John Commerford has always embraced opportunity in both his personal and professional life

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. 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.”

A NEW CHAPTER After retiring from the Canadian Forces when he was 48, Commerford took a job with Veterans Affairs, where he often represented those who had been denied pensions, retiring from that role when he was 69. One of his proudest moments was winning a pension for the widow of a soldier who had been poisoned by mustard gas in the Second World War and later died of lung cancer. “That was the best and most rewarding part of my career,” he says.

“My father really does have a heart of gold,” says his daughter Joan. “He has always supported the downtrodden or the misjudged, and he’s a very honest fellow. He feels that there is good in everyone, and that it’s just a matter of finding it.”

Today Commerford lives with Marian in the Perley and Rideau Veterans’ Health Centre in Ottawa. There, he exercises regularly, plays cards, sings in a choir and enjoys visits with family and friends. Over the years, Commerford attended some class reunions in Halifax, where he reminisced with former classmates and professors about the positive experiences he had while he was there. “I consider Dalhousie to be one of the best universities in Canada, and its law school is noted for the Weldon Tradition of unselfish public service,” he says. “I put the Weldon Tradition into practice by handling appeals of military veterans and widows. Throughout my life, I have enjoyed helping people in any way I could.”

TAKING THE NEXT STEP Two grad students share how Schulich Law is helping shape their future

BY ALLISON LAWLOR

OKANGA OGBU OKANGA

The Schulich School of Law has a stimulating and robust graduate program, offering the Master of Laws (LLM) and the Doctor of Philosophy in Law (PhD) degrees. This program comprises a vibrant, collegial, and close-knit intellectual community of bright, motivated students from around the world. It combines personally tailored study plans with close supervision from some of Canada’s finest legal minds.

Okanga Ogbu Okanga arrived in Halifax from Nigeria in August 2019 to pursue his Master of Laws degree. Eager to delve deeper into taxation, he had been practising at a private firm in Lagos since becoming a lawyer four years before. Focused primarily on dispute resolution, he discovered his interest was piqued whenever his legal work involved tax disputes and advising clients on tax law. It was, however, as an undergraduate law student at the University of Nigeria that Okanga’s interest in tax law was first ignited. There he was taught by a professor who had also studied at the Schulich School of Law.

Wanting to learn more about Nigeria’s tax system, as well as global tax policy, he started reading everything on the subject he could find. “Tax law is an ocean,” he said. “Despite the odds, I am excited to explore the width of it.” He decided to take his pursuit of tax beyond the shores of Nigeria. Canada became the target destination.

Okanga wrote to Professor Kim Brooks, who holds the Purdy Crawford Chair in Business Law and teaches taxation. In his email, he outlined his desire to research an aspect of tax administration in Nigeria that focuses on what happens when tax administrators change tax positions, how taxpayers are affected, and the remedies that exist for those taxpayers. Brooks wrote him back. “Her response decided it for me,” he said. “She showed genuine interest.” The idea of further pursuing his legal studies in Canada was not only exciting to Okanga but now seemed within the realm of possibility.

Keen to work with Brooks, Okanga came to Canada, believing she could bring out the best in him as a researcher. “It has happened,” he said.

This year, Okanga successfully earned his Master of Laws degree and was one of five candidates accepted into Schulich Law’s PhD (Doctor of Philosophy in Law) program for 2020. He intends to pursue his doctorate with the same vigor and determination as he did with his Master’s degree.

“Hard work is very important for anyone who is keen to excel,” he said. “You should set objectives and plan how to go about achieving them. Once you set objectives, stay humble and self-driven – you are likely to reach them.”

Schulich Law’s Graduate Programs have been around for a long time and play a key role at the school. In 1951, the Master of Laws degree was established; the PhD program followed three decades later. In a typical year, the program has 15 places for Master’s students, and three places for PhD students.

“Research and graduate studies are very important for a faculty,” said Lucie Guibault, Schulich Law’s Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and the Associate Director of the Law and Technology Institute. “Our students are enthusiastic and curious; they have a broad range of experiences and interests in diverse areas of law and policy.”

Graduate students gain knowledge and skills for careers in academia, private practice, national and international governmental organizations, counsel for NGOs and enterprise, and more. In their chosen fields, they make extraordinary contributions to legal knowledge, policy, and research at home and abroad.

She added: “The Weldon tradition [of unselfish public service] is to give back to the community. Our graduate students are finding new ways to do that through their research.”

Graduate students like Okanga are also the people Dalhousie University needs if it wants to remain committed to keeping research at the forefront of the institution, said Guibault. As Atlantic Canada’s leading research-intensive university, Dalhousie conducts more than $168 million in research annually; it is also part of the U15, a collective of some Canadian universities, which together undertake 80 per cent of all competitive university research in the country.

“In many ways, PhDs drive the research that is being done at an institution,” said Guibault. “Graduate students play a big role in research.”

Karinne Lantz is deep into her doctoral study looking at access to health care, human rights and international law. “My goal and my dream have always been to focus on international law,” she said.

In 2019, she returned to Nova Scotia, where she did her undergraduate degree at Saint Mary’s University, to start Schulich Law’s PhD program. Hoping to have it completed in 2023, she would like to settle in Halifax to work, raise her two young children, and be close to her parents and two sisters.

After working in labour and employment law at a Bay Street firm in Toronto, earning her Master of Law degree from the University of Cambridge and teaching at the College of Law at the University of Saskatchewan, Lantz is certain now that she wants a career in academia. “It is the perfect blend for me. I like teaching and also pursuing my own research and writing.”

By having a strong graduate program, Schulich Law attracts engaged students like Lantz whose research and enthusiastic belief that they can change the world, not only brings energy to the faculty but adds to their knowledge base, said Guibault. “Ideally, all the knowledge that is created as part of the research will be used in the context of teaching.”

A strong graduate program also provides the school with top legal researchers who might one day become faculty. Professor Colin Jackson is a good example. He earned both his LLM (’13) and PhD (’20) from the law school.

“By attracting good candidates in different fields, you encourage your research to keep moving and hopefully you are also in a better position to recruit good candidates as faculty members,” said Guibault.

Since starting her PhD last year, Lantz continues to delve further into her research exploring the role of international law in securing the right to health for vulnerable populations in Canada, Australia and abroad. She is also interested in the broader issues around how international law is perceived in the Canadian legal system, human rights, and how international law adapts and evolves with changes in society. To help guide her, Lantz is working with Professor Constance MacIntosh, an expert in health law and indigenous health governance, and Professor Rob Currie (’98), an international law expert.

KARINNE LANTZ. PHOTO CREDIT: DANNY ABRIEL

Recently, Lantz wrote publicly about some of these issues as part of a new Dalhousie initiative aimed at empowering researchers to shape public discourse and policy called OpenThink. Lantz is one of 10 PhD students who are actively sharing their research and ideas through blogs and social media. She is excited to be an “OpenThinker”. “I am a very firm believer in public engagement and outreach and education,” said Lantz.

“International law does not often make headlines in Canada, but I think it should,” Lantz wrote in a recent OpenThink Blog. “Increasingly, international human rights law is informing litigation in an attempt to address personal, local, national, and global challenges.”

Okanga’s doctoral research is also taking him deep into international law, but instead of looking at access to health care, he is looking at how international norms can play a role in the design of a just international tax system, especially in an era of globalization, digitization and rampant international tax abuse. Through his research works and social media commentary, Okanga has become more of an active voice on these topics, especially from what he considers a rather underrepresented African perspective.

“It’s a game of many cards…but the cards are not held equally,” said Okanga. “It is important that the rules are not only effective but fair. That is partly why they are so difficult to design. There has to be a conscious and genuine effort towards attaining these pillars.”

Okanga hasn’t decided yet whether he will return to Nigeria, where his father is a law professor, after completing his doctorate. Passionate about his country and finding positive avenues to help solve problems with the new knowledge he is acquiring at Schulich Law, he remains open to possibilities. “I am versatile. I have learned in life to never say ‘never’,” he said. “I think the best thing is to have options, to do what feels right and to give back.”