A Word About Michele and Stephen

By Gerald Caplan

This is a tough assignment for me to carry out properly. While Stephen and I have chummed around for the past half century, Michele and I have been friends for a mere 45 years. Can I do her equal justice after such a fleeting acquaintanceship?

At least I can say this with confidence about them both: They have demonstrated, as few others ever have, the capacity of conscience, commitment and compassion to make themselves heard in a world that more commonly genuflects to wealth and power. Our media routinely feature high profile people, some of them even couples-who have acquired personal riches, lucrative positions on corporate boards, and powerful government friends (perhaps purchased with timely political contributions?), often enough lobbying for policies and positions that will benefit them or their companies personally. In long lifetimes of public advocacy, no one can point to a single cause or a single policy that either Michele or Stephen has ever supported that would enrich either of them in any personal way, except of course the deep satisfaction of trying to make the world a more just, more egalitarian, more peaceful place.

The Harmony Movement was founded to combat all forms of discrimination that prevent citizens from becoming equal members of society, and it’s precisely their passionate dedication to egalitarianism that has driven both Michele and Stephen all their lives (which means, for these two very precocious individuals, probably from the moment they learned to speak). It was for them a matter of uncompromising principle that every human being was a moral equal. But they went further. Formal, theoretical equality wasn’t enough. Something approaching equality of condition, equality in practice, in daily life, was required to make the notion of equality more than easy rhetoric. For both, that’s what their democratic socialism has been about: translating fine words into meaningful deeds.

For Michele, as all the world knows, the most persistent focus of her egalitarian efforts has long been as an outspoken feminist, a term now often disdained even by the young women who have benefited so much from the women’s movement, of which she was a pioneer and leader both in Canada and the US. Because we all ignore history, many girls and young women in Canada today who have the entire world open to them are completely oblivious of the closed world constraining their grandmothers and mothers. Nor can they have the slightest sense of the raw courage it took to challenge the status quo and the formidable anger of those whom Michele was discomfiting every time she sat down at her keyboard or appeared on the radio. But from first to last, Michele was fearless, indomitable, unwavering. In the process, she became hugely popular, a voice other women turned to for inspiration and hope.

In those days, the entire female life cycle was a series of institutional and structural barriers that only the exceptional could hurdle. When Michele, Stephen and I were at the University of Toronto in the late 1950s, men had the usual athletic facilities; women had none. Men had the full use of a wonderful institution called Hart House, which included a gorgeous classical music room, a library, a quiet reading room stuffed with free magazines, a cafeteria, a debating forum where Stephen debated Senator Jack Kennedy shortly before he became president; women were banned from this building except by very occasional special dispensation of a committee of men. Yet men and women paid exactly the same tuition fee! Even at university, as in every other aspect of society at the time, women were consider unequal and treated accordingly. Michele rejected these humiliations in her own life then and fought against them day after day for the rest of her life. When you see the abundance of women in our law schools and medical faculties today, you realize that the fight for women’s rights has been one of the great revolutions of our times, thanks in considerable part to the unrelenting advocacy of Michele Landsberg. But when you see the forces of religious and political reaction attempting to turn back the clock and to re-impose male domination over the destiny of females, you just wish that Michele would grab her newspaper column back and lead the good fight again.

Of course Stephen too has been an activist and leader in the feminist cause. The family joke is that Michele over the decades pummeled him into accepting feminism. But if so, I think we can safely say she beat him with a feather. Today, it is universally agreed, Stephen stands as perhaps Canada’s single most respected citizen, a heroic figure to many both here and abroad, the acknowledged champion of those throughout the world who have no international voice. If that means undiplomatically criticizing irresponsible governments or even his own laggard UN colleagues, so be it the cause takes priority over starchy international protocol. Stephen has spent a lifetime battling on behalf of the oppressed, the persecuted, the outcast, the ignored, and the demeaned. Like Michele, that’s simply what his life has always been about. But what’s less recalled are the many decades in which his efforts were by no means appreciated or honored. A dangerous troublemaker, a reckless radical, a Castro in disguise, a foolish impractical idealist that’s the reputation you got if you were a progressive politician fighting for decent housing or safe workplaces or vulnerable children or visible minorities facing vicious discrimination. Stephen then was little different from Stephen now in his convictions, his ideas, his causes, but the powers-that-be were terrified of him. He was never permitted to fulfill his proper destiny in Canada, which proved to be a lucky break for the rest of the world.

I only hope Michele and Stephen aren’t getting this award on false pretences. Of course they believe in a harmonious existence, in harmony between nations, in harmony among people of all kinds, however diverse. But the real world they’ve lived in, like many, has been anything but harmonious. So they chose, both of them, to fight every step of the way for the kind of better world they’ve both believed in all their lives. That’s the funny thing about harmony if you don’t fight passionately for it, there’s no chance of achieving it.

Of course by "fighting" I don’t mean physical fighting. I don’t mean guns. I don’t mean war. All their lives they’ve both battled against a succession of wretched wars imposed on us by cynical governments that glory in having other people, younger people, fight and die for their unjust causes. No, Michele and Stephen have fought using the only weapons they really believe in and have access to unassailable research and stunning eloquence. By words alone, they have taken on the corporate sector, responsible for so many of the world’s ills; the political establishment, with all its opportunism, cronyism, and conservatism; and any and all defenders of a status quo that entrenches injustice and inequality. By words alone, written or spoken, they have inspired countless others to pick up the torch and carry on the fight and fights that have consumed their lives. Honoring Michele and Stephen tonight with your Harmony Award is a fine tribute. But you can honor them even further. The greatest award you can give them tonight is to pledge, each and every one of you in this room, to dedicate your own life to the greatest cause of all making the world a better, more just place for every citizen in it.

Another Word from Gerry Caplan

Gerry Caplan went to the University of Toronto with Michele and Stephen for a short time in another century. In fact, he and Michele went there for several years until they both graduated with flying honors, but Stephen shamed his family by dropping out. Young people should see Gerry and Michele as fine role models; it is obvious that Stephen is not. However, the three remain close friends notwithstanding Stephen’s lack of education.