The Advocate, published six times a year since 1943 by the Vancouver Bar Association, is one of those traditional bench-and-bar legal magazines. It has a wine column, a lively letters-to-the-editor section, and always an abundance of anecdotes.
It’s also evidence that lots of lawyers still have a sense of professional tradition.
A recent edition noted the centenary of the B.C. Court of Appeal by devoting itself to great advocates who had practised there, not by bloodless official reports but through the reminiscences of equally distinguished lawyers who knew them.
So Thomas Braidwood, of the recent Braidwood inquiry, writes of his mentor, criminal defence lawyer Angelo Branca. Jack Giles of Farris Vaughan Wills & Murphy LLP recalls senator Wallace Farris.
Patricia Proudfoot, formerly of the Court of Appeal, writes of early woman lawyer Edith Paterson. Her fellow judge Martin Taylor, previously with Davis LLP, recalls the Ontario migrant who founded that firm, the redoubtable E.P. Davis.
Just to keep a new generation involved, an articling student, Kaitlin McKinnon, writes of Charles Hibbert Tupper, a founder of her firm. Tupper moved to Victoria in 1897 after Sir Wilfrid Laurier defeated the federal government he had been part of.
Tupper was MP for Pictou, N.S., which had re-elected him. But the Law Society of British Columbia was less obliging. Tupper, though he was an ex officio B.C. bencher as a former justice minister, had to rewrite his law exams before being admitted to the local bar.
These were all B.C. lawyers, but many of them had national careers. Charles Locke, for example, recalls his father Charles Locke, a leading Vancouver lawyer who, in the son’s proud telling, “vanished to Eastern Canada” when he joined the Supreme Court of Canada in 1947.
Happily, it’s not only B.C. lawyers who honour their mentors and predecessors. I have recently been looking into Learned Friends, a book published by The Advocates’ Society in Ontario a few years ago. It consists of 50 brief profiles of “remarkable Ontario advocates” from 1950-2000.
Some of the 50 were giants of the Toronto bar: John Robinette, Arthur Martin, and Margaret Hyndman. But The Advocates’ Society got out around the province too: Fern Gratton of Sudbury, Jack Mirsky of Ottawa, Alf Petrone of Thunder Bay, and many more.
Lawyer and journalist Jack Batten wrote all 50 sketches but he drew on the memories of scores of friends, family members, and former partners for stories and personal glimpses.
Do other professions do this kind of thing? Right now, lawyers’ support for and participation in legal history seems to far outstrip what any other profession can show.
Largely through the inspiration of the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, recent decades have seen a tremendous blossoming in serious, scholarly legal history.
Much of it extends from law into political history, business, biography, women’s studies, and other fields while showcasing some of the country’s leading historians, from Jack Saywell to Constance Backhouse.
Still, it’s important that the history of the profession not be left entirely to outside scholars. As the profession and its law firms grow ever larger, oral transmission of professional lore becomes insufficient.
Projects like The Advocates’ Society book and the B.C. Advocate’s special issue show there are still lots of lawyers who take an interest in where their profession came from, as well as where it’s going.
I have just one quibble. Why is it the litigators who seem to take the lead? Surely, solicitors’ practice needs its storytellers, too.
Christopher Moore’s newest book is The British Columbia Court of Appeal: The First Hundred Years. His web site is www.christophermoore.ca.
