He listened to residential school victims and helped them achieve redress.
“They wanted to be heard, because in their view nobody heard them for a long, long time. No one listened.”
So read the headline in the Obituaries of the GLOBE AND MAIL dated April 19, 2011 and written by a Rod Mickleburgh.
Redress: “ to set right; reform, correct.”
Donald Brenner, 65, passed away suddenly on March 12, 2011 at his home on the Sunshine Coast in BC. Donald was a commercial pilot and a respected chief justice of the Supreme Court of BC. How will most prominent Aboriginal leaders remember him? “We have a lot to thank him for. Donald Brenner was a remarkable human being, as good as they come. He will have a place in our hearts, forever.”
Edward John, Grand Chief of the First Nations Summit.
Edward John, Grand Chief of the First Nations Summit.
Donald Brenner had accomplished a lot in his life but came into prominence when he presided over the Blackwater case where he “was instrumental in bringing one of the nations’ searing social sores to public attention – the decades of abuse that took place at native residential schools – and subsequently helping to achieve redress.”
The Blackwater case included a “civil suit by former residents of the Alberni Indian Residential School, hearing native witnesses, often in tears, bare their suffering in unrelenting detail. At the end, he awarded damages against both the United Church and the federal government. His ruling, upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada, paved the way for a slew of similar cases across the country and Ottawa’s eventual, multibillion dollar out-of-court settlement.”
Further significant redress was to follow.
Donald Brenner issued a rare, high court call for the government to apologize for the systemic abuse that occurred (across the country).
Enter June 2008,… most of you may remember the nationally televised event when Prime Minister Harper had apologized for all the harms and abuses that Survivors had experienced in the former residential school system.
In an interview after leaving the Supreme Court, Brenner said no case was more difficult or more draining during his 17 years on the bench than Blackwater. “They wanted to be heard, because in their view nobody heard them for a long, long time. No one listened.”
As usual, with any issue, the government needs to be embarrassed first to admit accountability. In this case, it took court action before the government would listen and finally forced into redress in the national apology to Survivors.
R.I.P. Justice Donald Brenner.
