Daniel Grafton Hill III (No ember 23, 1923 – June 26, 2003) was a

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

sociologist, civil servant,

human rights Human rights are Morality, moral principles or Social norm, normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for ce ...

specialist, and

Black Canadian Black Canadians (also known as Caribbean-Canadians or Afro-Canadians) are people of full or partial sub-Saharan African descent who are citizens or permanent residents of Canada. The majority of Black Canadians are of Caribbean origin, though t ...

historian. An American born in Missouri and raised in the western United States, Hill went to Canada for graduate work in sociology at

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

, and decided to settle there. He and his American wife both became Canadian citizens and their three children were born and raised there.

Biography

Born in

Independence, Missouri Independence is the fifth-largest city in Missouri and the county seat of Jackson County, Missouri, Jackson County. Independence is a satellite city of Kansas City, Missouri, and is the largest suburb on the Missouri side of the Kansas City metro ...

, Hill grew up in the western United States as the son of Daniel Grafton Hill II and his wife. His father, born in Washington, DC, and paternal grandfather were both university-educated men who became ordained ministers of the

African Methodist Episcopal Church The African Methodist Episcopal Church, usually called the AME Church or AME, is a Black church, predominantly African American Methodist Religious denomination, denomination. It adheres to Wesleyan-Arminian theology and has a connexionalism, c ...

. It was the first independent black denomination in the United States, founded in 1816 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. One of Hill's paternal aunts was

Violet Hill Whyte Violet Hill Whyte (November 18, 1897 – 1980, born Violet Hill) was a teacher, the first African-American to be appointed an officer of the Baltimore Police Department in Maryland, and a community activist. She was appointed in December 1937 by ...

, the first of his father's nine siblings. She was a public school teacher before 1937, when she was the first black to be appointed as an officer in the

Baltimore Police Department The Baltimore Police Department (BPD) is the municipal police department of the city of Baltimore, Maryland. Dating back to 1784, the BPD, consisting of 2,935 employees in 2020, is organized into nine districts covering of land and of waterway ...

in Maryland. In 1948, Hill graduated with a BA from

Howard University Howard University (Howard) is a private, federally chartered historically black research university in Washington, D.C. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity" and accredited by the Middle States Commissi ...

, a

historically black university Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are institutions of higher education in the United States that were established before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the intention of primarily serving the African-American community. Mo ...

in Washington, DC. While in the capital, he met his future wife, a woman from

Oak Park, Illinois Oak Park is a village in Cook County, Illinois, adjacent to Chicago. It is the 29th-most populous municipality in Illinois with a population of 54,583 as of the 2020 U.S. Census estimate. Oak Park was first settled in 1835 and later incorporated in ...

. In 1950, he moved to Canada to study sociology at the

. He received an

M.A. A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...

in 1951 and a

Ph.D A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common Academic degree, degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields ...

in 1960. Already teaching at the university, he and his wife decided to make their home in Toronto. In 1953, he had married Donna Mae Bender (1928–2018), a former Senate staffer and civil rights activist, whom he had met in Washington, DC. They settled in Toronto that year. They had three children together, all born in Canada: singer-songwriter

Dan Hill Daniel Grafton Hill IV (born 3 June 1954) is a Canadian pop singer and songwriter. He had two major international hits with his songs "Sometimes When We Touch" and "Can't We Try", a duet with Vonda Shepard, as well as a number of other charting ...

, author

Lawrence Hill Lawrence Hill (born January 24, 1957) is a Canadian novelist, essayist, and memoirist. He is known for his 2007 novel '' The Book of Negroes,'' inspired by the Black Loyalists given freedom and resettled in Nova Scotia by the British after the A ...

, and poet and novelist Karen Hill (1958–2014). In the early 1950s in Toronto, Donna Hill worked as a human rights activist for the city's Labour Committee for Human Rights. She lobbied the Ontario government to enact anti-discrimination legislation. She also wrote about Black Canadian history; her ''A Black Man's Toronto, 1914–1980: The Reminiscences of Harry Gairey'' (1980) was published by the

Multicultural History Society of Ontario The Multicultural History Society of Ontario (MHSO) is a not-for-profit educational institution and archives located in Toronto, Canada. Established in 1976, the Multicultural History Society of Ontario collects, preserves, and makes available recor ...

. From 1955 to 1958, Hill was a researcher for the Social Planning Council of

Metropolitan Toronto The Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto was an upper-tier level of municipal government in Ontario, Canada, from 1953 to 1998. It was made up of the old city of Toronto and numerous townships, towns and villages that surrounded Toronto, whic ...

. From 1958 to 1960, he was Executive Secretary of the

North York North York is one of the six administrative districts of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is located directly north of York, Old Toronto and East York, between Etobicoke to the west and Scarborough to the east. As of the 2016 Census, it had a popu ...

Social Planning Council. In 1960, he was the assistant director of the Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Research Foundation. From 1961 to 1962, he taught in the department of sociology at the University of Toronto. In 1962, he was the first full-time director of the

Ontario Human Rights Commission The Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) was established in the Canadian province of Ontario on March 29, 1961, to administer the Ontario Human Rights Code. The OHRC is an arm's length agency of government accountable to the legislature through ...

. In 1972, he became Ontario Human Rights Commissioner. In 1973, he resigned to found his own human rights consulting firm. From 1984 to 1989, he was the

Ontario Ombudsman The Office of the Ombudsman of Ontario is an independent office of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario in the Canadian province of Ontario. Role The office's jurisdiction includes more than 500 provincial government ministries, agencies, corpor ...

. He founded the Ontario Black History Society. In 1981, he published the book, ''The Freedom Seekers: Blacks in Early Canada''. In 1993, he was awarded the

Order of Ontario The Order of Ontario () is the most prestigious official honour in the Canadian province of Ontario. Instituted in 1986 by Lieutenant Governor Lincoln Alexander, on the advice of the Cabinet under Premier David Peterson, the civilian order is adm ...

. In 1999, he was made an Officer of the

Order of Canada The Order of Canada (french: Ordre du Canada; abbreviated as OC) is a Canadian state order and the second-highest honour for merit in the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, after the Order of Merit. To coincide with the ...

References

*
Daniel Grafton Hill
at ''

The Canadian Encyclopedia ''The Canadian Encyclopedia'' (TCE; french: L'Encyclopédie canadienne) is the national encyclopedia of Canada, published online by the Toronto-based historical organization Historica Canada, with the support of Canadian Heritage. Available fo ...

'' * ''The Freedom-Seekers: Blacks in Early Canada,'' Daniel G. Hill, Stoddart Publishing Co. Ltd., 34 Lesmill Rd., Toronto, Ontario M3B 2T6

External links

CBC The Hour Interview
June 10, 2009.
Order of Canada Citation
*
The Freedom-Seekers: The Life and Times of Daniel G. Hill
', online exhibit on Archives of Ontario website
Daniel G. Hill fonds
Archives of Ontario MCNEIL, DANIEL. Ushering Children Away from a ‘Light Grey World’: Dr. Daniel Hill III and His Pursuit of a Respectable Black Canadian Community. Ontario History 99, no. 1 (2007): 96–106. {{DEFAULTSORT:Hill, Daniel 1923 births 2003 deaths Writers from Independence, Missouri American emigrants to Canada Black Canadian activists Canadian civil servants Canadian male non-fiction writers Canadian sociologists Howard University alumni Members of the Order of Ontario Officers of the Order of Canada Writers from Toronto University of Toronto alumni 20th-century Canadian historians Black Canadian scientists