For Winnipeg lawyer Brad Rager, his fondest memories of the late Anishinabe judge and senator Murray Sinclair have only a tenuous connection to his career as a judge.
In 2007, Regel’s partner had recently given birth to their youngest child. Mr. Regel said he was interested in acting, and Mr. Sinclair persuaded Mr. Regel and his partner to participate in the Manitoba Bar Association’s production of Shakespeare’s works. midsummer night’s dreamas part of the association’s annual Lawyers Play fundraiser.
To persuade the couple, Sinclair offered to hold the baby during rehearsals and while the couple performed the play’s opening scene.
“And he just sat there, leaning back with Sanjay on his shoulder. During the play, there was madness going on behind the stage, and he was just this island of calm. And Sanjay, when he was on Murray’s shoulders, he never peeked,” Regel said. said in an interview.
Sinclair, a former senator, judge and chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, died Monday at a Winnipeg hospital, his family said in a statement. He was 73 years old.
Mr. Regel, a member of the Peter Ballantine Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, was the first Indigenous president of the Manitoba Bar Association and the Canadian Bar Association.
He recalled meeting Sinclair in 1993, when Regel was a law student. He was assigned to observe the courtroom, and one of his classmates was Sinclair’s nephew, Kelly More, now a district court judge.
Mr. More offered to introduce Mr. Regel to Mr. Sinclair, and Mr. Sinclair took the students to lunch.
“There’s a bunch of first-year law students here, and they’re going to go to lunch with Murray,” he said.
“We all knew who he was from his work with the Aboriginal Judicial Inquiry here in Manitoba. So it was like, here we go out with this rock star judge. ”
Sinclair was the first Indigenous person appointed as a judge in Manitoba and the second in Canada. As a member of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry, which submitted its final report in 1991, he investigated the relationship between Aboriginal people and the justice system.
“One of the giants of our time” says former chief judge
Through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Mr. Sinclair “embedded ideas about reconciliation and the history of boarding schools into the consciousness of Canadians,” Manitoba Crown Court Chief Justice Glenn Joyal said in a statement.
Raymond Wyant, a former Manitoba chief justice, said he first met Sinclair in the 1980s when they were both young lawyers.
“He will be remembered as one of the most important figures in the history of this country,” Wyant said.
Chief Judge Ryan Rolston remembers arguing cases before Sinclair when he was a lawyer and on the state court bench. He said Mr. Sinclair showed humanity at his sentencing hearing.
“He was very humble and really took the time to talk to the person as a human being,” Rolston said.
Mr. Wyant said he kept in touch with Mr. Sinclair throughout his career and often met him at the airport. Wyant says that even though they had known each other for years, Sinclair continued to make an impression on him.
“I’m talking to Murray Sinclair. He’s really… probably one of the giants of our time. And I’m sitting here, knowing him as a friend and just talking to him,” Wyant said. spoke.
“This is a huge loss for all of us.”
