AN ADVENTUROUS SPIRIT At the age of 94, John Commerford went skydiving for the first time. It’s just the latest adventure for someone who has always embraced opportunities in both his personal life and career as a military lawyer BY JANE DOUCET In 2018, Major (Retired) John Commerford (’51) celebrated his 94th birthday by fulfilling his teenage dream: he went skydiving. “It was an enjoyable, exhilarating experience that I will never forget,” he says. “I wasn’t scared, I was appreciative—it gave me something to boast about! I didn’t tell my doctor, because the year before he had told me not to do it. And you know what they say about parachuting—if you don’t succeed the first time, you don’t have to worry about trying again.” Commerford has carried that adventurous spirit with him throughout his personal life, as well as in his careers in the military and the legal profession. When he applied to attend law school at Dalhousie, he had a clear plan: he wanted to be a military lawyer to defend young soldiers who were up on charges. That’s because he had been such a young soldier himself. Soon after his 17th birthday in 1941, he reported to Camp Aldershot in Nova Scotia for basic training in the Canadian Armed Forces. There, his mischievous nature got him into trouble. For a time, Commerford, who had grown up in Sandy Point, Newfoundland, and Halifax, delivered messages as a runner. His commanding officer, a major and a lawyer, didn’t appreciate the young man’s attitude. On one occasion, Commerford stuffed a message into his tunic and took a short cut. When his CO saw the piece of paper sticking out of his coat, he wrote up Commerford for being out of uniform, failing to salute him properly and not following the prescribed route. As punishment, he was confined to barracks for seven days.
“The CO was judge and jury in that case, and that bothered me,” says Commerford. “I felt that it wasn’t fair or right. So I decided that when I graduated from law school, I would defend young soldiers who got in trouble.” Commerford’s desire to be a paratrooper was dashed when a bike accident on the training base took him out of the running, so he was transferred to artillery. He became a Bren gun instructor and sailed to England in 1943, where he shot at Nazi warplanes from installations along the English coast. Soon after D-Day, he waded ashore at Juno Beach and helped liberate occupied Europe.
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BUILDING A CAREER AND FAMILY After decommissioning, Commerford took advantage of the education benefits offered to veterans and enrolled at law school when he was 24. His favourite class was Public Law. “I thought Public Law knowledge would be helpful as a military lawyer, and it was,” he says. “I found it and all of the other classes challenging, because I was a terrible speller—so bad, in fact, that one professor told me that I had to learn to spell the common words at least!” His marks improved after he married a Halifax business secretary named Marian who edited and typed his papers. He first met her at a Dalhousie ball. Although they had noticed each other, Commerford didn’t speak to Marian or ask her to dance. “I wanted to,” he says, “but I was there with a wartime veteran friend, and I didn’t want him to feel obliged to ask Marian’s friend to dance.” Thankfully, fate intervened when the pair found themselves on the same streetcar after the dance. “Marian invited me to sit across from her,” says Commerford. “Afterward, I called it The Streetcar Named Desire.” They had their first date the next day and married in 1949. The first of their five children was born the following year. After graduation, Commerford re-enlisted in the military and rose to the rank of lieutenant. He and Marian were expecting their second child, Joan, when the Korean War erupted. The Canadian Forces offered to promote him if he agreed to serve as a lawyer. He thrived in his career as a lawyer with Ottawa’s Office of the Judge Advocate General, which oversees the administration of military justice, where he often defended soldiers at courts martial. He served on bases in Kingston and Germany and at headquarters in Ottawa. “I enjoyed being a defence lawyer,” says Commerford. “The defence lawyer puts forward everything good about the person he’s defending, while the prosecutor puts out all of the evidence. I didn’t like to prosecute anyone.”
