Bertha Wilson, the former Supreme Court of Canada judge with the soft Scottish burr in her voice, died last weekend.
The first woman to sit on that court when appointed in 1982, she had a remarkable career. Never wore lawyer's robes from the day she was called to the bar in 1957 until the day she was appointed to the bench. Never really worked with clients either. She was a pure research lawyer. On her first day on the job at Osler Hoskin in Toronto, one of the seniors told her, "Write me a memo: 'What is a bond?'" And for the rest of her private practice career she pretty much did things like that.
She functioned as a research lawyer, mastering all the most subtle and technical matters of the law for the benefit of other Osler lawyers. Did it so well, in fact, that big law firms accepted the idea that having research lawyers was better than pretending every lawyer in the firm knew, or could learn, everything in the law. For someone like Wilson, who loved the pure study of the law, there could hardly have been a more congenial career.
Osler is a big corporate Bay Street firm. Almost all her practice was corporate law, in the interest of the biggest corporate clients. Only when she rose to the high court did she get to apply her mind to big questions of fairness, justice, rights and freedoms -- and suddenly to general surprise, she became one of the court's most radical judges.
Had she pined, at Oslers, over devoting all her skill and passion mostly to nothing more than maximizing the incomes of the country's largest corporations and wealthiest shareholders? Not at all, as far as one can tell. Fascinating how often lawyers who love the law simply revel in the pure pleasure of the study without much considering who they are serving.
Ellen Anderson wrote a good life of Bertha Wilson some years ago: Judging Bertha Wilson. Available through the Osgoode Society or your bookseller or library.
