Revolutionary Moderation

Tooker Gomberg, 1955 - 2004



I first heard yesterday, attending an NDP nomination meeting, the sad news about Tooker. I first discovered this morning, reading Andrew Spicer's weblog, that his death was apparently suicide.



Tooker was a model for the activist life in Canada - alternating between working well within the system (sitting on or lobbying City Councils) and working well outside (with protests, street theatre, arrests, and Quixotic election campaigns like his run for mayor of Toronto). He lived as he preached, wearing natural fibres, eating vegetarian, and cycling everywhere. He's responsible directly for composting programs in Edmonton and Toronto, and those programs in turn became the models for programs across North America.



We'd crossed paths a couple of times, most recently as he lobbied for votes for Jack Layton during the NDP leadership, but I can't pretend to have really known him. But he was a single degree of seperation from so many people I know in the activist community, and his loss is felt deeply by those who knew him, as well as by those of us at a distance who watched his activism with admiration. Follow the link, and read the heartfelt tributes.