reading

Foreword

Rt. Hon. Beverley McLachlin

Five decades ago, the Canadian criminal justice system was a man’s world. Police, prosecutors, defence lawyers, judges — all, down to a man — were male. Women appeared in cameo roles as victims and accused persons, to be sure. But the people running the show and determining the outcomes were all men.

Fast forward fifty years and the picture is very different. Women are part of every part of the criminal process. They are policewomen. They are prosecutors. They are defence lawyers. They are judges. Women still appear in their roles of victim and accused, but the stereotypes of the victim who ‘asked for it’ and the accused who is a ‘bad woman’ have been banished. No longer do men pull all the strings and determine all the outcomes.

The presence of women in the Canadian justice system has changed the system in important ways. It has provided reassurance to women called to testify or answer for their deeds before our courts; no longer do women standing up before the court look around and feel themselves not only outnumbered and outgunned, but confronting an alien world. It has brought new, female perspectives into the criminal justice system. Finally, it has produced a group of women who are going beyond the courtroom and sharing their experiences in the criminal justice system with the public.

This book attests to all three benefits. It describes and affirms the presence of women in the criminal justice system. It offers a host of unique perspectives into the working of the system and how it impacts women in all their diverse roles. And its existence is an example of women moving beyond the courtroom to enrich the public’s understanding of criminal justice in Canada.

The insights offered in this volume fall into three broad categories — what it is like to be a woman working in the justice system as a lawyer or judge; what it is like to be a woman caught up in the justice system, as a victim or as an accused person; and how we can change the system to make it fairer to the people — women and men — it impacts. Since the stories are told by women working in the justice system who are passionate about the people they deal with and about justice, the three types of insight often merge.

The first set of insights is concerned with what it is like to be a woman working in the justice system as lawyer or judge. Among the chapters, Danielle Côté writes movingly of the judge haunted by the fear that the person she has convicted may not, in the end, be guilty, “I am always alone with the burden of my decision, with only myself to blame if an error is made.” Jennifer Briscoe provides a fascinating description of being a prosecutor in a ‘fly-in team,’ meting out justice in remote Arctic communities — of the remarkable people she met, “the cold … the silent darkness, and the heavenly galaxies that … carve into and shape your spiritual connection to the earth.” Jill Presser shares the anxiety of a mother torn between staying with her child and going to court, and how her conflicting emotions are resolved by her daughter’s note after she has won a landmark case, “I am proud of you and hope to do something as meaningful with my life as you have done with yours.” Lucie Joncas tells us of her anguish as she struggles to come to terms with the suicide of a mentally ill client. Iona Jaffe recounts the burdens of a prosecutor in a terrorism offence. And Jennifer Trehearne shares the burden of a client dead in prison after she failed to secure his bail.

The second set of insights focuses on how the criminal justice system impacts and shapes women who find themselves caught up in it. Among these chapters, Nancy Morrison describes her role as a judge in a case of long-running family-abetted sexual abuse of a young girl who refused to accept the wrongs done to her and courageously pursued justice for herself and others like her. Catherine Dunn shares the story of a young First Nations mother charged with failing to provide medical assistance to her dying daughter, through the lens of the woman’s experiences as the victim of domestic abuse and her domestic partner’s experiences of residential schools. Kaysi Fagan describes the dilemma of fashioning an appropriate sentence for an aging woman convicted of a serious drug offence in “Weeding out the Good.” And Susan Lang recounts stories of mothers wrongfully found to be alcohol and drug abusers because of invalid laboratory tests, with tragic consequences for them and the children that were taken away from them.

The third set of insights that emerges from these essays concerns failings in the criminal justice system and how we can rectify them. Included in these insights, Susan Lang recounts the havoc that bad science has wreaked in criminal courts: “We must remember that science is a tool, not a solution.” Catherine Dunn tells us that “children and vulnerable adults … need to be more supported in the justice system,” and urges more alcohol treatment centres and more assistance to Indigenous people struggling with alcohol and drug addictions. Deborah Hatch tells us that legal aid, indispensable to a fair criminal justice system, is in crisis, and warns, “The liberty of … accused persons is being sacrificed while debates continue as to how and by whom legal aid should be funded.” Karen Hudson recounts the promising steps being taken in Nova Scotia to improve the criminal justice system. And Lucie Joncas and Jennifer Trehearne underline the need to deal with mental illness in the criminal courtroom more compassionately and more effectively.

The reader emerges from reading Women in Criminal Justice with two pictures in mind. The first picture consists of vivid images of what actually goes on in Canada’s criminal courtrooms. There is justice to be found there, but too often injustice as well. And despite the progress that has been made, too often it is the vulnerable in our society — women, Indigenous persons, the mentally ill — who are the victims of lack of legal aid, sloppy science, and lack of appropriate sentencing alternatives. The second picture is of a cadre of people like the women who contributed to this book, who work without respite to achieve just outcomes for the people they deal with, often in the face of difficulty and at considerable personal cost. Both pictures are part of the justice system; both are important.

— The Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin

17th Chief Justice of Canada (2000 – 2017)

Introduction

Lorene Shyba

Bill Trudell and I approached the editing and publication of this book with a mutual aim; to create a volume for Durvile’s True Cases series wherein Canadian women judges and criminal lawyers tell about cases from their careers that they found particularly challenging. The stories that emerged have amazed us with their compassionate perspectives on urgent issues of our times — sexual assault, Indigenous, child protection and motherhood issues, mental health and suicide, LGBTQ+, immigration, drugs, and terrorism. Although some authors chose to write about high-profile cases, the lion’s share of chapters focus on matters of social and personal impact.

Women in Criminal Justice was Bill’s brainchild and I supported his bright idea all the way. We started working on it in early 2017, pulling our nucleus of writers together well before the entertainment industry-driven #MeToo and #TimesUp empowerment campaigns. It is a point of pride to clarify that we did not join a women’s rights bandwagon, rather, we initiated and are now delivering a unique project that is making heard the voices of fascinating women from the legal profession.

As a glimpse of the book’s development, we originally tried out snappy titles like ‘Skirts’, which was intended to be a gender-influenced play on the television series Suits, but the novelty of our ‘Skirts’ title was short-lived (although it would have made a great hashtag campaign). After ‘Skirts’, we auditioned the titles ‘Silk’ or ‘Silks’ and even designed a book cover and a promotional campaign around the theme. However for reasons that seem strange to a non-lawyer such as myself, most provinces in Canada bestow Queen’s Council (QC) barrister honourifics, aka ‘taking silk’, but Ontario and Quebec no longer grant the honour. Judges, by virtue of their silk gowns in every jurisdiction, would have fit the title, but the disconnect with ‘Silks’ and Ontario/Quebec lawyers was difficult to reconcile. Women in Criminal Justice had been our subtitle all along and so we elevated it to top billing.

As we began hearing story pitches from contributors, a few differences became apparent in comparison to Durvile’s previous True Cases books. Authors’ themes focused on many new topics, such as legal aid and personal stories of balancing home with work, instead of concentrating on brilliant courtroom strategies or winning a big case. Even when stories were about big cases with huge stakes, such as Iona Jaffe’s story about the Toronto 18 terrorists or Deborah Hatch’s recounting of the Wendy Scott case, Women in Criminal Justice authors stepped up to share personal reflections, often in a highly subjective and empathetic mode.

Many authors shared nuanced and private inner thoughts — something I had seldom seen before among the male writers in previous volumes. These amusing and intimate inner thoughts are typeset throughout the book in italics, ranging from Barbara Jackman thinking, Were [the judges] afraid that if they made a mistake it could result in others coming to harm?, Kim Pate wondering, How serious could the risk be that the women [rioting in prison] posed if the head of security believed a baby could calm the situation?, to musings of a currently unidentified author who thought, What the fuck am I doing? How did we get here?

A Unique Experience in Production

Collecting stories together for a book can be a pretty big job. It was not any easier to get authors to submit stories on deadline than it has been in previous True Cases anthologies, maybe harder than ever if truth be told, but the reasons for tardiness were more varied. We heard the usual, such as, “This trial is dragging on and I’m swamped,” or “I have back-to-back murder cases and can’t get to writing until [whenever],” but sprinkled into the mix were never-heard-before reasons like, “I’m having a baby next week,” and “I have to fly down to the retirement village again to be with my mom.” The most heartbreaking justification for lateness involved a rough session of chemotherapy.

Another interesting difference with this group is that instead of corresponding with executive assistants during business hours, as has mostly been the case with other books in the series, I had direct contact with authors. We collaborated on corrections and improvements to stories on an hourly basis as deadlines loomed, and at all times of night and day through multiple time zones. My admiration for these women has grown from respect into genuinely liking them.

Revisiting the matter of the unidentified author whose ‘f-bomb’ private musing rocks the top of this page, this special person also insinuated that we “forced her” to write a chapter. Yes, it is true, we twisted her arm some, in spite of being threatened with permanent expulsion from her organ donation list. We were tempted to edit out the incendiary “forced to” words from the first sentence of her chapter, but are not embarrassed to admit that, indeed, we did bully her a bit.

Like many of the other authors who we ‘asked nicely’ to write, Rosellen Sullivan is a brilliant and compassionate criminal defence lawyer. But over and above that, she practices in St. John’s and with her participation, we have coast-to-coast-to-coast Canadian representation. This starts in British Columbia with Nancy Morrison, who also represents Saskatchewan, having grown up in Yorkton, and continues with writers from all across the country ending up with Karen Hudson from Nova Scotia and, of course, Rosellen from Newfoundland and Labrador. The far North is represented by Jennifer Briscoe’s story, taking place, as it does, in Whitehorse, Yellowknife, Taloyoak, Old Crow, and Nunavut’s “big smoke” of Iqaluit.

Hard Work and Just Outcomes

As The Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin points out in the foreword to this book, story insights develop around several themes including how it feels to be a woman working in the justice system, how the criminal justice system impacts and shapes women who find themselves caught up in it, and failings in the criminal justice system and how we can rectify them. In addition, Justice McLachlin’s point about how hard women work in the justice system work can be applied to women in many other areas of professional endeavour.

If I may use my own life as an example, when I was a girl in Calgary, I was told I could be anything I wanted to be. I knuckled down Alberta style and did exactly that — in fields of media and communications rather than on the farm, or in the justice system, but these were challenging careers nonetheless. When I went back to graduate school after I’d raised my kids, certain professors informed me that women are “oppressed within a social construction called a patriarchal hegemony.” Not to seem a dolt but, How had I not known that?

Not realizing that men were supposedly better than women was likely the best thing that happened to me because I seldom felt inferior, let alone oppressed. I was amidst a wave of Canadian women who carved out and excelled at careers of our choice because we apparently didn’t know any better. (Thinking back on it now, and in the light of Justice McLachlin’s comments, I am sure that like my sisters who chose the legal profession, I work harder than most of the guys.)

In addition to thanking the Rt. Hon. Beverley McLachlin and all the Women in Criminal Justice authors for their brilliant writing and hard work, there is another group of writers who we would like to thank. On behalf of editors Bill Trudell, C.D. Evans, and J. Thomas Dalby, I thank the amazing women who have contributed to the True Cases series in previous books — Marie Henein and Marilyn Sandford in Tough Crimes; Lisa Ramshaw and Louise Olivier in Shrunk; and Faith Finnestad, Breese Davies, and Mona Duckett in More Tough Crimes.

Many women in Women in Criminal Justice and the other True Cases books have written about problems that their clients have had in a man’s world — especially troubling are the cases of domestic violence and sexual assault. I have seen examples of disturbances of this nature many times in the pages of the True Cases books, and they have always been emotionally hard to bear. I am greatly impressed that the thoughtful women lawyers, judges, and mental health experts who have written for us are in a position to advocate and implement solutions to correct these kinds of inequities. Setting words into action is an ongoing endeavour among writers throughout the entire series.

There are several design elements in the book that bear explanation. On the cover is the statue of Justicia (Ivstica), created in 1912 by sculptor Walter Allward for a memorial to King Edward VII. The plaster casts of Justicia and her sibling Veritas languished in a government storage vault for fifty years before being cast in bronze to grace the entrance doors of the Supreme Court of Canada building. Our Justicia is not blindfolded like most depictions of the Lady of Justice, nor does she hold forth a sword and scales. Instead, she shows compassionate and level determination in her eyes and keeps her sword well-sheathed. It occurs to me that she would be a good listener.

Another graphic element that runs throughout the book (but not seen in e-book) is the Women’s and Gender Studies (WGSt) logo from the University of Saskatchewan. This beautiful and dynamic logo was designed and donated to the WGSt Department by artist Joan Relke. In the department’s words, the design, “Combines the symbol for woman with the sun-moon symbol for male-female, mirroring a balance between genders.” The plant imagery lower-portion of this logo has also been used as a graphic element to divide chapters.

If I have to give a man the last word, I cannot think of anyone I would rather share these pages with than Bill Trudell, especially given that he is praising ‘the Oracle’. He says:

In the beginning of my career, I had the privilege of Articling and practicing for my first three years at Osler Hoskin in Toronto. I had the unique honour to meet, indeed work with, someone affectionately referred to as ‘the Oracle’. In the corner office was the remarkable Bertha Wilson. She meant so much to so many and guided innumerable careers, mine included. I likely had an inflated opinion of my own importance as one day in my second year, I knocked on her door in my campaign to try to practice Criminal Law at the Large Firm. I submitted that Large Firms should establish Criminal Law Departments to become full service, if you will. I told her that I would like to pursue that path, with supervision of course. There was an awful silence and then she looked across the desk at me and in that incredible Scottish voice said this, “Ah, William, I think you’re brilliant…but I haven’t seen it yet!”

For over forty years, I still hear that cherished voice every time I think I’ve accomplished something. When I thought of this book, I think I had Bertha Wilson in mind, that amazing trailblazer and first woman appointed to our Supreme Court. I wish now I could walk down to her office and show her Women in Criminal Justice, not to revisit her opinion of me but to thank her. I believe she would have been so very proud of Lorene and all the women herein who I am sure have been inspired by her, as was I.

Bill and I sincerely hope you enjoy reading this book as much as we have enjoyed working on it.

— Lorene Shyba

Publisher, Durvile Publications

and co-editor True Cases Series