Gods Red Poet had local roots

PICTOU - A Pictou County man who once dined with movie stars and was watched by the FBI is now having his life story told in a documentary airing next week.
God's Red Poet, which chronicles the life of award winning poet and political activist Kenneth Leslie, will be the first documentary in VisionTV's summer series profiling Canada's unsung heroes.
Leslie was born at midnight on Halloween 1892 in Pictou to a family of Scottish entrepreneurs. His father, Robert Jamieson Leslie, a native of Spry Bay, became one of the brightest young businessmen in the Maritimes, with large fishing interests on the Magdalen Islands and a partnership in a growing steamship operation.
Leslie lived on Willow Street in Pictou until he was 13 years old. When his father died he moved to Halifax with his mother. As a child prodigy, Leslie attended Dalhousie University in Halifax at the age of 14.
He then went on to publish several acclaimed volumes of poetry, earning him the Governor General's Award in 1938. He was also founder of the Protestant Digest (later The Protestant), a religious and political driven magazine based in the United States.
Leslie was in constant demand as a speaker and befriended the likes of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Nova Scotia-born poet Robert Norwood.
"I just found him to be a really interesting man whose story was largely left untold," says Halifax-based filmmaker Chuck Lapp, producer and director of the documentary.
During the Cold War, Leslie's outspokenness against anti-semitism attracted the attention of the FBI. He made Life Magazine's list of top 50 Communists, joining the ranks of Albert Einstein, Arthur Miller and Leonard Bernstein.
Finally in 1949, he left the U.S for good and returned home to Nova Scotia. Leslie has a surviving daughter who lives in Ontario. There are no known relatives still living in Pictou County, says Lapp.
"Not much is known about his early life, but we did find out he moved back to Pictou for a brief period of time in his adulthood. He died of a stroke in 1974 and is buried in a Halifax cemetery."
The hour-long documentary God's Red Poet: The Life of Kenneth Leslie will air on VisionTV, Wednesday, July 2 at 11 pm AT.