Harold R. Johnson (August 30, 1954–February 9, 2022)[1] was a Canadian indigenous lawyer and writer, whose book Firewater: How Alcohol Is Killing My People (And Yours) was a shortlisted nominee for the Governor General's Award for English-language non-fiction at the 2016 Governor General's Awards.
[2] The book, an examination of the problem with alcohol consumption among Canadian First Nations, draws on Johnson's work as a Crown prosecutor in northern Saskatchewan.
[3] Johnson told CBC Radio interviewer Shelagh Rogers in 2016 that his father was a Swedish immigrant and his mother a Cree woman in Saskatchewan, where he was born.
He enlisted in the Royal Canadian Navy and worked as a logger, trapper and miner before going to university as an adult, completing his education in law with an MA at Harvard.
[5] After being diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer, Johnson died on February 9, 2022, at the age of 67.