A Political Pioneer

"Go to School, You’re a Little Black Boy”—The Honourable Lincoln M. Alexander: A Memoir might be an awkward mouthful, but many black Canadians of West Indian heritage will understand its meaning. It was how ambitious black parents reminded their children of the minimum required for success. It was certainly the lesson Jamaican-born Mae Rose Alexander drove home to her son, Lincoln, when he was growing up in Toronto in the 1920s and ’30s. Says Alexander, “she was the one that indicated to me that being black you had to excel and reach for excellence at all times; you had to be two or three times as good,” by which he means as good as a white person. Alexander attributes his accomplishments—his career in law, his election as Canada’s first black member of Parliament and his appointment as the country’s first black lieutenant governor—to his mother’s emphasis on education.

His father’s advice would prove equally valuable. Lincoln MacCauley Alexander Sr. worked...