256 THE ADVOCATE
VOL. 80 PART 2 MARCH 2022
closed the extent of his astonishing intelligence and memory. A request for
help (in the early days of online research) might lead to an extremely useful
half-hour lecture on Boolean logic. In the midst of a debate concerning
updating the law of real property, he might muse about whether the law
relating to Welsh mortgages might have something to teach us. The privilege
of knowing and working with Arthur oftentimes required inhabiting a
very elevated and exhilarating level of discourse.
In his writing, he was able to take the most difficult subjects and explain
them in the clearest, simplest prose. And it often struck the reader of his
work that, though he was deadly serious in terms of what he sought to
achieve, there was underlying it all the sense of a gentle soul chuckling with
good humour while he set out about it.
Arthur was an early influencer for the use of computers, having built his
first personal computer from a kit (before they were available for retail purchase)
and, in 1977, he helped found the West Coast Computer Society. He
saw immediately the promise of online legal research services and, through
his efforts, as early as 1976, the Commission was one of the first Quicklaw
test sites. The Commission had computers for text processing by 1977 and,
by 1986, each staff lawyer had a computer and was expected to use it, a
familiar idea today but virtually unheard of then. At a time when much of
the internet consisted of idle promises of information, Arthur saw to it that
all of the Commission’s work was available online. Arthur was also a pioneer
in the development of online databases, particularly the Law Reform
Database (tracking all Canadian, Commonwealth and U.S. law reform publications),
still hosted online by the BCLI.
On Arthur’s retirement as executive director of BCLI, a dinner to celebrate
his career was held at the Law Courts Inn in March 2007, resplendent
with B.C. luminaries of bench and bar. It was definitely fitting that the legal
community had an opportunity then to celebrate one of our leading lights.
Also to mark his retirement, friends and colleagues established at the Allard
School of Law the Arthur Close, Q.C. Prize in Advanced Legal Research,
which serves as a permanent memorial to his immense contribution to the
systematic, impartial and deliberative improvement of the law.
But even more treasured by Arthur, who in his soul was a lover of legal
art, was the honour of being caricatured himself on the cover of the July
2007 edition of the Advocate!
Thomas G. Anderson, Q.C., with help from Greg Blue, Q.C.,
Judge Anthony Spence (ret.), Peter Lown, Q.C., and Clark Dalton, Q.C.