A mother who hid in haystacks from bayonet-plunging Japanese soldiers searching for women to rape.

A father who brutally beat her stepbrother and mother.

A young girl in an educated, professional immigrant family relocated from a comfortable middle-class lifestyle in Hong Kong to a small apartment in crowded St. James Town, Toronto.

A wife who loses her husband to cancer at the apex of his political career and struggles to find meaning and strength in her faith and community.

These are a few of the highlighted brush strokes that illustrate the life of Olivia Chow, former school trustee, Toronto city councillor, widow of the late, charismatic New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton and current Member of Parliament for Toronto’s Trinity-Spadina riding.

Her life canvas is a colourful and engaging one, recorded in her new book, My Journey, launched last week in Toronto.

The fact that her Toronto book launch was held in a church, Trinity-St. Paul’s United, is telling.

A faithful congregant of the Toronto Chinese Baptist Church in the late 1970s, where she found “unconditional love,” Chow had a type of religious epiphany during her first political rally in support of the Vietnamese boat people in 1979, one that led to a serious questioning of her faith.

Sensing that the core of the Christian message was to “love one’s neighbour as one’s self,” Chow began to ask why her church spent so much time saving souls when saving lives was just as central to the Gospel message.

Chow recalls that if she were to be true to her creed and faithful to Jesus’ promise to bring “good news to the poor,” the vulnerable and marginalized had to be at the foreground, rather than in the background, of her life’s landscape.

In the wake of conservative politicians in North America embracing the “new Christian right” and allying with fundamentalist Christian groups in their campaigns, it might seem odd to some to witness a mainstream, progressive politician talk about her faith in Jesus as a wellspring of her political life.

And yet, given the provenance of the NDP, whose first leader, Tommy Douglas, was a Baptist minister, Chow’s religious convictions are not surprising.

What is surprising, and refreshing, is her willingness to discuss her faith publicly.

In a recent conversation after a small United Church service in Toronto, Chow shared with me some of the religious influences that helped contour her intellectual and spiritual life. These included religious studies professors Father Arthur Gibson, John Meagher and Gregory Baum of St. Michael’s College, Toronto, mentors who embraced and help direct in some cases the reforms and bracing energy of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).

These scholars and the council they supported helped the church realize that to reform itself, it had to help reform society; they saw the need of the church to “open its windows” to the modern world and address the pressing issues of racism, global poverty and the prospect of nuclear war.

In short, they opened their arms and hearts, rather than closing their minds, to the energies of myriad communities, both secular and non-Christian, struggling to create a more just and compassionate world.

At her launch, Chow was asked about whether she still feels her husband Jack’s presence. Her response suggested to me that she finds the spirit of her husband in the positive energy of the communities and groups vying for a better world, whether it be for fairer wages, a cleaner environment, a safer workplace or a more loving societal fabric.

Is her story simply political? Of course it is political; she is after all a politician. But it is not just about politics. It is about engaging and working with positive political energies to help make constructive social change. It takes a lot of energy to tackle the thorny issues of public transit, homelessness, green energy alternatives, child poverty and justice for our aboriginal brothers and sisters. Sadly, at the municipal and federal levels, such positive energy has been absent of late.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Thankfully, though, as Chow’s life story suggests, there are still politicians who, despite their shortcomings, strive to “keep the faith” in the positive energy of the common good.

And that is good news.

Stephen Scharper teaches at the University of Toronto. His column appears monthly. stephen.scharper@utoronto.ca

Read more about: