Former Lieutenant Governor of Ontario Lincoln Alexander is being remembered for his lengthy tenure of public service and human rights.

January 21 was Lincoln Alexander Day, which is a national day of recognition marked yearly to honour the first Black member of Parliament in the House of Commons, federal cabinet minister as Minister of Labour, military veteran and champion of equality.

He was born in Toronto in 1922. He died in 2012 at the age of 90.

Alexander’s mom, Mae Rose, was from Jamaica and dad, Lincoln Sr., was a porter on the Canadian Pacific Railway, who arrived here from St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Linc, as he was affectionately called, faced a fair bit of discrimination growing up in early Toronto. He first distinguished himself in service to Canada in 1942 as a corporal and wireless operator in the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War.

While stationed in Vancouver, he was refused service at a bar because of his race. He reported the incident to a superior officer who refused to take action. Alexander quit the Air Force in 1945 and was granted an honourable discharge. Of that incident, he said: “[A]t that time they didn’t know how to deal with race relations of this sort of thing; they just turned a blind eye to it.”

He married first wife Yvonne Harrison in 1948. A year later he applied for a sales job at Stelco, a steel plant in Hamilton. Although he had references, the support of McMaster University and the mayor of Hamilton, Stelco was unwilling to have a Black man on its sales force.

By 1955, Alexander partnered with Dave Duncan, forming a law firm that he claimed was the first inter-racial law partnership in Canada.

Alexander bought his own home in Hamilton in 1958 and lived there for nearly four decades.

He ran in the 1965 federal election as the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada candidate in Hamilton West but was defeated. He ran again in the 1968 federal election and won the seat, becoming Canada’s first black Member of Parliament.

Alexander was an observer to the United Nations in 1976 and 1978 and served briefly as Minister of Labour in the Progressive Conservative Party‘s minority government headed by Joe Clark from 1979 to 1980.

He held the seat until resigning in 1980, when he was asked to serve as chair of the province’s Workers Compensation Board.

In 1985 he was appointed Lieutenant Governor of Ontario and became the first Black to serve in a vice-regal position in Canada.

As viceroy he visited 672 communities, held 675 receptions, received roughly 75,000 guests, attended 4,000 engagements, and visited 230 schools.

Alexander was appointed to the Order of Ontario in 1992 and became a Companion of the Order of Canada. From 1991 to 2007, he served as Chancellor of the University of Guelph.

He was accorded a state funeral and the Ontario government proclaimed January 21 “Lincoln Alexander Day.” He is commemorated on a Black History Month stamp and has had schools and a highway in his beloved Hamilton named after him, including a Toronto Police Service horse named, Lincoln.