David Jacks 🗯️

Rest in Peace Gord Delbridge — Brother to Labour leader, CUPE members, and to me. Our team is very sad to hear the news that we lost CUPE Local 500’s one of a kind leader. Gord had the kind of life story that I love: he started off with the City driving a Zamboni and worked his way up to a position of power—power he used to help other people. Brother Delbridge was a true progressive who publicly pushed for services like the Millennium Library’s Community Connections, which helps the city’s most vulnerable, and privately advocated for equity and inclusion. I will never forget that Gord was the first union leader to endorse me as Manitoba NDP Leader in 2017 (alongside other good CUPE MB folks). He’s been a source of great advice and unwavering support ever since, including in some tough moments like when we lost our sister-MLA Danielle Adams. Gord always had our back. His last texts to me included a picture he took with Jennifer Flett when she was campaigning in Matheson Island a few weeks back. My absolute favourite thing about Gord was that he’d call me up and put me on speakerphone so that he could introduce me to people he wanted to get excited about our movement. Over the years I can’t count the number of times we connected like this, but every time Gord would be on the other end saying “Wab, I’m here with CUPE local leaders,” or “I’m here with workers who just started their training,” or simply, “I’m here with neighbours on the deck at Beaver Creek.” I’d give them my spiel and then Gord would jump back on to explain this is how tight our movement is and how we were hard at work for them. In light of this tragic news I’m proud to say I never missed one of those calls. On behalf of the Province of Manitoba, we send Gord’s family, friends, and many labour movement relatives our sincere condolences. Heaven just gained one hell of an organizer.