During the Second World War, his father, a WW1 veteran, was the officer in command of the Fulking platoon of the East Sussex Home Guard, and Henry jr. served as a Private until 1944 when he joined the Royal Signals.
He was Glendon College's Academic Dean from 1967 to 1969, elected a Fellow in Royal Society of Canada in 1988 and was also given an Honorary Doctor of Letters from York in 2001.
He was "the keystone" of a group who gathered at Trinity College, Toronto, to translate the works of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.
[4]In the words of George di Giovanni, "for wealth of historical detail and accuracy of insight, there is nothing comparable in any language to this latest commentary of the Phenomenology of Spirit.
"[5] By his own account, Harris's effort to "make Hegel speak English" was greatly indebted to his ongoing engagement with the philosophy of David Hume.