Based on the legal systems, which early colonists brought to Canada in the 17 and 18 centuries, Canada’s judicial structure has remained stable, allowing Canadian courts a way to resolve disputes peacefully for centuries. But stability does not mean everything in Canada’s legal system has remained static, as Former Chief Justice of Canada Beverley McLachlin can attest to.
Photo: Jean-Marc Carisse
Initially called to the Alberta Bar in 1969 and the British Columbia Bar in 1971, Beverley’s judicial career began in 1981, when she was appointed to the Vancouver County Court. A few months later, she was appointed to the Supreme Court of BC, and in 1985, elevated to the BC Court of Appeal.
In 1988, she was made Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of BC, then sworn in as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada the next year.
Ultimately, in 2000, Beverley made history when she was appointed Canada’s first female Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada.
The role of women in the legal landscape is one of the areas where Beverley has seen a notable change over the years.
“It’s a totally different environment,” she says. “Previously, women were oddities in the legal profession. Many people had good attitudes, but there were a lot of people that had very negative attitudes. The atmosphere was often very sexually charged. Things that wouldn’t be tolerated now were then tolerated.”
In the 1970s and ’80s, early in Beverley’s legal career, “political correctness,” equality and inclusivity were not common practice. The sense that you shouldn’t say certain things just wasn’t there for some people. Of course, now inappropriate sexual comments or innuendos have become unacceptable. Consequently, the atmosphere for women in law and other professions has become more positive.
“We have a ways to go, though,” says Beverley. “I think that women are generally accepted as being capable and able to do anything but putting that into concrete action is the more difficult thing. There still are unconscious biases that work against women in certain situations… [Decision makers] might opt, in a situation of almost equal merit, for a man, because they’re more comfortable with it.”
“Now that’s a very difficult nut to crack,” she continues, “because it rests on unconscious decision-making, and it’s often cloaked as ‘this is what our institution needs. We’ve always done well with someone who looks like A, which is a male.’”
There’s also the fact that the rules of an organization may look okay on their surface, but in reality, could be inequitable. For example, it may seem fair that if you’re a part-time worker that you don’t get a pension, and if you’re full-time you do. But when you look at it in context, it can be a form of discrimination towards women, who still often take the primary responsibility for family and children.
“We might say we don’t penalize a woman because she’s struggling with all of these things, but we need to try to find ways to help her and reconstruct our model,” says Beverley.
Justice McLachlin has argued that courts may be justified in changing the law where such a change would accord with changes in society’s values. Recently, there was a case in the Supreme Court of Canada that said RCMP women who had been hired, had worked on contract, and thereby under the rules as they were set up, didn’t qualify for pension. The decision ruled that they should qualify for pension, otherwise you would just perpetuate this stereotype against women, because they sometimes have to opt for more flexible work environments.
“So that was a big step and that’s the kind of thinking we have to attack,” says Beverley. “It’s very difficult work, but some people are doing it, and they’re bringing their lawsuits and, hopefully, we’ll continue to make changes for the better.”
When Beverley became the first female Chief Justice of Canada, she was credited with turning “a divisive court into one of the most collegial and reflective institutions of its type in the world.” Although this collegial style was natural for her, it was also an intentional mindset. The number of dissents and disagreements had previously been commented on negatively by the public and the legal community, and she believed that the job of the Supreme Court of Canada was to provide maximum guidance to the people of Canada on undecided or difficult legal points, and to provide that as clearly as possible, so that people can move on.
“I don’t take too much personal credit, but when I became Chief Justice, I think I certainly felt that we needed to reduce the number of dissents and disagreements,” she says. “A decision that has the support of most or all of the Court is likely to provide clearer guidance. I agree with dissenting opinions, and I have authored quite a few of them, but what was happening was sometimes the Court was splitting two, three or four ways and that meant that it was hard for people to figure out what the decision actually stood for.”
So, Beverley talked about this matter with her colleagues, who felt the same way, and got their buy-in. There was a concerted effort to do more talking and more coming together to narrow their differences – to maybe find some common ground.
“It was very successful – it was very hard – but, by and large, it was successful, and so I suppose that is why our unanimity figures went up a lot,” she says.
Through necessity with her jurist career, Beverley has spent the bulk of her life being scrupulously non-partisan and impartial. But there have been many other life lessons and skills she has learned along the way, perseverance being one of them.
“There were lots of times early in my career where I suppose many people would have said, this just isn’t working, I’m going to do something else. I can’t do this anymore. But I never gave myself the option of not doing it,” she says. “I just said I’m going to do this and I’m going to do my best. And I did. That’s what got me through.”
Being able to look at a question, issue or situation from all sides is another life lesson. “As you face situations in your life – or particularly in judging – you have to be able to see all sides of things and then respond accordingly. It doesn’t mean you don’t have any convictions, but you have to be able to understand where the other person is coming from. You may not accept it, or you may think it’s wrong, but if you understand why someone did what they did, you’re more apt to forgive them, you don’t write them off and you move forward.”
In December 2017, a few months before reaching the mandatory retirement age of 75, Beverley retired from the Supreme Court of Canada with the distinction of being Canada’s longest serving Chief Justice. But she still works with several commissions, committees and private dispute resolutions. She’s also a member of the Hong Kong Final Court of Appeal.
In 2018, she took the opportunity for a “now for something completely different” endeavour and published her first fiction novel, a thriller about a rising young criminal defense attorney in Vancouver who becomes embroiled in a complicated court case.
“I’ve always been a voracious reader of fiction, and ever since I learned to read, I’d always toyed with the idea that I’d like to write some time, as many people do. I thought, now I’m retired, and if I don’t do it now, I never will,” she says. “Quite frankly, I never expected to get a publisher and I did. Simon & Shuster were great, and they worked with me to pull a book out of the morass of what I’d done. We got Full Disclosure.”
The novel talks about the justice system in a way Beverley wouldn’t be able to, by showing the choices judges and lawyers make and how that could operate in a fictional context.
“The reader is left to draw their own conclusions, and that’s the lovely thing about fiction. You can raise the problems, you can show the different sides of it, without actually standing in judgment,” she says.
Making it on to the Bestsellers’ list, Full Disclosure has been more successful than Beverley had ever dreamed. In fact, she has already written a sequel, to be released in September of 2021.
For someone who has spent their life writing non-fiction, judgments, legal opinions and speeches, Beverley found the fiction writing process liberating and a lot of fun.
“I’d never just let my imagination go and try to create characters and situations and so on. Once I got started on it – I think getting started is always difficult – but once I got started and you get your suite of characters and see things emerging that you never really consciously contemplated, is quite fun,” she says.
On the heels of her fictional writing debut, in 2019, Beverley also published Truth Be Told: My Journey Through Life and the Law, a memoir that provides an intimate and revealing look at her achievements and the trials and tribulations of her life – from growing up in Pincher Creek, Alberta, all the way through her retirement from the Supreme Court of Canada.
Beverley is definitely enjoying this chapter of her life. “I have more freedom now to choose what I’m going to do and when I’m going to do it. I’m still very, very busy, so some days I don’t feel so free. But I think that’s part of it,” she says.
She has also had a chance to contemplate the aging process: “There comes a certain peace and calmness because you’ve been through a lot, you’ve done a lot and, at this point in my life, I think I can get through most things. That gives you a real sense of being centred and grounded.”
“When I was younger,” she continues, “I was continually beset by anxiety on whether I’d succeed on this or that or the other thing and whether I’d done a good job, whether it was exam writing, to papers at university, to things I did as a lawyer. Now, I just do what I think is appropriate. It’s not totally stress free, but it’s a lot less stressful because I have a real sense of who I am and what I can do and my inner resilience. A lot of things have happened in my life and they weren’t all easy and I got through them.”
Snapshot:
If you were to meet your 20-year-old self, what advice would you give her?
“I would tell her to not worry so much.”
What or who has influenced you the most and why?
“There’s no one person. Probably my first husband was a great influence because he persuaded me to go into law.”
What are you most grateful for?
“Good health and love from those around me.”
What does success mean to you?
“Feeling you’ve done your best.”
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