Called one of the greatest thinkers of our time, Stephen Lewis is a college dropout whose life's work has been profoundly shaped by a continent on the other side of the world.

To learn how Africa got under this 70-year-old Canadian's skin, you would have to flash back to 1960, when Lewis left the University of Toronto "prematurely." (When he realized that he didn't have the grades to graduate, he flunked out in an act of belligerence.)

It wasn't that he hadn't loved the university environment … or learning for that matter. He read voraciously but just couldn't muster the energy for exams.

So Lewis left his hapless university career far behind, landing a job in London with Socialist International. Having been raised in a social democracy ideology, Lewis found it a perfect match. His father, David Lewis, was the federal secretary of Canada's Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, precursor to the New Democratic Party (of which he later would become the federal leader).

Only a few weeks into his new job, an invitation came across his desk to attend a weeklong conference of the World Assembly of Youth in Accra, Ghana. He replied that he would be pleased to attend and represent Canadian left-wing youth.

The conference lasted seven days. Lewis stayed for a year. He took a job teaching English and history at Accra High School and in villages around Accra for the University of Legion.

"I was crazy about the continent from the moment I set foot on its soil - the music, the energy, the kindness, the generosity, the camaraderie, the purposefulness of everything," he said.

A Devastating Disease
A former politician, international statesman, and eloquent orator, he spent five-and-a-half years as the U.N. HIV/AIDS envoy, one of the world's most high-profile and high-pressure jobs. As a result, he has become the world's HIV/AIDS advocate, campaigning for affordable drugs, women's rights, and government recognition of this disease that has ravaged Africa.

One particular visit to Africa became a galvanizing moment in his life. While serving as the U.N. envoy, Lewis made the rounds of the pediatric ward at the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka, Zambia, with a hospital administrator.

"There were four or five infants in every cot struggling with a combination of HIV and malnutrition," he recalls. "They were in dreadful shape. The walls of the ward began to vibrate with an eerie, otherworldly scream that riveted everyone. I turned around and there on her knees beside one of the cots weeping convulsively was the mother of an infant who had just died. A nurse came and took the infant away, wrapped in a white sheet. What I just can never get out of my mind is that this scene took place over and over again, every 10 minutes of my visit. Even as I left that building, and walked into the courtyard outside, there was another shriek of agony. I remember turning to the administrator and asking, 'How in God's name do you cope with this?' and he said, 'Mr. Lewis, it's terrible to say, but you just get used to it because it happens all the time.'

"I thought to myself, Stephen, I'm going to keep fighting until we turn this pandemic around. We are losing so many people unnecessarily. We have the drugs, we can provide the capacity and the support. This is just unconscionable." The numbers cannot be ignored. Of the 33 million people infected worldwide, 23 million are in Africa - 61 percent of them are women and 78 percent of girls between the ages of 15 to 24 are infected. There are now 14 million children orphaned by AIDS. Those numbers are impossible for anyone to wrap their minds around. But the millions dying in Africa are not mind-numbing numbers to Lewis. To him, they have faces.

Turning the Corner
Half a million children die of the disease each year, and it wasn't until 2007, 26 years after the pandemic began, that the first pediatric treatment formulation was finally worked out. About 2.3 million children are living with the virus worldwide; 90 percent of them in Africa.

"Finally, we're beginning to roll out treatment; finally, we're beginning to address the situation of children who are infected. We're finally turning our attention to the orphans … the most distressing legacies of the pandemic. Millions of kids are so bewildered, so frightened, because the anchor of life, their parents, were abruptly yanked away from them. We're working night and day to discover a vaccine, night and day to discover a microbicide. Plus, tremendous effort is being put into prevention of every kind - particularly in the 15- to 24-year-old age group."

Although the pandemic has taken its toll, there is a core of strength in Africa that Lewis finds undeniable. "The beauty of Africa lies at the grassroots level, at the community level, where there is so much intelligence, sophistication, and generosity of spirit - and basic human decency, particularly amongst the women. Sure, it's a continent where some countries appear to fall apart from time to time, but overall it's becoming more and more democratic. It's phenomenal how much strength of character and resilience there is at the community level. If only the Western world would understand the strength of Africa, we would respond to them more generously," Lewis said.

Only exhaustion sporadically stops him from his single-minded devotion to this cause. "It's this sense of community that keeps me going. Obviously, when one is dealing with so much death and so much despair, often it's very tough. I keep on going because we know the pendulum will swing. We'll turn the tide on this pandemic because the African people are so strong and so determined and there is such a network of solidarity at the community level. People helping each other in such extraordinary ways, particularly amongst the women, that for me has always been the basic truth of the continent."

Lewis blames gender inequality for driving the pandemic in Africa.

In his book, the 2006 best-seller, Race Against Time: Searching for Hope in AIDS-Ravaged Africa, and in conversation, he returns to the theme of women bearing the brunt of the pandemic - having no control over the sex they must submit to from "predatory" men, usually their husbands, who are HIV-positive. We will never subdue the gruesome force of AIDS, Lewis believes, until the rights of women become paramount in the struggle.

After five-and-a-half years as envoy, Canadian ambassador to the U.N. for four years, and deputy executive director with UNICEF for four years, Lewis has cut ties with the U.N. "It was pretty clear to me that it didn't make sense for a white Canadian to be representing Africa forever," he says. "It was important that an African become the envoy on AIDS and more important than that it be an African woman." Elizabeth Mataka from Zambia was appointed in May of last year.

Now Lewis serves as co-director of AIDS-Free World with Paula Donovan, a 20-year veteran of international development, women's rights, and HIV/AIDS. This U.S.-based international advocacy organization works to promote more urgent and effective global responses to the disease, and builds on the global advocacy achieved by the Office of the U.N. Special Envoy. It is focused on the need to fund universal access to AIDS drugs by 2010.

A Family Man
In addition, he also heads up the Stephen Lewis Foundation, run on a daily basis by his eldest daughter, Ilana Landsberg-Lewis, a human rights lawyer. Before joining her dad, she spent eight years with the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), working to advance the human rights of women internationally. The Stephen Lewis Foundation employs 20 - all female - professionals.

He has been married to Michele Landsberg, a well-known socialist feminist columnist for the Toronto Star, for 45 years. "All of our kids are feminists, left wingers, passionate about their convictions," explained Lewis. "They mirror the spirit we hoped they would have."

Their 40-year-old son Avi Lewis, a documentary filmmaker and television journalist, is married to Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Thirty-seven-year-old daughter Jenny Lewis is a casting director for documentaries and film. Two grandchildren have also joined the Lewis brood, Ilana's two sons, six-year-old Zev and three-year-old Yoav.

How did Lewis balance family life with his world wide advocacy work? "I wasn't an absentee father but I was consumed in politics and then in United Nations life," he says. "Michele has forever been the anchor for the kids. Never a day goes by that I don't check in, and when I'm home, I try to be as intensely involved in domestic life to the extent I can."

A family ritual since the children were born is gathering together for the Jewish Sabbath dinner on Friday nights. "We're not a religious family at all but we like the children to have a sense of their cultural inheritance and know who they are and why they are and Friday nights gives that opportunity," explained Lewis.

Today, this college dropout has 26 honorary degrees, bestowed on him by Canadian universities. He is also an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons in Canada, and is a senior fellow of Massey College at the University of Toronto.

Then there are the awards and accolades. In 2005, Time magazine named him one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World, in the same category as the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela, and in 2003, Maclean's chose him as its inaugural Canadian of the Year. He is also the recipient of The Pearson Peace Medal for his work in the field of international service and understanding and is a Companion of the Order of Canada, the country's highest honor for lifetime achievement.

He is now McMaster University's first social sciences scholar in residence, teaching a class on climate change and its consequences in both developed and developing countries.

"I have this little card that says 'Professor Stephen Lewis' and I laugh every time I look at it because it's like a piece of fraudulence," he says. "I guess they just overlook it."

Or maybe they realize they have the real deal.

Holding a Generation Together

According to Lewis, grandmothers are the unsung heroes of the continent of Africa. “It is the grandmothers who are holding things together. I don’t think there has ever been anything like this historically. We’ve never had a situation where millions of grandmothers are looking after millions of orphan grandchildren. These grandmothers bury their own adult children, the most painful thing imaginable, and then they start parenting again in their 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. They’re just magnificent in their resilience, courage, and devotion to their grandchildren.”

Two years ago, the Stephen Lewis Foundation launched the “Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign” (www.grandmotherscampaign.org) to mobilize support in Canada for Africa’s grandmothers. Nearly 200 groups of Canadian grandmothers have raised close to $3 million, sent to community-level organizations in 15 sub-Saharan African countries to provide grandmothers with much needed support — from food, housing grants, school fees for their grandchildren, to grief counseling.

“As I’m talking to you, there are 12 Canadian grandmothers visiting grandmother groups in Swaziland and Uganda and when they come back, they will crisscross Canada spreading the message of how the African grandmothers can be helped,” Lewis said.

Influential Thinker

Stephen Lewis has been called one of the greatest thinkers of our time. Here, he shares his views on a wide range of topics with Convene.

Women's Rights
"The single most important struggle on the face of the planet is the struggle for gender equality," Lewis says. "You can't continue to marginalize 52 percent of the world's population and expect to achieve social justice. In the developing or developed world, the struggle for equality has not been achieved and I feel deeply resentful. The world is losing so much because the struggle for equality has been so elusive and discrimination against women is so destructive."

Politics
There are four threats looming in the world today, according to Lewis. Three, which are of equal import, are AIDS, poverty, and climate change. The fourth challenge, said Lewis, is political leadership.

"We have the first challenges because of a terrible absence of political leadership over the last several years. We have unfortunately been saddled with political leaders who are either indifferent or incapable of responding to the terrible crises in the world," he said. "You'll notice I didn't include terrorism in the list. I don't depreciate it, but I don't think it stands at the same level as the other truths I've mentioned that threaten literally billions. The most critical vacuum is the vacuum in political leadership and that's why so many Canadians are feeling a certain absence of political leadership in our own country. We're looking to the United States to change that with the coming elections. I think the United Kingdom changed its political ethos by electing Gordon Brown as its prime minister. That's a very important move forward and with luck we'll change the dynamics in the G8 and make it much more responsive to human need."

Lewis served in the Canadian Parliament for more than 15 years. He was an elected member of the Ontario Legislative Assembly from 1963 to 1978. In 1970, he became leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party, during which time he became leader of the Official Opposition. "I never became premier, because the people of Ontario were much too intelligent to entrust the premiership to me," he said with a chuckle.

"For me, politics was not an exercise in nonsense and grandiosity. It was an exercise in social change. It was a highly productive and fascinating time and even though I'm a Social Democrat on the left-wing side of the spectrum, my relationships with the governing Conservative party were very close. We were not abusive to each other. There was no malice in the debates. They were heated and vigorous and expressed different ideological philosophies but we respected each other and we were fond of each other. Mine was a civilized political life. It didn't have the acrimony and rancor that has now seized the politics of the United States and Canada."

Borders
"A country that underwent the nightmare attack of Sept. 11 has every right to be sensitive of its borders and has every right to do something about it. The jolt to the American psyche on Sept. 11 will take generations to overcome. I was living in New York at the time. I can remember for months after the terrorist attack there was palpable unease. People were anxious and a little scared and New York, which is the most vocal and public and demonstrative city in the world, was subdued. I realized the United States of America had gone through a terrible catharsis, a terrible convulsion, and that it would never quite be the same again therefore concern about borders was inevitable."

Meetings
A gifted and moving orator, Lewis makes hundreds of speeches a year. His impassioned lectures explore the ongoing fight against disease and poverty in the developing world. His words move audiences to tears and brings them to their feet. Although he uses notes for reference, he doesn't write his speeches because he says he is much more comfortable with spontaneity.

"Meetings provide an opportunity to raise awareness and to rally the engagement of professional disciplines and communities. When I speak to groups of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, teachers, actuaries, accountants - it doesn't matter who they are - I appeal to them to make a contribution to the wellbeing of humankind. Whether it is picking up and going over to help in a developing country, or informing their own professional organization of what the priorities are, or contributing money."

Getting Involved
He pleads for everyone to join an NGO (non-governmental organization) and get involved. Even the small things we can do at home are helpful, he says. Some of the NGOs he recommends: CARE, Save the Children, Doctors Without Borders, World Vision, and Oxfam America.

"These are extraordinary NGOs with decades of experience who do such good work on the ground. You can join them, participate in their discussions, receive their material, help them raise money, or make contributions. It's a good way of getting plugged in so you don't feel isolated. So you're part of the human family."

Andrea Doyle is Convene's senior writer. The Leading by Example series is sponsored by the Canadian Tourism Commission. Visit its Web site at www.meetings.canada.travel.