Stephen Lewis, former Canadian ambassador to the UN and father of NDP leader Avi Lewis, dead at 88

Stephen Lewis, former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations and African human rights advocate and one-time leader of the NDP in Ontario, has died. He was 88.

The Stephen Lewis Foundation announced his death on its website on Tuesday.

“It is with profound sadness that the Foundation shares the news of the passing of our co-founder Stephen Lewis,” the statement said.

“Stephen was a respected humanitarian who spent his life championing social justice and human rights. Throughout his political and international careers, he was committed to creating a more equitable world.”

Lewis was also the father of Avi Lewis, who was elected leader of the federal NDP on Sunday.

Lewis had surgery for abdominal cancer in 2018, but the inoperable cancer returned in 2021 and had him “fighting for his life,” according to a 2021 report from TVO.

In early 2024, Christina Magill, executive assistant to Stephen Lewis, described Lewis as “ living with cancer. His health isn’t terrific, but he is still as insightful, curious, and wonderful as ever.”

Lewis spent more than two decades working with the UN between 1984 and 2006, including as Canadian ambassador, deputy director of UNICEF and United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa.

In each of these roles, Lewis was a staunch advocate for human rights in Africa.

“What kind of a world do we live in when the life of an African child or an Asian child is worth so much less than the life of a Canadian child?” Lewis said during a speech at the XVI International AIDS Conference held in Toronto in 2006.

Lewis was born in Ottawa in November 1937 to Sophie Lewis and David Lewis, former federal leader of the NDP and national secretary to the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, the party’s predecessor. He went to high school in Toronto and went to both the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia during his undergraduate career.

Lewis first moved to Africa after dropping out of law school in the 1960s, but returned to Canada in 1963, where he would join the NDP and eventually serve as the Ontario leader of the party between 1970 and 1978 while his father served as the party’s federal leader.

While leader of the Ontario NDP, Lewis gained popularity in the 1975 provincial election on a promise of bringing rent control and workplace safety regulations to the province. His campaign earned the NDP official opposition status and forced the Progressive Conservative Party to commit to bringing in more progressive regulations to keep its power in the province.

“What we have been suggesting is an agenda of work for Ontario, an agenda of work that means a which implies a shared government and shared leadership which the people of this province seem to be conveying to the politicians,” Lewis said during a campaign event in 1977.

Lewis stepped down as party leader in 1978 after his party failed to make up ground in the provincial election and lost its title as the official opposition.

Former federal NDP leader Tom Mulcair said in an interview on CTV News Channel Tuesday that Lewis was someone he “always admired.”

“He showed great sensitivity to issues of social justice, both here at home in Canada and around the world,” Mulcair said.

“He was an extraordinarily, in fact, exceptionally articulate person,” Mulcair also said. “And he used that specific skill to articulate, and become a voice for, some of those who did not have a voice, and articulate issues that were complex for people in other parts of the world to understand.”

Shortly after leaving the Ontario NDP, Lewis shifted his focus to the UN and became Canadian ambassador to the UN in 1984. During his role as UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa between 2001 and 2006, Lewis drew global attention to the health crisis in Africa.

“I cannot remember in my entire adult life scenes of such unendurable human desolation, it was heartbreaking,” Lewis said during his first speech to the UN in 2006.

Lewis co-founded AIDS-Free World in 2007 and the Stephen Lewis Foundation in 2003, which helps to support “community-based organizations working on the frontlines of the AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa.”

“I was clobbered by the carnage of the pandemic that I was witnessing in Africa and desperate to do something in a concrete way and thus the foundation was formed,” Lewis said in a YouTube video from April 2011.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Lewis turned his attention to vaccine equality, calling on Canada to refrain from dipping into a vaccine-sharing pool meant for developing counties that can’t afford them.

“It was always understood from the outset that this was not a source of vaccines for the rich and wealthy countries of the world,” Lewis told CTV’s Question Period in February 2021.

He also called for the suspension of all COVID-19 vaccine patents so generic pharmaceutical companies could produce cheaper versions of the vaccine for developing nations.

Among his several honours, Lewis was given the Order of Canada in 2002 and the Health and Human Rights Leadership Award from Doctors of the World-USA. He also holds 33 honorary degrees, among the highest of any Canadian.

There are also two Toronto-area schools named in his honour.

With files from The Canadian Press and report from CTV News’ Annie Bergeron-Oliver