Avi Lewis sees his role as part of a rising progressive group of politicians. The challenge before us is epic. But in the cataclysmic times we are living in, anything is possible, even reforming the NDP. Just like the Waffle emerged in the tumultuous 1960s, so a new feminist, anti-racist, eco-socialist movement can emerge today inside the NDP. That is my hope and I know that Avi will be part of making it happen.

Singh went from being written off completely by the mainstream media—due in no small part to tacit racism and the ‘soft bigotry of low expectations’—to being the person many Canadians believed would make the best prime minister. This is no easy task, particularly for a brown man with a turban in a country where the majority believe the federal government should limit or reduce the number of immigrants it accepts.

Electoral politics create the feeling of a horse race. I remember running for the NDP in the 1980s in a riding I couldn’t possibly win. I didn’t even want to win but two weeks before the election I started thinking it was a possibility. And today I starting thinking maybe the NDP could take it.

Those of us who have been fighting for social justice all our lives now have an opportunity to create a new vision of a just and caring society. A society where caring for each other, the land and the creatures that share it with us is a powerful transformative idea that can appeal to a majority of people around the world.

Svend Robinson: A Life in Politics ( Nww Star Books, 2013) is both a tribute to a true Canadian hero and a reminder that once, not so long ago, an individual could make a difference in politics.

When Jack Layton, newly minted Leader of the Opposition in Canada’s parliament, died on August 22, even politically indifferent Canadians took serious notice. Here was a political death that could dramatically affect the country’s future. What might the actual impact of Layton’s loss be, not just on the federal political landscape, but on the New Democratic Party, on Québec, and the “larger Left” in general? We asked observers on the front line to consider those questions.