What I learned from Stephen Lewis

Like any journalist who has been around for more than four decades, I’ve seen thousands of political speeches in my time.

I’ve never seen a better orator in Canadian politics than Stephen Lewis.

I’ve never seen anyone move audiences like Stephen Lewis did.

I’ve never seen anyone bring more passion to the job than Stephen Lewis did.

“The guy could read the phone book and make it sound like Shakespeare,” Robert Nixon once told me. Nixon would know. The former Ontario Liberal leader had the misfortune of competing against Lewis in the 1970s. In fact, in the 1975 election, Lewis bested Nixon, becoming official opposition leader at age 37, and relegating the Liberal leader to third place. Nixon, now 97, once told me he always thought Lewis was a much tougher leader to compete against than Premier Bill Davis ever was.

Five years ago, I got a tip from someone who said Lewis was suffering from inoperable abdominal cancer and might not be long for this world. He urged me to call him right away and get some reflections on his life before it was too late. So, I did.

Lewis sounded good on that phone call; not quite as energetic as I’d always remembered him, but we did talk for an hour, so he must have been having a good day. He told me, “I look in the mirror, and it’s curious. It’s abnormal to […] This is an excerpt. Read the full article now at TVO.org.