Harry Ralph Gairey (1898 – 1993) was a Jamaican-born Black Canadian community leader and activist who worked as a railroad porter for much of his life. Gairey moved to Toronto from Cuba in 1914. He worked for the Grand Trunk Railway as a dishwasher, cook and waiter until the early 1930s, when Black waiters were laid off in the competition for remaining jobs resulting from the railway's absorption into the operations of Canadian National. In 1936, to support his young family, Gairey returned to railway work, this time for Canadian Pacific as a porter. The poor working conditions and lack of job security led Gairey, along with other porters including Stanley G. Grizzle, to form a local chapter of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters labour union in the 1940s. Gairey was promoted to the po