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| Ross Allan Hunt Click on picture to enlarge |
A number of years ago, I participated as a member of the Hamilton Spectator Community Editorial Board. During this time, I wrote and had published a 700-word article, on a variety of subjects, every six or seven weeks over an eighteen-month period.
Within this format, I was given the opportunity to acknowledge my father, Ross Hunt, on the anniversary of his birth following his passing.
I've often lamented that I didn't write this piece while my dad was still alive. I think he'd have enjoyed this look at how a child's perspective of their parent changes, often in a positive way, as time passes.
I post this article as a tribute, today on Father's Day, as it was published in the Hamilton Spectator on January 15th, 1999.
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| Click on picture to enlarge |
Activist got the message out, one person at a time
"While pondering how I was going to begin this personal article, I found myself looking through an assortment of pens, papers and photos that my father routinely carried in his shirt pocket.
He always carried a collection of papers and photos with him and was often identified as the man with all the pens in his pocket. These important pieces of his life are now preserved in a clear plastic bag, because my dad died in October of cancer.
Mixed in amongst his pens and mementos, I found my dad's handwritten list of important phone numbers, his lodge membership card, a list of things still left to do, a letter from his cancer specialist urging my dad to continue treatment, and copies of three articles from The Spectator.
The first newspaper clipping was a copy of an Ann Landers column on how tobacco companies try to hide the lethal dangers of cigarette smoking.
Wisely heeding the warnings when the first Surgeon General's report came out in Reader's Digest more than 30 years ago, my father quit smoking, cold turkey. Two successive collapsed lungs moved him to spend the rest of his life trying to convince other smokers to become habit free.
To this end, my dad handed out hundreds of copies of the Landers article over many years, to anyone he saw smoking in cars, restaurants, malls or on the street. He'd simply walk up to someone and say he had an article he had found useful and felt they should read. He particularly targeted secondary students, outside schools, and they rarely refused to take the neatly folded sheet of paper.
The second article found among my dad's pocket possessions was written by former Community Editorial Board member Harry Meester: Printed Jan. 20, 1998, its title was "We don't need a Red Hill NAFTA bypass."
Meester's article inspired my father. In fact, my dad was so impressed with Meester's insightful comments and admitted change of heart that he began a single-handed effort to make Harry Meester a household name.
Originally using his own meagre funds, my father made hundreds of copies of this article and began distributing them all over the Hamilton-Wentworth region.
Using his tried and true method of folding the copies into pocket-sized parcels that were easy for people to keep, he distributed them to people in bank lines, restaurants, offices, stores, parked cars and at public meetings.
Eventually, he began receiving financial contributions towards copying costs from the people he was meeting and he methodically continued to canvas all six regional communities.
In all, he handed out more than 1,100 Meester articles and claimed 90 per cent of those he talked to ended up agreeing with him. It is interesting to note that my father never met Harry Meester (although they spoke on the phone, once), but we discovered Harry’s signature in the guest book from the funeral home, after my dad’s memorial service.
Interestingly enough, the third article is one my dad wrote for The Spectator in May of 1989. Published on the Forum page, “A lesson I almost died learning” was an account of how he was nearly electrocuted as a young boy, the result of an ill-conceived childhood prank.
He was extremely proud to have his story published. He hoped that knowledge of his experience might save others from tragic misfortune, though I suppose we may never know what effect any of my dad’s actions, over many years, ultimately had on people’s decision-making.
Nevertheless, as a man who adeptly utilized the possibilities of direct citizen action, my father surely must have been an effective community activist.
Even when his health failed last summer, my dad sat in his beloved shed, “like a tall, skinny Buddha, waiting for people to come visit and sample some of his wisdom” (in the words of my brother-in-law).
My dad and I disagreed regularly through most of our years together, he over-zealously trying to protect me and me trying to break free. How interesting that two of the things we eventually found we had in common were a newspaper and a commitment to a cause.
It is interesting, too, that through these common bonds, we finally developed a mutual admiration for each other’s good qualities and abilities. Like so many other former teens, I eventually discovered (to my surprise) that my “daddy” became much smarter as I got older."
