Without Precedent: The Supreme Life of Rosalie Abella - The Colourful Conscience of Our High Court
By Jim Slotek
Rating: B-plus
Despite the political ill-winds that blow over our border, Canadians still do many things differently. Our respective Supreme Courts are a case in point.
The U.S. Supremes are celebrities, infamous ones in some cases. People rattle off their names and rage about them on Twitter.
By contrast, Canadian Supreme Court justices fairly fly below the radar. Which is why Barry Avrich’s recent Hot Docs feature Without Precedent: The Supreme Life of Rosalie Abella demands attention. The spirited, progressive, eccentric wife, mother and former Canadian Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Abella stood out in that august body like a splash of colourful paint on a grey wall.
Even her chambers, her refuge for sober contemplation of the application of law was, like her home, awash in kitsch and personal expressions of her love for George Gershwin.
Avrich, whose films lead more toward personalities than events, is in his wheelhouse here.
This is not to say the events aren’t important. At every level of her judicial career – from Ontario Family Court on up – she brought a sense of social justice that rubbed social conservatives the wrong way.
It didn’t help that she often had the words “first woman” attached to her name (at her apex, she was the first Jewish woman to sit on the Supreme Court of Canada). But her encyclopaedia entries will note that she created the term “employment equity” and fought to see it applied across the board in favour of women, Indigenous people, people of colour and the disabled.
That her ascent was in fact enabled at times by actual Conservatives (including Brian Mulroney and Roy McMurtry) speaks to a time when you could add “Progressive” to the name of that political party without it appearing oxymoronic.
Which is not to say there weren’t people who thought Rosalie Abella was a sign of the end times. Avrich takes a minute to show us headlines by (almost all male) political pundits warning that she was far too radical to hold a gavel.
None of those people – the ones still alive – are on camera today in Without Precedent: The Supreme Life of Rosalie Abella. Avrich maintains they all declined to participate, whether out of embarrassment or grudge-holding.
Which is just as well, given the My Most Unforgettable Character tone of the film. The centrepiece of her profile is arguably her relationship with her then-ailing husband, the late author Irving Abella. She adores him, and he loves her back in his curmudgeonly way. Most of their scenes together are side-by-side on a couch, deliberately in the style of the elderly couples reminiscing in When Harry Met Sally.
Avrich adds another telling Hollywood touch, having Abella enter the court in her judicial robes at the start of the movie, and leave it at the end, shot from behind.
It’s a filmic nod to her decision to retire from the Court – yet another difference between our Supremes and the Americans’, who are apparently expected to die in office like Popes.
There is clearly too much life left in Abella for that.
Without Precedent: The Supreme Life of Rosalie Abella. Directed by Barry Avrich. Starring Rosalie Abella, Irving Abella, Margaret Atwood. Opens in theatres across Canada, Friday, June 9.