Barbara Hall

Barbara Hall (born 1946) is a Canadian lawyer and former politician who served as the 61st mayor of Toronto from 1994 to 1997, the last mayor of Toronto prior to amalgamation. Hall served as the chief commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission from 2005 to 2015. In 2014, Cawthra Square Park in Toronto's Church and Wellesley neighbourhood was renamed Barbara Hall Park in her honour. She was inducted as a Member of the Order of Canada in 2015. Background Hall attended the University of Victoria in British Columbia but left two credits short of a bachelor's degree to pursue community activism. She then moved to Nova Scotia to work with black families in rural areas. Hall worked as one of the first members of the Company of Young Canadians in the small community of Three Mile Plains, Nova Scotia. In 1967, at the age of 20, she worked for Toronto youth programs and co-founded an alternative school. She served for a time as a probation officer in Cleveland, Ohio. She returned to Canada and studied law at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University and in 1980 was admitted to the Law Society of Upper Canada.