David Swann paces back and forth in front of the Glenmore Landing Safeway, stopping every few seconds to raise a stainless steel mug full of juice to his lips. The lanky Liberal MLA is drinking a lot these days, and understandably so. He hasn’t eaten for two weeks. Today — Monday, December 17 — is the 14th and final day of his hunger strike, and this evening he’ll sit with his family and finally break his half-month fast with a simple meal of bread and soup. He needs it — Swann, a medical doctor, is feeling low on energy, and he’s had a “low-grade headache” for a week.

Swann forwent food as a way of pressuring the Canadian government to support the 26,000-troop African Union-UN mission to Darfur (UNAMID) scheduled to be deployed next month. “I couldn’t do any less,” says the gaunt-looking Swann, 58, his creased face turned slightly pink by the December cold. “This is the most extreme expression of outrage and grief that I know how to express.”

The Darfur conflict, which began in 2003 when fighting broke out in western Sudan between rebel groups and government-backed militias, has inflicted an enormous human cost: more than 200,000 killed and two million displaced, according to UN stats. “This is an emergency,” says Swann. “If we don’t get in there it’s going to be an absolute holocaust.” In July, the UN Security Council authorized UNAMID to enforce a peace agreement in Darfur. However, the force is short of helicopters and vehicles.

When shoppers pass by Swann — many pushing cartloads of food — he asks them to send letters to their MPs and Prime Minister Stephen Harper calling on Canada to support UNAMID with more money and technical resources. (Canada isn’t sending troops, but in August the government gave $48 million to the African Union mission presently in the region.) The responses Swann gets from passersby are varied, from concern for his health (“you’re already too thin!” says one elderly woman) and questions about Darfur to the more common response of “I’m fine, thank you.”

Undeterred, Swann calls after these people. His voice — “a genocide is happening” — often has a slowing effect. People plod on tentatively as if their feet have turned to lead. Nevertheless, most keep going. “Most people are too busy to stop, or they don’t want to think of genocide at this time of year,” says Swann. He estimates one in 10 people he speaks with will actually go to the trouble of contacting Harper.

Swann’s two-week journey started in Ottawa, where he travelled December 3 with several friends, including members of Calgary’s Darfuri community. The group met with several MPs and senators in the nation’s capital to discuss an expanded role for Canada in UNAMID. “I was pleased with how the politicians received us,” says Sarah Arthurs, a local psychologist who made the trip with Swann. “Those who were informed were supportive. Those who weren’t were asking the right questions.”

Swann and the others also held a poorly attended press conference with Lt.-Gen. Romeo Dallaire, the Liberal senator who led the failed UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda in 1994, and other politicians and activists. “Our people are suffering over there,” says Ameera Abbo, a Darfuri immigrant from Calgary who spoke at the event. “Canada has the capacity and the power to lead the international community to intervene in Darfur.” (The press conference’s timing was bad; most of the Ottawa media was focused on the Brian Mulroney-Karlheinz Schreiber affair, so the Darfur event got no coverage.)

The Calgary entourage also wanted to meet with Harper himself, but had no luck. “We were very disappointed,” says Abbo, whose parents and other relatives are still living in Darfur. “We hope that we’ll meet with him in the future. We’ll keep calling, keep asking until we get the chance.”

After Abbo, Swann and the others returned to Calgary, Swann started spending his days outside Harper’s Calgary constituency office in Glenmore Landing in the city’s southwest. He extended his fast from seven days to 14 and eventually moved beside the Safeway doors where there was more traffic.

Sitting in his red lawn chair, Swann swings his long corduroy-clad legs to keep them warm. The six-foot-four activist is down to 79 kilograms (174 pounds), more than five kilograms less than he weighed when beginning the fast. Nevertheless, he’s in good spirits. “I don’t judge them,” says Swann of the people who walk past without looking him in the eye. “I was there, too.” Young people, he says, have been the most responsive to his hunger strike, while older people are more “puzzled by it.” Even Swann’s 85-year-old mother, who’s been bringing him broth every afternoon, was skeptical of her son’s action at first, though Swann says she’s now onside.

To Abbo, Swann’s commitment to her people is “very touching.” “I can’t imagine someone his age standing out in this cold weather because of other people who are suffering in other wars,” she says. “He’s giving us the courage. He’s giving us the hope that there’s a human being out there who cares — even though it is one man.”