Angles Covered: August 2025

By Neil Armstrong

Photo contributed Lillie Johnson wearing her Order of Ontario and Order of Canada insignias at a special Order of Canada investiture ceremony on February 27, 2024, in Scarborough, Ontario.

I met Lillie Johnson in the 1990s at CHRY 105.5FM at York University when I invited her to discuss her work and the Sickle Cell Association of Ontario, which she founded with a small team in 1981.

We built a friendship over the years which included many conversations and interviews for news stories and features. In 2014, I interviewed her at the launch of her memoir, My Dream, at the Jamaican Canadian Association. It is worth reading to understand the mettle of her dynamism. I knew more about her when my friend, Karen Flynn, did her postgraduate studies at York University and included Johnson and other Black Canadian and Caribbean women in her research. Dr. Flynn, now the Terrance & Karyn Holm Endowed Professor in the Department of Population Health Nursing Science at the University of Illinois, Chicago, wrote the book, Moving Beyond Borders: A History of Black Canadian and Caribbean Women in the Diaspora, which has a photograph of Johnson wearing her nurse’s uniform early in her career.

The former nurse, educator, public health advocate, community stalwart and recipient of the Order of Ontario and the Order of Canada died on March 16, 1922, in St. Ann, Jamaica, and died in Toronto, Canada on August 10, 2025. She was 103 years old.

My condolences to her family, friends, and all who knew and loved her.

Her book, My Dream, ends with these lines:

“One of my favourite inspirational poems through the years has been this one, which expresses perfectly how I feel:

“Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.”

- William Ernest Henley (1849-1903)