On June 9, 1940, his mother married Francis Ronald Graham Sr, a wealthy widower over twenty years her senior with ten children of his own.

Shortly after the wedding, his mother and step-father moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, and Bill and Helen were raised by their maternal grandparents in Toronto, Ontario.

Upon returning to Toronto in 1968, Graham remained at Faskens until 1982 working with Walter Williston in litigation and on his own in an international trade and commercial law practice.

[citation needed] In 1975, Graham was appointed by Ontario Attorney General Roy McMurtry to an advisory committee on the implementation of bilingualism in provincial courts.

The agreement required that “U of T [rank] the faculty of management as one of its ‘highest priorities’ for the allocation of university funding, ensuring to its ‘best efforts’ that business education receives continuing focus.” Graham noted “the unqualified support for the ‘vision,’ and it talked about non-qualified support for and commitment to the values and principles underlying the ‘vision’ by the members of the faculty of management, as well as the central administration".

[citation needed] He served as a member, and for six years as chair, of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade (SCFAIT).

[citation needed] While his attention as an MP was directed largely to foreign affairs, in domestic politics he strongly promoted same-sex rights.

[citation needed] His tenure was largely dominated by the changes to world affairs flowing from the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the increased unilateralism of American foreign policy.

In the months leading up to the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq, Chrétien and Graham articulated a position of opposition to military action without either an unambiguous authorizing resolution by the United Nations Security Council or clear evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime was in violation of the obligations to disarm that it had accepted after the 1991 Gulf War.

A Canadian compromise allowing additional time for weapons inspections, but with a firm deadline for Iraqi compliance, elicited strong American opposition and little enthusiasm from other Security Council members.

After a resolution (sponsored by the US, the UK, and Spain) that explicitly authorized military action was withdrawn in the face of likely failure, Canada declined to take part in the subsequent invasion.

[citation needed] Canada did support important elements of the US-led War on Terror, and Canadian troops participated in the UN-sanctioned invasion of Afghanistan to oust the Taliban regime in October 2001.

In the summer of 2003, Chrétien and Graham committed Canada to assume the lead role in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the NATO mission in Afghanistan.

But opposition to BMD and Bush administration policies generally was strong in Canada, and Martin did not provide energetic backing for Graham's efforts to convince his Cabinet and Caucus colleagues.

He persuaded Martin and Finance Minister Ralph Goodale to accept a $13-billion increase in defence spending, the largest in a generation, as part of the 2005 budget.

This entailed significant capital expenditures, including the acquisition of Hercules aircraft to provide the Canadian Forces (CF) with tactical airlift capability.

[8]: 130–151 [13] Graham and General Rick Hillier, whose 2005 appointment as Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) he recommended, sought to transform the CF into a more mobile force, capable of conducting armed "peacemaking" and humanitarian interventions.

This broke with both the Cold War emphasis on preparation for large-scale conventional hostilities across defined international borders, and the recent Canadian tradition of lightly armed peacekeeping under UN auspices.

During Graham's tenure as Defence Minister, Canada's Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) provided emergency relief to Sri Lanka after the 2005 tsunami.

He conceded that the agreement had been imperfect, lacking as it did a mechanism for monitoring the treatment of prisoners after they were placed in Afghan custody, but pointed out that its omissions were more readily apparent in retrospect than they were at the time, and that it had been developed on the best available advice to meet unprecedented circumstances.

[citation needed] Two highly charged issues debated in the House of Commons during his leadership were the recognition of Quebec as a "nation" and the extension of the mission in Afghanistan until 2011.