Stephen Lewis awakened Canadians to the HIV-AIDS pandemic raging in Africa: experts

Stephen Lewis moderates a symposium on HIV and Food Security at the 16th World Aids Conference in Toronto on Thursday August 17, 2006. (CP PHOTO/Frank Gunn)

TORONTO — Stephen Lewis awakened the Canadian public’s consciousness to the HIV-AIDS pandemic raging in Africa and galvanized the political will to stop standing idle, experts said following his death Tuesday.

Lewis, who dedicated his life to advocating for social justice, was 88.

Dr. Adrienne Chan, who has worked in the HIV sector for over two decades, said she remembers feeling frustrated as an infectious diseases resident when she saw what was happening in Africa.

Tens of millions of people on the continent were dying because they did not have access to the life-saving medications her patients had in Canada, and she said it seemed like nobody was doing anything about it.

That is until Lewis stepped in to amplify the voices of communities on the ground and call out the people in power.

“I think what Stephen Lewis was able to do was to use his position to understand the global context, understand the global players, but also, realize that he had a role in amplifying the voices of the people that he met on the ground,” Chan said.

After leading the Ontario New Democrats in the 1970s, Lewis held a number of diplomatic postings, including serving as the United Nations special envoy for HIV-AIDS in Africa from 2001 to 2006.

Lewis did something very different to other public servants in high positions at the United Nations, said David Morley, co-chair of the Stephen Lewis Foundation, which Lewis established in 2003.

Lewis travelled to sub-Saharan Africa to understand what this pandemic really did to communities and then he used his strong communication skills to tell their stories and call out the silence of people in power, challenging African governments and accusing the G8 of turning its back on Africa.

“He was naming names. He was calling out international institutions. He was supporting the grassroots, the grandmothers who lost their children and were now having to raise their grandchildren. There was no other voice like Stephen in the world,” Morley said.

The way Lewis amplified the voices of grandmothers spoke to Lisbie Rae, who joined his Grandmothers to Grandmothers campaign in 2007.

A year earlier, at the International AIDS Conference in 2006, Lewis brought together 100 African and 200 Canadian grandmothers in Toronto.

“That was the beginning of a powerful, effective movement,” Rae said, who joined Lewis’ Grandmothers to Grandmothers campaign in 2007.

Looking back at the imprint Lewis had on this “horrible time in human history,” Morley said, “Stephen was the right person to come together with the mix of compassion and humanity and fury at injustice.”

“What an incredible legacy this man has left us.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 1, 2026.

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Hannah Alberga, The Canadian Press