Fulfilment: Memoirs of a Criminal Court Judge

Christopher English is a professor of history at Memorial University of
Newfoundland and the author of A Cautious Beginning: The Emergence of
Newfoundland’s Supreme Court of Judicature in 1791–92.

This autobiography expands the offerings of the Osgoode Society for
Canadian Legal History, which to date contains mainly collections of
essays on regional legal history and biographies of prominent litigators
and provincial supreme court justices. David Vanek was neither
privileged nor from the Anglo-French establishment. He was of modest
background, the son of Jewish immigrant parents, a noncommissioned
officer in the Second World War, and in flight from an unremarkable few
years in private practice when he became an Ontario provincial court
judge in 1968. Prejudice and the Depression had shut him out of Toronto
law firms, and his lack of postgraduate training and a change in
administration denied him a permanent post at the University of Toronto
Law School after four years teaching there in 1950. His high regard for
Dean W.P.M. Kennedy, under whom he studied and lectured, sharpens his
criticism of both Dean Caesar Wright and those who are said to have
deified him, and will interest readers of Kyer and Bickenbach’s
earlier volume in this series, The Fiercest Debate (1987).

Vanek’s memoirs illustrate the mundane, sobering, gritty but
necessary functions of the criminal courts. For 21 years, he adjudicated
the depressing daily results of crime at the street level—assault,
robbery, and homicide—against a backdrop of overcrowded dockets,
inadequate facilities, and insufficient pay and benefits. The
“defining moment in [his] career as a judge” was the preliminary
inquiry in R v Nelles, which was held to decide if there was enough
evidence to send the accused to trial for the death of four babies in
the Hospital for Sick Children. After 41 days of testimony from over a
hundred witnesses and four days of legal argument by opposing counsel,
Vanek found that the Crown had not met the necessary burden of proof and
discharged the accused. It was a high-profile and difficult case.
Crucial to his decision was his experience, his knowledge of the law,
and his careful attention to the obligations of the Crown and the rights
of the accused.

Self-effacing and public-spirited, Vanek also volunteered within his
community and worked to improve the professionalism and status of his
fellow judges. Surprisingly, he conveys no sense of fulfilment from his
careers in teaching, legal practice, soldiering, or judging. Perhaps the
title of his memoir reflects the success of a modest, decent, and
dedicated professional who was grateful for the limited opportunities
extended to a hard-working immigrant to make a contribution to Canadian
society.