Hamlin Grange recognized with Order of Canada
January 26, 2023
Seldom is Hamlin Grange speechless.
Receiving an email early last month from the Governor-General’s office requesting that he call them, the person on the other end of the line told the diversity & inclusion strategist and trainer that she was responsible for the Order of Canada file.
“She said she did the research and background checks and talked about how honoured she was to find all these good things out about me,” he said. “I told her that I am not often lost for words, but I am.”
Grange is among 99 new appointments to the Order of Canada established in 1967 to coincide with the centennial of the confederation of the country.
Always humble and respectful, he graciously accepted Canada’s highest civilian honour for his pioneering work in diversity and inclusion while being a passionate change agent for social justice.
Grange said it would not have been possible had it not been for giants on whose shoulders he stands.
“When I think back to some of the folks that have gone before me and have done this work, I think of people like Stan Grizzle, Bromley Armstrong, Dr. Wilson Head and Al Mercury who did a lot to uplift our community and were the targets of a lot of the slings and arrows that many of us don’t have to go through,” he said. “I have done the work in this area of social justice and inclusion standing on the shoulders of pretty gigantic folks.”
Four years after leaving Jamaica at age 10, Grange enrolled in Central Tech in 1968 and made an immediate impact.
In Grade 12, he became the school’s first Black Student Council President.
“His election victory was the result of him developing skills and maturity and the inclusive nature of the student body,” said then Student Council Staff Adviser Robert Longworth. “These were challenging times as the provincial government had brought in budget cuts to education that resulted in, among other things, larger class sizes. Extracurricular activities across the Board ceased with one exception. Hamlin convinced then Principal Milt Christmas to allow the student council, under his direction, to continue some activities. Dances were held after school and other groups, such as the track team, continued to train. Central Tech was unique.”
Longworth said Grange suggested rotating strikes and, after four days of protest, addressed the city’s student bodies at a rally at Nathan Phillips Square.
“He challenged members of the press to visit schools and see for themselves how the budget cuts had affected the classes,” added the retired educator and close friend of Grange. “It was a barnburner of a speech. It was the largest student protest the city had seen and he was a key organizer. In an unprecedented move, he and his fellow Student Council Presidents were invited to meet with then Education Minister Tom Wells to discuss the ongoing dispute. Hamlin was the right person in the right place at the right time. He learnt lessons in leadership that can’t be taught in the classroom.”
Grange also made his mark at Central Tech as an exceptional athlete, helping the school win its first city championship in 25 years.
Receiving a track scholarship while in high school, he went on to hold the Canadian junior 400-metre hurdles record for several years, win the 1975 Canadian Senior Championship in Sudbury in 52.7 secs. and just missed qualifying for the 1976 Montreal Olympics.
While at the University of Colorado Boulder, Grange met his wife – Cynthia Reyes -- when he was back in Toronto on school break. They have two daughters and a grandchild.
Migrating from Jamaica in 1974, she was one of the first Black female on-air personalities in Toronto and one of the youngest executive producers.
The couple started Innoversity in 2001 because they felt the mainstream media was a ‘closed club’. They also co-founded DiversiPro Inc. that is a training and consulting firm specializing in diversity change management.
Hamlin Grange & Cynthia Reyes at the Diversity Expo Transformation Awards in June 2014 where Grange was the recipient of the Media Award (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
He said the Order of Canada is also for Reyes who, in the 1990s, co-led a Canadian team of trainers and consultants working in South Africa and Canada to assist the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) to become a public broadcaster in the post anti-apartheid era.
“We have been partners in life and in business for a long time and my success is really her success and vice versa,” the 2022 Canadian Journalism Foundation Lifetime Award jury member and Stratford Festival Diversity Consultant noted. “We have been our greatest critics and supporters and her name is on this honour as well. Although she would say no, I would say absolutely yes.”
As the New Year unfolds, they are busy developing and growing DiversiPro that offers fresh thinking and new approaches to diversity and inclusion strategies and management.
“We recently launched a new learning platform around diversity, inclusion, equity, anti-racism and we are developing online learning products,” the company’s President & Principal Consultant said. “Our big project is to build a company and, at some point, leave a legacy behind. I am also helping to raise our three-year-old granddaughter which is a big and important project.”
Grange is a Qualified Administrator of the Intercultural Development Inventory that helps individuals and teams assess and reflect on their stages of cultural sensitivity and a Certified Associate of Emergenetics that is a psychometric assessment tool that measures the thinking and behavioural preferences of individuals and teams.
He is frequently called on to give keynote speeches on diversity and inclusion to senior executives and public service leaders.
Before becoming a change agent, Grange was a reporter with the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, a reporter/managing editor for 21 months with the defunct Contrast newspaper and a reporter, news anchor, host, municipal affairs specialist, news documentary reporter and senior producer with Canadian mainstream news organizations, including the Toronto Star, Global TV and CBC TV.
He hosted Newsworld, TVO’s ‘Workweek’ and the CBC’s ‘More to the Story’.
Hamlin Grange & Alok Mukherjee served at the same time on the Toronto Police Services Board (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
University of British Columbia Associate Professor Dr. Minelle Mahtani said Grange has profoundly shifted the terrain when the troubled history of representation of systematically disadvantaged groups in journalism in Canada is taken into consideration.
“Hamlin’s impressive background as a television host and producer has informed the mentorship and development of so many of us who identify as racialized journalists,” the Brenda & David McLean Chair of Canadian Studies said. “He has provided key support and insight into the profound shifts that media organizations need to make in order to create more inclusive and accessible newsrooms and he has taken on this gargantuan task with great generosity of spirit.
“His commitment to making systemic, broad-based change is at once obvious and in light with so much of what Pierre Elliot Trudeau had in mind when offering up spaces through which to imagine truly multicultural spaces. His journalistic excellence, his talent as a teacher and mentor and his stature as an elder and one of Canada’s most prominent Black journalists is to be heralded and championed. I feel so fortunate to know him and truly believe I would not be able to carry out my scholarly and journalistic commitments as a journalist of colour and scholar of colour in media studies if not for Hamlin’s groundbreaking work.”
In the last two decades, Grange has been a member of several important Boards.
A Responsible Gambling Council Board member since 2011, he was Chair for three years until June 2022.
“It is an international organization whose work revolves around responsible gambling initiatives,” the former Liquor Control Board of Ontario Diversity & Inclusion Consultant pointed out. “During my time, we have broadened the reach and scope of what we do. With the rise in online gambling, responsible gambling measures are going to be really important to put in place to protect individuals, especially those in vulnerable communities.”
Hamlin Grange & Suhana Meharchand co-hosted the University of the West Indies Toronto Benefit Awards show in 2012 (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
Grange, who enjoys cycling and photography, co-founded the Black Business & Professional Association in 1982 and the Canadian Association of Black Journalists in 1996 and was a member of the Toronto Police Services, the YMCA of Greater Toronto, the Canadian Women in Communications and Samara Centre for Democracy Boards.
As a Royal Ontario Museum Trustee, he was a member of the governance and research and exhibits committees and the board's representative on the Institute for Contemporary Culture.
Grange is the brother of senior Jamaica government minister Olivia ‘Babsy’ Grange who co-founded Contrast that served Canada’s Black community in the 1970s and early 1980s.
