From the outset, McLachlin has tried to engage Canadians in an active conversation about their court. She has weathered occasional rough stretches, such as the tempest when a Conservative MP accused her of claiming “godlike” judicial powers (the court categorically denied the charge, and the MP later retracted his remarks). She has navigated the court through steady turnover on the bench (six new justices appointed in seven years), and some tough decisions (on issues ranging from same-sex marriage to health care policy to national security). According to political scientist Troy Riddell of the University of Guelph, the court’s more astute tone is likely a reflection of McLachlin’s personality and approach. “I see this chief justice as being more media savvy than previous chief justices, as perhaps more out there in terms of giving speeches, attending conferences, speaking with the media, and cultivating media relations.”
Indeed, the sixty-five-year-old McLachlin sets a blistering communications pace. She is the public face of the court at such official events as throne speeches, and represents it abroad several times a year. She holds countless informal meetings with student and community groups, and writes and delivers some four dozen speeches annually. And she tries to make herself available for personal interviews, including ours, conducted at the table in the judges’ reading room, a light-filled, wood-panelled space on the second floor of the Supreme Court building, lined with shelves of legal books. “The court has a very important role to play in Canadian democracy,” she says. “It’s not always understood. Occasionally, people look at a court and say, ‘Where did they get all that power, and how are they exercising it; is it legitimate?’
“Well, I believe it is legitimate. I believe it is fundamental to democracy,” she continues. “I believe that we exercise our powers in a transparent and responsible way, that we have a system of appeals in our justice system, so when mistakes do happen they get examined. I believe we have a good system of justice.”
This is a bedrock belief, one McLachlin has been reiterating for years. According to Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Abella, McLachlin “has the institution always paramount in her mind. She’s very protective of the institution, and of the ability of the people in it to do their jobs as well as they can.” Former Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci first worked with McLachlin on the Lamer court, and then for several more years under her tenure. He says her contribution has been outstanding, that it’s “not just the quantity of her work, but the quality.”
McLachlin is extremely well suited to the task of court messenger. Colleagues consistently describe her as pleasant, courteous, respectful. She is known for her wry sense of humour — often “the funniest person at the table,” according to Abella. Justice Louis LeBel, elevated to the court around the same time McLachlin took over, recalls the box delivered to his home on Christmas Eve, two days after his appointment. He excitedly opened the gift from the chief justice — only to find the books for the upcoming court hearings. “She is very focused about the work of the court proceeding in an efficient manner,” he says with a laugh, “and judges getting the proper information.”
Despite her wit, McLachlin has an air of reserve. She is careful about which opinions she will share (favourite composer to play on the piano? Bach) and which she will not (favourite Charter section? Sorry). “She holds her cards close to herself,” says her husband, Frank McArdle, an affable lawyer and executive director of an association for federally appointed judges. This doesn’t mean she’s an introvert, he says firmly: “She has a very, very warm heart and a very, very strong head.” She has spoken candidly in the past about the personal challenges she has faced — for example, coping after her first husband, Rory McLachlin, died of cancer in 1988, leaving her a single mother to their young son, Angus. But for the most part, she prefers to maintain a zone of privacy around her personal life. There’s “a freedom that comes with that,” she explains.
Given where she ended up, though, and how quickly she got there — Supreme Court of Canada justice at age forty-five, chief justice at fifty-six, and the first female chief justice at that — there’s an understandable curiosity about just who Beverley McLachlin is. Much was made of her Pincher Creek roots when she became chief justice. It’s a remarkable Canadian story, that the eldest of rancher Ernest Gietz and housewife Eleanora Kruschell’s five children now presides over the highest court in the land. From her parents (fundamentalist Christians of “high moral value,” she says), she soaked up the necessity of doing the right thing and the importance of fairness. Theirs was a hard-working household that encouraged debate, and curiosity beyond the bounds of the home.
The town’s small, community-run library fuelled in her a passion for reading that continues to this day (favourite author? All the CanLit stuff, she says diplomatically, after some hesitation. Alice Munro. Margaret Atwood. Just finished a Fred Stenson). Television wasn’t widespread at the time, so she methodically worked her way through first the junior section of the tiny collection, and then the senior section. “My mother had always wanted to be a writer, but life did not allow her to take that path,” she says. “Since I was a little girl, I remember her saying, ‘Oh, I would have loved to; this was my dream.’ If you have a mother who expresses that dream with such longing and yearning, and you realize she’s feeling badly that she’s not on track to realize it, it has an influence on you as her daughter, to think, ‘I’d better not squander my chances.’”
After entering the University of Alberta in 1960, McLachlin became smitten by philosophy and switched her major from modern languages. “At that point in my life — I was eighteen, I suppose — I felt my brain was very muddled. I had a lot of ideas, and I was having trouble putting structure and order on things,” she says. “It helped me learn to order my ideas better, because philosophy is insistent on approaching things in an analytical, logical way. You have to be able to defend or analytically attack a position, and you have to be able to set out either process in clear terms that other people can understand.”
After graduating with an honours degree, she simultaneously pursued a master’s in legal philosophy and a law degree. She graduated in 1968 at the top of her law class, then launched her career. She was called to the bar in two provinces (Alberta and British Columbia), practised law at three different firms, polished her French language skills, and earned a tenured professorship at ubc. She eventually moved on to become a judge at Vancouver’s county court, then just months later vaulted to the BC Supreme Court. Four years later, she was appointed to the BC Court of Appeal, and within three years returned to the BC Supreme Court as its first female chief justice, just days before her husband, Rory, died. McLachlin’s meteoric rise attracted national attention, and in March 1989, when Brian Mulroney needed a candidate for the Supreme Court of Canada who was from the Western provinces, she became the third female justice in its history. Ten years later, after Lamer stepped down, Jean Chrétien put her in the chief justice’s chair. It was a politically heated time for the court — the Reform Party had been pushing to establish a parliamentary committee that could review its decisions — so it was significant that Reform’s justice critic, John Reynolds, remarked on McLachlin’s common sense, and called her appointment “exciting.”
