William Denis Hertel Johnson, CM (23 April 1931 – 2 March 2020) was a Canadian academic, journalist, and author.
For seven years Johnson attended Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf in Montreal, and held an MA in French literature from the Université de Montréal.
In 1982, Johnson was made a Member of the Order of Canada with the citation that his "daily reports from Quebec on social, cultural, and political affairs have given Anglophone readers new insights into the problems and aspirations of Francophones and have contributed notably to Canadian unity."
During that term, he refused to meet with government officials, held two small demonstrations against the Charter of the French Language, added clauses to the group's constitution denouncing hypothetical declarations of independence by the Quebec government, and supported the election of members of the tiny Equality Party to the group's board of directors.
[3] As president of the association recognized by the federal government to defend Quebec's official language minority, Johnson insisted on marching in Montreal's Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day parade in 1998, over the objections of the organizers and the police; during the parade, the Entartistes threw a cream pie in his face.