The most revealing answers I got from the Justices in my interviews were those to the questions I asked when I shut off the microphone and the Justices felt completely relaxed. JUSTICE CHARLES GAUTHIER
At the time of my interviews, Justice Charles Gauthier was the new kid on the block.
"How did you feel the first time when the two 20 foot doors to the Courtroom swung regally open? And you walked slowly into the courtroom for the first time. At the end of the line, dressed in your fur lined red velvet robes into the courtroom?" He replied shyly.
“I felt overwhelmed. Like I had felt as a bridegroom walking slowly up the aisle in the church to meet my loved one waiting for me to join her in wedded harmony.
JUSTICE GERARD LA FOREST
I shut off my microphone after a one and a half hour interview. Non stop.
“Do you ever feel tired,” I asked Justice Gerard La Forest, as I shut off my microphone.
He leaned back, and succumbed to a few moments of reminiscence.
“There are days when I am exhausted. And then one day, a case comes across,
and it has 10 little fingers, and 10 little toes, and I am reborn all over again!” Justice La Forest commented almost resignedly about that long narrow hall
with its cold marble floor and all the Justices offices all lined up on one side,
“When I was a judge in the New Brunswick Court of Appeal, the judges offices were all around a square hall. So when i wanted to take a break and think, I went out into the square hall. Sure enough, there was always one or two judges doing the same thing.
And that was wonderful. So conducive to have other judges with whom to toss ideas back and forth." Justice La Forest never stayed to have lunch with the other Justices in the Court dining room. He always went home to eat with his wife.
“A family man’ commented the guard standing outside the Courtroom.
“And what about Justices Lamer and Sopinka,” I asked the guard. “Men of the world!”
And then the guard caught himself and rephrased.
"But family men. Family men!”
Justice Bertha Wilson?
The eyes of the guard rolled upwards to the heavens as he answered with a beatific voice. "An angel. An absolute angel"
Way back when, shortly after Justice Wilson graduated law school, she was hired by the Toronto law firm of Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP . But she didn't put a foot into the courtroom. Her brilliance was so staggering that they created a special department for her to head. The department of research.
JUSTICE BEVERLY MCLAUGHLIN
I was sitting at the desk of the newly appointed Justice Beverly McLaughlin while her secretary was unpacking her computer - the first computer to hit the Justices.
My first reaction struck me like a bolt of lightening.
“She’s going to become the next Chief Justice!"
I was right on!
And when i sat in front of her in the interview, the second reaction was,
"A dynamic woman, with an amazing sense of self."
She was wearing a stunning satin Kelly green blouse with a knee-high skirt,
a great mix of confidence, a super no-nonsense razor-sharp mind with a delightful fun demeanor.
A woman of tremendous strength, she got the call that she was appointed to the bench only 5 days after husband had died.
There’s a wonderful story about Justice McLaughlin about how she received the request for her hand in marriage over the loudspeaker of the plane on which she was flying with her companion.
He absented himself and without any of her knowledge landed up in the captain’s
cabin. Prearranged, he took the microphone and his voice boomed over the entire plane. "My dearest Beverly, will you marry me?!"
as cabin, turned on the captain’s mike and asked for her hand... and the rest is history!
