Practising with Northern absurdity.

• Author: Seebaran, Mark

"You have to imagine Sisyphus a happy man." These words, the conclusion to an essay by the French philosopher Albert Camus, have guided me through my work in the criminal justice system in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut (Le mythe de Sisyphe, Gallimard, Folio Collection, 1992). Sisyphus, according to Greek myth, was a man whom the gods gave eternal life, but with a caveat. He could live forever rolling a boulder up a mountainside, but would always see it fall back down again. Instead of wondering whether or not this life was worth living, Camus' Sisyphus made it meaningful by dedicating himself to lifting the boulder perfectly each time. I don't know the Zen references, if any, but this story does more for me than truisms like "virtue is its own reward," or "getting there is half the fun."

For me, it is a story about the value of detaching oneself from expectations and a reminder that work always leaves unfinished business. Implicitly, Camus' essay focuses attention on what we do, not what we achieve. I remember applying this theme to one of my first trials.

I defended a young aboriginal man from a charge of sexual assault. I was about five years older than he was. Like many of his generation, he had pursued the training and job opportunities negotiated by northern aboriginal leaders and earned far more money than I did. Nevertheless, he still lived with his parents and drank milk. I had just moved thousands of kilometres to Yellowknife, had long since lost count of the number of moves since leaving home, and was drinking more non-dairy beverages than I used to. He worked at a fly-in mine site; I walked to work in an office on the same street where I lived. He knew relatives in the Dogrib communities of Rae and Dettah; I knew

the Canada Post office, the courthouse, and cable TV.

My client lacked experience in sexual relationships; I wasn't used to asking strangers to describe them. During the year that we waited for his trial, he described the event to me over and over, without trying to justify himself, without yielding a clear defence. Because I looked only for defences, and found none, I saw only the crashing boulder of Sisyphus each time he told the story.

But I also learned, from interviewing this man, that people can change their recollection without lying. Eventually, I put aside what I thought he had hired me for -- to look for defences -- and looked instead for inconsistencies each time he told the story. Like Sisyphus, he...