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| (Photoshop dramatization - not Smith) |
Back in 1968 - one of the most politically volatile years in recent history - Smith would haul a bullhorn to the corner of De Maisonneuve and Mackay and present a case for revolution that he believed would improve the world.
Smith was well known-among student radicals and described by a friend of Coolopolis as "very handsome, classic features, big brown eyes, witty, ironic, soft spoken."
Smith - standing about 5'8" with long black hair - was a gifted orator and one of many street-preaching salesmen of a variety of popular-in-the-sixties radical political solutions of the Marxist, Troskyist, Maoist and Black Panther varieties.
"He had this sophisticated political rant. He was 23 and yet you would think that he had fought in the Russian Revolution."
Another acquaintance credits Smith with a "vibrant sense of humour and strong political instincts."
Smith was on the COMFRU, a committee for free university, where he fought for change.
Even those less-inclined to his views give him respect.
"He had delusions of grandeur about his own importance as a neo-Marxist theorist, although he once wrote an interesting review of Philip Roth's celebrated book Portnoy's Complaint in The Georgian," according to another.
After his university street preacher days, Smith went on welfare in Verdun and worked in an anti-poverty group in NDG. He gave a lot of thought and effort into helping Israel and Palestine get along and even worked on a novel concerning the issue.
He is heavy-set, bearded now and what's left of his hair has turned grey.
Smith still spends his days in the same area that he once touted revolution but no longer gives heady speeches and political sales pitches.