Harold R. Johnson


Harold R. Johnson is a Canadian 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 aboriginal 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.