656 THE ADVOCATE
VOL. 80 PART 5 SEPTEMBER 2022
Howard and Brent. Two of these boys would go on to become well-regarded
lawyers with practices in British Columbia: Perry and Howard.1
While still a boy in Yorkton, Perry knew of Nancy Morrison2 (16 years
older than him) and her father, William, who was “like royalty” in Yorkton
because he was a lawyer. Perry notes that at the time in small-town
Saskatchewan, if you were a doctor or a lawyer, you were a somebody. The
law partially appealed to him as a career calling because he grew up in the
era of Perry Mason, a popular fictional lawyer who had the same first name
as him and was based on a real lawyer with the same last name as him.3
Being in a courtroom appealed to Perry, who had shown an early interest
in performance and was intrigued by the theatricality of the courtroom.
More significantly, though, the law rang true to Perry because it involved
human communication and caring about people.
Perry’s parents were not especially musical. Although his mother’s father
had been a cantor (the singer at the synagogue), Perry says that when he
sang “O Canada” with his parents, it was always in three-part harmony only
because neither of his parents could stay in tune. He took piano lessons
from an early age and entered the Yorkton Music Festival competitions. At
eight years old, he came in second, singing a song called “Fishing” (first
place went to David MacIntyre, who went on to teach musical composition
at SFU). The comment on the adjudication form (which Perry still has)
reads: “You weren’t the best voice here, but you sang the song with such a
degree of truth I could tell you love fishing and you communicated it.” In
fact, Perry hates fishing.
Perry’s father did not make much money, and as a child of a holocaust
survivor, Perry was all too aware that he needed to seize any opportunities
he had. As he told me: “When you grow up as the child of a holocaust survivor
who lost his entire family and didn’t have the luxury of a good life or
an education or any food on the table, you realize: ‘My father didn’t have
this opportunity; I have this opportunity.’ You make the most of it. It wasn’t
demanded; it was expected.”
As a result, Perry entered law school at the age of 20 with only two years
of university education behind him. He financed his legal tuition ($400 per
year) by selling carpets and playing piano. He graduated from the University
of Saskatchewan with an LL.B. in 1976 at the age of 23. While at university,
he entered another musical competition called “I Can Hear Canada
Singing” for which he won a case of beer. In his final year of law school, he
was the musical director of the school’s Legal Follies production. That year,
Perry and others penned a legal parody of Fiddler on the Roof restyled as Fiddling
with the Truth.