Senior Advisor

Nonagenarian author Harry Leslie Smith on his second career as a political activist, protecting universal health care and caring for refugees

- Micah Toub

After decades of selling imported carpets, you’ve found a second vocation in your 90s as a political commentator—mostly looking back on times of great wealth disparity to warn us of the consequences of austerity and inadequate social supports. What inspired you to start writing? In 2008, the world’s economies crashed. And the following year my middle son, Peter, died at the age of 50. By 2010, my grief was uncontrollable and I knew the only way I could expiate it was through writing about my early life—in a book and also on social media. I needed to let people know that the economic and political storms coming our way, I’d seen them before.

In your new book, Don’t Let My Past Be Your Future, you express concern that in Britain, national health care is in danger. But as someone who has been based mainly in Canada since 1953, what’s your perspective on our coverage?