Preceded by Oswald Smith Crocket Preceded by James P. Byrne Constituency Gloucester Role Canadian Politician Resigned April 27, 1959 | Premier Peter Veniot Preceded by James P. Byrne Name Ivan Rand Succeeded by Roland Ritchie | |
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Nominated by William Lyon Mackenzie King Died January 2, 1969, London, Canada Education Harvard University, Harvard Law School, Mount Allison University | ||
Ivan Cleveland Rand, CC (April 27, 1884 – January 2, 1969) was a Canadian lawyer, politician, academic, and Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada.
Life and career
Born in Moncton, New Brunswick, the son of Nelson Rand and Minnie Turner, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Mount Allison University in 1909. In 1912, he received a Bachelor of Law degree from Harvard Law School. He was called to the bar of New Brunswick in 1912. From 1912 to 1920, he practiced law in Medicine Hat, Alberta. Returning to Moncton in 1920, he joined the Canadian National Railways as a counsel.
In 1924, he was named Attorney General of New Brunswick and was a member of the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick from February to June 1925.
On April 22, 1943, he was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada. In 1945, he developed the Rand formula requiring payment of trade union dues by all employees in the bargaining unit affected by a collective agreement, whether or not the employees are members of the union.
In 1947, he was Canada's representative on the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP). Rand's meeting with William Lovell Hull, a fellow Canadian, changed Rand's understanding of Zionism. Rand became the central and most influential swing vote on UNSCOP in favour of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine and the eventual creation of the State of Israel.
Rand wrote the foreword to Hull's 1953 book, The Fall and Rise of Israel. Until Rand wrote the foreword, Hull did not know how significant his meeting with Rand had been. Rand wrote:
"It was a relief, then, when shortly after my arrival I had the good fortune to meet the author of this book. Here he was, a Canadian, with whose father's name I had, while living in Western Canada, become familiar; a clergyman who, for a number of years, had been carrying on a mission in Jerusalem; who was, as I saw at once, a man of good will, well known to and knowing the many religious and racial groups in that amazing galaxy of rivalries and antagonisms. Whatever might be said of the soundness of his judgments, here, I thought, was one whom I could trust to express himself with honest and frankness. Somewhat to my surprise, I listened to words of high admiration for the Jewish people, their standards of life and the tremendous work they had done since returning to their ancient homeland. This sympathetic attitude released within me a vague constraint of doubt, uncertainty and puzzlement which, I see now, the limited and one-sided acquaintance I had had to that time with the Palestine question had generated. The controversy at once appeared unclouded by irrelevancies and shadowy prejudices and became on for decision in the light of subtle appreciations and comprehensive understanding. Mr. Hull knew nothing of this effect of that luncheon talk until this foreword had been perused by him, but I feel confident that he will count that day as not having been without its fitting deed.
I.C. Rand Supreme Court of Canada, Ottawa, Canada"
Rand retired from the Canadian Supreme Court on April 27, 1959.
From 1959 to 1964, he was the first Dean of the law school of the University of Western Ontario. In 1966, he chaired a Royal Commission into allegations of improper stock trading against Supreme Court of Ontario justice Leo Landreville.
In 1969, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.
He received Honorary degrees from Mount Allison University, the University of New Brunswick, Dalhousie University, Queen's University, the University of Toronto, the University of Western Ontario and Columbia University.
Rand was Canada's appointee to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine following World War II. As such, Rand visited Mandatory Palestine in 1947 and became a supporter of partition supporting UNSCOP's majority report which led to the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. He became a supporter of the state of Israel once it was created in 1948 and visited in 1959 to dedicate a forest in Jerusalem named in his honour.
Biographer William Kaplan describes Rand as "an intolerant bigot" who disliked French Canadians, Catholics, Jews and Canadians who weren't of British stock. When his sister married an Acadian, Rand refused to talk to her for 30 years. Nevertheless, as a judge, Rand was a civil libertarian who struck down restrictive covenants that barred property from being sold or rented to Jews or non-whites, acknowledged the rights of Japanese Canadians who were being interned as enemy aliens during World War II, defended the rights to free speech of the Communist Party of Canada when it was banned by the Canadian government under the War Measures Act as well as the rights of Jehovah's Witnesses being persecuted under Quebec's Padlock Law. During his tenure as dean of the University of Western Ontario's law school he was reluctant to hire a Jewish applicant claiming that a small town like London, Ontario could not abide "too many Jews". He would complain regularly about people whose names ended with vowels. Kaplan explained this contradiction in describing Rand as a person with a "first rate mind but a third rate temperament".