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Workers lose a dear friend....

Susan Meurer, poet, playwright, author, health and safety activist, labour adjustment specialist – a true renaissance woman in the world of social justice – died in Toronto on March 3, after a nine-year struggle with the aftermath of a stroke.

Born in the United States, Susan came to Canada with her husband, following a year at two universities in Germany, which she attended on a Fulbright Fellowship. They settled in Toronto but, after the arrival of her three children, she became a single parent in the mid-1970s. From there Susan began her activist journey, some of which paid the bills but most of which was more about her commitment to working people, their rights and their voice through politics and culture.

Her 1988 play, Shadowboxers, chronicled the shutdown of a Toronto Goodyear plant, the beginning of the de-industrialization of Canada’s largest city. The play, which featured the audience playing a role as union members at a local meeting, was eventually sold to the CBC and produced as a radio play.

That was followed by collaboration with historian David Sobel on Working At Inglis. The book is an absorbing and detailed account of the life and death of a Canadian factory that closed in late 1989 after 100 years of operation. Working At Inglis is primarily about people, their lives, their struggles, their relationships with their fellow workers, all in the context of a workplace that supported generations of families. Most those families were connected with Local 2900, the active and rebellious Steelworkers’ local union that was also the first union home of Steelworkers’ former International President, Lynn Williams.

In addition to the children she raised and nurtured, Susan Meurer sought ‘family’ in all of her work, including occupational health and safety and First Nations poverty.

“I had the honour to work with Susan on the Miners History Project and through my work at HighGrader Magazine,” says NDP Member of Parliament Charlie Angus. “She taught me a beautiful expression, ‘barefoot epidemiology’, which is that the only way to truly develop a coherent picture of the impacts of industrial exposures on health is to be active with community and family members. This community knowledge held the key for determining cancer sources in mining communities.”

In the early days of working with computers, Susan became an expert on the effects of using those big, radiation-filled video display terminals (VDTs).

“She was the backbone of the VDT health and safety committee of the Toronto Labour Council,” says former colleague Bob DiMatteo. “She edited our VDT newsletter that had world-wide circulation. Like all other endeavors in Susan’s life she was tireless and selfless in making this project work.”

Unemployed workers also got the ‘Susan Meurer’ treatment in her work on labour adjustment.

“Susan was key to getting the Job Action Centre at Cecil Street up and running,” says United Steelworkers Toronto Area Coordinator Stuart Deans. “I was privileged to have worked with her in developing the concept and obtaining the funding despite a very reluctant government.”

“Susan was an adjustment adviser with me,” says Bill Thompson, now with Environmental Defence. “She was the ‘anti-bureaucrat’ who got things done even if they made the establishment nervous. I recall a manager whining after being bested in an argument with Susan that he would ‘never hire a social activist again!’”

Susan Meurer’s great friend Carrie Chenier points out that Susan was also ahead of her time as an environmentalist. When her Toronto neighbours complained to City Hall that Susan was refusing to keep her front yard trimmed and covered with the usual grassy lawn, Susan fought back and won the right to grow native plants and maintain what trendy gardeners now call “natural gardening”.

The world needs more Susan Meurers. She is survived by her three children, Nadia, Jennifer and David, and several grandchildren.