Lincoln MacCauley Alexander PC CC OOnt CD QC (January 21, 1922 – October 19, 2012) was a Canadian lawyer and politician who became the first Black Canadian to be a member of Parliament in the House of Commons, a federal Cabinet Minister (as federal Minister of Labour), a Chair of the Worker's Compensation Board of Ontario, and the 24th Lieutenant Governor of Ontario from 1985 to 1991.

[3] He was the eldest son of Mae Rose (née Royale), who immigrated from Jamaica, and Lincoln McCauley Alexander Sr., a carpenter by trade[4] who worked as a porter on the Canadian Pacific Railway, who had come to Canada from St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

"[3] His family was religious and enjoyed a social life centred on regularly attending a Baptist church in downtown Toronto.

Alexander preferred various sports, including track, soccer, hockey, softball, and boxing; he never learned to swim.

He recalled in his memoir, "[G]iven the message about education that had been pounded into my head since I was a young child, the fact those kids didn’t go to school was an eye-opener for me."

As a black community, Harlem allowed him to find role models who worked at jobs that did not involve manual labour.

The youngest of four daughters of Robert, a railway porter, and his wife Edythe (née Lewis), Harrison lived in Hamilton, Ontario.

Because he was too young to enlist in the armed forces, he took a job as a machinist making anti-aircraft guns at a factory in Hamilton to be close to her.

[3] He first distinguished himself in service to Canada in 1942 as a corporal and wireless operator in the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War.

Of that incident, he said: "[A]t that time they didn't know how to deal with race relations of this sort of thing; they just turned a blind eye to it.

Although he had references, the support of McMaster and the mayor of Hamilton, Stelco was unwilling to have a black man on its sales force.

[3] In 1986, Alexander said in a Chatelaine magazine interview: "My mother was the single biggest influence on me–before my wife, I’ve always regretted that she didn’t live to see me graduate from university.

Here he practiced real estate and commercial law and established a political base in the German and Polish communities in Hamilton.

[3][4] Alexander bought his own home on Proctor Blvd in the east end of Hamilton in 1958 and was able to move his family out of his in-laws' house.

"[4] Alexander wrote in his memoir: The experience was an eye-opener for me not only as a lawyer but also as a human being because I began to realize what black people could do.

[6] In 1965, Alexander ran in the Canadian federal election as the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada candidate in the Hamilton West electoral district but was defeated.

[6] He ran again in the 1968 federal election and on June 25, 1968, he won the seat, becoming Canada's first black Member of Parliament.

However, I want the record to show that I accept the responsibility of speaking for him and all others in this great nation who feel that they are the subjects of discrimination because of race, creed or colour"[3]In 1970, Alexander voted in favour of the War Measures Act invoked by then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau but later felt he had erred in this decision, saying: "[T]he issue of limiting rights has far more serious implications than I thought at the time.

[8] It was Alexander and Newfoundland MP John Lundrigan who provoked Trudeau into mouthing an obscenity in the House of Commons during a discussion of training programs for the unemployed in February 1971.

[8] Alexander was an observer to the United Nations in 1976 and 1978 and served briefly as Minister of Labour in the Progressive Conservative Party's minority government headed by Joe Clark from 1979 to 1980.

[4] In November 2006, his autobiography Go to School, You're a Little Black Boy: The Honourable Lincoln M. Alexander: A Memoir was published.

[12] The national and provincial flags outside the Ontario Legislative Building were flown at half-mast and tributes were given by various viceroys and politicians.

[12][13][14] His body lay in state, first inside the Ontario Legislative Building at Queen's Park, then at Hamilton City Hall.

Those in attendance included then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper, former Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, then-Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, Governor General David Johnston, former Governor General Michaëlle Jean, former Prime Minister Joe Clark, federal cabinet minister Julian Fantino, Dr. Alastair Summerlee, President of the University of Guelph, and Dr. Peter George, former President of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

In December 2014 Parliament passed a law designating January 21 "Lincoln Alexander Day" across Canada,[19] which was observed for the first time in 2015.

[6] In 2018, Canada Post marked Black History Month with stamps featuring Alexander and Kay Livingstone.