RCAF pilot, inventor, husband, great-grandfather, man of ideas. Born May 10, 1920, in Sherbrooke, Que., died March 13, 2012, in Ottawa of natural causes, aged 91.
I remember O.D. sitting in his comfortable, west-end Ottawa home, CBC Radio on his headset, books stacked around him – everything from Jung to Stephen Hawking.
He was a thinker, was Owen Donald Lewis, and his was the world of ideas. Even though he couldn't walk by the end, he still ranged the planet, indeed the cosmos.
"When I'm dead," he quipped one day, "I want you to send my ashes into outer space … it'll be my 'orbituary.'"
When the Second World War broke out, O.D. was hell-bent on making pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force. Photographs show a tall youngster of 19 with a steady gaze, slim as a blade of grass. Not the look of someone ready for war. But O.D. made it.
In 2009, CBC Radio chronicled his odyssey in a moving tribute by his daughter, Ideas producer Jane Lewis, called My Father's Story.
Shot down by the Luftwaffe, badly hurt, O.D. convinced a German doctor not to "saw off" his leg. Later, confined to a PoW camp, he read the only book available – the Bible – three times over, though he remained a confirmed atheist. "Great read," he said.
O.D. was barely 94 pounds at war's end, but resilient enough to make it to the side of his childhood sweetheart, Joyce Ford, a gorgeous Navy Wren decoder. They would be married for 64 years.
In 1949, O.D. landed a job at the hectic Ottawa Post Office, where tidal waves of mail were sweeping in. He had an idea. Inspired by the new electronics, he envisaged a machine that could read a printed code, and by 1957 had made it happen. The Electrical Sortation Machine was a marvel of its day; it put Canada on the world map.
O.D.'s next target was the cigarette. He joined the Department of Health, becoming a national health activist. Again he had an idea. He would not target smokers; he would target the smoke itself. It was an ingenious concept, and largely why Canadians today enjoy smoke-free spaces.
Meanwhile, at home, Joyce was the loving, elegant, ever-giving centre of his life and that of their seven daughters, while O.D. was the caring but rigorous dad, urging the girls to find and realize their talents. He was also a surrogate dad to many, and all were welcome at the Lewis home, where Joyce served them freshly baked scones and pots and pots of English tea.
O.D lived a passionate life of the mind to the end. He read voraciously. He loved an argument. He kept his sense of humour.
"Why, yer just as ugly as ever," he'd grin when I came to visit, and I took that as a great compliment. I wanted to return it, along with the many books he gave me. I'm sending them to outer space, O.D. Enjoy.
Jonina Wood is Owen's friend.