Stanley G. Grizzle

It was June 1940, at Canadian Pacific.

A twenty-two-year-old from Toronto started work as a sleeping car porter. He had not been able to find any other job.

His name was Stanley Grizzle. But travellers often called the porters "George."

Stanley was born in Toronto on 18 November 1918. His parents, Theodore and Mary, had come from Jamaica in 1911. His father had been a chef on the Grand Trunk Railway. They had seven children.

The porters faced racism. Later, Stanley would write that many Black porters had been "denied [...] opportunities by a racist society."

He had not waited to organize. In 1938, he had helped found the Young Men's Negro Association of Toronto.

In 1942, the army conscripted him. He served in Europe.

In England, a superior wanted to make him his batman, a kind of servant. Stanley refused. And he told him why:

He was punished with latrine duty. So he went on strike. In the end he was reassigned. Later, he was promoted to corporal.

Meanwhile, in Canada, the porters signed their first collective agreement with Canadian Pacific, in 1945. It provided for something very simple: in each car, a plaque bearing the porter's name.

In 1946, Stanley came home to Toronto. He became president of the Toronto CPR division of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. He held the post until 1962.

With his union, he pushed the company to open its management ranks to Black workers.

In the early 1950s, he joined a labour committee against racial intolerance. With others, he went to see political leaders. He called for laws against discrimination.

In April 1954, he was part of the first delegation of Black Canadians received by the federal Cabinet. The subject: discrimination in immigration.

In 1959, with Jack White, he was among the first Black Canadians to run for the Ontario legislature. He ran for the CCF. He won more than 9,000 votes, but he lost.

In 1960, he joined the Ontario Labour Relations Board. No Black person had yet held a post at that level of provincial government.

In 1978, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau appointed him a citizenship judge. Once again, he was the first Black Canadian.

The man they had called "George" now sat as a judge, in the name of Canada.

In 1990, Lieutenant Governor Lincoln Alexander presented him with the Order of Ontario. In 1995, he was named to the Order of Canada.

In 1998, he published his memoir. He called it My Name's Not George.

In 2007, Toronto named a park after him.

Stanley Grizzle died in Toronto on 12 November 2016, at ninety-seven.

All his life, he had fought alongside others, through the union. That workers' solidarity echoes Ubuntu, without being the same thing.

In 2018, a Toronto laneway was given his name as well.

What remains of him is a park, a laneway, a book.

And perhaps, somewhere, a small sleeping car plaque, with a real name on it.