Several years ago, when we redesigned the studio in which I host The Agenda at TVO, executive producer Stacey Dunseath approached me with an idea.
“We actually have some room on one of the walls for any pictures you might want to put up,” she told me. “Think about who you might want up there.”
I needed about three seconds to give her my answer.
We needed one picture of former premier Bill Davis. He was, after all, the man who, as education minister, in 1970 created TVO. Not only that, but we’d also renamed the studio after him, so it made sense to have a picture of him there.
I also suggested we mount a picture of one of Canada’s great trailblazing figures, who, like me, was from Hamilton, and whom I’d known since I was a kid. And that trailblazer was born 100 years ago today.
America has Martin Luther King Jr., but Canada has Lincoln Alexander.
They were both Black men who cared a great deal about civil rights, equality, and discrimination, but they had very different ways to realize their visions.
Coincidentally, each has been given a day on the calendar to remember them by, in the same week. Americans observed Martin Luther King Day this past Monday. Canadians, since 2015, have had January 21 on our calendar to remember the man everyone knew simply as “Linc.”
Alexander made a name for himself in politics under highly unusual conditions. In 1968, when much of Canada was caught up in the love affair that was Trudeaumania (leading to a majority government for the current prime minister’s father), Linc managed to get himself elected as a Progressive Conservative in one of the country’s staunchest labour cities — by just 342 votes. It was the first of five consecutive victories for Linc in Hamilton West.
Bob Rae (left) sits with Lincoln Alexander (right) (Courtesy of the Office of the Premier)
He spent 11 years on the opposition benches before the Tories finally won the 1979 election, and Prime Minister Joe Clark appointed Linc to his cabinet as minister of labour.
But the good times did not last. Linc’s cabinet career ended nine months later, when Clark’s minority government was defeated, Trudeau made a comeback, and Alexander was back on the opposition benches.
Enter Bill Davis. Ontario’s premier offered Alexander the chairmanship of the Workers’ Compensation Board. Five years later, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney advised Queen Elizabeth to appoint Linc as Ontario’s 24th lieutenant-governor, a role in which his people skills shone spectacularly.
Linc’s first official event was in Stirling — Loyalist country— at the annual International Plowing Match, North America’s largest rural agricultural expo. It was pouring rain, and organizers put together a makeshift stage out of a hay wagon, from which Linc was to speak. He arrived looking like a million bucks in shiny black patent-leather shoes and a $2,000 suit. He looked into the audience of rural Ontarians, who were clad in mud boots and plaid shirts. After a long pause, the new lieutenant-governor said to the audience: “Man, you’re my kind of people!”
David Peterson, who was Ontario’s premier at the time, told that story at Linc’s funeral 10 years ago and concluded with: “And that, my friends, was the official beginning of the permanent love affair between Lincoln Alexander and the 13 million people of the province of Ontario.”
Five years later, it was Alexander’s responsibility to swear in Peterson’s successor, Bob Rae, as Ontario’s 21st premier. As he took the stage at Convocation Hall at the University of Toronto, Alexander surveyed the crowd and repeated a question numerous people had already asked him.
“Do I know Bob Rae?” Alexander asked rhetorically, before informing the crowd that it was Bob Rae, then MP for Broadview–Greenwood, who’d moved the motion to defeat the Tories and end Alexander’s time on the government benches.
“Do I know Bob Rae?!” he repeated, smiling mischievously.
Linc was a man of so many firsts: Canada’s first Black MP; the first Black cabinet minister; the first Black chair of the WCB; and, of course, Canada’s first Black lieutenant-governor. He went on to serve five terms as chancellor at the University of Guelph, and no one had ever done that before, either.
Lincoln M. Alexander: The Time Has Come to Celebrate (Archives of Ontario, 2002)
Unlike MLK, Alexander was not the kind of civil-rights champion to lead mass demonstrations in the streets. He became a lawyer to work within Canadian institutions. He’d surely suffered more than his share of discrimination, particularly when, as a freshly minted lawyer, he couldn’t get a law firm to hire him.
But he always felt his own improbable story demonstrated what Canada was capable of. And Canada has rightly honoured him. Twenty-five years ago, the city of Hamilton named a new expressway after him. Everyone calls it “The Linc.” And last year, Ryerson University renamed its law school the Lincoln Alexander School of Law, which undoubtedly would have made him burst with pride.
Alexander’s nickname was perfect for him, because he was a link between so many people. He used his devilish good looks (as former premier Peterson once described them), his love of people, and his desire to do good in the world to link disparate groups of people together in common cause.
It is always appropriate on January 21 to remember this great and good man, but particularly today, on the 100th anniversary of his birth.
Linc, you were always my kind of people.
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