It was at some point in 1938 that Dean Cecil “Caesar” Wright of Osgoode Hall Law School sat down to write a letter of recommendation for his protégé, Bora Laskin. Wright had been Laskin’s mentor and would continue to be his close colleague and friend as their respective careers intertwined over the better part of the next two decades. For the moment, however, Laskin, despite his academic brilliance and his Harvard LLM, was without a permanent position in either the academy or the practice of law, and a vacancy had opened upon at the Law Department of the University of Manitoba. Wright addressed his letter to Sidney Smith, the humane and cultured president of the university who would subsequently go on to do great things in the same post at the University of Toronto. Here in part is what Wright said:
Unfortunately he is a Jew. This may be fatal regarding his chances with you. I do not know. His race is, of course, proving a...
Mark J. Freiman practises law at Lerners LLP in Toronto. He is a former deputy attorney general for Ontario. In his private practice he has appeared on a wide variety of human rights matters, including acting on behalf of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
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