Former chief justice of the Federal Court of Canada, Julius Isaac, died at the age of 82 in Regina on Saturday.
Isaac was the country's first black chief justice and the first black person appointed to the Federal Court. He was head of the court for seven tumultuous years after being appointed by then-prime minister Brian Mulroney in 1991.
In an interview that year, Isaac said he considered himself a lawyer "first and foremost."
"It's no secret that I'm a black person. If having a great lawyer who is a black person assists minorities, that's a plus, an add-on. I don't have the sense the appointment is symbolic," he said at the time.
Born in Grenada, Isaac studied at the University of Toronto and spent 11 years in private practice before joining the federal government. He spent 17 years with the Justice Department before being appointed to the Supreme Court of Ontario in 1989.
While he was chief justice many of the judges were censured by the Canadian Judicial Council for behaviour — on and off the bench — that was deemed to be inappropriate.
Isaac himself was embroiled in scandal after it was revealed he met secretly with a government minister to try to speed up war-crimes prosecutions. The meeting with Ted Thomson, then-assistant deputy minister in charge of war crimes, took place while three Nazi war crimes cases were ongoing in the Federal Court.
Isaac was cleared, twice, of any wrongdoing even after the Supreme Court of Canada had originally called the meeting a serious affront to the appearance of judicial independence.
Isaac stepped down as head of the court in 1999 to become a part-time judge. He moved to Regina in 2006.
