Leslie Howard Saunders (September 12, 1899 – March 30, 1994)[1] was Mayor of Toronto, Canada, from 1954 to 1955 and the last member of the Orange Order to hold the position until William Dennison.

[1] He and his family moved to Toronto in 1928 and, during the Great Depression, Saunders became Business Manager of The Sentinel, the Orange Order's influential, twice-weekly publication.

In 1936, Saunders founded a rival publication, Protestant Action, as he felt The Sentinel was not taking a strong enough stand against Catholic-run Separate Schools.

In 1946 he led a campaign against the city holding a public welcoming for newly proclaimed Cardinal James Charles McGuigan.

[1] In 1945, Saunders attempted to win the Progressive Conservative nomination for Riverdale, but he lost narrowly to his fellow Ward 1 alderman Gordon Millen.

Saunders caused almost immediate controversy when one of his first acts was to write a Twelfth of July letter on official stationery extolling William of Orange's victory in the Battle of the Boyne.

Controller Roy E. Belyea, a fellow Orangeman, criticized Saunders for his action accusing him of being intolerant of religious minorities.

The controversy, along with Saunders's decision to bar the press from attending meetings of the Board of Control, was a contributing factor in his subsequent electoral defeat at the hands of Nathan Phillips, the first non-Protestant, the first non-Orangeman in the twentieth century and first Jew to be mayor of Toronto.