Lawyer Clayton Ruby speaks to the Globe and Mail editorial board in Toronto on July 24, 2013. Kevin Van Paassen/The Globe and Mail
Civil rights attorney Clayton Ruby was driven by a simple rule his parents instilled in him: If he saw something wrong in the world, he should try to fix it. There was never any “should,” because as I saw it, I had no choice.
From counseling American dodgers in 1967 at a fledgling clinic in Toronto’s Yorkville neighborhood to arguing cases before the august Supreme Court of Canada, Mr. Ruby always did what she knew was right. Sometimes he won. He often didn’t. But no matter the outcome, he was never distracted from continuing the fight in and out of court, knowing that court decisions, no matter their length, tone, and detail, were not set in time forever.
He said this in an interview with SEE Change magazine six years ago, while discussing the impact of R. vs. Askov, a 1990 Supreme Court decision that won regarding a defendant’s Charter rights to a speedy trial. One would think that this would have been the end, a significant moment enshrined in the law that should have guaranteed a timely prosecution of all the courts. Instead, Ruby noted, the principle has since been ignored, with Crowns going before judges to ask for “small extensions” because the charges are too serious to be dismissed, and to label a delay of months for to the disclosure that “It could have been in three days” as “neutral time”.
“In the intervening years, the judges have accepted it,” he said. “Now, it’s a classic example of reforming the law even though the court decision is absolutely useless.”
Mr. Ruby, an Order of Canada member known for his eloquent arguments, prodigious work ethic and brightly colored socks worn under fancy dresses, died Tuesday at Toronto General Hospital of complications from an aneurysm. He was 80 years old, a foodie and oenophile with a penchant for Diet Pepsi on ice, the only regret was that his family would be sad when he was gone.
He lived as he was prompted, on his own terms, with a strict moral code, an abiding love for his wife, two daughters, their partners and children, and no strings attached.
“He told me that,” said his oldest daughter, Emma Ruby-Sachs. “Dad set such a high bar for everyone, because he was an example of what one person can do. From equal rights to arbitrary detentions, the environment, animal welfare, women’s rights to choose and the right to die, touched them and helped shape them all”.
Kate Best, his youngest daughter, remembers going to the school in the winter of 1988 when her father was working for the then NDP MP Svend Robinson just after he had come out as gay.
“I was 7 or 8, and dad made me put a pin that said ‘I’m Svend Robinson,’ a huge political statement on my shirt,” he said. “I don’t remember other kids reacting to it, but I do remember one teacher saying, ‘Well, you’re going to be in big trouble if you do that.’
“Problems like these were so simple to him. He was right, or he wasn’t.”
Clayton Charles Ruby was born in Toronto on February 6, 1942, the eldest of two children of Lou and Marie (née Bochner) Ruby. His father was a self-made man, the owner of a printing press that had started in Montreal as a determined eight-year-old boy selling newspapers on street corners.
From the start, young Clayton – his mother chose the name after seeing it listed in the credits of an old Western – was smart. After finishing high school at Forest Hill Collegiate, he earned a bachelor’s degree from York University in 1963 and a law degree from the University of Toronto six years later, when he was also called to the bar.
In 1967, while still a law student, he teamed up with some young lawyers, including his future law partner Paul Copeland, to run what they called the Village Bar. In the beginning, it was an open-air table-and-chair operation outside the Grab Bag convenience store on Yorkville Avenue, a place where they gave free legal advice to everyone from dodgers to hippies who were being harassed by the police. That first year they were called to the Law Society of Upper Canada and told to immediately cease and desist because the work they were doing was only serving to confuse the public and bring the entire practice of law into disrepute penalty
Clayton Ruby on March 18, 1988. Zoran Milich/The Globe and Mail
“We were told that people didn’t know if we were lawyers or law students,” said Mr. Copeland. “The next year, we moved inside and continued what we had been doing before.”
During this time, Mr. Ruby and Mr. Copeland wrote a book called Right Right Right, published in 1971 by the House of Anansi Press. At 116 pages, it billed itself as a “real citizen’s handbook on the most frequently encountered laws,” from driving to drinking, apartment living and drugs.
Two years after the publication of the book, Mr. Ruby earned a master’s degree in law from the University of California, Berkeley.
In 1976, after separating from Mr. Copeland, entered into a professional partnership with attorney Marlys Edwardh that would last more than three decades. In recent years he has been with the association Ruby Shiller Enenajor DiGiuseppe.
Normally, Mr. Ruby was at the forefront of social change, a man who chose his cases because they appealed to his finely tuned sense of right and wrong. There were cases of those wrongfully convicted, such as Guy Paul Morin, and his representation of doctor and abortion rights advocate Henry Morgentaler so that women who needed abortions could have them safely without being harassed by protesters as they entered clinics .
There was Michelle Douglas, who was discharged from the Canadian Armed Forces in 1989 as part of a discriminatory purge of its LGBTQ members. At first, he was reluctant to file a claim, but with Mr. Ruby by his side, they fought the army for three years, until it accepted a settlement, awarding him $100,000 after a Canadian Federal Court ruled that men and women no longer He could ban them from serving in the forces because they were homosexual.
There were cases related to the environment and the plight of an elephant named Lucy at the Edmonton Zoo. There were cases involving free speech, including one against the Lubicon Cree of Alberta for instigating a consumer boycott over a territorial claim.
And there were cases of police misconduct and brutality, including one in 1988 when the mother of Michael Wade Lawson, a black teenager, shot him in the back of the head as he fled from Peel police officers in a stolen car , hired Mr. Ruby to push for a full and fair investigation. The result was the creation, in 1990, of the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), which aimed to carry out independent investigations into violent incidents involving the police. However, more than a quarter of a century later, the lawyer would emphasize that the fight for justice never ends with a specific decision or law.
“I think most people recognized that [the SIU] from the beginning as a showpiece, a fake organization,” Ruby told the Toronto Star in 2016. “There was never an attempt to do anything other than pretend that something was changing.”
Jill Copeland, an Ontario Court of Appeal judge who wrote an article with Mr. Ruby, remembers him as a teacher and mentor who taught the craft by giving young lawyers real work to do on cases, from conducting cross-examinations to arguing appeals. “It was an amazing way to learn,” he said. “The penal college has not always been welcoming to women. To him, [gender] it didn’t make any difference.”
James Lockyer, one of the country’s leading criminal lawyers who specializes in wrongful conviction cases, noted that Mr. Ruby always seemed decisive. “He used to speak in short sentences very quickly and you wanted to hang on to his every word,” she said. “You can’t be a better defender than that.”
Former federal Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, who was first linked to Mr. When they both attended anti-war protests in the mid-1960s, Ruby said she will always remember her friend’s sense of humor, even when they were talking about the most serious of issues.
“We were in the trenches all the time, whether it was wrongful convictions or other areas of criminal justice,” Mr. Cotter. “Although we didn’t see each other often, every time we did, it was as if we hadn’t been apart. Absence makes you realize the importance of this friendship. The world was a better place because he was always there for what needed to be compromised. We’ll be lost without him.”
And somehow, in the midst of his hectic professional schedule, without fail, Mr. Ruby managed to take summers off the courts to become the primary caregiver for her daughters at their cottage in the Kawarthas, as their mother, Ontario Superior Court Justice Harriet Sachs, had to – it stay in the city to work. There he sat, a work-at-home dad with all his files spread out around him, making sure the girls had the most fun, carefree, sugar-filled time possible.
“That was him,” said Mrs. Best. “He sucked as much joy out of life as he could, for as long as he could, while changing the world.”
In addition to his wife and daughters, Mr. Ruby is survived by her daughter’s partners, a sister, Brenda, and two grandchildren.