ORAL HISTORY
The Society's Oral History Programme is a unique and invaluable source of information on all aspects of our legal past. The interviews have been used extensively in scholarly research and the programme has gained a wide reputation across Canada and beyond for the quality and scope of its work. Several of our programmes are privately funded, for example by law firms, judges' associations etc., and we are pleased to discuss possible sponsorship with interested parties.
The number of legal professionals interviewed through the programme since 1979 now totals almost 500 and their interviews amount to well over 75,000 pages of transcript. The following description of the Osgoode Society's programme, and discussion of the uses of oral history, has been prepared for the Osgoode Society by Susan Lewthwaite, of the Law Society of Upper Canada archives.
For terms of access to the Osgoode Society collection scroll down to the end. For a list of our oral histories, and a guide for volunteer interviewers, see the links on this page.
What is Oral History?
Oral history is a relatively recent development in Canadian historical methodology. Historians have traditionally relied solely on documents of various kinds while conducting their research. However, surviving documents are often insufficient for fully reconstructing the past, and this is as true of legal history as of any other field of history. Court and other legal records from the past have been lost, damaged or destroyed over time, or are so sparse in detail as to be virtually useless; solicitor/client privilege prevents historians from accessing or using potentially rich client files; and many historically important cases have gone unreported and the archival records about them are cursory. Thus the documentary record must be supplemented by other means.Oral histories not only fill in gaps in the written records, they also add important information to supplement what we can learn from such records. They add colour, detail, and texture to characterizations of individuals, discussions of cases, and analyses of legal organizations and developments. Some examples of this are given below.
Oral history involves interviewers asking subjects questions about their lives and careers, community involvement, colleagues and judges, and major cases or causes in which the subject has been associated, and historians use the transcripts of these interviews while researching biographies, studies of courts and particular cases, legal issues and organizations, and groups in the legal profession which have not left extensive records. Moreover, oral history transcripts of legal professionals can be used for historians focussing on aspects of social and political history which have a legal angle.
The inadequacy of written records is especially a problem when trying to reconstruct the experiences of particular groups of people, such as racialized communities or early women lawyers. As Professor Constance Backhouse has noted, many such legal records have been jettisoned as unworthy of retention and so have been forever lost to researchers; or, as in the case of Viola Desmond, about whom Prof. Backhouse has written, the trial records did not mention that she was black and so left no record of the real significance of her case. See Colour-Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canada, 1900-1950 (Toronto: Osgoode Society and University of Toronto Press, 1999), 14, 232 and footnote 14.
Oral histories can also be used to flesh out personal profiles of early women lawyers and highlight the difficulties they faced. For example, in a recent paper on Bertha Wilson and others, Mary Jane Mossman mentions that male lawyers often made deals in the men’s robing room, thus excluding women. She cites an interview with Hon. Mabel Van Camp, who recalled that in trying to overcome this problem when she appeared in cases in Toronto, Judy LaMarsh insisted on robing in the men’s robing room, causing “great furor.” (“‘Contexualizing’ Bertha Wilson: Wilson as a Woman in Law in Mid-20th Century Canada,” The Supreme Court Law Review, 2nd Series, Vol. 41 (2008), 22.)
Few lawyers or judges have written memoirs or been the subjects of biographies, a gap that oral histories help to fill. Sometimes too the “official” record of a person or a case misses important details or presents contradictory information that must be added to or reconciled in other ways. For example, Bora Laskin never mentioned that he articled with Samuel Gotfrid, a fact that Laskin’s biographer, Philip Girard, discovered in the transcript of Mr. Gotfrid’s oral history interview. See Bora Laskin: Bringing Law to Life (Toronto: Osgoode Society and University of Toronto Press, 2005), 61, 63-65 and footnote 9.
The Osgoode Society Oral History Programme
The oral history programme has been an important part of the Osgoode Society’s mandate since its inception in 1979. Recognizing the importance of capturing the voices and stories of members of the Canadian bar and bench, and others involved in the legal system, the Osgoode Society has to date interviewed almost 500 people, and the transcripts of those interviews amount to almost 75,000 pages.
Many of the Osgoode Society’s books have benefitted from the oral history collection, including those by Constance Backhouse and Philip Girard noted above.
The interviews cover a very wide range of people. Over the years we have interviewed almost all of the prominent men and women of Ontario’s bench and bar, people like Alan Borovoy, G. Arthur Martin, Roy McMurtry, and J.J. Robinette, and many judges of the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada. The partners of most of the largest law firms in Ontario were interviewed in 1989-1990, and those interviews are very useful for people researching the development and practice of the large firms. We have endeavoured to interview all Treasurers of the Law Society, and for the past few years have co-sponsored with the court a project on the Ontario Court of Justice (Provincial Court).
The parameters of the oral history programme have changed somewhat over time. Initially the emphasis was on capturing prominent judges and lawyers and those practising in large firms in the major urban centres. Over time that focus has evolved to ensure that the experiences of diverse and racialized communities are also captured, as well as those of small and sole practitioners, lawyers in smaller communities, and specialists in particular kinds of legal practice, such as Aboriginal issues.
The collection therefore contains interviews with aboriginal lawyers and aboriginal rights activists (e.g. Elton Brant, Chief Glenn Lickers, David Nahwegahbow), African-Canadian lawyers and judges (e.g. The Hon. Lincoln Alexander, Leonard Braithwaite, Hon. George Carter, Charles Roach, Marva Jemmott, Hon. Romain Pitt, Hon. Keith Hoilett), Asian-Canadians (eg. Gretta Wong Grant, Kew Dock Yip, Kazuo Oiye); Francophones (eg., Hon. Lucien Beaulieu, Hon. Jean-Pierre Beaulne, Hon. Jean-Eudes Dube); Italian-Canadians (eg., Hon. Frank Iacobucci, Frank Rocchi, Rino Stradiotto); the Jewish community (eg., Lili Sherizen Charon, Samuel Gotfrid, Hon. Abraham Lieff, Prof. Jacob Finkelman); and pioneering and successful women lawyers (eg. Mary Eberts, Hon. Edra Ferguson, Margaret Hyndman, Laura Legge, Eileen Mitchell Thomas).
In addition, several interviews of sole practitioners or those practising in smaller firms (eg. John Honsberger, John Nelligan) are useful for researching legal practice outside the large firms. Other law-related subjects for which the interviews are useful are:
law librarianship and legal information (eg., Prof. Margaret Banks, Prof. Balfour Halevy, Dr. George Johnston);
the experiences of lay benchers of the Law Society of Upper Canada such as Reginae Tait and senior managers of the Law Society (e.g. Richard Tinsley, Stephen Traviss);
legal aid (eg., Andrew Lawson);
legal education (eg., Prof. Mary Jane Mossman, Prof. Jacob Finkelman, Prof. Harry Arthurs);
the police (eg., Sgt. Benjamin Eng, Det. Mark Mendelson).
In Canada there has always been a strong link between lawyers and politics and the Osgoode Society has interviewed several people who have achieved prominent political careers (eg., federally, Rt. Hon. John Turner, Hon. Mark MacGuigan; provincially in Ontario Premiers Hon. William Davis, Hon. Robert Rae and Attorneys-General Allan Lawrence, Marion Boyd and Howard Hampton).
In addition to their uses for legal and political historians, the oral history transcripts are also useful to social historians researching family life, immigrant communities, military service and the experiences of those at home during the wars, and community and recreational activities and organizations. For example, Laura Legge, who went on to become the first woman bencher and Treasurer of the Law Society of Upper Canada, was a nurse during the Second World War. David Vanek, the son of an immigrant Jewish peddlar, went on to become a judge.
Terms of Access to the Osgoode Society Collection
All tapes are transcribed and tapes and transcripts are placed in the Archives of Ontario for safekeeping. Each interviewee may close all or part of the material for a period of years and may also make the material available as he or she sees fit. The Osgoode Society retains copyright to the material. No portion of the material may be photocopied without written permission from the Osgoode Society. The material contained in the Osgoode Society Collection is intended for legal, historical, genealogical or other worthwhile research. It must be used at the Archives of Ontario.
Many interviews are closed in full or in part for a period of time. For information as to use please contact either the Osgoode Society or the Archives of Ontario.
