Michael Newman, former publisher of the Oliver Chronicle, died February 23, aged 68, after his battle with pancreatic cancer. He will be remembered for his many contributions to the Oliver community and for his generosity, kindness and mentorship. He leaves a legacy of commitment to sustainable development, social justice and to leaving the world a better place. His family and many friends will also remember his cooking and love of good food and wine, his skills as a wit and raconteur, his quiet sense of humour, and his urbane outlook on the world.
A life of adventure and dedication
Michael, the eldest of three children, was born in Vancouver to Jack and Una Newman. He grew up in a home of modern design, a member of a family that instilled a dedication to social justice, books, science, music and nonconformity. Growing up, he was always looking for the next adventure and, identifying with Christopher Robin (his parents faithfully read the Winnie the Pooh books to all their children), spent much time in his own Hundred Acre Wood, the “bush,” an extensive woody and urban wilderness area behind the family home in north Burnaby. Throughout his life, he carried with him an activist spirit, questioning the status quo and challenging it when he felt it necessary.
After graduating from high school in 1962, Michael went to the University of British Columbia. But in that socially turbulent era of civil rights and peace movements, Michael found university life constricting and, after a year, he left for Montreal. From there he joined the Committee for Non-Violent Action’s 2800-mile Quebec – Washington – Guantanamo Walk for Peace.
In January 1964, the marchers were stopped and arrested in Albany, Georgia. Here he came face to face with out-and-out racism. Michael spent a month in jail from which he wrote a letter to his parents on jailhouse toilet paper telling stories of work gangs and cattle prods but also, as he would say later with a typically wry smile, the best grits he ever tasted.
Michael returned to Montreal and worked in the library of Sir George Williams University (where he also returned to his university studies) and met his first wife, Serena, a gifted visual artist. He moved back to Vancouver with her in 1968 but the marriage did not last.
Returning to Montreal, Michael was working at McGill University library when he met his second wife, Ildiko. They fulfilled a dream of farming and living off the land in the Kootenays. Their son, Gabriel, was born in 1972 to be joined in 1977 by their daughter, Rachel.
Soon after, his parents retired to the same area to enjoy a similar lifestyle. Like his father, Michael had an innate sense of how machinery worked and during this time learned from him many workshop skills.
His family’s collective dreams were rudely interrupted by a BC Hydro dam whose impact unexpectedly made their properties geologically unstable. BC Hydro compensated both Michael’s family and his parents. While his parents relocated to Summerland, Michael, Ildiko and the two children settled in Oliver where he purchased an orchard south of town in 1980.
A life involved with the local community
As an orchardist for six years, Michael became very involved in the Oliver community. He became a board member of the growers’ association and the concert society as well as a rural director and trustee for the irrigation district.
It was during his time as an orchardist that he became deeply involved in community development in Central America. There his knowledge of small-scale agriculture was useful for monitoring local projects in the villages of Honduras and Guatemala.
In 1989 Michael was part of a small group that founded World Neighbours Canada, which raised money for development projects around the world. Michael’s focus throughout his 23-year participation was to oversee projects among the most impoverished people in Central America. Some of Michael’s proudest moments were in the rural villages of Honduras and Guatemala that he visited regularly and where this model of community learning was successfully implemented.
In 1986, Michael began his career as a newspaperman, buying the Oliver Chronicle from Don Somerville. Given his entrepreneurial flair and instinct for community development, the paper flourished. In a time when local small town newspapers were disappearing into corporate chains, the Chronicle, to the enormous benefit of its readers and the town, remained stubbornly independent. In recognition of his excellence as a publisher, Michael was chosen by his peers to serve on the British Columbia Press Council for many years. He sold the paper in 2008.
He met his wife Celia at a World Neighbours workshop in Seattle. They shared an interest in progressive causes and sustainable development. Celia moved to Oliver from the Seattle area, and married Michael in 1991. Celia’s children, Jeanna and Matthew, became part of his family and frequently came to Oliver to visit and join holiday celebrations.
For the past 22 years Michael and Celia have supported each other’s social and community projects while enjoying shared interests in gardening, birding, travel, movies, books, and what Michael would call “puttering around the yard.”
With Michael’s encouragement, Celia helped to transform Triangle Park into a garden with pathways and benches. And when Celia bemoaned the lack of foreign films available in Oliver, Michael told her she could have any movie she wanted, provided she find a way to bring them to the community. Celia took his cue, and in cooperation with the Oliver Theatre, started the Oliver Film Club. Many may remember Michael as the ticket-taker on film club nights. In 1999, Michael helped create a camp near Covert Farms to provide the many young people who came to pick fruit with a place to live for the summer.
Michael had a keen interest in local history and for a period in the 1980s was the town’s volunteer archivist. In 2010, he was elected chairman of the Oliver and District Heritage Society where he oversaw major changes and a thorough renovation of the Oliver museum. Under his leadership the society was revitalized and the board and staff began a bold new direction of community engagement.
Michael dove into local politics soon after arriving in Oliver when he was elected rural director in 1984. He served on the local health authority in the early 1990s before it was merged into a larger entity. After retiring from the Chronicle, he was elected to Oliver town council on which he served one term, 2008-2011. During this time he spearheaded the move to rename Oliver’s streets for meaningful local historical and cultural features instead of the previous cumbersome and confusing numbering system.
Michael was an active participant in the Oliver Rotary Club where he was a member for 22 years and a charter member of Osoyoos Rotary Club. He and Celia welcomed to their home Rotary exchange students from Australia, Finland, South America and Honduras.
In January, when Michael first faced the diagnosis of advanced pancreatic cancer, he immediately donated the funds needed for a World Neighbours project benefitting the Maya Chorti women along the Guatemalan-Honduran border (to encourage healthier living and sustainable farming).
A life in a ‘hundred acre wood’
Looking forward to an active retirement, Michael built a cabin on land near Tonasket, Washington, which he and Celia visited almost every week to enjoy a quiet, peaceful time together and with family and friends. The land provided another version of his Christopher Robin dream as he could now take on adventures that drew on the skills he had learned from his father and the earlier periods on the Pend d’Oreille and the Oliver orchard.
He cleared brush and snow with his tractor, cut down trees, pulled stumps, chopped wood, enjoyed watching wildlife, checked fences, and chatted to neighbours.
Michael started feeling unwell last summer. Initially diagnosed with diabetes, he, in his usual cheerful way, thought he had things under control and was starting to enjoy life again, treasuring his time at the cabin and cooking meals for friends.
In January, he discovered that he had advanced pancreatic cancer. Nonetheless he maintained as active a life as he could. From his bed he e-mailed and texted friends here and abroad. He ensured that his favourite causes, World Neighbours Canada and the Oliver and District Heritage Society, had succession plans in place. While he was able, he enjoyed chatting with friends when they came to visit. He died at home as he wished, surrounded by family.
Michael is survived by his wife, Celia; son, Gabriel, daughter-in-law, Lia, grandchildren, Lucas and Ella, and his daughter, Rachel, all of Vernon; stepdaughter, Jeanna and her husband, Austin, and stepson, Matthew, all of the Seattle area; brother, Denis, of Palo Alto, California and sister, Wendy, of Oliver; nephew and nieces, Reed of Del Mar, California, Alissa of Brooklyn, New York, and Rosa of Vancouver.
A celebration of Michael’s life will be held at Oliver Alliance Church at 2 pm on Saturday, March 16, followed by a gathering at Medici’s Gelateria.
Michael’s family requests that those who wish to remember him with a donation, give to World Neighbours Canada, Box 1771, Oliver, BC V0H 1T0 or through its website, http://worldneighbours.ca/
