Honouring John Humphrey

How many Canadian law students could identify John Humphrey or explain his significance to the law? I certainly couldn’t when we met at a meeting in 1976, convened by the Ontario Human Rights Commission. He was then seventy, a tweedy academic in bow tie, who had come down from the McGill Law School. Only at a break did a friend lean over and tell me that this academic had held the pen for the drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

René Cassin was credited as the “Father of the Universal Declaration” and awarded the 1968 Nobel Prize, while Humphrey modestly remained silent.

Many years later, when researchers examined Humphrey’s papers at McGill University, they uncovered the original draft of the Declaration, scrawled in Humphrey’s handwriting. Humphrey was belatedly honoured with a UN Human Rights Award. Ever humble, Humphrey explained to an interviewer, “To say I did the draft alone would be nonsense… The final Declaration was the work of hundreds.”

Here is a video minute on Humphrey’s role, a tribute from the DFAIT website, and a note from the Humphrey Foundation’s own website.

Humphrey was honoured last week in his home town of Hampton, NB
. The Kings’ County Record has a full account.