After the recent death of his father Harry Leslie Smith — known affectionately as 'the world’s oldest rebel' — John Smith stopped in Guelph Thursday to speak at the weekly Breezy Breakfast event.
The elder Smith died in November at the age of 95. John said he has received condolences from people around the world in remembrance of his father, who lived a modest life and didn’t became known as a noted humanitarian and anti-poverty activist until he was in his late 80s.
“All of that outpouring of love for my dad did help in the weeks after my dad died. It was very touching and I am still very grateful and humbled,” said John at Breezy Corners restaurant on Macdonell Street.
About 10 years ago, John began encouraging his retired carpet salesman father to write about his experiences growing up in depression-era England and collecting those thoughts into what would eventually become a number of memoirs, essays and columns published around the world.
The project was one way for the father and son to deal with the death of John’s brother Peter.
“What my great fear was up until we started this project was that my father would die and he would die not knowing what a beautiful, unique person he was. That’s why I wanted to share him with the world, so he could get some of that love back that he lost when my brother died,” said John.
His father became best known from his speech at the 2014 British Labour Party conference in which he recounted the difficulties of living in that country prior to the creation of its National Health Service. His sister died in those years of tuberculosis at the age of three.
“To my mind, it is one of the greatest political speeches ever made and it’s not because he’s my dad, it’s because anyone who listens to that just goes wow, that could have been my father or my grandfather who lived thought those things,” said John.
Later, the elder Smith was known for touring refugee camps around the world, which he accomplished in a wheelchair in his final years.
Wearing his father’s signature plaid trilby hat, John has tasked himself with continuing his father’s work and will be travelling through the United States to Mexico this month to talk to people about the current refugee crisis at the border between those two countries.
“One of his last missions was to do a complete tour of all of the refugee camps to highlight it and to shame governments into action. I am trying to complete that mission for him,” said John.
Within hours of his father’s death, John said he faced accusation on social media that he was using his father’s fame for his own ends, but he notes the two of them were collaborators for the last 10 years.
“My politics are his politics,” said John. “They may veer or shift or be more nuanced in some areas, but basically I supported his mission because I believed in the social democracy that he was preaching.”
Before he embarks on his bus trip through the United States, John stopped in Guelph to speak at the Breezy Breakfast event hosted most Thursday mornings by city councillors James Gordon and Phil Allt.
It was a homecoming of sorts for John, who lived in Guelph and attended the University of Guelph for four years.
“I love the city and the people. I hadn’t been back in 25 years and when I left the train station I felt like I had just gone the day before,” said John.
Breezy Breakfast has affectionately been called ‘politics and pancakes’ by some and the 'lefty breakfast' by others.
Allt said the latter label isn't necessarily fair because all viewpoints are welcome.
“It’s not a place where James and I pontificate on our particular views, rather we would want to hear from people and sometimes agree with them and quite often agreeing to disagree,” he said.
The Breezy Breakfast was started about three years ago to allow people share a breakfast table while having an exchange of ideas outside of the rules and regulations of city hall.
“It was put together as a way to provide people with an opportunity to meet and talk about issues of a local, national and international concern,” said Allt. “We like to keep it broad and informative and we like to balance it off by having speaker like John in and then having days when people can actually talk about what their concerns are.”
Allt said the discussions are not intended to be political, but often they inevitably do end up that way. The breakfasts have spurred talks about everything from national politics to local garbage collection and development charges.
“The one thing we insist is there are no wrong ideas. There is one rule, that is listen politely,” he said. “I might disagree with your ideas, but you have even right to them and that’s the kind of forum we want.”
The capacity for people to listen to each other and participate in polite political dialogue seems to have disappeared with the creation of social media, said Allt.
“It very much is breaking bread, it also gets us back to the old principle of Greek democracy that is very much the marketplace for people engaged in the discussion of ideas and hopefully it will promote and move the city forward for the betterment of all."
John said his father would have loved the Breezy Breakfast and that many of the ideas Harry espoused were perfected and shared around the family’s dinner table.
“Throughout my entire life, my parents were very political and well read in American, European and Canadian politics. That’s an unbelievable asset as a child growing up, because the discussions rent’t always about whether the leafs won or lost or how the Argos are doing, but about what is going on in the legislature, what is going on in Britain or the States,” said John.
“These are the types of talks he would do — large talks in conference centres and universities, but he would also do these small coffee shop speeches and talks and he loved those the best, because you’re in a much more intimate setting,” he said.
“I think he would be very happy that I was doing this. In fact, I know he would be.”
