John Alan Lee
John Alan Lee (August 24, 1933 – December 5, 2013) was a Canadian writer, academic and political activist, best known as an early advocate for LGBT rights in Canada, for his academic research into sociological and psychological aspects of love and sexuality, and for his later-life advocacy of assisted suicide and the right to die. Early life Born in Maxville, Ontario in 1933, he grew up as a ward of the provincial Children's Aid Society after his father abandoned the family and his mother was financially and emotionally unable to care for Lee and his brother David on her own as a single mother. He was a factory worker and trade unionist in his youth, and ran as a Cooperative Commonwealth Federation candidate in the electoral district of Broadview in the 1958 election. Education and academic career He completed an undergraduate degree in sociology at the University of Toronto in 1956, and earned a Ph.D. from the University of Sussex in 1971. He then joined the University of Toronto as a faculty member in 1971. In the same year, his book Test Pattern: Instructional Television at Scarborough College, University of Toronto was published by the University of Toronto Press, a