THERE are some things Carol Baird Ellan won't miss about the court. The judge's robes, for instance, which can be hot and uncomfortable. The late night hours writing decisions.
Baird Ellan, 55, says she's ready for change. But after almost 20 years on the bench, the last seven of those in North Vancouver, her sense of justice - and her impact on the system, will remain.
Thursday was the former judge's last official day on the job. "I'm not 'honourable' anymore," she said, laughing.
Ten days earlier, she was still writing final decisions while packing up her office. A set of practice golf clubs and a golf tee stood in the corner. On the wall there was a cartoon caricature of her presented when she left the office of the chief judge in 2005.
A wooden motto stood among family photos on the shelves behind her desk: "The only thing troubling my supreme selfconfidence is the nagging possibility you might be right." A wry mantra of reasonable doubt.
Baird Ellan doesn't fit the stern stereotype of judges. Those who know her speak admirably about her commitment to her family - including five children - who she raised while pursuing an often-remarkable legal career. They say she's been able to keep her perspective.
Baird Ellan has been a more public provincial court judge than some, partly because of her belief that the courts do play a key public role and that decisions should be written and made accessible.
Judging in provincial court has been a gift and an honour, she said. "You have the ability to affect hundreds of lives every day."
After two decades on the bench, Baird Ellan has seen some of humanity's worst moments: the sailor who downloaded child porn, the Mountie who broke a man's jaw with his punches, the hit-andrun-driver who left a young man dead by the side of the road. She's seen more than her share of child sex abusers, fraudsters, and home invaders. There have been drunk drivers and crack dealers by the bucket load. The court has been extremely busy.
Baird Ellan said she likes provincial court for some of the same reasons she became a judge. "I saw it as an opportunity to right wrongs."
She has a reputation as being dedicated and conscientious. And for her compassion.
"She realized that very often accused persons were victims as well," said Herb Chambers, a North Vancouver defence lawyer.
When it comes to trials, she's been admired more often by defence lawyers than the Crown. A stickler for applying the Charter of Rights to provincial cases, Baird Ellan has tossed out a number of drunk-driving and drug cases on charter violations.
The police may not be among her closest admirers. "She expects the Crown to do their job," said David Walsoff, another criminal defence lawyer in North Vancouver. "You go into that courtroom with her, you do your homework."
The daughter of a homemaker and an advertising executive, Baird Ellan didn't come from a legal background. She grew up in Vancouver and Hawaii with a brother and identical twin sister. She was 14 when, inspired by a high school law class, she decided to become a lawyer. She was called to the bar in 1980 and started practising tax law.
She also married fellow lawyer Tim Ellan, who she still counts as her number 1 support. It didn't take long for Baird Ellan to decide the work she saw her husband then doing in the prosecutor's office looked more interesting than tax law.
She spent a decade as a criminal prosecutor, working part-time when her children were young.
In 1993, she was appointed to the judiciary by the governing NDP. Her first stint as a judge was at Robson Street's small claims division.
Civil law is "probably more hotly contested work than criminal," she said. "You have two parties who fervently believe that they're right and neither one thinks they're going to lose. So when a decision comes down, somebody's usually quite dismayed."
One time, Baird Ellan heard from a woman upset about marks she said painters had left on her wall. But there wasn't any evidence. Baird Ellan told the woman she was dismissing the case. "So she spat on me," she said. "Luckily I had my glasses on."
Next she went to Main Street, the highest volume criminal court in western Canada.
Both the kinds of cases she dealt with and the workload were intense.
"I wouldn't say I went in with any illusions," she said. Unlike some judges, however, Baird Ellan had five children under the age of 10 at home.
"I tried to keep the work behind the scenes," she said. "My shift was: the kids were in bed at 8: 30 p.m. and I worked (on judgments) until 2 (a.m.)"
It helped that she had what she describes as "low maintenance, outstanding" kids. She also had help from nannies and a husband who had a more flexible schedule. There were sacrifices, she said.
Baird Ellan doesn't see herself as a trailblazer for women in the legal profession. That had already been done for her, by older women, she said. They had opened the doors. "I just walked through them."
"I describe her as a reluctant role model," said Judge Ellen Burdett, a friend and colleague of Baird Ellan who was appointed to the judiciary at the same time.
In 2000, Baird Ellan became the first woman appointed as chief judge of a provincial court. "She created a very collaborative governing style" - unusual in a very hierarchical system, said Burdett, who served with Baird Ellan as an associate chief judge.
But in 2002, that was quickly overshadowed by a bitter headline-grabbing dispute between the judiciary and the attorney general of the day over court closures. Baird Ellan said she had no warning about what was going to happen until she was given a list with 24 of 99 court houses scheduled to shut.
There were emergency meetings. She considered the question, "Do we sit back and say 'No problem.'?"
For Baird Ellan that wasn't an option. She felt the closures were a serious undermining of justice, especially for people in small communities. A number of the courthouses on the closure list were already operating at more than 100 per cent capacity. At the same time, the government was slashing the budget for Legal Aid by 40 per cent.
Baird Ellan wrote and delivered a letter to then-attorney general Geoff Plant, telling him that what he was doing was "unlawful" and that he had lost the confidence of the judiciary.
Soon a very public showdown began, with Baird Ellan taking a share of public flak for criticizing government.
"High-handed" and "crossing the line big time" were just a few of the words used to describe her actions, with columnist Michael Smyth likening her letter to a "judicial butt-kicking."
"Certainly there were pundits who felt it was not the role of a judge to speak about that sort of thing," she said.
She still believes the money the province was looking to save could have been found through more collaborative discussion.
"They spent $7 million revamping the Air India courthouse so the jury could sit there and have video terminals at each of the stations," she said. "Ultimately they didn't have a jury there."
Eventually, the government agreed to keep half of the courts on the list open. For a while.
"It was a dark time for our court," she said. Another dark moment came one day in a phone call from Prince George. There had been a shocking allegation about a sitting judge: that he had used his position to prey on vulnerable teenaged prostitutes.
Nobody in the chief judge's office had been told that rumours had been swirling for years and that a police investigation had been opened.
"I called him and said 'You need to go home,'" says Baird Ellan. "I was dismayed that something hadn't been brought to the judiciary's attention."
Once the judge was off the bench, it became easier for the police to get statements.
In 2004, former judge David Ramsay was sentenced to seven years in jail after pleading guilty to four sexual assaults against young First Nations women.
At the end of her five years as chief judge, in 2005, Baird Ellan decided to do something unusual. Instead of moving on to a superior court, she returned to provincial court in North Vancouver - her home community.
"I was intrigued by the whole concept of sitting in a community and being more visible," she says.
For the most part, it's been "incredibly rewarding," she says. "With the odd bad moment."
"Occasionally you'll get that 'Don't I know you from somewhere?' I'm a little reluctant to find that out. It might be from court or it might be from the soccer field with the kids.'"
In the seven years Baird Ellan has been at North Vancouver provincial court, a number of her rulings on impaired driving, diala-dope drug trafficking and child sexual offences have become part of legally significant case law.
Her local stint has also had its share of controversy. "I know in my kids' circles and some of my adult friends' circles I'm just always going to be the Botox Judge," she said.
In a Real Housewives of Vancouver moment, that case in October 2010 earned national headlines when Baird Ellan acquitted a West Vancouver woman who said she couldn't blow into a roadsidescreening device because Botox had frozen her facial muscles.
The police were not amused. Uglier reaction was prompted when she sentenced a young offender who beat up a local bus driver to a year's probation.
"Hey Judge. How about jail?" screamed an editorial in the Province, one of the milder comments directed at the sentence.
For the most part, the critics haven't fazed her. "We know we're here doing a function that is not always going to be understood or popular," said Baird Ellan. "Sometimes the result that is open to the court . . . is just not going to be understood by the general populace."
It's one of the reasons most of her decisions have been written and posted on the courts' online website. "People can go read it for themselves if they're interested," she said.
Of the many hundreds of cases she's heard, only about a dozen have been appealed, and only about half of those successfully. Once she's made a decision, Baird Ellan says she doesn't second-guess herself. "It's gone. It's done."
There have been times in the past seven years when she's received hate mail or had to have police watch her home.
One of her most disquieting moments came when an RCMP officer showed up in court and passed a note to the sheriff, saying he needed to speak with her. "My immediate thought was 'Oh my God, one of my children has been in a horrible accident.'"
Instead, the officer wanted to inform her about comments that had been posted on a newspaper website by a man who said he wanted to get a gang of teens together to go after her. "I said, 'Oh thank God. It's only a death threat,'" she said.
There are occasional cases that stay with her. Like the time just before Christmas when she sent a young man with fetal alcohol syndrome to jail. She had tried with him before, giving him chances, knowing he couldn't learn from his mistakes and it hadn't worked.
"Jail's going to do nothing but unfortunately it was the only answer," she said. "We were both crying."
Like all judges, Baird Ellan is painfully aware of the problems faced by the courts. Fundamentally, she believes the system works well.
"In my view we should be grateful we have a system where the rule of law functions well and there is a healthy presumption of innocence," she said. "In places that doesn't exist there's a lot more injustice."
Her next steps are still a work in progress. She'd like to pursue a role in family mediation - an area not always well served in the adversarial court process. She'll have time to volunteer and to spend with her family, including two Labradors she won't name, owing to their informal inclusion in a canine witness protection program. Apparently they have pasts that are better not spoken of.
Those who've worked with Baird Ellan say North Vancouver has been lucky to have her.
"I've always had a whole lot of faith in humanity," said Baird Ellan. She said her time on the bench hasn't changed that.
"You always have the repeat offenders who disappoint you. But there are also a lot of pleasant results where your faith in them isn't misplaced and you see people change," she said. "That's not an unusual story."
Her last sitting day in court passed without her realizing it. "It was just as well," she said. "You wouldn't want to be bawling through your whole day in remand court. Court's not really a place for tears. At least on the part of the judges."
