Acknowledgments
Author | Craig Jones |
Pages | 15-16 |
xv
Acknowledgments
British Columbia Attorney General Wally Oppal should get full credit
for putting momentum behind the province’s polygamy le after decades
of uncertainty and inac tion. His successors — Mik e de Jong, Barry Penner,
and Shirley Bond — each took a particular interest in the subsequent Poly-
gamy Reference proceeding, and would have shouldered the blame had
the whole enterprise collapsed in failure, so it is fai r that they should claim
a large measure of credit also for its success. Each had a personal hand in
aspects of the case’s progress. Successive Deputy Attorney s General Allan
Seckel and David Louk idelis, and my immediate superior, Assistant Deputy
Richard Fyfe, threw their support behind this untried and ambitious idea
of a trial of the constitutional issues t hrough a reference proceeding. Each
showed enough faith in me and my team to trust us with virtually every
aspect of the conduct of the litigation.
is book is partly memoir, and any such work, as Ben Franklin rec-
ognized, is in some measure an exercise of the ego. After all, we write
these things in the conceit that something we have done is worth reading
about at some length. at Franklin oered his disclaimer in the intro-
duction to the autobiography of, to my mind, one of Western history’s
greatest gures and then went on to write the balance with such o hand
humility and genia l charm is remarkable. I am no Franklin. I’m sure that,
whatever eorts I take to conceal it, my recollections of the polygamy cas e
and its conduct will reveal a n element of pride. I can only hope that it does
so without obviously intruding on the story that follows.
With that disclaimer behind me, I should say right from the beg inning
that had the litigation, which is at the heart of this book, been left in my
hands alone, it would have been a mess, or at the very least, a ver y dierent
case from the one I describe here. I worked with some exceptionally dedi-
cated and talented lawyers in the Legal Services branch of the Ministry
of Attorney General, and it will be my privilege to introduce you to many
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