Court Jesters: Canada's Lawyers & Judges Take the Stand to Relate Their Funniest Stories

C. Stephen Gray is Director of Information Services, Institute of
Chartered Accountants of Ontario.

Most people would probably agree that safely enshrined in our legendary Canadian non-identity is an impression that our legal system is somewhat stodgy, conservative, and supremely dull. Peter V. MacDonald’s Court Jesters is designed to dispel that impression.

The book is a collection of anecdotes and reminiscences, intentional jokes and inadvertent one-liners, gleaned from the collective consciousness of hundreds of Canada’s lawyers, judges, court reporters, and other legalistic hangers-on. And, believe it or not, a good deal of the book’s contents are genuinely amusing. Amusing — but seldom outright funny.

As Henry Fielding noted more than two centuries ago, we generally laugh at something that strikes us as ridiculous, for such things provide us with both surprise and pleasure. He also pointed out that we are generally most surprised when we encounter something that is actually the exact opposite of what it appears to be, such as a tragic moment that is really comic, or a character who is a genuine hypocrite. It is perhaps some of the inherent hypocrisy of our modern legal system that accounts for our amusement when we read through the collection of anecdotes in Court Jesters.

We expect the law to be solemn, its institutions and representatives to be beyond reproach. It is therefore refreshing to discover that there are many light moments in what would otherwise be very dull proceedings indeed.

MacDonald’s collection of legal humor is limited by the fact that it is merely anecdotal: The strongest chapters are those that amount to mini-biographies of such legal luminaries as Patty Nolan of Calgary, A.B. MacGillivray of Nova Scotia, and George Walsh of Ontario. These chapters offer something a little more substantive than the rest of the book — mini-portraits of real people who not only lived and thrived within Canada’s legal system but never lost a sense of perspective about it.

For the majority of the book, we may be frequently amused by the ability of lawyers and judges to be witty, and to abstract themselves from the immediate proceedings sufficiently to make light of themselves and their surroundings. But for the genuinely comic, we need a stronger organizing principle than this book provides — more details, longer episodes and some fully developed characters.

British author John Mortimer need feel no threat from his fellow author and barrister Peter V. MacDonald. Rumpole of the Old Bailey is safe, at least for the immediate future. Yet it is tantalizing to think that somewhere in the midst of these hundreds of quips and anecdotes are the makings of a Canadian Rumpole — a stodgier, more conservative old legal hack than his English forebear, but one nevertheless with the power to contribute significantly to our one truly Canadian quality: our ability to laugh heartily at ourselves and our institutions, at the same time as we continue to be persuaded that both are the best in the world.