John Humphrey

John Peters Humphrey was born in Hampton, New Brunswick, and overcame childhood adversity—losing both parents to cancer and losing his left arm in an accident at age six—to graduate in law from McGill University, later serving as Dean of the McGill Faculty of Law.

In 1946, Humphrey was appointed the inaugural Director of the United Nations Human Rights Division. Working alongside Eleanor Roosevelt, René Cassin, and Charles Malik, Humphrey penned the four-hundred-page handwritten first working draft of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, defining thirty foundational articles that became the Magna Carta of the entire human race.