Claire L'Heureux-Dubé: A Life by Constance Backhouse (review)

Claire L'Heureux-Dubé: A Life by Constance Backhouse is a masterful biography of an iconic, brilliant, and complicated woman who made an indelible mark on Canadian law.¹ The book presents the extraordinary life of Justice L'Heureux-Dubé in the social, cultural, and political context in which it unfolded: in this way, Backhouse's book is both the story of L'Heureux-Dubé and also a history of the times and places that shaped her (and that she in turn shaped). At 740 pages,² the book is long, detailed, and meticulously researched, yet it is consistently compelling and hard to put down.

Backhouse opens the book with a discussion of Ewanchuk, the sexual assault case that propelled L'Heureux-Dubé into the national consciousness.³ In her concurring Supreme Court of Canada reasons, L'Heureux-Dubé pointedly criticized the sexual assault myths underlying the trial decision of Justice John McClung. In an unprecedented response,⁴ McClung wrote a caustic piece in the National Post criticizing what he called L'Heureux-Dubé's "feminist bias" and making what appeared to be a reference to the death by suicide of L'Heureux-Dubé's late husband. Backhouse's decision to begin with a discussion of this case and its fallout makes sense for multiple reasons: Ewanchuk and subsequent events highlight L'Heureux-Dubé's legal approach, showcase key aspects of her personality, and made her a household name. The case inevitably leads to questions about the woman behind the decision. Indeed, Backhouse ends the opening chapter with the question: "Who was the woman behind the Ewanchuk decision? How did she attain such legendary status, ground zero for the pitched battles over sexual consent, reviled and revered at the same time, icon and lightning rod to Canadians across the country?"⁵ This question sets the stage for the biography.

The book then turns to L'Heureux-Dubé's life story, divided into nine sections: (1) family heritage and childhood; (2) early education; (3) legal education; (4) law practice; (5) Quebec Superior Court; (6) Quebec Court of Appeal; (7) Supreme Court of Canada; (8) selected Supreme Court of Canada cases; and (9) retirement. Each of these sections is divided into chapters that focus on events and themes in L'Heureux-Dubé's personal and professional life. The reader becomes immersed in the story of L'Heureux-Dubé's childhood in Rimouski, her school years in an Ursuline convent school, her legal education at Laval University, and her entry into private practice as Quebec City's second female lawyer, where she became known over time as "la tigresse."⁶ From there, the book chronicles her twenty-nine years on the bench, including fifteen years at the Supreme Court of Canada, charting her transformation from a judge whose decisions were "generally in conformity with established standards"⁷ to the Supreme Court's "great dissenter":⁸ a judge who "shaped our notions and legal doctrines of equality, and whose influence on constitutional, family, criminal, and administrative law was transformative."⁹

Backhouse notes at the outset that her approach in the biography is borrowed from L'Heureux-Dubé's own context-centred legal methodology. She writes that L'Heureux-Dubé's "innovative legal approach was anchored in context, giving explicit recognition to the social, economic, and political realities that impacted her cases. This is a socio-legal biography that borrows from that approach, examining how context can also shape a life."¹⁰ Indeed, one of the biography's great strengths is this close attention to context—whether it be the cultural, political, and religious context of Québec in the 1930s and 1940s when L'Heureux-Dubé was growing up or the male-dominated context of legal education and legal practice in the 1950s. The depth and breadth of the focus on context means that the reader is immersed in the milieus that shaped L'Heureux-Dubé, appreciating more fully the extent to which she frequently found herself at the "vertex of change" in her life...