Veteran championed the poor
Harry Leslie Smith was motivated by his poverty-stricken upbringing and time during the war
BELLEVILLE, ONT. — Humanitarian and author Harry Leslie Smith, a Second World War veteran who dedicated the last years of his life to defending the marginalized and the poor while warning against the threat of nationalism, has died.
Smith’s son, who had been issuing regular medical updates to his father’s 250,000 Twitter followers, said the 95-year-old died early Wednesday morning.
“I have spent the last 8 years with Harry on his beautiful odyssey to not make his past our future,” his son John wrote on Twitter. “It was (an) honour to be his son and comrade.”
Smith was hospitalized in Belleville after suffering a fall and contracting an infection, the younger Smith added by phone Wednesday.
On Twitter, British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn called Smith “one of the giants whose shoulders we stand on.” Corbyn led a tribute to Smith in the British Parliament Wednesday. Last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was among the chorus of supporters extolling Smith’s dedication to championing the poor and persecuted in his final days.
Smith’s mission was born of his own suffering during the Great Depression and the Second World War. In his writing in several publications and books, Smith recounted growing up in squalor in Yorkshire, England, and hearing the sound of his father’s boots among the coal miners who made their daily pilgrimage beneath the surface of the earth.
In 1926, he lost his sister to tuberculosis, a disease he attributed to the lack of sanitation in the slum in which his family lived, too poor to afford proper medical care. His youth was punctuated by hunger and homelessness as the Great Depression took hold.
He witnessed the rise of fascism during the Second World War as a member of the Royal Air Force, and was deeply affected by watching a stream of desperate refugees flee Germany.
Amid the destruction and bloodshed, however, Smith found the great love of his life — a young German woman named Friede Edelmann, his wife of more than five decades before her death in 1999.
As the couple raised three children, Smith, who split his time between England and Canada, came to see his hardscrabble youth as symptomatic of the geopolitical tides shaping societies for good and for ill.
And as he entered his twilight years, Smith cautioned against what he saw as a resurgence of the same destructive forces that wrought havoc in the early 20th century — the dismantling of social-welfare systems, the inequities of unchecked capitalism and the rising threat of nationalism.
The nonagenarian embraced social media and podcasting to spread his warnings across the globe, and his progressive polemics gained particular resonance among many millennials.
“I am the world’s oldest rebel,’’ Smith told UNHCR Magazine in October. “I think there are many things we can do if we put our minds to it, and we shouldn’t be leaving anyone out.’’
Having published five books and spoken to audiences across the United Kingdom and Canada, Smith launched a crowdfunding campaign last year to finance his travels to refugee hotspots, raising more than $70,000.
“Over my close to one hundred years of life, I have witnessed or participated in the great and terrible events that shaped the 20th century,” Smith wrote on the GoFundMe page.
“Those impressions will not die with me because I have delivered my memories of those turning points in our collective history.
“I will make sure that this last great task of my life will be a fitting testament to my generation’s commitment to leaving the world a better place.”
Former Labour Party leader Ed Miliband tweeted that Smith was “one of a kind who never wavered in his fight for equality and justice. We should all carry his passion, optimism and spirit forward.”
Canadian Veteran Affairs Minister Seamus O’Regan also paid his respects in a tweet Wednesday, calling Smith an “extraordinary public leader.”
“The mark Harry left on the world — on so many of us — is indelible,” O’Regan wrote. “He was an extraordinary man.”
Smith’s son, John, tweeted that he hoped there would be public memorials for his father in Canada and the U.K., and he vowed to take on the mantle of his father’s fight for justice.