Democratic socialism, David Lewis reportedly told his son, Stephen, may not triumph in his lifetime, but perhaps for his children. “Recently,” said grandson Avi Lewis, “my Dad told me the same thing: not in my lifetime, maybe in yours.”
But the newly elected leader of the federal New Democratic Party added in his victory speech that he refuses to tell his own child the same thing: “We can’t wait another generation. We’ve got to start winning now.”
Stephen Lewis died just two days after his son’s historic, first-ballot win. Lewis joked that his father’s timing provided him with one news cycle before the inevitable flood of tributes for his father shifted the spotlight from a campaign that promoted a wealth tax, public investments in the economy and a Green New Deal.
I’m an expert on the left in Canada, currently writing a book on the Lewis family.
Almost exactly 55 years prior to Avi Lewis’s recent win — on April 24, 1971 — David Lewis, Lewis’s grandfather, assumed the same position in the party he had forged, a decade prior, as an alliance between the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) and the struggling Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). He required four ballots to defeat the Waffle candidate, James Laxer.
Stephen Lewis ultimately claimed full responsibility for the 1972 expulsion of the insurgent Waffle group. His father, Stephen Lewis insisted, “was anti-Waffle, but he would never have agreed to expulsion. In fact, he called me and begged me not to do it. It was one of our infrequent tussles.”
Read more: The NDP turns 60: It’s never truly been the political arm of organized labour
David Lewis
The eldest Lewis, a Bundist Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe and a Rhodes Scholar, was a controversial figure: he feared and intimidated those unable to match his intellect and persuasiveness; he was viewed with suspicion by groups seeking to radicalize the electoral left; and he was respected by both peers and opponents for his lifelong dedication to the fight for justice and equality.
From the 1930s to the 1950s, Lewis criss-crossed the country, almost single-handedly building the CCF, and his 1943 best-seller, Make This Your Canada, co-written with poet and intellectual, Frank R. Scott, popularized the socialist platform and contributed to electoral success in Ontario and Saskatchewan
Liberals and Conservatives countered growing CCF support by accepting government intervention in the economy and an expanded social safety net. Later, the 1972 Corporate Welfare Bums campaign earned the NDP their highest seat total to date and gave the party the balance of power in a minority government.
Read more: Corporate welfare bums: It’s payback time
Stephen Lewis
Stephen Lewis, too, was committed to electoral politics. In 1963, at just 25, he was elected to the Ontario legislature. In 1970, he was chosen leader of the Ontario NDP which, in 1975, became the Official Opposition and forced rent control, mental health supports and occupational health and safety regulations.
But Stephen Lewis reportedly found Canadian politics boring, parochial and frustrating due to its technocratic pettiness; he wanted to focus on broader issues. The NDP, hamstrung by a de-radicalized labour movement and, ironically, the success of their co-opted programs, could not contain his ambitions.
He happily accepted an appointment as ambassador to the United Nations where he aided the struggle against South African apartheid and, as special envoy, raised awareness about the HIV/AIDS epidemic ravaging Africa, though he later said “the death gets to you.”
Others in the Lewis family
Avi Lewis’s campaign for the federal leadership marks the long-anticipated return of the family to electoral politics, though the journalist, documentary filmmaker and activist promotes policies more closely aligned with the socialist CCF than the moderate, centre-left NDP.
But it’s not only these high-profile members of the family who contribute to the Lewis legacy.
Stephen Lewis’s wife for more than 60 years, Lewis’s mother, is path-breaking feminist journalist Michele Landsberg.
His brother, Michael Lewis, organized dozens of successful election campaigns across the country and transformed political action efforts within the labour movement. His sister, Janet Solberg, held almost every possible position within the NDP, including president of the Ontario wing, and participated in nearly every election in her lifetime.
Stephen Lewis’s eldest daughter, Ilana, ran the Stephen Lewis Foundation for nearly 20 years, and his youngest, Jenny, was the casting director for the smash hit Heated Rivalry. Often overlooked, Stephen Lewis wrote in a 2024 email to me: “She is far and away the most politically astute of our three kids.”
Avi Lewis is married to author and activist Naomi Klein.
As I researched my book, Stephen Lewis told me his was “a family that took positions … believed in them, fought them through. They were tenacious, they were indefatigable, they were uncompromising.”
Avi Lewis agreed. He told me in a recent interview: “The job … was to fight. Win occasionally, lose a lot and never stop fighting.”
