Bill Graham

William Carvel Graham (March 17, 1939 – August 7, 2022) was a Canadian lawyer, academic and politician. Graham served as the minister of foreign affairs, minister of national defence, leader of the opposition and interim leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. After leaving politics, he was the chancellor of Trinity College at the University of Toronto. Early life According to his birth certificate, Graham was born on March 17, 1939, in Montreal, Quebec, to Loring and Helen (née White) Bailey. He was the youngest of four siblings: Arthur, Loring Jr and Helen. His parents divorced five months before he was born. On June 9, 1940, his mother married Francis Ronald Graham Sr, a wealthy widower over twenty years her senior with ten children of his own. Shortly after the wedding, his mother and step-father moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, and Bill and Helen were raised by their maternal grandparents in Toronto, Ontario. In 1943, when Bill was four, he joined his mother and step-father in Vancouver. Graham Sr. died in 1963; at his funeral, Graham learned that his step-father was actually his biological father. His paternal grandparents were Protestant Irish immigrants. He was educated at Upper Canada College, Trinity College at the University of Toronto, the University of Toronto Faculty of Law (where he was an editor of the Law Review and the gold medalist of 1964), and the University of Paris. As a student, he travelled in the Middle East and Europe. While at university, he served in the Royal Canadian Naval Reserve under the University Naval Training Division (UNTD), obtaining his commission as a Sub-Lieutenant in 1960. He married the former Catherine Curry in 1962, and they have a daughter, Katherine ("Katy", born in 1964) and a son, the freelance writer Patrick Graham (born in 1965).