Chief Justice W R Jackett

Wilbur Roy Jackett, born in a small town in Saskatchewan in 1914, is inextricably connected to some of the most important developments in Canadian legal history. As a scholar, public servant, and jurist, he was a leading figure in Canadian law, serving during the governments of Mackenzie King, St Laurent, Pearson, Diefenbaker, Trudeau, and Clark. After graduating from the University of Saskatchewan's College of Law, Jackett was chosen as a Rhodes Scholar. He returned to Canada from Oxford not long before the outbreak of World War II and joined the ten-man Department of Justice as a junior lawyer. Through extraordinary hard work, rigorous legal analysis, and a bent for organisation, he eventually became Canada's eighth deputy minister of Justice. He left this position after three years to become general counsel for the Canadian Pacific Railway and was later appointed president of the Exchequer Court of Canada. He quickly revamped the level of service provided by the court to the legal profession and the public and was instrumental in both the creation of the Canadian Judicial Council and the design and creation of the new Federal Court of Canada. As the first chief justice of the Federal Court, he led the new court by example, moulding it into the most efficient and effective court in the country, despite opposition from provincial superior courts and the Supreme Court of Canada. After fifteen years on the Bench he retired in 1979 at the height of his judicial career, believing that this would help the Court develop. He continued to work in relative obscurity at what he loved best - solving legal problems - but never again appeared before the courts. Richard W. Pound is a senior partner at Stikeman, Elliott, chancellor of McGill University, and a member of the International Olympic Committee.

After graduating from the University of Saskatchewan's College of Law, Jackett was chosen as a Rhodes Scholar. He returned to Canada from Oxford not long before the outbreak of World War II and joined the ten-man Department of Justice as a junior lawyer. Through extraordinary hard work, rigorous legal analysis, and a bent for organization, he eventually became Canada's eighth deputy minister of Justice. He left this position after three years to become general counsel for the Canadian Pacific Railway and was later appointed president of the Exchequer Court of Canada. He quickly revamped the level of service provided by the court to the legal profession and the public and was instrumental in both the creation of the Canadian Judicial Council and the design and creation of the new Federal Court of Canada. As the first chief justice of the Federal Court, he led the new court by example, moulding it into the most efficient and effective court in the country, despite opposition from provincial superior courts and the Supreme Court of Canada. After fifteen years on the Bench he retired in 1979 at the height of his judicial career, believing that this would help the Court develop. He continued to work in relative obscurity at what he loved best - solving legal problems - but never again appeared before the courts.

In any account of twentieth-century Canadian law, Bora Laskin (1912-1984) looms large. Born in northern Ontario to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, Laskin became a prominent human rights activist, university professor, and labour arbitrator before embarking on his 'accidental career' as a judge on the Ontario Court of Appeal (1965) and later Chief Justice of Canada (1973-1984). Throughout his professional career, he used the law to make Canada a better place for workers, racial and ethnic minorities, and the disadvantaged. As a judge, he sought to make the judiciary more responsive to modern Canadian expectations of justice and fundamental rights. In Bora Laskin: Bringing Law to Life, Philip Girard chronicles the life of a man who, at all points of his life, was a fighter for a better Canada: he fought antisemitism, corporate capital, omnipotent university boards, the Law Society of Upper Canada, and his own judicial colleagues in an effort to modernize institutions and re-shape Canadian law. Girard exploits a wealth of previously untapped archival sources to provide, in vivid detail, a critical assessment of a restless man on an important mission.