Editing Dan Heap (section)

==Background==
Heap was born on September 24, 1925, in [[Winnipeg]], [[Manitoba]], into a middle-class family, the second of four children. His father, Fred Heap, was a lawyer and his mother was a piano teacher.<ref name=obitmay>{{cite news|title=Lifelong socialist was a champion for the marginalized|url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/lifelong-socialist-was-a-champion-for-the-marginalized/article18709381/|accessdate=May 16, 2014|newspaper=Globe and Mail|date=May 15, 2014}}</ref> Heap's maternal grandfather was a Presbyterian [[Minister (Christianity)|minister]] inspiring Heap, from a young age, to want to take up the same calling.<ref name=obitmay/>

Heap was raised a [[Presbyterian]] in a family that was concerned about social causes. When he was 6, the family decided to boycott [[Japan]]ese oranges to protest the [[Japanese invasion of Manchuria]].<ref name=obitmay/>

For his last two years of high school, Heap attended [[Upper Canada College]] on a scholarship, and then studied classics and philosophy at [[Queen's University at Kingston|Queen's University]].<ref name=obitmay/>

A pacifist, Heap nevertheless joined the [[Canadian Army]] during the [[Second World War]] due to his opposition to [[Nazism]], later saying "It wasn't possible to be neutral in the face of Hitler". However, the war ended before he could be sent overseas.<ref name=obitmay/>

In 1945, while working in a factory as a summer job, he met members of the [[Student Christian Movement of Canada|Student Christian Movement]] and became a [[Christian socialist]]. He later also became a member of the Society of the Catholic Commonwealth and of the [[Co-operative Commonwealth Federation]],<ref name=titan/> forerunner of the [[New Democratic Party]].

Heap studied theology at the [[University of Chicago]] for a year before becoming an [[Anglicanism|Anglican]] and transferring to [[McGill University]] to pursue a divinity degree.<ref name=obitmay/> While at McGill he became engaged to Alice Boomhour, a pacifist, activist in the SCM and CCF, and daughter of a [[United Church of Canada|United Church]] minister. They married in 1950.<ref name=alice/> That same year, he was ordained a priest within the [[Anglican Church of Canada]].<ref name=titan/>

After working as a parish priest in Quebec for only a few years in the 1950s, Heap decided against a career as a church employee and aligned himself with the [[Worker-Priest]] movement which paired ministry with social activism.<ref name=obitmay/> Heap moved his family to Toronto where he worked for 18 years as a labourer (cutter trimmer, later pressman) in a cardboard box factory in Toronto, where he became involved in the paperworker's union (later the [[Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada]] which eventually merged to become part of [[UNIFOR]]) and was elected a union representative<ref name=obitmay/> and attempted to "bring socialism to the Canadian worker".<ref name=titan/>

He and Alice raised seven children, including son Danny Heap, a computer science lecturer at the [[University of Toronto]].<ref>{{cite news |title=Former MP Dan Heap has settled into a new home but without wife Alice |first=Laurie |last=Monsebraaten |url=https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2011/10/22/former_mp_dan_heap_has_settled_into_a_new_home_but_without_wife_alice.html |newspaper=Toronto Star |date=October 22, 2011}}</ref>

In 1965, Heap marched with [[Martin Luther King Jr.]] on his [[Selma to Montgomery marches]] while the rest of his family participated in a solidarity [[sit-in]] in Toronto.<ref name=obitmay/> The family also opened their home to [[Canada and the Vietnam War|Americans resisting the Vietnam War]], youth involved with the SCM and other activists.<ref name=obitmay/>