THE ADVOCATE 955
VOL. 79 PART 6 NOVEMBER 2021
recalled that December 29 is near the winter solstice, so it was dark at that
time. The cow was of the Black Angus breed and was thus difficult to see on
the dark highway, and the car ran into it, resulting in the injuries to plaintiff
for which she seeks recovery.”
The website of the Royal Museums Greenwich explains that “at the spring
and autumnal equinoxes the day and night hours are around the same
length, each lasting around 12 hours. The number of daylight hours peaks
at summer solstice.”
Robert Frost has been called upon to help determine whether a person is
ordinarily resident in Canada, as in Fisher v. R., 1994 CarswellNat 1149
(T.C.C.). While the court noted there were “unquestionably factors that
would justify a conclusion that the appellant in that case was resident in
Japan and not Canada”, “the conclusion that is more consonant with the
tests of ordinary residency enunciated in other cases is that by 1987 Canada
had become again his place of ordinary residence.” Bowman A.C.J.
explained that Canada “was a country whose language the appellant spoke
and of which he was a citizen by birth. He had a right to come to Canada
whenever he chose. That can be said of no other country. One is reminded
of the passage in Robert Frost’s poem, ‘The Death of the Hired Man’: ‘Home
is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.’
This observation would apply to Canada.” Bowman A.C.J. continued that
“theoretically, it might conceivably be possible to be resident nowhere, if
one kept constantly on the move, such as the captain of the legendary phantom
ship, The Flying Dutchman, but in real life it really does not work that
way. If one had to pick one place on earth where the appellant was resident
in 1987 and 1988 that place would be, in my view, Canada.”
The Frost analysis (via Fisher) was also applied to the question of whether
the aptly named Pamela Snow was resident in Canada: “Mrs. Snow considered
Vancouver as the place where she could ‘reconnect’ and where, if she
needed a place to stay, she could stay. Mrs. Snow sojourned in Belize, that
is, her stay in Belize was temporary. Vancouver was her home; it was the
city where her home was located and was ‘the place where, when you go
there, They have to take you in’”: Snow v. The Queen, 2004 TCC 381.
As noted in our September issue, the CBABC recently launched its Robe
Bank program. They collect court robes from people who have them (and
are perhaps retiring) and loan them to the people who need them. They
accept dry-cleaned robes and waistcoats in good condition from anywhere
in the province. For more information, visit <cbabc.org/robebank>.
/robebank
