sid said I think you need some money,” said Ted, who is now 80. “He gave me five dollars, which at the time was enough to go to a movie and have a pizza.”
In 1953, when Sid was 13, he published a handwritten “newspaper” about the local hockey and basketball leagues set up by his lifelong friend Earl, who was just nine at the time.
“Earl would be coaching and playing at the same time, and I’d be writing little articles about how the game went and name the people who scored goals,” Mr. Stevens said in a CBC interview in 2018. The boys would then visit players’ homes and “rent” their handwritten newspaper to families for two cents a copy.
Their “newspaper,” The Clark Street Sun, morphed into the Sun, which became the Sun Youth Organization.
“That’s how it started,” he said in the CBC interview.
Since its beginnings, Sun Youth is credited with helping countless youth by providing something as simple as a bicycle or a stint at summer camp, or as life-changing as keeping them out of jail.
Sun Youth/Supplied
“We thought we were just keeping ourselves busy and out of trouble and one step ahead of the law,” Sid told the CBC. “Because at that time you couldn’t congregate on street corners or they’d charge you with loitering, so we started our own little club.
“We used the schoolyard, where the cops wouldn’t bother us.”
With the money they made from their rented newspaper, the boys were able to rent gym space in the local school for two hours every night and started their own youth club.
“We got a typewriter donated and people came forward to help us,” Sid recalled.
While in high school in the 1960s, Mike Possian got involved in the Sun Youth soccer program and was eventually hired to work with kids on the street, encouraging them to get involved in sports and helping them if they ran into legal trouble. Sun Youth filled a gap before there was a probation system in Montreal.
One of Mr. Possian’s jobs was to accompany kids to their court hearings and promise to act as a parole officer until the youth got back on their feet.
Mr. Possian stayed with the organization for 22 years and was always impressed by Sid’s tenacity.
“He wouldn’t take no for an answer,” Mr. Possian said. “He would involve everyone to make sure something got done and always had an open mind for suggestions.”
Dida Berku, a city councillor for the Côte St. Luc municipality, met Sid in the 1970s, when she was a young lawyer representing tenants fighting against building demolitions and other difficulties with landlords.
“He was always there to help them and defend them,” she said. “[Sun Youth] was there with food, temporary housing, blankets or electric heaters.”
Sid was elected to city council in 1978, under Mayor Jean Drapeau, but soon discovered politics wasn’t for him and left after serving one term. In an interview with CBC television three years ago, Sid recalled arguing with the mayor, saying the city should rent buses to transport people displaced by fires, most of whom didn’t have insurance or places to stay, to hotel rooms until they could get back on their feet.
“We wrote to 35 hotels to see if we could have three rooms, but all refused except the Queen Elizabeth,” he said. “We wrote to those who refused and when they saw the QE was getting publicity, they wanted on board too.
“That’s how the fire program started and it was one of our biggest accomplishments.”
It was Mr. Drapeau who insisted Sid officially change his name before running for office, because more people would relate to the name Stevens, Ted said.
In 1996, Sterling Downey wanted to start a graffiti festival in Montreal but was worried about being harassed or shut down by the police. He turned to Sid for support.
“Sid said sure, I fully support you guys doing this,” said Mr. Downey, now a city councillor. “He always believed in youth who were mobilizing as long as it was for the right reason, whether to change things or get a conversation going, he was always willing to take a chance on people.”
Mr. Downey credits Sid with being the mentor who encouraged him to volunteer and even led him to enter municipal politics.
“Sid believed, and even if youth were doing things that were questionable and maybe putting themselves in a little bit of danger, he didn’t give up on them.”
In 1975, when Johanne Saltarelli was 15, she got a summer job at Sun Youth’s overnight camp north of Montreal. She has been with the organization ever since and is now its executive director.
“We were his kids,” she said. “It was his passion.”
Among many other services, the organization has fed thousands of families through its food bank – one of the first in Canada. These days, they provide meals for up to 145 families a day, according to Ms. Saltarelli.
Sid was a master at promoting his organization and raising funds – skills he honed while working at his marketing job at National Typewriter Inc. which sold and rented out typewriters. He knew that Sundays were slow news days in the local media, so he would call that evening in order to get a story about a certain campaign he was organizing or about a family in need of help into the Monday papers, preferably on the front page.
Sun Youth’s building – the old Baron Byng high school – was an icon on Saint-Urbain Street and seemed to be bursting at the seams with everything a family in need could use.
When the high school building was taken over by the French-language school board in 2018, Sun Youth had to scramble to find a new home and ended up operating out of several different buildings. In January, after months of fundraising and planning, they will move into a new permanent home, complete with dedicated sports facilities, on Saint-Laurent Boulevard. It’s a moment the staff wish Sid could have witnessed.
Over the years, Sid received much local recognition for his dedication to Montrealers. But he refused to accept the Order of Canada because his Sun Youth co-founder, Mr. De La Perralle, who died in 2018, was not offered the same accolade.
“While Earl was never interested in being the public face of the organization, Sid knew it would have been wrong to accept such an honour without him,” Ms. Saltarelli said. “For Sid, their partnership was inseparable.”
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