Moving testimony of a pioneering woman lawyer
B.C. Supreme Court judge Nancy Morrison recounts challenges in a 50-year career
Nobody quite like Nancy Morrison has ever written a memoir in Canada.
Our judges — Morrison was one for eight years on British Columbia’s Provincial Court and fifteen years on the province’s Supreme Court — rarely record their own careers, and so being able to get insight into the legal system, particularly from the point of view of a woman, is something of an event. And Morrison, writes about her experiences on the bench with uncommon candour, intelligence and a welcome dose of humour.
Morrison’s 50-year career in the law, as a lawyer, defence counsel and prosecutor as well as a judge, gave her an omnipresence in events with some historic resonance.
As an articling student in Toronto in 1962, she was in the courtroom for two successive murder trials, of two different men, accused in two different killings. Each of the accused was convicted, and each sentenced to death: They were hanged, one after the other, on the same night, the last two people ever to be executed in Canada.
Afew years later, as a newly graduated lawyer who had yet to land a job, Morrison was scooped up to fill in at the one-person Niagara Falls law office of a desperate Judy LaMarsh. LaMarsh was about to resettle in Ottawa as a cabinet minister in Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson’s government. This began Morrison’s long affiliation with the Liberal party.
On a personal level, she tells in the book of having a long-time crush on the charismatic actor and radio host Bruno Gerussi, star of the famous CBC drama The Beachcombers. A coincidental introduction to Gerussi in 1970 led to the love story of Morrison’s life, lasting until Gerussi’s death 25 years later.
Morrison graduated from Osgoode Hall Law School at a time when Canadian law schools produced no more than two or three women lawyers each year. For decades, the line Morrison heard most regularly from male lawyers as she progressed through her roles in the profession went something like, “A woman handling this case? Over my dead body!” In criminal courtrooms, with Morrison sitting on the bench, the line changed only slightly when the accused thief or thug spotted her. “A broad’s hearing my case? Over my dead body!” Morrison persisted through a long career of challenges, based mostly on her gender. She recounts each with a laugh or a clever line — allowing us a glimpse into a legal world that still remains mostly opaque to the public.