Standing outside a conference with a group of devotees, a famous political scientist brags that there’s only two people in the world he’s afraid of: his mother and Leo Panitch. To anyone who knows Leo, this revelation elicits knowing smiles and an affirmative nodding of heads. But it also poses a question. Those with an authoritative and intimidating presence tend to bring a distancing from others. How, then, did so many nevertheless come to feel so close to Leo?

The almost universal answer in the hundreds of emails sent in response to Leo’s passing spoke to the vital social dimension that came with Leo’s charisma: a genuine interest in others, a generosity in terms of time, an eagerness to schmooze, the quiet supportive hand on a student’s shoulder that followed a crushing critique of an assigned paper. It was also impossible to ignore Leo’s down-to-earth energy and enthusiasm, whether he was speaking on Jeremy Corbyn or Syriza, wolfing down a Polish sausage with sauerkraut at a Toronto Blue Jays game, or lamenting his inability to play the saxophone — never mind play it like Sonny Rollins.

All of this came together in his passion as a teacher and a public intellectual. His undergraduate lectures opened up thousands of eyes to a different way of seeing the world. His graduate seminars inspired new generations of young intellectuals to ruthlessly rethink everything. As a commentator on current events at home and abroad, Leo was stunningly comfortable in launching, on call, into a clear explanation or an argumentative diatribe. In the middle of a phone conversation, he’d suddenly interrupt to say: “Shit, it’s five minutes to my interview at 4:00. We can only talk for two more minutes. Then I have to find out what it’s about so I can get my head into it.”