At last weekend's legal history gathering, I reconnected with a longtime acquaintance, Carolyn Strange, the Canadian scholar who is now the very accomplished professor of history at Australian National University.
And I learned that her 2025 book Fatal Confession: A Girl's Murder, a Man's Execution and the Fitton case, co-published by the University of British Columbia Press (in its 'Landmarks in Canadian Law' series) and the Osgoode Society for Legal History, is a shortlisted title for the City of Toronto Book Award -- the only nonfiction work alongside four novels.
a long successful career in civil litigation in Canada between 1960 and 2025 [demonstrating] how lawyers, judges, courts, and law firms have transformed both the law and the practice of civil litigation during his lifetime.
Legal historians will take note of the evolution of the law and legal practice as he documents it. I suspect it may be more widely read by litigators and intending litigators, as virtually the whole book is Cherniak's detailed and opiniated insiders' recounting of many hard-fought trials and appeals large and small, and how he won them or why he lost them.
And while we are tallying all these honours, how about the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Alberta to my friend and nonfiction guru Myrna Ann Kostash, BA '65? Can an honorary degree be far behind, U of A?
