Peter Kormos, A Life-Long Fighter For Social Justice And The Little Guy, Dies At Age 60

By Doug Draper

He was a towering figure in the life of Niagara and Ontario – so much so that it is almost impossible to believe he, who was only 60 years old, is so suddenly gone.

Peter Kormos, at a citizens’ rally in St. Catharines in 2010, protesting police actions and mass arrests at the G20 Summit in Toronto. File Photo by Joanne McDonald.

Those of us who have followed the journey of Peter Kormos, from his early days as a student activist in the 1960s, through his years as a lawyer defending people he believed were getting a bad rap from the law, and his years as a free-spirited, fiery voice in municipal and provincial politics, knew over the past could of years that something was going terribly wrong with his health. But it was not something he cared to discuss, at least not publicly anyway.

When you phoned or crossed paths with him and began with a; ‘Hi Peter, how are you doing?’, he’d typically respond with his trademark; ‘Howdy’ and; ‘I’m doing just fine. Then it was on to the issues. Peter was not much for talking about himself. He always wanted to get on to the issues at hand.

That was the way of it right up to the end as I recall him standing up as a regional councillor for Welland as recently as a month or so ago, reminding his fellow councillors that while they consider what monetary compensation might be fair for councillors to receive for travel, or for sitting on other boards and agencies, etc., there are a lot of people out there who have seen their wages and jobs downsized or disappear completely, who might not care for such a discussion.

That was Peter, whether you liked him and the theatrics he often employed to draw attention to issues that were near and dear to his heart or you did not. He was always out there, at the rallies, on the picket line, in the provincial legislature or the council chambers, speaking out, first and foremost, for the concerns of ordinary working people, for people who lost their job and were struggling to find another one, for college and university students burdened with growing debt, and for older people struggling to pay their bills and keep their homes on a fixed income.

Remembering Peter, as I did, back in the days when we were both going to high school in his beloved hometown of Welland and he was already making a name for himself as a an activist, I could not help but think of him years later when I had an opportunity to interview Abbie Hoffman, one of the leading activists from the youth movement of the 1960s.

“I have a strong sense of heroes and villains, and I never wanted to be a villain,” Hoffman told me during that interview I did with him a few years before his death in 1989. “I was the kid who took on the schoolyard bullies. I’m still doing it. I don’t think I’ve ever changed much in that response. I still conceptualize the powers-that-be as bullies picking on the little people – misusing their power. We never left the schoolyard. It’s still recess and there are still bullies around.”

There was an awful lot of Peter in those words, I thought. He never stopped fighting schoolyard bullies either, whether they be the governments that unleashed riot police on thousands of non-violent demonstrators at the G20 Summit in Toronto three years ago this June, or the companies that tell their workers to accept wage cuts or they will close the plant gates and throw them out of a job.

Tragically, the bullies are still there and Peter is gone.

Through his life, Peter summoned his fellow citizens to get engaged, and to stand up for justice and fairness for the little guy – for everyday people who make up the 99% and are not making a killing off Bay Street and Wall Street.

As a lasting tribute to him, we can still answer his call.

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