A list of Canadians who have contribited substantially to society and are making the world a better, more sane place.

Most links are to articles on wikipedia.org

John Peters Humphrey (1905 – 1955)
wrote the first draft of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908.10.15 – )
economist who played a key role in the US Kennedy Administration as one of Kennedy’s best advisors

Marshall McLuhan (1911.07.21 – 1980.12.31)
philosopher who initated a new understanding and a philosophy of the electronic media

Jane Jacobs (1916 – )
urban affairs activist

Pierre Trudeau (1919.10.18 – 2000.09.28)
Canada’s greatest Prime Minister who began his political activity advising the abestos miners of their rights during the corrupt Duplesis regime, who went on to be a socratic gadfly toward the stulifying Duplesis status quo, and who became Prime Minister almost by accident. In his last term he insisted the country adopt a constition and bill of rights suitable for the contempoary era, and he travelled to the capitals of the world urging nuclear disarmement.

Jean Vanier (1928.09.10 – )
founded the Arches centres, which provide care for the disabled throughout Europe and North America

Charles Taylor (1931.11.05 – )
philosopher who has contributed to thoughts on authenticity and morality

David Suzuki (1936.03.24 – )
trained as a genetist, he’s used his position as a science broadcaster on the CBC to advocate for environmental responsilbilty

Louise Arbour (1947.02.10 – )
lawyer who served at on the war crimes tribunal at The Hague, the Supreme Court of Canada, and now is the UN Commionsner for Human Rights

Micheal Ignatieff (1947 – )
leading thinker about human rights and of the responsible uses of political power

John Ralston Saul (1947.06.19 – )
philosopher who argues against the downsides of the corporate and managerial mentality

Steven Pinker (1954.09.18 – )
Psychologist and cognitive scientist making contributions to a materialist understanding of the human mind, and able to communicate these achievements to a broad audience

James Gosling (1956.05.19 – )
programmer who developed the Java programming language which has been used on NASA probes

Malcolm Gladwell (1963 – )
writes articles for the New Yorker magazines which documents the history of popular culture.

Mark Kingwell (1963 – )
philosopher who is active in the media and who is able to communicate the complexity behind the gray areas of today’s issues

Rasmus Lerdorf (1968.11.22 – )
programmer who created the PHP scripting engine which is used throughout the internet for dynamic websites and database interfacing

Naomi Klein (1970 – )
reporter and activist for worker’s rights and for limiting corporate power

Cory Doctorow (1971.07.17 – )
novelist and activist for sensible copyright reform

Craig Kielburger (1983 – )
activist against the use of child labour in developing areas