ARTICLE IN Toronto Daily Star covering Braithwaite’s victory. Courtesy photo.
Black History runs deep in Etobicoke and residents today still have great respect for the late lawyer Leonard Austin Braithwaite, who became the first Black Canadian elected to the Ontario Legislature.
Braithwaite, or “Lenny,” as he was affectionately known, was born in Toronto in 1923 to a Barbadian father and Jamaican mother who instilled in him the value of hard
work and dedication.
He served overseas with the Royal Canadian Air Force in World War II and returned home with plans of becoming a lawyer. A brilliant student, he received a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Toronto in 1950.
BRAITHWAITE, with wife, reporting to the Ontario Legislature. Courtesy photo.
He then obtained a Master of Business Administration degree from the Harvard Business School in 1952, and graduated from Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto in 1958.
Braithwaite moved to Etobicoke and started a successful law firm that he operated for decades. He was named a Queen’s Counsel in 1971.
His political career began in 1960, when he was elected to Ward 4 of the Etobicoke Township Board of Education.
A former president of Etobicoke Ratepayer’s Association, he was elected because of demand for a high school north of Eglinton Ave. W.
Two years later, he was elected as an alderman on the Etobicoke council.
BRAITHWAITE, with friend, in the Royal Canadian Air Force. Courtesy photo.
Braithwaite ran for the Liberals in the 1963 provincial election and won the newly-created constituency of Etobicoke by 443 votes.
He helped to revoke a section of the Ontario Separate Schools Act that had allowed for racial segregation in public schools, when he asked the Legislature to “get rid of the old race law” during his maiden speech at Queen’s Park on February 4, 1964.
Braithwaite also called for the admission of female legislative pages in 1966.
He was re-elected in 1967 and 1971, and served as the Liberal Party Critic for Labour and Welfare, before being defeated in the 1975 election by New Democratic Party candidate Ed Philip by 1,256 votes.
The seasoned politician was next elected a city controller on the Etobicoke City Council in 1982. Braithwaite attempted a return to the provincial Legislature during the 1985 election but lost as he was a last minute candidate. The York West Liberal constituency association could not find anyone to run.
He became a bencher of the Governing Council of The Law Society of Upper Canada in 1999; was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 1997; invested into the order in February 1998 and appointed to the Order of Ontario in 2004.
Braithwaite died in Toronto on March 28, 2012, at the age of 88. The City of Toronto that year renamed a park in his former Etobicoke riding to Leonard Braithwaite
Park in his honour.
GARDENS at Len Braithwaite Park in his former riding.