Respected MP helped shape NDP image
DIDN’T ALLOW CANCER FIGHT TO JADE HIM
Paul Dewar, a teacher and union leader from Ottawa who became the New Democratic Party’s foreign affairs critic, died Wednesday after suffering with brain cancer for a year.
Despite getting trounced by Ed Broadbent during his initial foray into politics, losing his seat in the House of Commons in the Liberal wave of 2015 and being diagnosed with a terminal illness, the 56-year-old was infused with a positive, hopeful attitude and belief that the world could be made a better place.
So it was startling when Dewar revealed in June 2018 that as he was recovering from brain surgery several months before, he saw news of the high school shooting in Parkland, Fla., that killed 17 people — and that he “abandoned any hope” and was ready to give up.
Except giving up was never really in Dewar’s vocabulary.
Inspired as Parkland students rallied against gun violence in the U.S., Dewar decided to use what time he had left to launch Youth Action Now to encourage young Canadians to work for the good of their communities.
But he is perhaps best known for having served as the MP for Ottawa Centre from 2006 to 2015, much of which he also spent as the NDP’s foreign affairs critic, following an early career as an elementary-school teacher and union executive.
In the critic’s post he earned respect on both the government and opposition benches, and helped the NDP shed some of its image of being idealistic and naive on Canada’s dealings with the rest of the world.
Dewar’s path into politics was blazed by his mother, Marion Dewar, one of Ottawa’s most beloved mayors and a heavyweight in the federal NDP and social-activist circles in the 1970s and ’80s.
Dewar would often say that he learned about politics from his mother, telling the Ottawa Citizen in September 2011 that while Marion warned against running for office just to get power, “power isn’t a bad thing, it’s how people use it.”
Then there was Ed Broadbent, the former NDP leader whose short-lived political comeback started by trouncing Dewar during the latter’s first nomination battle in 2004. Dewar had been campaigning for the nomination when Broadbent decided he wanted back in.
It was only after Broadbent’s difficult decision two years later to leave politics once again that Dewar was elected as the MP for Ottawa Centre.
He lost the seat to Environment Minister Catherine McKenna in 2015.
The NDP kept him on as an adviser, helping the handful of new MPs the party elected adjust to their new duties.
Then came the diagnosis in February 2018 that he had Grade 4 glioblastoma, the same type of brain cancer that killed Tragically Hip singer Gord Downie.
He had surgery but the cancer couldn’t be cured.
“What I have discerned is that notwithstanding the urgency to live as much life as possible, I see this path I am walking as a gift to realize the beauty of life itself,” Dewar wrote in an open letter announcing his plan to launch Youth Action Now a few months later.
“Each one of us is capable of contributing something to make a difference with our family, friends and in our community. Sometimes cynicism, isolation and fear hold us back from truly contributing and participating in making the world around us a better place.”
Dewar is survived by his wife Julia Sneyd and their two sons, Nathaniel and Jordan.