Harold R. Johnson
Harold R. Johnson was a Canadian indigenous lawyer and writer, whose book Firewater: How Alcohol Is Killing My People was a shortlisted nominee for the Governor General's Award for English-language non-fiction at the 2016 Governor General's Awards. The book, an examination of the problem with alcohol consumption among Canadian First Nations, draws on Johnson's work as a Crown prosecutor in northern Saskatchewan.
Johnson told CBC Radio interviewer Shelagh Rogers in 2016 that his father was a Swedish immigrant and his mother a Cree woman in Saskatchewan, where he was born. He enlisted in the Royal Canadian Navy and worked as a logger, trapper and miner before going to university as an adult, completing his education in law with an MA at Harvard. He was a member of the Montreal Lake Cree Nation.
After being diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer, Johnson died on February 9, 2022, at the age of 67. His twelfth and final book, The Power of Story was released posthumously in October 2022.
Daniel Grenier received a Governor General's Award nomination for English to French translation at the 2024 Governor General's Awards, for his translation of Johnson's Charlie Muskrat.