The Crossroads of Canada

There’s a bas-relief portrait of Joe Zuken on a plaque outside the exercise studio in the Wellness Institute, a rehabilitation-­fitness centre attached to the Seven Oaks General Hospital in the north Winnipeg neighbourhood of Garden City.

The bespectacled face of the lawyer, long-time school trustee, and city councillor — the longest-­serving Communist Party politician in North America — is a reminder of his commitment to strengthening his community by empowering all its members. He worked to give them the tools they required to improve their lives, valuing personal agency over charity.

Zuken did much more than lobby the municipal and provincial governments to build a hospital in the underserved neighbourhood, which sprawls even further north than what’s familiarly known as the North End, an area bounded by the Canadian Pacific rail yards to the south and Inkster Boulevard to the north. In the years before “holistic wellness” became a popular concept, he...