Avi Lewis

Documentary filmmaker and broadcaster Avi Lewis has made a career of advocating for social justice and environmentalism through the media. In the early 1990s, he hosted City TV’s landmark music journalism show, The New Music, and later hosted CBC’s live, nightly political debate show, Counterspin. When he moved to Al Jazeera USA, he hosted a biweekly show on U.S .politics and a weekly series examining the issues behind the U.S. presidential election. His first independent feature documentary, The Take, tells the story of Argentinian workers who struggle to take over an abandoned factory and save their livelihoods. It premiered at the Venice Biennale and won the International Jury Prize at the American Film Institute Festival.

He is co-founder of The Working World, a capital fund that makes microloans to worker co-operatives, and a board member of the Jackman Humanities Institute at the U of T and the Council of Patrons of the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture. His parents, Stephen Lewis (1959 UC) and Michele Landsberg-Lewis (BA 1962 UC), and his sister Ilana Landsberg-Lewis (BA 1988 UC), have all been honoured as UC Alumni of Influence.