Climate changes

This long silence describes a large circle. And, very soon, a Q.

Northern Ontario, whose seasons are marked by the adornments on pickups – from canoes to carcasses, snowploughs to skidoos – and whose courtrooms are counted on one or two hands – is a long way from urban BC. Both places, these past 18 months, have given me home, and both have been ground for digging away at the issues that this site addresses. A year in Vancouver let me observe how different courts speak and listen to the basic moral concepts of crime – guilt, responsibility, fairness and punishment – in a system of ‘summary’ (i.e. guilty plea-based) justice. Anyone interested in a 95,000 word exegesis on the topic is welcome to consult my LL.M. thesis, available here.


Done? Great. Now return with me to Thunder Bay, where very little seems to have changed. Since August, I've been back practicing criminal law, my year of research both a memory and a fleshy presence. This is where, for better or worse, we make sense of laws and lawbreaking. We do it as judges, or prosecutors, or defence lawyers. We do it as witnesses and spectators and journalists. We do it as accused persons and convicts, and we do it as victims. I do so with a bit of experience in a few of these roles; but each role contains innumerable variations. For all I have learned about the rules and strategies essential to my job, the basic fact remains: our courts are only effective insofar as they resound in the hearts of those whom they purport to command. And in Northern Ontario, the congestion of agendas, ideologies, and cultures that churn in every justice process seems particularly unhealthy.

Next week I'm relocating to Sioux Lookout, a small town closer to the centre of these apparent problems, and, I hope, some potential improvements. I will try to share what I learn there.