Note: George Hislop ran for Toronto City Council in 1980 as the first openly gay candidate but he was not elected and did not serve on city council, as was incorrectly stated in the article below.
Allan Sparrow, the wild-haired impassioned activist and city politician who helped stop the Spadina Expressway construction in the early 1970s and more recently opposed the bridge to the island airport, has died at 63.
He died Wednesday at London Health Sciences Centre of colorectal cancer.
He and his wife Sue Sparrow and their partner Marc Brien had moved early last year from Toronto Island to Stratford, Ont.
A three-term city councillor from 1974 to 1980, Sparrow was a "tireless crusader who believed passionately in everything he did," Mayor David Miller said yesterday.
Both as an activist and alderman, Sparrow was committed "to building a great and livable city," the mayor said in a statement.
Sparrow joined activists such as Jane Jacobs, John Sewell and David Crombie in the campaign to stop the province from razing homes for a Spadina Expressway. On council, he was "a very strong representative of the downtown area," said former mayor Sewell.
Sparrow was also a tireless campaigner for the gay community. He gave up his aldermanic seat to make way for George Hislop, Toronto's first openly gay council member.
As an outspoken critic of Toronto police, Sparrow created the Citizens Independent Review of Police Activities to make the force more accountable to the community.
He also started the City Cycling Committee while at city hall and helped create new planning guidelines to put controls on what he called "rapacious blockbusting development."
After leaving council, Sparrow started the Domicity information technology consultancy. For many years he acted for the federal government to attract IT investment to this country, leading missions to the Silicon Valley, Korea and Japan.
A few years ago he returned to the political fray as an organizer of Community AIR, a group dedicated to shutting down the island airport. He's quoted on the group's website as saying an expanded airport would be "a disaster for the city of Toronto and its plans to create a clean, green Waterfront."
Councillor Adam Vaughan said yesterday Sparrow was a "master tactician" and a "real downtown activist" who kept "two steps ahead of everybody."
He was a "troublemaker in the finest tradition of troublemaker," Vaughan said. "He was as effective as entertaining ... He had hair as wild as anybody in the 1970s. He was a hippie. He was like Sewell, an extraordinary community activist."
Ex-councillors who recalled him fondly yesterday were NDP Leader Jack Layton and MP Olivia Chow.
In a joint statement, they called him "a good friend, mentor and leader" who inspired a generation of reform-minded activists.
Sparrow was born in Vancouver and was a self-described "air force brat" who grew up on military bases across Canada.
He settled in Toronto in 1967 after he and his new wife Sue spent a year travelling to Australia.
