588 THE ADVOCATE
VOL. 80 PART 4 JULY 2022
The first week of August 1998, John was sitting as a judge of the Yukon
Territorial Court. My wife and I, from different worlds and different religions,
were moving toward a small civil marriage ceremony. We asked John
if he would do us the honour of officiating.
Beyond all of the law, the mentoring and the hard work, what will stay
with me as an abiding memory is John sitting on horseback. He could not
walk out to the cliff, so he rode instead on his steed, his robes blowing in
the wind. He married us at the edge of Miles Canyon next to the Yukon
River smiling widely as we each said “I do”. That is how I see him today: statuesque,
proud, with charisma to spare—sitting astride his horse and open to
the next experience.
Comments from the Honourable Lynn Smith, O.C., Q.C.:
I first met John in 1971. The Law Society had struck a Special Committee
on Credentials, and invited the Law Students’ Association to nominate a
member—that was me (a second-year law student). John was then at Farris
and was on the committee as a member of the bar. One of the issues the
committee discussed was whether it should be unprofessional conduct for
a member to discriminate in hiring based on gender, race or religion. He
and I formed an alliance on that issue, arguing that it was time to recognize
that racial, religious and sex discrimination were inconsistent with the values
of the legal profession—or should be. In the end, we came fairly close2
but were unsuccessful, and no such measure was put in place.
John was ahead of his time and a wonderful ally. Twenty years later, the
Law Society Rules were changed to prohibit discrimination in hiring.
As a result of our participation on the committee, John and I became
friends, and he and Sarah kindly included my husband Jon Sigurdson and
me in some of their parties and activities. Law students at that time played
charades, and John and Sarah were enthusiastic and highly competitive
participants. John loved my husband’s sense of humour, and at one point
commandeered Jon to be his speech writer for an address to his daughter
Alison’s graduating class. Assignment and management of the task were
approached with the same intense focus as a major litigation file, with
phone calls from John “requesting” a new draft at awkward dinner-time
hours, and then (as I understand it) delivery of the resulting talk with enormous
gusto on the day.
Later, I worked with John after he had started his own boutique firm,
under an arrangement whereby young lawyers at Shrum, Liddle and
Hebenton worked with him on litigation matters, and young lawyers at his
firm came over to Shrum, Liddle to do some solicitor work. I learned an
enormous amount from the experience, about thinking things through,