Ivan Rand had a long, varied, and remarkable career. He is best known for his Supreme Court of Canada judgments in a series of cases emanating from Quebec in the 1950s and dealing with civil rights, cases that established limits on the governmentʹs ability to persecute unpopular religious minorities. To labour lawyers he is also an icon for his invention of the ʹRand formula,ʹ one of the defining features of Canadian labour law. Rand was also a member of the United Nations special committee on Palestine in 1947, the founding Dean of the University of Western Ontario law school, and...

He was born on 27 April 1884, in Moncton, New Brunswick, with a caul. For hundreds of years, the birth of a veiled child – his head covered by a thin membrane – was believed to be an omen. ʹThis boy,ʹ the attending physician prophesied, ʹwill have a great and worthwhile life.ʹ¹ From his modest beginnings, Ivan Cleveland Rand, the first-born son of Nelson and Minnie Rand, would build a remarkable career of professional accomplishment and success. He studied law at Harvard, participated in the opening of the Canadian West, returned to his home province, served as a reformist attorney...

Looked at from Medicine Hat, New Brunswick seemed a far better place to be. But appearances were deceiving. In 1920 New Brunswick had about 390,000 people living in a region of fertile valleys, unending forests, and numerous lakes and rivers. The forests were rich in hard and soft woods, the fishery rated second among the provinceʹs abundant natural resources, and considerable mineral reserves awaited development. As always, there was the potential of water power. Still, most New Brunswickers continued to earn their livelihood from mixed farming. The province was noticeably agrarian, with more than two-thirds of the population living in...

Ivan Randʹs foray into provincial politics had been brief, but his accomplishments as attorney general were highly regarded. He caught the attention of Liberal Party officials in Ottawa – in particular the prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, who was a fine judge of talent. Would he like to throw his hat in the federal ring for the forthcoming federal election? he was asked. He was offered Westmorland County, held by Arthur B. Copp, the regionʹs minister, who had clearly outlived his usefulness. His answer was a polite no. Instead, he went back to work for the railway.

In January...

When Ivan Rand received the call in 1943 asking him whether he would accept an appointment to the Supreme Court of Canada, it was really no surprise. He had been asked eleven years before, he said, when the Maritime seat on the top court became vacant – and he had accepted. But Prime Minister R.B. Bennettʹs Tory colleagues objected and, in the end, Oswald Smith Crocket, an undistinguished judge on New Brunswickʹs Court of Kingʹs Bench, got the nod.¹ Rand considered him ʹthe stupidest man in New Brunswick,ʹ² and, indeed, as soon as Crocket arrived in Ottawa, his significant limitations...

Windsor 1945: the Second World War was finally over, but a different fight was shaping up on the home front. Almost ten thousand men employed at the Ford plant in the city were embroiled in a battle with their employer. The causes were many, but at the heart of the dispute was managementʹs refusal to acknowledge and contractually recognize the legitimate role of the United Auto Workers – the union freely chosen by Fordʹs employees. Union and employee discontent had been simmering for years, punctuated by the occasional wildcat strike. With the end of the war, the uneasy labour-management truce...

In 1947 Palestine was an armed camp, and 100,000 British soldiers were attempting, unsuccessfully, to keep the peace. There were four key rival groups. The Haganah was the military arm of the Jewish Agency, the organization created by the World Zionist Organization to represent the Jewish community in Palestine. It focused its immediate attention on defying the British ban on further Jewish immigration to Palestine by running ships bursting with homeless Jews past the Royal Navyʹs blockade. The Irgun Zvai Leumi, the military arm of Zionist revisionists, was composed of extreme nationalists who believed that every Jew had the right...

By the early nineteenth century a major coal industry had developed in Cape Breton, in the Sydney area, and in mainland Nova Scotia in Pictou County, in the Stellarton-Westville area, and in Cumberland County, in the Springhill-Joggins area. The reserves were huge, particularly in the Sydney field. Over time, a people and a culture grew up around the mines. Even though many of the miners and their families lived in company houses in company towns, and even though their jobs were among the most hazardous in the country – many miners died in industrial accidents while others were felled much...

In 1957, after years of insisting that all future Ontario lawyers receive their legal education at Osgoode Hall, the Law Society of Upper Canada reluctantly changed course and approved the establishment of new law faculties in Ottawa, Kingston, and London. Two years later, on 1 May 1959, having earlier reached the age of mandatory retirement at the Supreme Court of Canada, Ivan Rand became the founding dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Western Ontario.

The Law Society was, and is, an institution established by statute. Its mandate is to govern Ontario lawyers, and, most agree, to...

Room 182 at Osgoode Hall was no ordinary judgeʹs chambers, and its occupant, Leo A. Landreville, was no ordinary judge. Franco-Ontarioʹs representative on the Supreme Court bench, Landreville was a small, well-dressed man who had made it big in northern Ontario. His Sudbury law office had been the busiest in town, and the income from it had been handsomely supplemented by his many investments. A lifelong Liberal and successful local politician, Landreville had been elected mayor in December 1954. His two-year term was interrupted, however, by a telephone call from Ottawa. Would he accept a judicial appointment? Yes, he decided,...

Much had changed since January 1946 when Ivan Rand awarded his now famous formula. Twenty years later, industrial unionism was firmly established in Canadaʹs economy. The legal regime prohibited unfair labour practices and required employers to recognize and bargain collectively with the union selected by a majority of their employees and certified as the bargaining agent. The growth in union density was accompanied by a rise in real wages and the introduction of fringe benefits such as pensions, paid holidays, shorter workweeks, sick pay, and disability insurance. Seniority did not just protect employees from economic downturns (ʹfirst in, last outʹ);...

Rand first met Premier Joey Smallwood in the summer of 1967, when he visited the province during his investigation into labour disputes. Soon after, Smallwood asked him to look at labour law and labour relations in Newfoundland and Labrador, and to make recommendations for both a labour code and a new government department of manpower and industrial relations. As usual when duty called, Randʹs answer was an immediate yes.¹ Previously, Rand had harboured a negative view of the premier, but now, he told his friend Horace Pettigrove, Smallwood had ʹimagination.ʹ He particularly admired the premierʹs ʹwillingness to listen to other...