Civil rights attorney Clayton Ruby was guided by a simple rule instilled in him by his parents: If he saw something wrong in the world, he should try to fix it. There was never any “should” because the way he saw it, he had no choice. From counseling American soldiers in 1967 at a pioneering sidewalk clinic in Toronto’s Yorkville neighborhood to arguing before the august Supreme Court of Canada, Mr. Ruby always did what he knew was right. Sometimes he won. Often he didn’t. But regardless of the outcome, he was never distracted from continuing the fight in and out of court, because he knew that court decisions, regardless of their length, tone, and detail, were not set in time forever. He said this in an interview with SEE Change magazine six years ago, while discussing the impact of R. vs. Askov, a 1990 Supreme Court decision it won regarding a defendant’s Charter rights to a speedy trial. One would think that would be the end of it – an important moment enshrined in law that should guarantee the timely prosecution of all those facing trial. Instead, Mr Ruby noted that the principle has since been scrapped, with Crowns coming before magistrates to ask for “small extensions” because the charges are too serious to be dismissed, and to characterize a months-long delay in revealing that ” It could be in three days’ as ‘neutral time’. “In the intervening years, judges have accepted it,” he said. “Now, it’s a classic example of reforming the law, although the court decision is completely useless.” Mr. Ruby, an Order of Canada member known for his eloquent arguments, prodigious work ethic and bright socks worn under smart tailored suits, died Tuesday at Toronto General Hospital of complications from an aneurysm. He was 80, a foodie and wine lover with a penchant for Diet Pepsi over ice, whose only regret was that his family would be sad when he was gone. He lived as he was led, on his own terms, with a strict moral code, an abiding love for his wife, two daughters, their partners and children, and absolutely no compromises. “He told me so much,” said his oldest daughter, Emma Ruby-Sacks. “Dad set the bar so high for everyone, because he was an example of how much one person can do. From equal rights to arbitrary detention, the environment, animal welfare, women’s right to choose and the right to die, she touched and helped shape them all.” Kate Best, his youngest daughter, remembers going to the school in the winter of 1988, when her father was working for the then New Democrat federal MP Swed Robinson, just after the latter had come out as gay. “I was 7 or 8 years old and my dad put a pin that said ‘I’m Swede Robinson’, a huge political statement, on my little shirt,” he said. “I don’t remember other kids reacting to it, but I do remember one teacher saying, ‘Well, you’re going to be in big trouble if you are.’ “Questions like these were so simple to him. You were right or wrong.” Clayton Charles Ruby was born in Toronto on February 6, 1942, the older of two children to Lou and Marie (née Bochner) Ruby. His father was a self-made man, owner of a printing company that had started in Montreal as a brash, determined eight-year-old selling newspapers on street corners. From the start, young Clayton – his mother chose the name after seeing it mentioned in the credits of an old western – was smart. After finishing high school at Forest Hill Collegiate, he earned a bachelor’s degree from York University in 1963 and a law degree from the University of Toronto six years later, when he was also called to the bar. In 1967, while still a law student, he teamed up with some young lawyers, including his future law partner Paul Copeland, to run what they called the Village Bar. At first, it was an outdoor table-and-chair operation outside the Grab Bag convenience store on Yorkville Avenue—a place where they provided free legal advice to everyone from crooks to hippies harassed by the police. In that first year, they were summoned to the Law Society of Upper Canada and told to cease and desist immediately because the work they were doing only served to confuse the public and bring the entire practice of criminal law into disrepute. Clayton Ruby on March 18, 1988. Zoran Milich/The Globe and Mail “We were told that people didn’t know if we were lawyers or law students,” Mr Cowland said. “The next year, we moved in and continued what we were doing before.” During this time, Mr. Ruby and Mr. Copeland wrote a book entitled Right Right Right, published in 1971 by House of Anansi Press. At 116 pages, it was billed as a “down-to-earth handbook for citizens on the laws they encounter most often,” from driving to drinking, apartment living and drugs. Two years after the book was published, Mr. Ruby earned a master’s degree in law from the University of California, Berkeley. In 1976, after divorcing Mr Copeland, she entered into a professional partnership with barrister Marlys Edwardh that would last more than three decades. The last few years are with Ruby Shiller Enenajor DiGiuseppe collaboration. Typically, Mr. Ruby was at the vanguard of social change, a man who chose his cases because they appealed to a fine sense of right and wrong. There were cases of wrongfully convicted cases, such as Guy Paul Morin, and the representation of doctor and abortion rights advocate Henry Morgenthaler so that women who needed abortions could have them safely without being harassed by protesters as they entered clinics. She was Michelle Douglas, who was fired from the Canadian Armed Forces in 1989 as part of a discriminatory purge of its LGBTQ members. At first, she was reluctant to pursue a claim, but with Mr. Ruby at her side, they fought the military for three years until it agreed to settle, awarding her $100,000 after the Federal Court of Canada ruled that men and women were not they could now be barred from serving in the forces because they were gay. There were cases involving the environment and plight of an elephant named Lucy at the Edmonton Zoo. There have been cases involving freedom of expression, including one against the Lubicon Cree of Alberta for inciting a consumer boycott over land claims. And there have been cases of police misconduct and brutality, including one in 1988 when the mother of Michael Wade Lawson, a black teenager shot in the back of the head as he fled Peel police in a stolen car, hired Mr. Ruby to push for a full and fair investigation. The result was the creation, in 1990, of the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), which was intended to conduct independent investigations into violent incidents involving the police. However, more than a quarter of a century later, the lawyer would emphasize that the fight for justice never ends with a specific decision or law. “I think most people recognized that [the SIU] from the beginning as a show, a fake organization,” Mr. Ruby told the Toronto Star in 2016. “It was never intended to do more than pretend something was changing.” Jill Copeland, an Ontario Court of Appeal judge who wrote articles with Mr. Ruby, remembers him as a teacher and mentor who taught the profession by giving young lawyers real work on cases, from conducting arguments to appeals. “It was an incredible way to learn,” he said. “The criminal bar has not always been welcoming to women. In him, [gender] it didn’t make a difference.” James Lockyer, one of the country’s most prominent criminal lawyers who specializes in fighting wrongful conviction cases, noted that Mr. Ruby always sounded determined. “He used to talk in short sentences really fast and you wanted to hang on his every word,” she said. “You can’t be a better advocate than that.” Former federal justice minister Irwin Cotler, who first became involved with Mr Ruby when they both took part in anti-war protests in the mid-1960s, said he would always remember his friend’s sense of humour, even when they were talking about the most serious matters. “We were in the trenches at all times, whether it was wrongful convictions or other areas of criminal justice,” Mr. Kotler recalled. “Although we didn’t see each other often, every time we did, it was if we hadn’t broken up. Absence makes you realize how important this friendship is. The world was better because he was always there for whatever needed to be dealt with. We will be lost without him.” And somehow, amid his hectic professional schedule, without fail, Mr. Ruby managed to take summers away from the courts to be the primary caregiver for his daughters at their summer home in the Kawarthas, as their mother, Judge of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, Harriet Sachs, had to stay in town to work. He’d be sitting there, a work-at-home dad with all his files spread out around him, making sure the girls had as much fun, carefree, and sugar-filled time as possible. “That was all,” Ms. Best said. “He soaked up as much joy as he could from life, for as long as he could, while at the same time changing the world.” In addition to his wife and daughters, Mr. Ruby leaves his daughters’ partners, a sister, Brenda, and two grandchildren.
