Early Life
From a middle-class Winnipeg family, Heap attended the elite Upper Canada College on a scholarship, and then Queen's University and University of Chicago. He became an Anglican, studied divinity at McGill University and turned to socialism as a member of the Society of the Catholic Commonwealth, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and the Student Christian Movement.
While at McGill he met Alice Boomhour, a pacifist, activist in the SCM and CCF, and daughter of a United Church minister. They married in 1950. That same year, he was ordained a priest within the Anglican Church of Canada.
After working as a parish priest for only a few years, Heap's longest-held job (18 years) was as a labourer (pressman) in a cardboard box factory in Toronto, where he became involved in the paperworkers union (now the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada) and attempted to “bring socialism to the Canadian worker.” The Heaps were renowned for their help in the community.
Read more about this topic: Dan Heap
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