Dugald Christie passes
It’s often not until someone has passed that us strangers see the biggest window into their life.
Dugald Christie passed on July 31, 2006 near the end of his campaign to raise awareness to justice reform in Canada – more to the point of equal access to legal services despite any Canadian’s income status – by bicycling across Canada.
A van struck him in Sault Ste. Marie.
I don’t know Dugald Christie, but I’m impressed he wasn’t one to simply protest. In 2005, he challenged Premier Glen Clark’s (NDP) British Columbia law in 1992 that extended provincial sales tax to legal services. He argued that the tax infringed on the constitutionally protected rights of low income people to access the ‘justice system’. The second appeal is currently being decided by the Supreme Court of Canada.
He started dispensing legal advice to those with low income while living out of a Vancouver-based Salvation Army – despite coming from a well-to-do family – in 1997, before becoming involved with the Western Canada Society to Access Justice by setting up numerous legal pro-bono clinics around Western Canada (today, this group runs around 60 such clinics in total with 400 volunteer lawyers).
“He was totally outspoken against a two-tier legal system that benefited people with deep pockets,” his grieving son Oliver, 31, said yesterday.
“And he believed that if you talk the talk, you have to walk the walk. So he made many sacrifices, giving up a very successful practice and luxury, in order to fulfill his dream.”
Western Canada Society to Access Justice
