Activist Wendell Fields was a member of the so-called Father's Day Five, a group arrested in 1999 for demonstrating against U.S. war planes appearing at the Hamilton International Air Show.

He and the others were charged with trespassing when they unfurled peace banners in front of a U.S. air force Thunderbolt at the June 20 air show. They charged that the event promoted militarism and called for its cancellation.

The incident caused a little sensation, but the activists — who were looking forward to their day in court — saw the charges tossed out by a justice of the peace who noted the date the tickets were issued was not noted by the police officer. Spokesperson Murray Lumley termed the dropping of the charges "devilishly clever" and concluded "they didn't want us to be heard. It's not an air show. It's a war show."

For Fields — who died March 1 at the age of 59 from cancer — it was not the first protest, nor the first time his name appeared before the public.

He and four other activists were charged with trespassing when they occupied Stoney Creek MPP Brad Clark's office in April 2000 to protest his Conservative government's welfare laws, and he was also involved in a sit-in at Hamilton East MP Sheila Copps' office in February 1998.

He walked many picket lines and also appeared in the Ontario legislature in 1999 before a standing committee holding public hearings on the Safe Streets Act.

Fields ran for political office a number of times. He ran for Hamilton mayor in 1997 — he got 611 votes — and also ran in the federal elections of 1997, 2000, 2011 and 2015, and in the provincial election of 1999. He ran in the old riding of Hamilton West in the earlier elections but moved to Hamilton East-Stoney Creek in the last two federal campaigns.

Fields was a member of a political group that few Canadian cities have, but which has found a place in Hamilton — the Marxist-Leninists. In 2000, he told The Spectator he was living on social assistance after losing his job as a semi-skilled rotational moulder. He joined the Marxist-Leninists in 1979 and was proud of it and his social agitation.

"I may be retired from the job but not the fight!" Fields told The Spectator in 2011.

According to the Marxist-Leninist party, "Comrade" Fields was born in Windsor, N.S. His father was in the armed forces and was killed in 1967 in a parachute accident. "This tragedy was to cause the family great hardships in the following years," the party said on its website.

It said he became attracted to the party in the 1970s while living in Cambridge while listening to the University of Waterloo campus radio station talk about the party and "the Anti-Imperialist Alliance."

Fields moved to Hamilton in 1987 after he was laid off from his job in Cambridge and worked for a time on the party's weekly newspaper.

He was predeceased by his parents and is survived by two brothers and two sisters.

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