Recent from talks
Dan Heap
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Dan Heap
Daniel James Macdonnell Heap (September 24, 1925 – April 25, 2014) was a Canadian activist and politician. Heap served as a Member of Parliament with the New Democratic Party, a Toronto City Councillor, a political activist and an Anglican worker-priest. He represented the Toronto, Ontario, riding of Spadina (after 1988 Trinity—Spadina) from 1981 to 1993 and Ward 6 on Toronto City Council from 1972 to 1981. As an activist he was involved in the peace movement, community issues around housing, homelessness, poverty and refugee rights among other social justice issues.
Heap was born on September 24, 1925, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, into a middle-class family, the second of four children. His father, Fred Heap, was a lawyer and his mother was a piano teacher. Heap's maternal grandfather was a Presbyterian minister inspiring Heap, from a young age, to want to take up the same calling.
Heap was raised a Presbyterian in a family that was concerned about social causes. When he was 6, the family decided to boycott Japanese oranges to protest the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.
For his last two years of high school, Heap attended Upper Canada College on a scholarship, and then studied classics and philosophy at Queen's University.
A pacifist, Heap nevertheless joined the Canadian Army during the Second World War due to his opposition to Nazism, later saying "It wasn't possible to be neutral in the face of Hitler". However, the war ended before he could be sent overseas.
In 1945, while working in a factory as a summer job, he met members of the Student Christian Movement and became a Christian socialist. He later also became a member of the Society of the Catholic Commonwealth and of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, forerunner of the New Democratic Party.
Heap studied theology at the University of Chicago for a year before becoming an Anglican and transferring to McGill University to pursue a divinity degree. While at McGill he became engaged to Alice Boomhour, a pacifist, activist in the SCM and CCF, and daughter of a United Church minister. They married in 1950. That same year, he was ordained a priest within the Anglican Church of Canada.
After working as a parish priest in Quebec for only a few years in the 1950s, Heap decided against a career as a church employee and aligned himself with the Worker-Priest movement which paired ministry with social activism. Heap moved his family to Toronto where he worked for 18 years as a labourer (cutter trimmer, later pressman) in a cardboard box factory in Toronto, where he became involved in the paperworker's union (later the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada which eventually merged to become part of UNIFOR) and was elected a union representative and attempted to "bring socialism to the Canadian worker".
Hub AI
Dan Heap AI simulator
(@Dan Heap_simulator)
Dan Heap
Daniel James Macdonnell Heap (September 24, 1925 – April 25, 2014) was a Canadian activist and politician. Heap served as a Member of Parliament with the New Democratic Party, a Toronto City Councillor, a political activist and an Anglican worker-priest. He represented the Toronto, Ontario, riding of Spadina (after 1988 Trinity—Spadina) from 1981 to 1993 and Ward 6 on Toronto City Council from 1972 to 1981. As an activist he was involved in the peace movement, community issues around housing, homelessness, poverty and refugee rights among other social justice issues.
Heap was born on September 24, 1925, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, into a middle-class family, the second of four children. His father, Fred Heap, was a lawyer and his mother was a piano teacher. Heap's maternal grandfather was a Presbyterian minister inspiring Heap, from a young age, to want to take up the same calling.
Heap was raised a Presbyterian in a family that was concerned about social causes. When he was 6, the family decided to boycott Japanese oranges to protest the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.
For his last two years of high school, Heap attended Upper Canada College on a scholarship, and then studied classics and philosophy at Queen's University.
A pacifist, Heap nevertheless joined the Canadian Army during the Second World War due to his opposition to Nazism, later saying "It wasn't possible to be neutral in the face of Hitler". However, the war ended before he could be sent overseas.
In 1945, while working in a factory as a summer job, he met members of the Student Christian Movement and became a Christian socialist. He later also became a member of the Society of the Catholic Commonwealth and of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, forerunner of the New Democratic Party.
Heap studied theology at the University of Chicago for a year before becoming an Anglican and transferring to McGill University to pursue a divinity degree. While at McGill he became engaged to Alice Boomhour, a pacifist, activist in the SCM and CCF, and daughter of a United Church minister. They married in 1950. That same year, he was ordained a priest within the Anglican Church of Canada.
After working as a parish priest in Quebec for only a few years in the 1950s, Heap decided against a career as a church employee and aligned himself with the Worker-Priest movement which paired ministry with social activism. Heap moved his family to Toronto where he worked for 18 years as a labourer (cutter trimmer, later pressman) in a cardboard box factory in Toronto, where he became involved in the paperworker's union (later the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada which eventually merged to become part of UNIFOR) and was elected a union representative and attempted to "bring socialism to the Canadian worker".