Later Life
Despite retiring from politics, Heap remained involved as an activist, strongly backing the anti-war movement, and supporting NDP candidates in the region. He also remained involved at the downtown Church of the Holy Trinity and social justice issues within the Anglican Church of Canada. In retirement, he prefers to go by the name "Don Heap", which he used before entering electoral politics in 1968. In the late 1980s, he and his wife Alice sold their family home in Toronto's Kensington Market area at a fraction of the market price to a community organisation which provides housing for refugees. The house had been a nexus for meetings and organizing among student activists around the anti-war, anti-apartheid and social housing movements from the 1960s to the 1980s with as many as a dozen young people staying with the Heap family at one time.
In his late seventies and early eighties he remained involved in various issues such as refugee rights. Heap co-founded the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee to campaign on the issue of homelessness.
Heap suffered a heart attack in 2005 and was also diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease in 2006. In 2011, he and his wife faced eviction from their retirement home as they await admission to a long-term care facility, for which they have been on a waiting list for five years. In October 2011, Heap was admitted to the Kensington Gardens facility and his wife Alice got a spot there later that month. Alice Heap, his wife of 61 years, died due to complications from pneumonia on March 24, 2012 at the age of 86.
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