Note: Dr. Michael Klein was the father-in-law of federal NDP Leader Avi Lewis (married to his daughter, author and activist Naomi Klein) and the father of author and climate organizer Seth Klein. This Globe and Mail obituary is preserved here as immediate family context to the leadership transition.
Dr. Michael Klein, described by the Globe as a “renegade” and self-described “dissident doctor,” died on June 10, 2026, in Roberts Creek, B.C. Over more than half a century he fought to reduce the overuse of invasive childbirth procedures such as episiotomies and cesarean sections, and championed the role of midwives and doulas.
Born in Los Angeles in 1938 to a socialist, secular Jewish family — his father a Disney cartoonist blacklisted during the McCarthy era for organizing a union drive — Klein trained at Stanford and first came to Canada in 1967 as a Vietnam War deserter, returning in 1975 to work in the public health care system. His 1984 clinical trial demonstrating the harms of routine episiotomy led to a lasting shift in obstetric practice, and he did comparably influential research on the overuse of cesarean sections. He led family medicine departments at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal and at B.C. Children’s and Women’s hospitals, and was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2016 for “placing maternity care at the heart of family medicine.” An active member of Canadian Doctors for Medicare, he was a staunch defender of the public health system.
“More than anything, my father felt it was privilege to be part of the birth process,” said Naomi Klein. “As a result, he was a renegade in the medical profession.”
Klein leaves his wife of 59 years, documentary filmmaker Bonnie Sherr Klein; his children Seth, Naomi and Misha; daughter-in-law Christine Boyle and son-in-law Avi Lewis; and four grandchildren.