On June 30 of this year, our world lost a great fighter for social justice. James Elliot Potts passed away at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto at the age of 93. Knowing him for almost a decade changed forever the way I look at politics, economics and the world.

I first met Jim in the summer of 1995 at the United Nations Association in Canada (Toronto Branch), a not-for-profit organization that engages the public in the work of the UN. He hired me as a part-time fundraiser and organizer, my first work experience that didn’t include a cash register or a gas pump. I was only 20 years of age at the time, and with Jim taking me under his wing, I learned more about the world of political economy that one summer than I did from two years at university. More so, Jim educated me on the issues that were constantly being ignored by the corporate media — global hunger, poverty, inequality and the brutal conflict that was then taking place in Rwanda.

Jim’s beliefs were always ahead of their time. He introduced me to COMER (Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform), a Keynesian economic think tank that warned of the dangerous policies of neo-liberalism (such as zero inflation, high interest rates and corporate-managed trade). During the ideological rampage of the New Right during the mid-1990s, the idea of establishing fair trading agreements, lowering interest rates and increasing social expenditures to create jobs was practically a thought crime.

Yet ten years later, no one outside of the boardroom of the Bank of Canada or the Fraser Institute believes in the viability of high interest rates or zero inflation anymore, and during the last federal election, none other than Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper campaigned on (or, more realistically, pretended to care about) increasing expenditures on health care and other important social programs.

Jim would always enjoy telling me about his early years throughout Canada during the 1930s and 1940s. At the age of only 19 he played football for the Toronto Argonauts. Later, while attending the University of Western Ontario, he organized the first Youth Club of the CCF (Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, the forerunner of the New Democratic Party) in 1934, incurring the snide remarks of members of the established Liberal and Conservative Youth Clubs on campus. Jim laughed about how he and his fellow CCFers were labelled “communists,” the same insult I received as a member of the University of Toronto NDP Youth Club in the late 1990s. Funny how some things never seem to change.

Jim also worked as a physical education instructor at the Mimico Correctional Centre for Boys, where conditions were unbearable for the young men. As Jim once wrote, “If one of them ran away, he would be brought back and taken to the gymnasium, where he would take off this clothes, be tied to the leather exercise horse, and strapped. He would then be placed in solitary confinement for up to three weeks and given a bare minimum of food and water.” When Jim protested these conditions, it cost him his job. After an inquiry, however, Jim was reinstated weeks later by a new person who was put in charge of the correctional centre.

This was just one example of personal struggle that was to define the life of Jim Potts. Throughout the Great Depression, one could see him standing on soap boxes on Yonge Street in downtown Toronto warning about the growing threat of Fascism in Europe. Some of Jim’s friends volunteered on the front lines in Spain, fighting for socialism and democracy against Franco’s armies. They believed that if Fascism could be stopped there, it could create a tidal wave of resistance against the extreme Right throughout Europe, preventing what was to be a world war. Of course, these warnings about Fascism from the Left were ignored by the ruling corporate elite, and it was only later that the world had to pay such a heavy price of their negligence.

After Jim attained his Masters Degree in 1938, he left for Quebec to work in the East Malartic Gold Mines for the purpose of starting a union. His efforts to organize failed, and Jim was later fired for his activities. The working conditions of the miners were appalling. Jim once wrote about his experiences there, “I will never forget coming up from the underground everyday after my shift. Five hundred or more unemployed people, desperate for work, would wait to see if one of us was too sick or injured to continue working for the company, hoping that they could take one of our jobs.”

Of course, this was at a time before the creation of the modern welfare state. It was a form of free market capitalism that young people in Canada today thankfully don’t have to tolerate, largely due to the efforts of Jim Potts and millions of others of his generation. Throughout the post-war era, Jim continued his struggle for social justice, working with Aboriginal peoples in Eastern Canada, the poor in Central America and was an active member of Amnesty International, while at the same time raising a family with his wife of more than 50 years, Betty Potts.

Until his final days, Jim warned me about the return of neo-liberal economics during the last quarter of the 20th century. As he stated in 1998, “Recent events in stock markets throughout the world are warning us that we may see yet another devastating world-wide depression. And I am afraid that some of the circumstances I had to face sixty years ago will, once again, haunt the lives of millions of youth across Canada in the very near future.”

Although ever an optimist, he believed that through a proper understanding of the issues, young people could win against even the most overwhelming odds. He always liked to tell me that he was passing on the torch to a new generation of young people to continue the struggle for a more free and equitable world. And without dictating cliché, it is up to youth, along with working people and their allies in the social justice movements, to continue the work that such people as Jim started so long ago.

Jim Potts was a person I was very fortunate to meet — and will never forget. He will be sorely missed by his son David Potts, daughter Catherine Potts and his sisters, Margaret Mitchell and Bernice Troost. Throughout all of North America, Jim will be remembered by many friends and relatives for his kindness, intelligence and generosity.