Famed anti-poverty activist based in Ontario dies at 95
The son of internet-famed anti-poverty activist Harry Leslie Smith, a war veteran who campaigned to ensure that the sins of the past were not repeated by future generations, is vowing to lead his late father’s legions of social-media supporters in carrying on his legacy.
John Smith said he feared that with his father’s death on Wednesday, the “living history” he embodied is on the verge of extinction, putting us at risk of perpetuating the cycle of calamity that has plagued soci- eties past and present.
“I think that means we better grab hold of that message and run with it, or else we are in for as much trouble as Europe was in the 1930s,” said Smith, vowing to take on the mantle of his father’s fight for justice.
“He wanted the generations that followed him to actually build societies that actually care about all of their citizens. That’s what I think he wanted his legacy to be.”
The 95-year-old Smith died early Wednesday in hospital in Belleville, Ont., said his son, who had been issuing regular medical updates to his father’s 250,000 Twitter followers.
The younger Smith said his father was admitted to hospital last week for pneumonia after contracting an infection and falling.
“I think he has at least planted the seed in many people’s hearts that we have to change the way we’re going,” John Smith said in an interview from Belleville.
“[His upbringing] reinforced his idea that when a country is only for the few and not the many, that it is a great human-rights violation.”
News of his death was met with an outpouring of grief on social media.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was among the chorus of supporters extolling Smith’s dedication to championing society’s most vulnerable, on Wednesday.
“Throughout his life, Harry Leslie Smith fought and worked to make the world a better place for everyone,” Trudeau tweeted. “His legacy will be profound.”
British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn tweeted that Smith was “one of the giants whose shoulders we stand on,” and led the British parliament in a tribute to the veteran.
But despite the embrace of politicians and other notables, Smith’s son said his dad’s moral authority stemmed from his profound ordinariness.
Born on Feb. 25, 1923, Harry Leslie Smith grew up in squalour in the small town of Barnsley in Yorkshire, England. In his writing in several publications and books, Smith recounted 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 10-year-old 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 before the formation of the National Health Service.
As the Great Depression took hold, Smith would rummage through garbage bins to quell his aching stomach, his son said, and was forced into hard labour at the age of seven to help his family make ends meet.
He witnessed the rise of fascism during the Second World War as a member of the British air force, and was deeply affected by the stream of desperate refugees he saw, his son said.
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.
Having lived in the U.K. through the 1950s, John Smith said his parents decided to move to Canada, a country they believed was less gripped by the strict class divisions that defined the pecking order of British society.
“Both my mother and father thought that they needed a neutral country, one where they had no past, but they could have a future,” Smith said.
As the couple raised three children, John Smith said his father made a living selling rugs to Toronto’s upper crust.
Smith said Harry’s hardscrabble youth manifested in a steadfast commitment to give his children the comfortable upbringing he never had.
“A lot of people who suffer that type of trauma and PTSD go inwards, and not by their own frailties, they become bitter and lash out at people,” he said. “That never happened with my dad.”
As he entered his twilight years, Smith was shaken by death of his 50-year-old son, Peter, in 2009.
And as the Great Recession deepened, Smith saw a resurgence in 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.
“He did not want his past to become our future,” John Smith said.
Dubbing himself the “world’s oldest rebel,” the nonagenarian spread his call for justice across the globe in several books, speaking tours through Canada and the U.K., as well as newer modes of communication such as social media and podcasting. His books included Don’t Let My Past Be Your Future: A Call to Arms and Harry’s Last Stand: How the World My Generation Built is Falling Down.