Alayne McGregor
This is a slightly expanded version of the story that ran in the printed May 2023 Centretown BUZZ.
Don Smith, a longtime community activist and BUZZ volunteer, saw what needed doing and did it.
“He would easily pitch in,” said BUZZ chair and distribution manager Archie Campbell. “I heard a story about Tommy Douglas – when Douglas was giving political speeches in church basements early in his career, he said he would always keep a very careful eye, after the meeting, on those who put away the chairs. Those he would then go up to and talk more seriously about helping out with election work.
“So Don was the guy who would put away the chairs after the meeting.”
Smith died suddenly of natural causes in his home in the Des Jardins Co-op on Empress Street on April 21. He was 79. He is survived by two brothers, two sons, and three grandchildren.
At his celebration of life on May 6, more than 80 people showed up, including relatives and people he knew through his co-op, political campaigns, community organizing, The BUZZ – and English country dancing.
“In politics, there are some who get the limelight, and others who build the stage,” said Ottawa Centre MPP Joel Harden.
“Don Smith was a stage builder and a first-class organizer at doing so. I never heard him complain or speak poorly of anyone. But I always saw him taking shifts in the campaign office late at night and pounding in lawn signs in all kinds of weather. Don was tireless, and he carried himself with a quiet dignity that set a powerful tone. I am shocked he is gone in person, but his example will never leave our hearts.”
A long and varied career in Thunder Bay
Smith grew up in northwestern Ontario. His brother Ray told the celebration of life that their father died when Don was 13 and their family was poor. Don was a voracious reader and invented games for the other children to play from his books. In university in the 1960s, he encountered the activist Student Christian movement which encouraged his sense of social responsibility and service.
In Thunder Bay, Smith worked as a journalist for the Chronicle Journal, and as a community developer and project manager. He was a constituency assistant for MP Iain Angus working on non-profit housing development, and helped start a housing co-op. From 1977 to 1982 he served as an alderman on Thunder Bay City Council.
Love brought Smith to Ottawa
From 1999 to 2013, he worked as house co-ordinator for the Russell Heights Community House in Ottawa’s east end. He also was president of his housing co-op, and volunteered on many election campaigns, particularly for the NDP, as well as serving on the executive of the Ottawa-Vanier NDP riding association.
Smith supported his wife of 21 years, Mary Cheesebrough, through her fight with cancer ending in 1990. Later he rekindled an old friendship with renowned Ottawa anti-poverty activist Aline Akeson when she visited Thunder Bay on an organizing tour. They married and he moved to Ottawa in 1999. Akeson died in 2013.
For the last eight years, Don was in a relationship with Aurore Trahan. She said he “cared for humanity and wanted to make this world a better place. He had warned me that his mistress was politics, and that was a fair warning. He was NDP, I was Liberal, so we never discussed politics. Don’s last advice to us would have been, ‘Take care of the earth and vote NDP.’
“He was a Good Samaritan. Anybody that needed help, this fellow would rise up and do it. He unplugged toilets, he drove people, he was always ready to help anybody.
Partial to country music and country dancing
“He called himself an atheist. He was not sure that God existed, but I called him my gift from heaven. He was a bookaholic. He loved music, any kind of music, but was partial to folk festivals and country music.”
He also loved contra dancing and English country dancing, and was out dancing the Saturday before he died. At the celebration of life, a fellow dancer said that Don danced with everyone because “a lot of us liked to dance with him.” He would stay til the bitter end of every dance and clean up and sweep the floor and would be the last to leave, she said.
Shady Hassan, the current board president of the Des Jardins Co-op, said Smith was a big act to follow. He first met Smith when he was unclogging a drain in the parking lot at 11 p.m. in November, spending 45 minutes with an ice pick and hose until it was all clear.
The co-op will name its library after Smith, he said: “he spent uncountable hours there.”
An invaluable BUZZ delivery volunteer
Smith had started delivering The BUZZ around 2009. About three years ago, he stepped up to help drop off bundles of papers to other delivery volunteers as well as to larger high rises. Campbell said that Smith was particularly adept at reserving the most convenient Communauto cars for deliveries.
In the last two years, Smith and Campbell would drop off 70 bundles (of 100 papers each) on Thursdays, Smith and Eleanor Sawyer would do some door to door delivery on Friday, and then the three would do what was left over on Saturday. Smith kept thinking of creative ways to refine the system and make it more efficient, Campbell said, and it was getting to be a pleasurable exercise.
Smith never complained, he said. Instead of saying it was cold, he’d say he should have brought his other coat.
An anti-poverty and pro-affordable housing activist
Robert Fox met Smith when Smith first moved to Ottawa because they were both organizing around anti-poverty issues, tenants’ rights, and access to non-profit housing. They met socially through Akeson, and at meetings, rallies, vigils, protests, and marches.
“He was a very gentle person, a very generous person, but he was a fierce advocate for social justice. He was fearless in going forward and speaking to people whom he didn’t know about issues and talking to them in a way that connected with their reality. He loved participating in campaigns and never missed an opportunity to encourage someone to get out and vote progressive.”
He brought people together
At Russell Heights, he worked to build the community, Fox said. “He was not someone who had a big ego or was in the front of the room trying to steer the conversation. He was usually keeping out of the limelight but was always playing a very active and important role bringing people together and organizing to make change.”
Smith would train community members in how to explain their stories and press for action at city hall. “He was very credible in that because he really had a remarkable ability to relate people to people, very naturally.
“Some people insert their resume into their conversation. He never did that, because it was never about him. It was about you and it was about the work.”
A Good Samaritan of election campaigns
Many people mentioned Smith’s talent and commitment in putting up election signs. Mike Bileski, who worked with him in Ottawa Vanier, said he remembered Don putting up signs for hours on end in a blisteringly-cold byelection where the ground was covered by three feet of pure ice.
Catherine Boucher said that Smith worked on many campaigns to elect progressives and NDPers. He was a person that could be counted on for the unglamorous tasks after the election. “Taking down 1000 signs, often in November in the pouring rain, when everybody’s gone back to work and bye-bye … the people who come out on E-day +1 and 2 and 3 are the Good Samaritans of election campaigns and Don was one of those.”
Ottawa activist Sam Hersh knew Smith through Horizon Ottawa and on campaign sign teams. “He always knew all the sign locations in the city, and the best spot for them.” But he was also committed to other projects, and at one point in an election campaign they couldn’t find him. It turned out that that was his shift time at the local food bank.
Hersch said Smith was very passionate about many issues. He knew a lot about housing policy and the history of progressive movements, and had been a member of the Waffle wing of the NDP. “He was a part of the long tradition of trying to make the NDP more left-wing.”
Smith would have turned 80 in July, and Hersh said he and some friends had planned to throw a big birthday party for him. He said he had only learned Smith’s birthdate recently because he was modest and didn’t like talking about himself.
Ottawa school board trustee Lyra Evans said Smith cared about poverty and economic issues and would say the NDP needed to do everything it could to advocate for people who were struggling. “He liked the word ‘socialist.’ ”
She said that it “really irked him” that one of the largest areas of deep poverty in the city kept electing centrist politicians instead of the NDP – unlike similar areas in Winnipeg or Vancouver. He also was concerned at how the cost of housing was the top contributing factor to poverty right now.
Smith coordinated signs on four of her campaigns, and was wonderful to work with – except when it came to sending in his expense receipts. But he knew how to get the signs out fast and in the best places – bending the rules a bit.
“Don would say all of the city election people are going home at 5 o’clock. The legislation says that you can put up signs as of midnight, but they’ll have gone home. What that meant [as far as Don was concerned] is the signs can go up at 5:01.
“So you would get all the best sign locations everywhere. He put up signs on all the major corners and because he’d show up at 5:01 p.m. and start knocking in the sign seven hours before the other team started.”