Truth Be Told by Beverley McLachlin

Author:Beverley McLachlin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2019-09-23T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY

* * *

A New World on the Ottawa

THE SUPREME COURT OF Canada sits on a bluff overlooking the Ottawa River. As befits the highest court of the land, it lies close to the Houses of Parliament and the key executive offices of government.

The building that houses the Supreme Court of Canada is a rare thing—an architectural mishmash that has achieved iconic status. It was designed in the 1930s by the renowned Montreal architect Ernest Cormier in the art deco style. Cormier spared no detail or expense in his quest for a building of classic simplicity—grand staircase, Grecian columns, a grand hall (la salle des pas perdus)—lit by glass windows echoing the contemporary abstraction of Mondrian. In keeping with the art deco style and modern aesthetic, Cormier ordered a flat roof.

Legend has it that each day during construction, Prime Minister Mackenzie King passed the building as he walked his dog, watching it slowly rise from the barren field of grass where it was set. The prime minister had been intimately involved in the design, reviewing the detailed plans, making this change or that. He had left the flat roof intact. But as the court took shape—or so story has it—he decided that the flat roof would not do. Not grand enough, not regal enough. Not fit for the Supreme Court of Canada. He called Cormier in and demanded a roof in keeping with the neo-Gothic peaks of the Houses of Parliament and the nearby Justice Building.

Whether Cormier protested is lost in archival mist. It seems inconceivable that he did not. But Prime Minister King, as was his wont, had his way. In due course, a steep copper roof, as tall as the stone façade of the building itself, rose towards the skies.

To architectural purists, the roof—replete with gargoyle-like curlicues—is an abomination. Justice (later Chief Justice) Antonio Lamer summed up the view of many when he dubbed the roof the court’s “dunce cap.” But to most Canadians, including me, its silhouette has become synonymous with justice.

And now it was to be my home. At least for a while, or so I thought when I first arrived there in April 1989. Little did I dream that I would pass twenty-eight years of my life in the imposing precincts of Cormier’s supreme courthouse.

I had been to Ottawa twice before—once as a twenty-one-year-old student attending a conference, and once as a new judge on my way to new judges’ school at Lac-Sainte-Marie to the north. I knew nothing about the city, though, and I had never even seen the Supreme Court Building.

A man in a dark jacket who identified himself as a court attendant met Angus and me at the Ottawa airport on a cold Saturday afternoon. In Vancouver, the cherry blossoms had just finished blooming; in Ottawa, there was still snow on the ground. I shivered inside my summer coat. Someone should have warned me.

The attendant drove us to the Minto Place Hotel, and Angus and I checked in to the suite that had been reserved for us.

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