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the County Court of Vancouver. Judge Bole would face a further disappointment
with respect to presiding in Vancouver. He apparently anticipated
being named as the first Supreme Court justice resident in Vancouver. The
December 7, 1906 appointment of West Kootenay County Court Judge
William Henry Pope Clement to that role dashed those hopes. He retired
from the bench soon after, resuming his role as a leading New Westminster
barrister.
The first official Vancouver County Court judge, Alexander Henderson
(1901 to 1907), held that position for only five years, resigning to return to
his focus before the bench: politics.31 He had served as a Member of the Legislative
Assembly and Attorney General in the Semlin provincial government.
After resigning from the bench, he ran unsuccessfully in the 1907
provincial election; he was then appointed as the sixth Commissioner of the
Yukon, succeeding William Wallace Burns McInnes, of whom more later.32
After that stint, he returned to practice as a prominent Vancouver barrister,
serving as counsel in some of British Columbia’s most famous trials, including
the Simon Gunanoot33 and Janet Smith murder cases. At his death in
1940, he was noted to be one of the few barristers who once possessed a
“Q.C.” honorific, having been appointed in the antepenultimate year of
Queen Victoria’s reign.34
Henderson C.C.J. was succeeded by George Fillmore
Cane (known as “Phil”), the first subject of this
article. In the three weeks between Henderson
C.C.J.’s resignation and Cane C.C.J.’s appointment,
Cane had served as Henderson’s agent in the 1907
provincial election. Cane also served as agent for
several other Liberal candidates, a role that likely did
not hurt his prospects for appointment by the Laurier
government.35 Among the other candidates represented
by Cane were future County Court judge
William Wallace Bruce McInnes and future senator
John Wallace de Beque Farris.36
George Fillmore Cane
A graduate of the University of Toronto, Cane first practised in that city
before moving to Nanaimo. There he married the widow of David William
Gordon, a wealthy Nanaimo architect who had served as the Member of Parliament
for Vancouver until his death in 1893. Cane then relocated to Vancouver,
where he became a noted barrister. He worked in partnership with
future County Court judge Hugh St. Quentin Cayley, of whom more later.
His time on the bench and on this earth were regrettably short.37 On September
26, 1908, he died suddenly of heart failure, hours after the close of
evidence in the second R. v. Walkem trial, over both of which he had