Alumni of Influence

Lawyer, author and civil libertarian Alan Borovoy is one of Canada’s most vociferous defenders of human rights. For more than four decades, he acted as general counsel and chief spokesperson for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. Borovoy has been a visiting professor at Dalhousie, Toronto, Windsor and York universities and currently holds four honorary doctorates. He has been recognized with the Award for the Advancement of Intellectual Freedom in Canada and an inscription in the Honour Roll of the Aboriginal People's Treaty Number 3.

Lawyer Leonard Braithwaite is the first Black Canadian to be elected to a provincial legislature. Born in Toronto to West Indian immigrants and raised during the Great Depression, Braithwaite served overseas with the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War. In 1963, he was elected to the Ontario Legislature as a Liberal member, where he served as critic of labour and welfare, advocated for the admission of female pages and helped revoke a regulation that had allowed for racial segregation in schools. He has been recognized with numerous awards, including U of T’s Chancellor’s Award and the Black Alumni Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Lawyer and real estate tycoon Rudolph Bratty has built communities across the Greater Toronto Area. He is the founder of Bratty & Partners LLP, a law firm specializing in real estate, development,and planning. As chair and chief executive officer of The Remington Group, he is also a real estate developer whose projects have changed the landscape of the city. Bratty has been honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Building Industry and Land Development Association, as well as a star on the Italian Walk of Fame on College Street in Toronto’s Little Italy.

Religious historian Wilfred Cantwell Smith was an early and influential proponent of interfaith dialogue. An expert in oriental languages, he founded the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University and the Department of Comparative Religion at Dalhousie. He was best known for arguing that the term religion, before the seventeenth century, meant a quality of piety common among the faithful from various traditions, and that its modern definition as a set of beliefs arose from conceptual slippage.

Harvard astronomy professor David Charbonneau searches for Earth-like planets that can sustain life beyond our solar system. He the recipient of the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal, the Sackler Prize in the Physical Sciences and the National Science Foundation’s Alan T. Waterman Award, honouring an outstanding young scientist or engineer. In 2007, he was named Scientist of the Year by Discover Magazine. Currently, he is working on NASA- and National Science Foundation-funded projects that aim to detect distant planets capable of supporting life.

The former president and chief executive officer of TD Bank Financial Group, Ed Clark is one the most influential figures in the financial industry in Canada. Under his leadership, TD Canada Trust grew into the nation’s second-biggest bank by assets. For his extraordinary vision, Clark has been honoured with the Egale Leadership Award for support of LGBT communities, as well as the Catalyst Canada Honour for women’s advancement. Clark was named Canada’s Outstanding CEO of the Year in 2010, followed by the Ivey Business Leader Award in 2011 and an appearance on Barron’s prestigious annual list of the world’s top 30 CEOs in 2012.

Austin Clarke, who died in 2016, was a celebrated author of novels and essays on the Canadian immigrant experience. A prolific author of 11 novels, six short story collections and five books of nonfiction, he was the recipient of the Roger’s Writer’s Trust Fiction Prize, the Toronto Book Award and the W.O. Mitchell Award for support of young writers. In 2002 he won both the Giller Prize and the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for The Polished Hoe. Beyond writing, he served as Cultural Attaché of Barbados, manager of the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation in Barbados and on the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada.

Economics consultant, journalist and broadcaster Dian Cohen has helped Canadians make sense of the economy and personal finance for more than four decades. She began her career as a syndicated columnist writing about money matters in the 1970s and parlayed her success into a radio and television career with CTV and CBC. She is the author of a number of books on economics for popular audiences, and her writing has been recognized with the National Business Writing Award and the Literary Guild Award. She has also been named to the Order of Canada.

Lawyer and corporate titan Marshall Cohen has led some of Canada’s most recognizable brands, including The Molson Companies Ltd, Barrick Gold Corporation, TD Ameritrade, and AIG, among others. He has lent his expertise to a number of non-profits, including the C.D. Howe Institute, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and Mount Sinai Hospital. Currently, Cohen is retired counsel at Cassels Brock, a business law firm in Toronto.

Writer and folklorist John Robert Colombo is the ultimate enthusiast of Canadian culture. Known nationally as the Master Gatherer, he has compiled more than 200 anthologies of quotations, lore, literature, mystery and horror. A frequent commentator and avid supporter of the arts, Colombo has described been as a “national treasure” by the Globe and Mail. For his prolific body of work and dedication to preserving Canadian culture, Colombo has been honoured with the Centennial Medal, the Order of Cyril and Methodius, the Harbourfront Literary Award and an honorary doctorate from York University.

Corporate director, business executive and psychologist, Ruth Corbin is a Canadian authority on intellectual property policy and protection. She is an adjunct professor at Osgoode Hall and author of several books, articles and public addresses. In her corporate career, Corbin has held top management positions with Kroll Canada, Angus Reid Group, Leger Marketing and Royal Trust, among others. An in-demand speaker, she has been named among Canada’s 100 Most Powerful Women by the Women's Executive Network and as one of Canada’s Top Women Entrepreneurs by PROFIT magazine. She is currently managing partner of CorbinPartners Inc, a firm specializing in intellectual property auditing and forensic marketing evidence.

Filmmaker David Cronenberg is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest directors of all time. A native of Toronto, he studied arts at UC where a classmate's short film sparked his interest in cinema. The director of the acclaimed Crash, eXistenZ, A History of Violence, Eastern Promises, A Dangerous Method and Cosmopolis, among many others, Cronenberg has a reputation for making highly original and daring films. In recognition of his incredible body of work, Cronenberg was awarded the Carrosse D’Or for lifetime achievement from the Cannes Film Festival, as well as the Légion d’honneur from the government of France.