Brian Dickson

Robert George Brian Dickson (May 25, 1916 – October 17, 1998) was a Canadian lawyer, military officer and judge who served as the 15th chief justice of Canada from 1984 to 1990 and as a puisne justice of the Supreme Court of Canada from 1973 to 1984. He retired on June 30, 1990.

Dickson's tenure as chief justice coincided with the first wave of cases under the new Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which, established in 1982, reached the Supreme Court from 1984 onwards. Dickson wrote several very influential judgments dealing with the Charter and laid the groundwork for the approach that the courts would take to the Charter.

Early life and family

Dickson was born to Thomas Dickson and Sarah Elizabeth Gibson, in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, in 1916, although the family lived at that time in Wynyard. His adolescence and young adulthood occurred during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl years, which hit the Canadian prairies particularly hard.

Dickson's father was a bank manager, and the family was eventually transferred to Regina, the capital of Saskatchewan. Dickson attended high school at the Central Collegiate, where two of his classmates were William Lederman and Alexander "Sandy" MacPherson. All three would go into law, with Lederman becoming one of Canada's leading constitutional scholars and MacPherson becoming a justice of the Saskatchewan Court of Queen's Bench. In later years, Dickson would reminisce that "Bill was always first in our class, and Sandy and I were fighting for second and third".

Sandy MacPherson's father was M. A. MacPherson, the attorney general for Saskatchewan. When the legislature was sitting in the evenings, Dickson and Sandy MacPherson would come in the evenings to the Attorney General's office to do their homework, and then sit in the galleries of the Assembly and listen to the debates. Dickson said that his interest in the law was triggered by that experience. His first permanent job was with the Great-West Life Assurance Company, where he worked in the investment section for two years. signed up for active duty as second lieutenants with the Royal Canadian Artillery, joining the 38th Field Battery in Winnipeg.

Lieutenant Dickson sailed in February 1941 for Britain with the 3rd Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment. His abilities attracted notice and he was chosen for staff training, returning to Canada for a course in 1943, followed with a tour of duty in British Columbia as brigade major with the Royal Canadian Artillery. In 1944, Dickson volunteered to return to Europe as a captain. He was posted to the 2nd Canadian Army Group, Royal Canadian Artillery, and distinguished himself in Normandy, being mentioned in dispatches. and also lectured at the Faculty of Law of the University of Manitoba for six years, until 1954.

Community involvement

In 1950, Dickson volunteered to be head of the Manitoba Red Cross, on the suggestion of a partner who told him it would only involve a few meetings per year. Instead, Dickson took the position just in time for the 1950 Red River flood, with the Red reaching the highest level since 1861. Winnipeg itself was inundated, 4 of 11 bridges were destroyed, and over 100,000 people had to be evacuated. Dickson took charge of the relief effort by the Red Cross, not seeing his law office for six weeks. Under his direction, the Red Cross mobilised 4,000 volunteers, evacuated thousands and provided support to the people working on the dykes. He later admitted he ran the Red Cross volunteers like an army.

Judicial career

In 1963, Dickson was appointed to the Court of Queen's Bench of Manitoba and in 1967 was elevated to the Manitoba Court of Appeal. He was appointed a puisne justice of the Supreme Court of Canada on March 26, 1973. On April 18, 1984, he was elevated to chief justice of Canada over the more senior Roland Ritchie, who was one year away from mandatory retirement at age 75 and was in ill health.

During his early years on the Supreme Court, Dickson frequently joined with Justice Laskin and Justice Spence on cases involving civil liberties, often in dissent from the more conservative majority on the Court. The grouping was colloquially referred to as the "LSD connection".

Having come from a corporate law background,

With the introduction of the Charter in 1982, Dickson made many major contributions to the early standards of interpretation. Among his most famous decisions was that of R v Oakes, where he proposed the analytical framework for section 1 of the Charter now known as the "Oakes test". In R v Big M Drug Mart Ltd, he gave a broad interpretation to the guarantee of freedom of religion set out in section 2 of the Charter, and in R v Morgentaler, he found that the restrictions on abortions set out in the Criminal Code violated a woman's security of person, contrary to section 7 of the Charter.

Later life and death

Dickson served on the Supreme Court for 17 years before retiring on June 30, 1990. He died on October 17, 1998, at age 82.

The Brian Dickson Law Library at the University of Ottawa is named for him. The library's reading room contains a full reproduction of his home office, artifacts and personal items representing his life.

References

External links

Supreme Court of Canada - Biography - Robert George Brian Dickson
Order of Canada Citation: Brian Dickson