Thomas Rodney Berger

Berger, Thomas Rodney
Thomas Rodney Berger, lawyer, judge, humanitarian (b at Victoria, BC 23 Mar 1933). Berger practised law in Vancouver from 1957 to 1971 and was counsel for the plaintiffs in the historic aboriginal rights case Calder et al v. Attorney General for British Columbia. He was NEW DEMOCRATIC PARTY MP for Vancouver-Burrard in 1962-63, an NDP MLA 1968-69 and leader of the BC NDP in 1969. From 1971 to 1983 he served as justice of the Supreme Court of BC, and from 1974 to 1977 as commissioner of the MACKENZIE VALLEY PIPELINE Inquiry.

His best-selling report, Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland (1977), eloquently recommended against the proposed Arctic gas pipeline from Prudhoe Bay in Alaska across northern Yukon and along the Mackenzie Valley. The government of Canada accepted his recommendation to reject the proposal and approved an alternative route. The report's other recommendations were subsequently adopted.

Berger's public intervention in the constitutional debate in 1981 led to the inclusion of aboriginal and treaty rights in the 1982 amendments to the Canadian Constitution. In 1983 he resigned from the Court in disagreement with the Canadian Judicial council's view that judges should not comment on matters of great public concern. In 1983-85 he headed the Alaska Native Review Commission, sponsored by the Inuit Circumpolar Conference and the World Council of Indigenous Peoples. Its report, Village Journey, was published in 1985.

Berger returned to private practice in Vancouver, also continuing his writing and international service. In 1991 he published A Long and Terrible Shadow, a study of native rights and European values in the Americas since 1492. In 1991-92 he was deputy chairman of the World Bank's review of resettlement and environmental issues in the Sardar Sarover Projects in western India, which found the projects flawed and led to the withdrawal of Bank funding and the creation of a permanent Inspection Panel.

In 1995 he reported to the Attorney-General of BC on sexual abuse of students in Jericho Hill School for the Deaf. His recommendation for relief and compensation for those who were abused was accepted. Berger received the Order of Canada in 1990 and the Freedom of the City of Vancouver in 1992.

Author DENIS SMITH

Suggested Reading
T.R. Berger, Fragile Freedoms (1982) and Village Journey(1985); C. Swayze, Hard Choices: A Life of Tom Berger (1987).

Links to Other Sites
History of Oil and Gas in the NWT
Historical overview of petroleum exploration in the Northwest Territories. Focuses on oil activity in the Norman Wells region, the Mackenzie Delta, the Beaufort Sea, and the Liard Plateau. Also mentions the Canol agreement signed by US and Canada during World War II. A Government of the Northwest Territories website.