AMITY VISIT TO CANADA
MASTER DAVID BEAN
Middle Temple
Amity Visit to Canada Master David Bean was Chairman of the Bar in 2002, a High Court judge in 2004, Presiding Judge of the South Eastern Circuit from 2007 to 2010, and a Judicial Appointments Commissioner from 2010 until 2014. In 2014, he was appointed a Lord Justice of Appeal. From 2015 to 2018 he was Chairman of the Law Commission. He was Treasurer in 2019.
Each September for the past 15 years, except when the world is in lockdown, Middle Temple has made an Amity Visit to another common law jurisdiction. There are many purposes to such a visit. It strengthens the Inn’s links with members in the host jurisdiction. It enables Middle Templars in England and Wales to meet judges and lawyers working in another country and to hold discussions, seminars, moots and social events. It promotes the professional interests of members who are seeking work in or from the host jurisdiction. It is also an opportunity to show our support for advocacy and the rule of law throughout the common law world. Over the last decade the Inn has made Amity Visits to the US, South Africa, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Gibraltar, Mauritius and Barbados, but until 2019 we had not been to Canada since a small group went there in 2004.
So, I decided that during my Treasurership we would visit Canada. Our own jurisdiction and Canada have much in common, including a firm commitment to the rule of law, a judiciary appointed on merit and deciding cases without regard to party political considerations. The Inn’s links with Canada go back a long way (for example, the celebrated novelist John Buchan, a member of Middle Temple, was Governor-General of Canada from 1935 to 1940). These links were strengthened in 1966 when Master Harold Fox, a leading patent lawyer, published a scholarship fund which since 1985 has enabled young graduates who have passed the Ontario Bar exams to spend ten months in London and recently Called Middle Templars to spend ten months in Toronto. In planning the trip, we had advice from Master Graeme Mew of the Superior Court of Justice for Ontario,
Bench Call at Osgoode Hall. From left to right – Masters Richard Wagner, David Bean and Sheila Block
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2020 Middle Templar
Scott Maidment, President of The Advocates’ Society of Canada and our in-house team of Colin Davidson, Director of Membership and Development, and Oliver Muncey, Membership Manager. The group comprised 58 members of the Inn and 35 guests. The most senior were three former Treasurers: Masters Igor Judge, Derek Wood and Stanley Burnton, respectively called in 1963, 1964 and 1965. Three student members were with us as guests of the Inn including Rebecca de Hoest, winner of the Middle Temple International Essay competition for 2019. Canada is of course a vast country, and we could not visit all parts of it in a week. I settled on Ottawa, the federal capital and home of the Supreme Court of Canada and Toronto, the country’s largest city and commercial hub. We began in Ottawa at a reception in the garden of the British High Commission, on a bright, sunny evening in September. ‘What a wonderful place to be posted’, I said to a senior member of the High Commission staff. ‘Yes’, she replied, ‘but you might not like it as much in February. Winter is a serious business in Canada.’ The next day, after a visit to the Supreme Court and a question and answer session with Justice Andromache Karakatsanis, we had the privilege of hearing an outstanding keynote address by Master Rosalie Abella, the senior Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. This was the only one of the Treasurer’s Lectures for 2019 delivered at a venue other than Middle Temple Hall. Master Abella’s talk ranged over Aeschylus’ Eumenides, CP Snow’s lecture on The Two Cultures, and Michael Frayn’s play Copenhagen. At the end of it, Master Abella said: You cannot be born in the shadow of the Holocaust to two Jews who survived it without an exaggerated and fearless commitment to the pursuit of justice. You cannot grow up indifferent to a just rule of law when every adult you love
