Emmett Hall’s Supreme Court legacy

There is a vacancy on the Supreme Court of Canada and an appointment will have to be made soon. Each of the four western provinces believes it is their turn, and spokespersons are lining up to make the case. Among them is Saskatchewan’s Attorney-General. The last Supreme Court judge from Saskatchewan was Emmett Hall, who served between 1963 and 1973. He died in 1995.

I can make no informed suggestion about the next Supreme Court appointment, but I did write a biography of Hall which was published in 1985, with an updated version appearing in 2005. Writing the book gave me a deep appreciation for Judge Hall’s contribution to the public good. As journalist Walter Stewart once wrote: “A number of crucial factors have gone into making Canada the nation that it is today: the Rockies, the St. Lawrence River—and Emmett Hall.”

I am providing here an abridged version of the Introduction that I wrote for the Hall biography reissued in 2005.

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During the pleasant spring days of 1957 Emmett Hall might have surveyed his situation with satisfaction. A tall, stately man with fine, thinning hair, he was the senior member of a successful law firm in Saskatoon. During 35 years of practice, he had earned a reputation as an eminent counsel. His clientele consisted of local businesses and a few larger corporations, including the CPR.

Now and then he took on spectacular criminal trials, such as the defence of a man accused of having committed a mass murder near Melville, Saskatchewan, or the defence of several of the on-to-Ottawa trekkers in 1936. He was a King’s Counsel, active in the affairs of provincial and national bar associations and he lectured at the law school. He was respected for his work on local Catholic school and hospital boards.

Blue chip

Hall and his wife Isabel were a handsome couple. Petite and attractive, with distinguished greying hair, she dressed tastefully and helped Hall choose his expensive suits. She was popular and known for the dinner parties that she hosted. The Halls were blue chip members of the local Establishment, and they heartily enjoyed the perks commensurate with their status: a fine home, a live-in housekeeper, frequent travel, and a social connection with the local elite—other lawyers, judges, bank and department store managers, industrialists, and Roman Catholic bishops.

It was a fulfilling life, solid and rewarding, but Hall had always harboured ambitions to play a prominent role on a wider public stage. He wanted to be a judge but Jimmy Gardiner, Saskatchewan’s most powerful Liberal politician in Ottawa, controlled those appointments. Hall was a Conservative and his name was not on Gardiner’s list.

Politics

Hall had tried his own hand at politics, running provincially for the Conservatives in 1948, and later contesting a federal nomination. Both times he lost. Political magic eluded him while it accrued to his law school classmate and friend John Diefenbaker. So, Hall began to work in Diefenbaker campaigns, although there was little chance of immediate reward. Louis St. Laurent and the Liberals appeared unassailable federally, and in Saskatchewan Tommy Douglas and the CCF were equally entrenched.

Hall was 58 years old and began to plan for retirement. He and Isabel bought an apartment block in which they intended to live and use for revenue as they aged gracefully in their prairie city. All thoughts of retirement vanished early on the morning of June 11, 1957. Late on the previous evening, to the astonishment of everyone, it became evident that John Diefenbaker and the Conservatives had received enough votes in the federal election to indicate a minority government.

The court

As Hall later told the story, he had celebrated the unexpected victory late into the night with his local Conservative friends. He was still in bed next morning when the telephone rang. It was Diefenbaker calling from Prince Albert to say that St. Laurent had called him to concede defeat. After 17 years in opposition, Diefenbaker was about to taste power.

As his conversation with Hall neared an end Diefenbaker, as an afterthought, but most likely with puckish glee, reminded Hall that the Liberals had neglected, prior to the election, to fill the position of chief justice of the trial division on Saskatchewan’s Court of Queen’s Bench. How about it? When could Hall start?

Remarkable career

With that promotion began an amazing era that propelled Hall from relative obscurity to national renown. Rescued from imminent retirement, he proceeded to become Saskatchewan’s chief justice and later a member of the Supreme Court of Canada and the compassionate conscience of a nation.

It was a truly remarkable career and as the late journalist Walter Stewart has so aptly described, Hall became the rock on which much of modern Canada has been built.

Truscott and Nisga’a

Hall stood alone against eight fellow Supreme Court judges in 1967, when he insisted that young Steven Truscott had not received a fair murder trial and should be awarded a new one. Truscott served his time and, after living quietly and anonymously for years, he emerged to demand exoneration. In 2007, his conviction was finally quashed. The Attorney General for Ontario apologized and the province awarded Truscott $6.5 million in compensation for the miscarriage of justice.

It was Hall’s powerful dissenting Supreme Court judgment in the 1973 Calder case that set the stage for the Nisga’a treaty and for all future negotiations on Indigenous land claims. He insisted that Indigenous peoples had title to land in Canada by dint of occupying it since time immemorial, and that governments must negotiate with them for its use. Hall’s minority judgment did not carry the court then, but his view soon came to prevail. That made possible the Nisga’a treaty in the year 2000 and a growing number of subsequent land and self-government agreements between the Canadian and First Nations governments.

Royal Commissions

Hall is justly hailed as a father of Medicare. It was his royal commission in the 1960s that recommended publicly financed health care for Canada, and Canadians see embedded in it the values of caring and compassion.

Hall co-chaired the 1968 Hall–Dennis commission that turned Ontario on its ear by offering a blueprint for child-centred education. Depending on your point of view, Hall and his co-chair Dr. Lloyd Dennis liberated education from its almost stultifying militaristic organization, or they set the table for laxity and confusion. The debate lives on.  

Another Hall royal commission in the 1970s investigated the sensitive issue of rail transportation and small-town survival in western Canada.  

Profound impact

Emmett Hall accomplished more after the age of retirement than most people do in a lifetime. A poor boy from Saskatchewan, he became a skilled lawyer, then a formidable judge and royal commissioner. In his long service, he had a profound impact on Canada.

Source

Emmett Hall: Establishment Radical is available for purchase on Amazon.