Pat Magill dies in Napier - a saint or a stirrer?

Pat Magill died in Napier on Sunday. Photo NZME

Internationally-known Napier social justice campaigner Pat Magill died at his Westshore home on Sunday, aged 96.

Born in Napier on September 29, 1926, a pupil of Central and Napier Boys’ High schools, he first trained as a wool classer but found his career at the other end of the chain in the family carpet firm of father Robert Magill.

He became president of the Hawke’s Bay Rugby Union for a year during the 1966-1969 Ranfurly Shield era – having himself played a game and a half for the Bay at halfback - but he was also a stalwart for the YMCA movement, and 45 years ago – in 1978 – was bestowed an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, for services to YMCA and the community.

It was part of a unique straddling of the social divide on a mission barely part done at the time, much of the remainder being focused on the ideals of the Napier Pilot City Trust of which he has been the backbone since its establishment almost 40 years ago – a mission which would see him dubbed everything from Napier’s biggest stirrer to a Saint.

With wife Catherine (nee O’Donnell) having died in a car crash when the couple were holidaying in Queensland in 1994, while visiting one of the six children from their marriage of 43 years, he became even more embroiled in what had been their joint pursuit of a better community, and his own take “Building Communities Not Prisons” – a call for restorative justice and healing, ahead of the punitive measures.

It stemmed from a 1983 Government-funded study and Napier’s designation by Police and Social Welfare Minister Ann Hercus as a Pilot City for social change, the research report having cited that the social philosophy of the Pilot City project was to embrace finding new ways to offset social problems and violence for improvement in securing a better quality of life for all citizens of Napier.

Under his leadership, the YMCA would develop the Downtown Y in the late 1970s as a youth venue in the Napier CBD, which among other things spurred the resolve to reconnect the gathering Māori youth disenfranchised by the social, education, housing and employment issues of economic change, his commitment leading to multi-generational links to whanau and disadvantaged groups across the city.

The Pilot City Trust would in 1990 establish the Robson Collection at the Napier Public Library, a now globally-recognised collection of books, theses and other writings on social reform, named after Dr John Robson, the Secretary for Justice who is credited with abolishing the death penalty in New Zealand in 1962.

The Pilot City Trust, with Magill leading from the front, would stage a “Unity” walk from Taupo to Napier, drawing together not only the varying communities of his own local sphere but also ethnicities in the morphing of the concept into a Unity and Unity Week, now marked annually for more than 30 years around Anzac Day and the 2023 version, with its Pilot City Trust awards for community services and the Robson Lecture, held just nine days before he passed at his Westshore home about 7.15am on Sunday, surrounded by family.

The Robson Collection was formally recognised by the International Conference on Penal Abolition, and in 2012 was recognised as a finalist in the Senior category of the New Zealander of the Year, not only on the flash night at the Langham in Auckland, but also at Hawke’s Bay Airport in the hours beforehand, as a flight was held up while the suit he wore was fetched from where it had inadvertently been left behind.

The “Unity” mission, says fellow-Napier social change activist Denis O’Reilly, writing just last week, turned Anzac Day celebrations “upside-down by focusing on peace and unity rather than the commemoration of that wasteful human endeavour called war.”

Almost all except the final chapter, and the last 18 months of continuing the fight, despite indifferently failing health, was told in the wide-ranging 282-page tome Pat Magill - Leading from the Front - “edited” by daughter Jess “with loyal and solid support from whānau and friends”, as it says on the title page, published in September 2021.

On the back cover it posed the question: “What drives Napier-born and raised Pat Magill to be his town’s social conscience ?”

It says he wanted everyone in the city to reach their best and deserved potential, and that he reckoned the only way that would happen would be for “Napier/Ahuriri” embraced its biculturalism and became a “child-friendly city”.

His birthdays, particularly once reaching the age of 90, were near-public events, which also embraced the ideals, some reflecting the levels to which he had opened the door of mayors and ministers of the Crown.

He had a particular love for the environment, with a retreat in the bush and garden of Puketītiri, and across the road from the Ahuriri Estuary at Westshore, where he will rest until being taken for a visit on Tuesday, via such sites as the “office in the street” where he would chew the fat with friends and supporters outside “The Pie Man” in the Maraenui Shopping Centre each Wednesday.

He will then spend a night at Pukemokimoki Marae, where his final service will take place on Wednesday.