FEBRUARY 9, 2025 – It is almost a year since the untimely death of John Arthur Bell. His life and activism honoured September 8 at a well-attended and moving celebration of life held, appropriately, at the United Steelworkers Hall in downtown Toronto. After the event, I found the photos that accompany this article – John at his computer, smiling and laughing, listening to music and hammering out another of his famous “Left Jabs.”
Those photos would be vintage 2001, when John and I were both immersed in the challenge of producing an under-resourced small-budget bi-weekly newspaper. Our paths intersected years before that photo was taken – the first time in an undergraduate student dorm. It was student council election time at York University, and I was campaigning for something we called the “United Left Slate”, walking the corridors of Founders College residence, knocking on doors to persuade my neighbours to “VOTE ULS”. Behind one of those doors, I encountered John and a York friend he was visiting. I remember the cloud of smoke, John’s shock of red hair, and the quizzical smiles I got from them both.
“Vote ULS? Sure, we’ll vote for you … but you know that elections aren’t going to solve anything, certainly not student council elections. We’re going to need a revolution – a workers’ revolution”. I think John held to that position until his untimely death on March 28, 2024.
Our paths next crossed in 1980 Ottawa where I was working in a print shop, and John was pursuing graduate studies. For the political circles in which we travelled, the world changed in August of that year. Polish workers struck and occupied the shipyards in Gdansk, Poland. Suddenly the “workers’ power” discussion in a student dorm had come alive in the magnificent mass trade union, Solidarność. Workers’ power was in the air. John would shortly join the International Socialists and never look back.
I was in the IS in those years, and back in Toronto, both John and I made our focus putting out what was then a monthly newspaper. John’s area was photography, working the stat camera (yes, before the era of the scanner) in our makeshift darkroom. I did much of what was called “paste-up” (it was before the era of computer-aided design – we used X-acto knives, cutting boards and other museum pieces from the 20th century). Often as we worked away on these tasks, I would have my young daughter in tow, and she loved hanging out with the man she called “Bell John”.
In 1995 we took the outrageous gamble to relaunch our little monthly as a bi-weekly – coming out every two weeks. We figured we would need four journalist-activists to carry out such an undertaking. That never happened. For the first three years, with never more than two of us on staff, our focus was the great Ontario social movement against Tory cuts – the “Days of Action.” John’s coverage breathed the optimism of that struggle. Our staff complement increased to three at the turn of the millennium – for two glorious years. Our coverage focussed on the mass movement we optimistically called “anti-capitalist” (it would probably be more accurate to use the title “anti-globalization”) and John was a core part of the little team that attended and covered the big events of those years – including the demonstrations in Windsor in 2000 against the Organization of American states, the fiery demonstration in 2001 in Quebec City against the Summit of the Americas, and the few-thousand strong march to Kananaskis in 2002 to challenge the G8.
Equally important were the less visible, but no less important “small, local” struggles. In 2000, a man named Otto Vass died in a confrontation with police in the west end of Toronto, and John was a stalwart in the “Justice for Otto Vass” committee, which soldiered away for years to spotlight the issue of police violence in Toronto.
By 2002 the bi-weekly paper could no longer afford three journalists, and for the next two years, John and I were the only two “full-timers” getting that paper out every two weeks. At the end of 2004 John made the understandable decision to get another job – one with benefits and a pension plan – and I made the same move a couple of years later, enrolling in Teachers’ College. The bi-weekly experiment had a good run but was just unsustainable.
In the summer of 2007, just before I landed a teaching position, John and I went camping on the banks of Lake Erie, one of his favourite spots. Two things stick in my mind about that trip: the “beer chicken” John was famous for (google it), and his superb choice of music. Growing up in southwestern Ontario, John’s “cultural” orientation had been toward Detroit, and the mixtapes he created based on classic R&B tunes were nothing short of outstanding.
From 2013 on, John and I went in separate directions politically, and in the following years, we only met up a few times. When I heard of his lung problems, I stopped by his apartment in the Vaughan and St. Clair area, and it was clear how serious his health situation was. The double-lung transplant was a literal lifesaver, and just before the pandemic, visiting his new digs in the east end, it was wonderful to see how full of optimism and energy he was.
Condolences to John’s family, friends and loved ones. John will be missed.
Left Jab
John’s “Left Jab” column was his trademark, writing the column even when he was quite ill. From my files, I have unearthed a draft of the very first one – and it’s pretty great. Here’s one last jab from John Arthur Bell.
Stick this revolt where the Sun don’t shine
JOHN BELL: JUNE, 1991 – Understand that, generally speaking, I am a big fan of revolts.
So, when the local news reported several thousand angry people on the lawn of Queen’s Park, carrying signs declaring “The Revolt Has Begun,” I asked myself: a) who are these revolting people and what are they revolting about? and b) why wasn’t I invited?
Seeking answers, I turned to the one paper which had fearlessly held aloft the beacon, proclaiming its headline; “The Revolt Has Begun” – the Toronto Sun. Day in and day out, in its editorials, columns and cartoons, the Sun has exhorted us to break out the torches and pitchforks and descend in hordes on the evil power which is the seeming source of all society’s ills.
The target is Ontario’s NDP government and its budget. Bob Rae, and his treasurer Floyd Laughren, committed the cardinal sin of running up the deficit rather than cutting already deteriorating services such as health, education, and welfare. Not only are they doing it they’re also telling us up front they are doing it. Those rascals!
The forces behind the revolt are old supporters of the Tories and Liberals, still stinging from their election defeat, plotting in dingy boardrooms up and down Bay Street.
They’d rather see a respectable government, one which feeds us lofty rhetoric about “restraint” and “fiscal responsibility,” while quietly running up huge tabs. Buying missiles, paying for wars, giving nice handouts and tax breaks to friends in big business – good government should know enough to pay for these essentials discreetly. Just ask Reagan, Thatcher, or Mulroney.
They never complained about the nice Liberal, David Peterson. He waited until he was voted out of office before discovering the “accounting error” that turned Ontario’s budget “surplus” of several million into a multi-billion dollar deficit. Now that’s discreet.
This revolt has a focus as narrow as the canyons of Bay St. The federal Tories with their austerity cuts and GST, wage freezes and free trade? No problem. Those pinkos and their deficit? Haul out the pitchforks.
Some of the people revolting truly are. They travel under names like People Against the NDP Budget, or the Ontario Taxpayers’ Coalition. The leading “revolutionaries” come from Bay Street’s biggest firms, and have been getting touching moral support from their comrades in Ottawa and, down south, on Wall St.
Who are the people behind People Against the NDP Budget? People like John McBride, a founding member of the group and Chairman of the Board of Great Lakes Mineral Inc.; Louden Owen, managing partner of Bay St. law firm Burgess Macdonald; and Hayden Matthews, head of the Urban Development Institute and mouthpiece for the development industry.
And behind them are other people. People like the big-money guys at the bond rating services who knocked Ontario’s AAA credit rating down to AA – I cried myself to sleep over that one.
Even Brian Mulroney took time off from his busy tub-thumping tour of Japan to condemn the NDP. His pitch backfired a little when a Japanese business spokesman admitted the Ontario deficit was a matter of complete indifference to them. NDP Treasurer Floyd Laughren wondered aloud about the credibility of such an attack coming from the same Prime Minister whose government has presided over the largest increase in the federal deficit ever witnessed.
“That Mulroney is one weird dude,” commented Floyd, proving himself, if nothing else, a master of understatement
Correct me If I’m wrong – maybe you bowl with the Chairman of Great Lakes Mineral Inc. every Tuesday night – but these are not people just like you and me. They are our bosses and our bosses’ bosses. Their Interests are not the same as those of people who work for a living.
That first demonstration was created with a flurry of faxes up and down Bay St., as Canada’s business elite urged their employees to attend. Just try to use those same fax machines to build an abortion rights demo, or a rally against the GST and see how long you last.
Daily the Sun runs inflammatory articles and gives you John McBride’s phone number so you can get involved.
Of course, you don’t get to talk to John himself – these guys don’t want to consult about things like the agenda of the revolt – but you will be asked to show up on cue for future demos.
Hey, I am invited! But only to be part of a stage army whose generals will be chauffeured to the demonstration in stretch limousines.
I don’t claim that the next demo will be attended only by millionaires. By shrieking loud and long enough, Chicken Little convinced the whole barnyard that the sky was falling. When it comes to shrieking, the Toronto Sun takes a backseat to no domesticated fowl. (We should change the Sun’s motto to: ‘The Chicken Little Paper That Grew’). No doubt some workers, feeling squeezed from all directions and not knowing where to direct their anger, will fall for the trap.
The facts about this revolt are clear. It is the brainchild of people who don’t give two hoots about preserving your job, or whether or not you can make your rent. All they want is a friendly climate for business (which they control) to keep making big profits. That means the “revolutionaries” are the same people who advocate greater belt-tightening (i.e., reducing your standard of living so theirs doesn’t suffer). Cut back wages, bust unions, slash services: that’s the not-so-hidden agenda.
If you fall for the shrieking and help shake the NDP government, you will make it easier for these yahoos to grind us all down.
The revolt workers need – the one I’ll enthusiastically join – is the one that gathers at Queen’s Park to demand the NDP goes further. Defend jobs by occupying and nationalizing plants which threaten to close. A workers’ revolt would say to hell with the deficit. If it’s such a headache for Bay St, tax profits to pay it down.
To hell with the boss’s revolt. And while I’m at it, to hell with the Sun, the boss’s paper; not the one they read, but the one they want you to read.
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