Emmett Hall: Establishment Radical 1st edition

Widely hailed as a father of medicare, Judge Emmett Hall played a vital role in Canada's transformation from frontier society to a modern nation that is the envy of the world.   It was Hall's royal commission in the 1960s that recommended medicare for Canada. He stood alone against eight fellow Supreme Court judges in 1967, when he insisted that Steven Truscott had not received a fair murder trial and should be awarded a new one. Hall co-chaired the 1968 Hall-Dennis report that changed education in Ontario. It was Hall's powerful dissenting Supreme Court judgment in the 1973 Nisga'a case that set the stage for all future negotiations on Indian land claims. Another Hall royal commission in the 1970s investigated the sensitive issue of rail transportation and small-town survival in western Canada.   Emmett Hall: Establishment Radical tells the story of the poor boy from Saskatchewan who made it to law school and graduated with John Diefenbaker in 1919. It contains fascinating material on many of Hall's legal and judicial cases, including his 1936 legal defence of several on-to-Ottawa trekkers following the Regina Riot.   This is a book of immediate intensity and rare historical sweep. Dennis Gruending goes well beyond the public record, searching for motivation and clues to the character of a man whose long service had a profound impact on contemporary Canada.