Urban Visionary & Businessman David Pecaut Loses Battle To Cancer

His passion for Toronto inspired him to create the Luminato Festival and bring together some of the brightest minds in the Toronto City Summit Alliance.

Businessman, idealist and urban visionary David Pecaut has died at the age of 54. He had reportedly been battling colorectal cancer and is survived by his wife, Helen Burstyn, and four daughters, Lauren, Amy, Sarah and Becca.

“I was deeply saddened to hear of the passing of David Pecaut. At the same time, I am grateful for the gift that was his life and work,” Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty said in a statement Monday.

“David was a man of boundless energy and optimism, who freely gave of himself to improve the city he loved.”

The American-born businessman moved to the city in the 1980s and created and chaired the Toronto City Summit Alliance, which strives to find solutions to current and future social and economic challenges facing the city.

Not long before his passing, Pecaut issued a message to his friends and colleagues at the TCSA.

“Aside from my family, there is nothing for me more personally gratifying than working with other citizens in our community to address a civic challenge or identify an opportunity we can make happen together. I feel very lucky to have found in Toronto a place where so many others felt the same way,” he wrote.

Read the full statement.

Among his other outstanding achievements, Pecaut worked to rebuild Toronto’s appeal as a tourist destination after the SARS crisis and co-founded the Luminato Festival, now an established and highly popular annual event.

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