Goodbye to Howard Moscoe, one of Toronto’s original political mavericks

The last time I interviewed Howard Moscoe was seven years ago. He was about to turn 80 years old. I asked him how he was doing.

“I’ve never been older,” he said.

That was Howard.

People have been swapping Moscoe stories for the past week since we learned the news of his death at age 86. Over more than three decades in municipal politics in Ontario’s capital city, Moscoe made a few friends, a lot of enemies, and was a major burr under the saddle of anyone who had decision-making authority.

Moscoe took to politics after a visit to Queen’s Park as a child. He would go sit in the balcony and watch his MPP Joe Salzberg (the legislature’s only Communist MPP) dazzle with speeches. Later, when he was perhaps 12, his mother took him to visit Toronto City Hall. Young Howard was hooked. He became a teacher and then a sign-maker, mostly for election campaigns, but couldn’t fight the itch.

In 1978, still a year shy of his fortieth birthday, Moscoe successfully ran for […] This is an excerpt. Read the full article at TVO.org.