What is “The Spirit of Dumont” anyway? Some might say it is living a caring life, cooperating with others and helping facilitate positive change going forward. Perhaps this means constantly questioning conventional wisdom and applying critical thinking to everyday decisions and events. Certainly it will mean something different for everyone, both while involved with Dumont and afterwards. One variation on the theme follows:

One afternoon in a previous century, John Stafford paid a short visit to 53 Roy Street. This fine mansion, first erected by one of Kitchener’s entrepreneurs in an even earlier century, housed an ever-changing group of people and animals, with a large walk-in safe in the basement. One of the dogs barked at John, who quickly leapt back while exclaiming, horrified, “Even your dog is a social democrat”.

September, 1966: A young 17 year old, naive student started his career as an aspiring Electrical Engineer at UW, happy to be out on his own. It is extremely likely that he had never heard the phrase “social democrat”. The next several years followed the normal pattern of a co-op student. His first work term was with Power Corp. in Montreal followed by three more with the CBC, both highly regarded Canadian firms. The future seemed exciting.

September, 1971: Five years later, this same fellow was in the first group of people hired at Dumont Press Graphix. How did this happen? What could explain such a rapid decline from a promising, productive member of society, hopefully a faithful husband and good father to someone who understood that being a social democrat was an insult? What did the future hold now?

The decline started when he switched from Engineering to Sociology during the last half of his third year. It accelerated during the summer of 1970 living in the West Quad of Village 1 where Henry and Betsy Crapo were the dons. A gig as a turnkey in the Campus Centre introduced him to more strange people with strange ideas. Yippies, hippies, music and concerts, Black Panthers, communists, socialists, drinkers, smokers, tokers and general rabble rousers. Somehow this resulted in a move to a large house outside St. Agatha with 5 other people, including Brenda Wilson and Elaine Switzman. They knew other strange people, some of whom were busy setting up a workplace where everyone was both a worker and a boss. This sounded like a good way to work especially after his time spent at two Canadian mega-corps. Abandoning Sociology, he spent some time in the summer of 1971 hanging around and helping at Dumont, threw his hat in the ring and somehow was hired. Obviously the hiring process needed a lot of improvement but everyone involved was on a steep learning curve. That learning curve probably remained steep throughout the existence of Dumont. There are many stories about this in the “Life at the Shop” and “Workers’ Control” sections.

September, 1971: A small family of 2 moved from Ontario’s Big Smoke to the little smoke to further Mum’s education. They lived in Married Students’ Residence at UW and shared their apartment with several other students. At some point they moved to downtown Kitchener and eventually (mostly through the women who lived on Ahrens St), the Mum (and the Kid) became involved with the crowd in and around Dumont

September 1974. The Mum started working full time at Dumont while living on Roy St. Some Dumonters lived in the other half of the house along with some non-Dumonters (but fellow travellers). This continued for several years until the Mum left Dumont in December of 1979. She stayed somewhat involved, participating in the wind-up discussions of 1986 and ended up at a Waterloo copy and print shop. Some years went by, with various other jobs, during which she and her partner became actively involved in local politics.

At some point in those years he had become that partner. He had left Dumont in March, 1978, planted some trees and spent hours driving James Allen’s taxi. The lure of again being the boss as well as the worker resulted in taxi ownership and many more years behind the wheel. Gainfully employed, they were able to buy a house in downtown Kitchener, where they still live.

They became more involved with the NDP riding associations (both provincial and federal) and were members of the executive in many different capacities for several decades. Even though Waterloo Region is now home to 2 large universities and one large community college, it has been a very conservative area. The bank accounts of the Federal and Provincial riding associations combined was often under $100. After many elections and many learning experiences, they were happy when Kitchener finally elected a Black woman as their NDP MPP in 2018 (they resigned after she was elected in order to go out on a winning team!). Several months later, their ward councillor won her seat and joined a council with as many women and men (another campaign they worked on). Both women were recently re-elected and the next generation has hopefully taken over.

Since leaving Dumont those many years ago they have been involved with the majority of the Dumont reunions and kept in touch with many Dumont workers and allies. They feel their lives have not been very remarkable and they certainly didn’t live up to Gabe’s legacy of militancy. They tried to raise The Kid as best they could, occasionally with her cooperation. They tried to carry on the DIY spirit of Dumont by continuing to use the carpentry, cooking, electrical wiring, bookkeeping, communication and cooperation skills that were learned to keep the shop operating. Trying to tread lightly on the land resulted in efforts at gardening, composting, water conservation, etc. He still some 30 year old blue jeans that he hopes to fit into again. They have tried to be supportive of various Labour initiatives, strikes and marches as well as events like the Black Lives Matter demonstrations. They were and are involved in the Heritage planning for their downtown area, helping with the Neighbourhood Association and, most recently, fighting the greed of the many high rise condo developers overwhelming our cities.

They are now retired from gainful employment, still living in downtown Kitchener and involved in the Dumont web site and the Dumont Archives. Going forward they will no doubt keep involved with their community and their city. They recently delivered Christmas hampers to some people who need Christmas (or whatever) help because of no wages, low wages, or the rising cost of inflation. Take that Doug Ford!

What does all this have to do with The Spirit of Dumont? We’re not really sure. We may have ended up as fairly run of the mill, productive members of society with some sense of social injustice, for whatever good that has done. We have met many people doing the same things we do who didn’t work at Dumont. We are happy for such fellow travellers and hope for more from the future generations.

Many years ago a large group of progressive people organized and attended an event in Toronto called “Who’s Left”. One of the last speakers was Judy Rebick. She basically said that we were all relics of the past and her main hope for the future lay with our children. That is always the way.

However, what’s with man buns!?!

As for John Stafford, we would like to tell him (if we could) that we may not be social democrats but we are, at the very least, New Democrats! We are sure he would have been disappointed, but not surprised, had he known at the time that we had reached the pinnacle of our political development. As a committed believer in the CPC-ML he would have argued that NDPers were the true enemy. But perhaps they are only the best of a bad lot.