Leonard Braithwaite served in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as a member of the Liberal Party from 1963 to 1975.
21 Facts About Leonard Braithwaite
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Leonard Braithwaite was the first Black Canadian to be elected to the Ontario Legislature.
3.
Leonard Braithwaite served overseas with the Royal Canadian Air Force in World War II.
4.
Leonard Braithwaite received a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Toronto in 1950.
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Leonard Braithwaite then received a Master of Business Administration degree from the Harvard Business School in 1952, and graduated from Osgoode Hall Law School in 1958.
6.
Leonard Braithwaite practiced as a barrister and solicitor, and was named a Queen's Counsel in 1971.
7.
Leonard Braithwaite was president of Etobicoke ratepayer's association at the time, and was elected because of demand for a high school north of Eglinton.
8.
Leonard Braithwaite ran for the Liberals in the 1963 provincial election, and defeated Progressive Conservative candidate Geoffrey Grossmith to win the newly created constituency of Etobicoke by 446 votes.
9.
The original declared result showed Grossmith winning by over 500 votes, and Leonard Braithwaite was only declared elected after a serious error in the vote totals was discovered by his campaign team.
10.
Leonard Braithwaite 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.
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Leonard Braithwaite called for the admission of female legislative pages in 1966.
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Leonard Braithwaite was re-elected in 1967 and 1971, and served as the Liberal Party Critic for Labour and Welfare.
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Leonard Braithwaite was defeated in the 1975 election, losing to New Democratic Party candidate Ed Philip by 1,256 votes in the redistributed electoral district.
14.
Leonard Braithwaite was elected a city controller on the Etobicoke City Council in 1982.
15.
Leonard Braithwaite attempted a return to the provincial legislature during the 1985 election; he was a last minute candidate, as the York West Liberal constituency association could not find anyone to run against the Progressive Conservative incumbent Nick Leluk, who was the Minister of Correctional Services at the time.
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Leonard Braithwaite lost by 715 votes, significantly closer than his constituency association originally expected, as they thought Leluk would win by a massive rout.
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Leonard Braithwaite did not run again, and neither did Leluk in the next election, two-years later.
18.
Leonard Braithwaite became a bencher of the Governing Council of The Law Society of Upper Canada in 1999.
19.
Leonard Braithwaite was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 1997, and invested into the order on February 4,1998.
20.
Leonard Braithwaite was appointed to the Order of Ontario in 2004.
21.
Leonard Braithwaite died in Toronto on March 28,2012, at the age of 88.