Hamilton marijuana activist, political candidate Michael Baldasaro dies in hospice
http://www.thespec.com/news-story/67...es-in-hospice/
Michael Baldasaro, a longtime marijuana activist and perennial candidate for office, has died in a Hamilton hospice after a short battle with cancer.
Baldasaro, a Church of the Universe minister, died early Thursday morning, church member Rev. Juliet Boyd told The Spectator. He was 67.
"It was very quick," said Boyd, noting Baldasaro had died of prostate cancer that had spread throughout his body.
He leaves behind an uncle, sisters in Ohio and his son, Aaron, who lives in Vancouver.
"And all the church members who adored him," Boyd added.
Baldasaro, who'd only been in hospice for about week, made it his mission to help those who were ignored by others, she said.
"He bothered with the people nobody else bothered with."
Baldasaro, who ran for the Marijuana Party, sought office at there levels of government in Hamilton since 1984.
He ran for mayor in 2014.
"I'm the common guy," Baldasaro told The Spectator. "It's about time we had someone who knows reality."
He wanted to term limits for the mayoral office and pushed for lower city councillor salaries.
"I'll take half off the mayor's pay," he promised. "I'm encouraging all councillors to do the same thing."
Baldasaro also advocated for the well-being of drug users, sex workers and the homeless.
"They shouldn't be in jails. They need help. The police have better things to do than go after these people."
Church member Karen Coruzzi said Baldasaro gave her a new lease on life after helping her get off the streets and hard drugs 25 years ago.
"He taught me to love myself," she said. "He's a great man.
In 2014, he also ran federally for the Marijuana Party in Hamilton Centre.
"He truly believed he could make a difference. That's why he kept running," Boyd said.
Born in 1949, Baldasaro noted in a 2006 candidate profile that he'd been a general contractor, operating engineer, professor, human rights activist and "aspiring servant to my fellow human beings all my life."
He went to Delta Secondary and studied at Universe University.
Baldasaro was longtime minister in the Church of the Universe, which was founded in the 1960s by Walter Tucker, who died of heart failure at 79 in 2012.
In 2011, the church lost a federal court bid to become exempt from Canada's marijuana laws.
In 2007, Baldasaro and Tucker were sentenced to two years and 12 months each. They also lost their Barton Street church because it was deemed an "offence-related property."
"People will not stop smoking pot even if we did," Baldasaro said after the failed appeal. "I ain't leading anybody. Rev. Tucker and I are just fighting for our religious rights. It's not like I'm building guns and selling them on the street."
Boyd said Baldasaro had been annoyed that the Trudeau government's route to relaxed marijuana laws was turning the "holy sacrament" into a corporate commodity.
"It's big business now, and that, I think, was his biggest beef with this."
Baldasaro didn't want a funeral, Boyd said, but the church plans to hold a memorial event for him in the next few months.
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