Stephen Lewis, leader of Ontario's New Democratic Party, with his son Avi Lewis, right, leads a group of NDP election candidates in a Labour Day Parade in Toronto in 1975.John McNeill/The Globe and Mail
Not long before Avi Lewis was elected federal NDP Leader last month, he was on the phone with his father, Stephen. The younger Lewis was in quite a state.
“He asked me how I was doing, and I just found myself saying: `I’m actually kind of nervous. I’m stressed. It’s a lot that’s coming up,’” said Mr. Lewis, who was speaking to his dad weekly during the campaign.
Stephen Lewis, dealing with the cancer that would end his life two days after his son became leader on March 29, had been engaged by Avi Lewis’s campaign, offering sage advice based on his years in politics. But on this call, he took a different tack to meeting the moment.
Stephen Lewis: a man of moral vision
“He just reassured me like, you know, like a dad and he just said: ’You don’t have to do anything that you haven’t been doing for months. Just keep it up. You’re doing great. Stay calm. Stay clear. You’ve got this,’” Mr. Lewis said.
“He’s 88. I’m 58. Neither of us has been a kid for a very long time, but in that conversation, I felt like a kid being reassured by a parent.”
Avi Lewis and his siblings will remember their father at a memorial service Sunday.
Stephen Lewis led the Ontario NDP between 1970 and 1978. He went on to be Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations and later started the Stephen Lewis Foundation, a non-profit organization that worked on HIV/AIDS in Africa.
Stephen Lewis moderates a symposium on HIV and Food Security at the 16th World Aids Conference in Toronto in 2006.FRANK GUNN/The Canadian Press
A private family funeral was held for Stephen Lewis earlier this month. “It was an incredibly intense, powerful, deeply sad and beautiful experience,” Avi Lewis said.
Now comes something more public. It’s a ceremony at Toronto Metropolitan University that acknowledges Stephen Lewis’s high-profile career in politics, diplomacy and advocacy. Guests and speakers will include Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew and Rosalie Abella, the former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada.
And it will include Mr. Lewis’s two daughters Ilana Landsberg-Lewis and Jenny Lewis, as well as his only son, Avi Lewis.
Mr. Lewis said he and his sisters would provide a more intimate glimpse of Stephen Lewis as their father. Their mother, journalist Michele Landsberg, is not up to speaking.
Mr. Lewis said his father was a very unusual person, with many hidden talents. He was a quarterback of the Harbord Collegiate football team. Once, when Avi was young, the elder Lewis went with his son to throw a football near their home. “He fired a perfect spiral like a laser, hit me in the chest. I managed to hang on to it, but it almost knocked me over.” It was a shock. “He never did it again. He never did it before that.”
Readers share how meeting Stephen Lewis had an impact on their lives
Mr. Lewis said his father was a private man without many hobbies or an active social life, Avi Lewis said. “Maybe he exhausted his lifetime supply of socializing in the many public roles that he had.”
But he had many dimensions, including an athletic, adventurous and playful qualities. “He had a really silly streak, a truly delightful side of him. I think we want to share some of that to fill out the portrait.”
None of the children is eager to be at the microphone on all this. “Quite the opposite,” Avi Lewis said. “I was prepared to take the hit, and do the public-speaking part for my sisters.”
“But as we’ve gotten closer to it, we’ve, I think, quite rightly realized that, we should be up there together.”
Avi Lewis was elected as leader of the federal NDP on March 29.Sammy Kogan/The Canadian Press
For Avi Lewis, it’s a moment for the personal following political work in Ottawa, where he is leading the federal NDP, as his grandfather David did in the 1970s.
Avi Lewis has been busy getting up to speed in his position. The challenges of the job include dealing with unexpected events such as the news Friday that Alexandre Boulerice, the NDP’s only Quebec MP, is leaving for provincial politics. Avi Lewis was interviewed before that setback was disclosed.
Speaking about the memorial service, he said: “It won’t be a political moment for me. I’m not naive about the fact that there’s an interest.”
He said there’s sometimes a dread around these moments.
“We’re all just embarrassed about losing it emotionally in front of a group of people, and everybody knows it’s actually okay.”
“This is one of the aspects of grieving that is totally important and appropriate, but we all are nervous about it, and then, when you get to the ceremony, if you’re lucky, you just get swept up in it.”
Opinion: The NDP hopes Avi Lewis will set the right kind of fire to Canadian politics
Avi Lewis was born in 1967, four years after his father was elected to the Ontario Legislature, at age 26. In the 1975 campaign, Avi and his sister Ilana, went on the road with their father. “We were fascinated by Dad’s job.”
He remembers being on the campaign bus and being stung by a bee on Toronto’s Danforth Avenue while his father was mainstreeting. Once, at a pulp mill, a worker put a snowball-sized ball of warm pulp in Avi’s hand. “He’s like, `That’s pulp kid. We’re going to pound all the water out of that and make it into paper.”
Avi Lewis said he grew up without an interest in politics, veering instead to journalism, his mothers’ field, and disdaining media questions about when he was going to run.
“I look back at that now and can’t help laughing because when I told Dad I was going to run for leader about a year ago, his first reaction was, `What took you so long?’”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to state that Stephen Lewis was a quarterback for the Harbord Collegiate football team.