THE ADVOCATE 265
VOL. 80 PART 2 MARCH 2022
the desired time and under the circumstances it was going to be very difficult
to be removed as an executor. For Jamie, the only option was to plead
insanity. He drafted a stellar brief regarding the plans to sail around the
world in a small wooden boat, providing details of the rudimentary navigational
and emergency aids on board, and was given an in-camera session
with a B.C. Supreme Court judge to hear his plea for removal and have an
alternate appointed instead as an administrator de bonis non. The judge was
very quick to determine that what Jamie had planned was indeed insanity
and removed him as executor. Jamie and Sally set sail shortly after.
So, in 1988, Jamie retired. It was then that they set off around the world in
Pacific Jade. This circumnavigation took them nine years. They stayed for two
years in Wellington, New Zealand, where Jamie lectured at the law school at
Victoria University. His subject was wills and trusts. The voyage also
included year-long stops in Australia and in South Africa where they connected
with descendants of the family who had moved there from Scotland.
They returned to British Columbia in 1997, sold Pacific Jade and built a
house on Gabriola Island, where they lived until Sally died in July 2013.
Jamie lived on in the house until his sight deteriorated and he had to move
into a retirement home in Nanaimo. Glaucoma eventually robbed him of
his sight entirely and he became quite frail.
Jamie was a singularly self-reliant man. I was once driving down South
Granville Street and spied a man carrying a mast on his shoulder. It was
Jamie. He then owned a 25 ft yacht, a Sandusky. It had a 35 ft mast. He
needed to repair it and decided to do so in his father’s garden on Balfour
Avenue in Shaughnessy. The boat was moored at Fraser’s Wharf in Kitsilano.
So, there he was, marching down Granville Street with the mast on his shoulder,
bent on getting it back to Fraser’s Wharf. It never occurred to him to
enlist the aid of friends with this task. He could do it himself, so he did. He
did, however, recognize, implicitly, that progress meant working together.
The Sandusky had a permanent leak and tended to float with its gunwales at
the water level. Before they were married, one thing that enamoured Jamie
to Sally was her willingness to bail the boat out before they went sailing.
Jamie possessed a phenomenal memory. He could quote many of Robbie
Burns’s poems by heart. He was a free spirit, blessed with a high intelligence,
but was vitally disinterested in personal advancement. He and Sally
amassed a large group of friends over the years, many of whom were made
during their sailing trips. Those of us who survive him will miss him sorely.
David Roberts, Q.C.
The author wishes to acknowledge the assistance and contributions of
Paul Daniels, Q.C., and Andrew Lawrence.