Long-time NDP supporter, labour leader and community activist Wilf McIntyre died of heart disease earlier this month.
McIntyre, 69, had been involved with local election campaigns and helped collect signatures against the former harmonized sales tax.
McIntyre also led the formation of a Block Watch group for his neighbourhood and helped keep the kids safe by getting a crosswalk light installed at 240th Street and Hill Avenue, near Albion elementary.
McIntyre was also a past president of the IWA of Northern Ontario and the Port Arthur Labour Association in Thunder Bay, Ont. In his latter years, he was a Maple Ridge resident.
“There was an NDP sign on my lawn, no matter what I thought,” said his wife, Aline.
He also was involved in union bargaining and told his wife the side who lost was the side that blinked first.
Aline said her husband went into Ridge Meadows Hospital in early February and had been delayed twice for an angiogram. Doctors eventually found two heart valves 70 per cent blocked and put in stents.
But in March, those also became blocked. He was then put into a medically induced coma, but never recovered and died on March 12.
In 2011, McIntyre, helped current Maple Ridge Coun. Corisa Bell collect signatures in the unsuccessful Done with Dalton campaign, aimed at recalling Maple Ridge-Mission MLA Marc Dalton for supporting the harmonized sales tax.
A later anti-HST campaign forced a referendum, which defeated the tax and forced the provincial government to revert to the provincial sales tax and the federal goods and services tax.
In addition, he encouraged Maple Ridge Mayor Nicole Read to run in the November 2014 election and helped out on her campaign.
“Such a good person. It’s a devastating loss,” Read said.
“Wilf was an incredibly solid foundation and the loss is felt pretty profoundly by our family. I think, as a community, we’ve lost someone.”
It happened unexpectedly because everybody thought he was going to be fine, she added.