Indigenous leader Joe Hester built an innovative urban health facility

Joe Hester devoted much of his life to Anishnawbe Health Toronto (AHT), believing that culturally informed health care was a fundamental right and could even be a form of reconciliation.

For more than two decades, he and his team worked to secure land, raise funds and grapple with regulatory hurdles to build a 45,000-square-foot home for the organization.

The facility opened in June, 2024, and was purpose-built to integrate Western medicine and Indigenous healing; it includes a sweat lodge and ceremonial space, and is adorned with Indigenous art.

“It’s a huge, huge achievement,” says Cynthia Wilkey, co-chair of the city’s now-disbanded West Don Lands Committee, which worked closely with Mr. Hester and AHT on the project. “He had to, in addition to being the executive director of a health centre, become a developer, and it was a long road.”

“It was his vision. And a really big vision,” Ms. Wilkey says of the new facility. “He built up AHT bit by bit, with the goal of ensuring that the community was served, ensuring traditional healing was incorporated and respected. I think it is unique in Canada in what it is and where it’s going,” she says.

Mr. Hester’s daughter, Springwater Hester-Meawassige, admired her father’s approach. “He had this incredible vision of having this large building for Anishnawbe Health. He wasn’t driven by ego. He was driven by a love of his people. He really believed we are deserving of good things.”

Mr. Hester died on Jan. 31 of complications related to bladder cancer. He was 77.

Through the lengthy process of developing the site, Mr. Hester held firm to his values, which prioritized Indigenous sovereignty.

“He was always saying, ‘This is our house, and you’re not going to tell us how to run it,’” says Leslie Saunders, a case manager at AHT who worked with Mr. Hester for more than a decade.

AHT offers services such as chiropody, mental health support and diabetes care, plus it helps people find housing and trains community health workers. Its new facility is part of a larger Indigenous hub, which is still under construction and will occupy a city block in the southeast corner of the city’s downtown core. It will include a building to house the employment and training organization Miziwe Biik, plus housing, including rental units, some of which will be earmarked for Indigenous residents.

Mr. Hester worked with AHT for decades and became its executive director in the 1990s. The organization grew under his tenure and once had three sites across the city. Its operations amalgamated at the new location when it opened.

In the spring of 2020, Mr. Hester moved quickly to get AHT out into the community with mobile units offering COVID-19 testing. (AHT has continued offering mobile health care through its small fleet of vans.)

When vaccines for the coronavirus first arrived, Mr. Hester advocated at the provincial level for a rollout that offered Indigenous people access at a younger age than the general population, arguing that their risks of infection and poor outcomes were higher. Later, AHT itself administered vaccines. “We had people lined up down the street and around the corner regularly while we were vaccinating,” Ms. Saunders says.

Mr. Hester’s advocacy included efforts in the 1990s related to the federal government offloading of funding for labour market programs to First Nations, Métis and Inuit groups. The plan only included people affiliated with reserves, excluding many living in urban areas, even though a significant proportion of the Indigenous people in Toronto and other cities and towns had never lived on a reserve, including Mr. Hester himself.

To raise awareness, in June, 1999, he helped organize a walking protest up the Gardiner Expressway during morning rush hour that culminated in a rally at Queen’s Park. The march was treated as confrontational by the police at the start.

“Joe was one of the courageous people on the front line. Joe was not a big guy. We had mostly large, big men at the front of the line to take the heat, and Joe was among them. He was totally fearless,” says Christopher Reid, an Indigenous lawyer who knew Mr. Hester well and worked with AHT.

“He was not a big guy, but he was a giant,” Mr. Reid says.

Mr. Hester always stayed calm, says Mr. Reid, who never saw him lose his temper. During that protest, he was key in de-escalating hostilities; the police ended up acknowledging that the march was peaceful, and served as escorts to ensure safety.

The protest led to a meeting with Mel Lastman, Toronto’s mayor at the time. A subsequent lawsuit resulted in off-reserve Indigenous people receiving a share of funding for labour market programs.

Mr. Hester helped validate that the urban population of Indigenous people in Toronto constitutes a community, and he did his part to foster collaborative leadership in that community.

“Joe was instrumental in keeping the various service organizations working together on common goals,” Mr. Reid says. That included being part of a team that drafted Toronto’s first Indigenous health strategy, in 2016.

Joseph Colin Hester (spirit name Ayimuu Macheshuu, or “talking fox”) was born on April 3, 1947, in South Porcupine, which is now part of Timmins, Ont. His parents, Bert and Daisy Hester (née Small), were originally from the Cree Nation of Waskaganish in northern Quebec. There were four boys, Gilbert, Joe, David and George.

Joe worked for a time on the railroad in Alberta along with his brothers and their father. He briefly trained to be an electrician, and then did some undergraduate studies at the University of Lethbridge.

He moved to Toronto, working in Indigenous organizations, and relocated to St. Catharines, Ont., in the 1970s, serving as executive director for the Niagara Regional Native Centre. There, he established a bricks-and-mortar location for the organization that opened in 1983 and still stands in Niagara-on-the-Lake.

Mr. Hester returned to Toronto, joined AHT and became acting executive director in 1997, taking on the title formally in 1998. He stayed in that role until his death.

He supported his community at the leadership level, but one-on-one, too. “At his funeral service, people were coming up to me, time and time again, people I had never laid eyes on, saying that he was their mentor,” Ms. Hester-Meawassige says.

He was known for his calm, non-judgmental manner. His daughter would go to him first when she had something to confess as a child or teen. Her own young adult daughter would make weekly trips to Starbucks with her grandfather and confide in him.

Ms. Hester-Meawassige says her father devoted his life to serving his community out of a family-like love. “I can’t stress enough the love he had for his people. You know the things we do for a mom or dad or grandma or grandpa; the things we do for the people we love. A lot. Move mountains.”

Mr. Hester leaves his two younger brothers; children, Springwater, Paydahbin, Jon and Geri Lyn; and granddaughter, Waasnoode.

You can find more obituaries from The Globe and Mail here.

To submit a memory about someone we have recently profiled on the Obituaries page, e-mail us at obit@globeandmail.com.