This doctor treated HIV/AIDS patients when no one else would. His advocacy continued as he prepared to die

A Winnipeg doctor hopes his legacy of providing health care to LGBTQ patients — one of only a few local physicians doing so at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis — extends beyond his life.

Dr. Dick Smith, who had pancreatic cancer, died with medical assistance on Tuesday. He was 80.

"My biggest thing that I want people to really get a grip on is that no minority of any kind, whether it be religious or sexual or racial, is ever safe," Smith told CBC News in an interview 24 hours before he died.

"Democracy is a wonderful thing, but there is always a risk of a majority of people suddenly thinking this or that.... Be very careful and be aware that everything that has been achieved could be taken away in a single election."

The gay doctor and activist helped many men who have sex with men throughout the HIV/AIDS epidemic and beyond.

Smith played a key role in founding the Village Clinic, which became Nine Circles Community Health Centre.

He retired at 65, but it didn't stick. He kept seeing patients and founded the Gay Men's Health Clinic, later renamed Our Own Health Clinic.

His career spanned over half a century; he finally hung up the stethoscope in 2019.

Smith facilitated fundraisers for LGBTQ health care and educated patients on safe sex in the 1980s and '90s, when fears and stigma around HIV/AIDS were heightened.

He also understood the importance of meeting those most at risk where they were at. He held testing clinics for sexually transmitted infections inside a Winnipeg bathhouse, O'Bee's Steam Bath, where gay and bisexual men socialized and hooked up.

He arrived in Manitoba in 1972, a few years after graduating med school, and practised for a time in Neepawa. He opened a clinic in Winnipeg seven years later to serve lesbian and gay patients.

"Whether it was internalized homophobia or whether it was a genuine shunning while I was in medical school, I had a very emotionally traumatic time, and from that came my tenacity not to give up on this job," he said. "So that turned out, strangely, to be good."

He was further propelled toward LGBTQ health care and activism when he met his husband Doug Arrell. They came out together.

"That was a great 46 years," Smith said.