June Callwood died on April 14, age 82, after living with cancer for several years. The first thing I thought of when I read the news was a summer afternoon in Toronto 17 years ago. Callwood treated me to lunch on a pricey patio in Yorkville. After I'd worked as the national publicist for her 1990 title, The Sleepwalker, she'd drafted me onto the board of an AIDS organization. Lunch was her way of saying thanks. Just like she'd sent handwritten thank-you notes to all seven regional book publicists I'd hired to help out with her author tour.

I was young and in awe, but the then–66-year-old Callwood's amazing grace and sense of humour instantly put me at ease. By the time we'd gotten round to our second glass of wine, we were giggling and chatting animatedly about the gay S&M community. She'd recently been to a male couple's "leather" union ceremony and thought it was fabulous. I almost spat out my Chardonnay when "Canada's conscience" announced with a twinkle in her eye, "I love the studs and harnesses!" That was Callwood. She respected and even celebrated what others judged. She tried to understand what others willfully ignored. And most importantly, she wrote about it.

From her first job at a newspaper, the Brantford Expositor, at the age of 16 to a freelance career contributing to the Globe and Mail, Maclean's, and other national publications to writing some 30 books, Callwood used her words to fight social injustice. She wasn't afraid to embrace controversy and give voice to issues that made people uncomfortable: women's rights, youth issues, poverty, censorship. 1988's Jim: A Life With AIDS was the first mainstream book to defy the widespread demonization of gay men and give the disease a human face. That same year, she helped found the world's first AIDS hospice outside a hospital. Toronto's Casey House was named after her son, who died when an impaired driver crashed into his motorcycle in 1982.

In 1992, Callwood's activism was put to the test when some women of colour on the board of the women's shelter Nellie's, which she had helped found, accused her of racism and of being a "woman of privilege". The accusations were vicious and, ultimately, unsupportable. Unlike Callwood, who triple-checked every fact, they hadn't done their homework. She spent her childhood in a poor, unstable household in a small Ontario town during the Depression. That's why she became self-sufficient at such a young age.

No way would Callwood want to be remembered as a saint. She wasn't religious and believed that the meaning of life is life itself. And she believed in the power of kindness. Her legacy is a baton to be passed on to serious journalists and other writers. In a world in which the media is preocccupied with Britney's, Lindsay's, and Paris's latest underwear crisis, or dog-eat-dog reality shows, she would be tickled pink to know that due to her example some of us are cutting through the crap. Maybe Callwood didn't believe in God, yet if anyone exemplified the saying "There but for the grace of God go I", she was it. But for the grace of June Callwood, Canada would be a lesser country.