by Barry Cahill, Independent Scholar. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 2000. Barry Cahill’s study of the life of James McGregor Stewart adds an exciting new dimension to Canadian legal biography. James McGregor Stewart (1889-1955) was a towering figure in Canada’s inter-war legal and business establishments. The foremost Canadian corporation lawyer of his day, head… Read more »

by Patrick Brode, Legal Counsel, City of Windsor. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 1984. It is appropriate that Patrick Brode’s biography of Sir John Beverley Robinson was published in the year that marked the 200th anniversary of the coming of the loyalists to British North America. Robinson, as Patrick Brode demonstrates, embodied much… Read more »

by Fred Kaufman, Quebec Court of Appeal, retired. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 2005. As one reviewer wrote, this is a ‘a tale well told of a remarkable life well lived.’ Born into a middle-class Jewish family in Vienna in the mid-twenties, Kaufman managed to leave his native city on one of the last… Read more »

by Laurel Sefton Macdowell, Professor of History, University of Toronto. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 2001. J.L. Cohen, one of the first specialists in labour law and an architect of the Canadian industrial relations system, was a formidable advocate in the 1930s and 1940s on behalf of working people. Cohen is best described as… Read more »

by Patrick Boyer. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 1994. Patrick Boyer’s portrait of James Chalmers McRuer (1890-1985) reveals the complexities of one of Canada’s outstanding jurists, and shows the character and personal dilemmas of the man who was arguably Canada’s greatest law reformer. McRuer’s career of more than fifty years included periods as a… Read more »

edited by William Morrow. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 1995. One of the first Canadians to champion the legal and cultural cause of the North’s indigenous peoples, William George Morrow, the senior partner in an eminent Edmonton law firm, seized the opportunity to go to the North in 1960, and act as a volunteer… Read more »

by Martin Friedland, Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 2007. Professor Martin Friedland has been involved in many areas of legal research and law reform in his career, and the Osgoode Society is very pleased to be able to publish his account of that involvement, especially as… Read more »

by David Ricardo Williams. Published with the University of Toronto Press, 1995. In 1924 Mackenzie King, on bended knee, pleaded with lawyer, Eugene Lafleur to accept the chief justiceship of Canada, but Lafleur refused. Another lawyer, Gordon Henderson was offered an appointment to the Ontario Court of Appeal but rejected it. Lafleur, Henderson, Frank Covert, Aimé… Read more »

by George D. Finlayson, formerly of the Court of Appeal for Ontario. Published with Dundurn Press, 2003. John Robinette is generally acknowledged to have been the foremost counsel of his era and was, perhaps, Canada’s greatest advocate of all time. Comfortable before any court or tribunal at any level and regardless of issue, he combined… Read more »

by David Vanek. Published with Dundurn Press, 1999. We are very grateful to Judge David Vanek for offering us the opportunity to publish his memoirs. In Ontario provincial court judges are the workhorses of the judiciary, carrying out a huge range of tasks and bearing an enormous burden. Most students of Canadian legal history are familiar… Read more »