Comrades, colleagues and friends were shocked and saddened to learn that long time socialist, humanist, leading gay rights advocate, and substitute teacher union activist Greg Pavelich died of a massive heart attack on Monday, October 6 in Toronto at the age of 52. Greg occasionally wrote for Socialist Action (Canada) newspaper. He was a speaker at SA public forums in Toronto, a friend of SA, and a supporter of the NDP Socialist Caucus.

Greg was best known as a prominent activist in the Toronto gay-lesbian community, advancing anti-harassment, human rights education, local policing, AIDS action, and civil rights equality issues. As the obituary in the Toronto Star (October 20, 2003) observed, “Greg Pavelich didn’t have time for hobbies. His weekdays were spent teaching at-risk kids; every other moment was dedicated to human rights and social justice.”

His ashes were buried in his home town of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. At a memorial meeting held to celebrate the life of Greg Pavelich on October 19, attended by over three hundred people at the 519 Centre, in the heart of Toronto’s gay/lesbian community, I contributed the following remarks:

In Memory and in Celebration of Greg Pavelich

My name is Barry Weisleder. For most of the past 20 years I have served as President of the Toronto Substitute Teachers. For about ten of those years, my colleagues, my union sisters, brothers and I, had the honour and pleasure of working closely with Greg Pavelich. Like all of you, we are shocked and extremely saddened that Greg is gone so suddenly from our lives.

Many people knew Greg as a leading gay rights advocate, as a community activist, as a socialist and humanist. We want the world also to know that Greg was an excellent substitute teacher and a long time, dedicated union builder. Greg was a shop steward, a local executive officer and a contract bargaining team member. He was a local delegate to Toronto Labour Council, to conventions of the Ontario Federation of Labour and to conventions of the Ontario New Democratic Party.

He was one of the leaders of Ontario Public Service Employees’ Union Local 595, representing 1600 elementary and secondary school substitute teachers at the former City of Toronto Board of Education in the 1990s.

Greg played an active role in the ground breaking October 1990 strike of Toronto substitute teachers. He joined our executive shortly afterwards, juggling his union duties along with his commitments to 101 other just causes. I think Greg found it hard to say ‘no’. We were among the many who benefited from his selflessness, his generosity of spirit. Greg helped countless members with work place issues and potential grievances. One of his proud achievements was to help negotiate equal rights to health benefits for the same-sex partners of substitute teachers. We were one of the first unions at the Toronto school board to do so. It was a joy to work with Greg, ever the optimist, the ‘can-do’ guy on the team. It was always a joy to see Greg. Even from a distance he was not hard to spot, given his friendly-bear-like silhouette, draped in the most topical T-shirts, or the loudest plaid work shirts, festooned with all the best political buttons.

In 1997 we were organizationally separated, but not politically parted. In 1997 Mike Harris and the Tories kidnapped our membership. They tore us out of OPSEU, they divided elementary from secondary school substitute teachers at the old Toronto Board of Education, and they put us, without a membership vote of any kind, into the existing teachers’ federations. I went with my secondary panel members into OSSTF in 1998, and Greg accompanied the elementary panel members into ETFO. I was elected president of the board-wide secondary unit. Temporarily, Greg served as the president of the former downtown Toronto elementary component of the amalgamated unit set up for substitutes in ETFO. I say ‘temporarily’ because a conservative group seized control of the amalgamated elementary unit -- and not without making life for Greg and his co-workers quite miserable in the process.

If ever a medal is commissioned for ‘bravery in the face of bigotry’, it should be named in honour of Greg Pavelich. Because he was ‘out’ and up-front about his gay identity, Greg attracted many of the slings and arrows of the narrow-minded -- including the North York, blue-rinse bigots who excluded Greg and most of the downtown elementary substitute teacher leaders. On the secondary school side, we suffered some tribulations in an elitist teachers’ federation, one which is hostile to local autonomy generally, and to substitute teachers in particular. Although Greg obtained a full-time teaching position at a Toronto elementary school about four years ago, he never turned his back on his colleagues and comrades. When OSSTF launched a venomous attack on our bargaining unit, evicting us from our office, seizing our funds, seizing control of local bargaining, removing re-elected officers, and putting the entire unit in Trusteeship, Greg Pavelich was one of the first to make a donation to our local union Defence Fund, and to sign our petition for justice.

As recently as August 27 we walked together – actually we picketed the Danforth Avenue office of Liberal MP Dennis Mills, an avowed opponent of same-sex couples’ rights -- and Greg enquired about the state of our ongoing struggle for union democracy. Greg never forgot his friends. He was in high spirits and spoke of no ailments.

Many people know that Greg worked tirelessly to advance anti-harassment awareness, human rights education, community control of policing, AIDS action, and civil rights equality issues. Not so many know, but few would be surprised, that Greg Pavelich sought to take these issues, along with his steadfast opposition to imperialist war and to every form of human oppression, into every venue possible, including the labour movement and the NDP. Few have the courage of his convictions.

But what also made Greg Pavelich such an outstanding example to us all is that he demonstrated that it is possible to do this with a sense of humour, never sacrificing the human dimension. His warm, friendly, generous, principled and dedicated presence will be sorely missed by all whose lives he touched.

As our Latin companeros would say: “Greg Pavelich es presente, siempre.”