'Rock-star judge' Murray Sinclair left lasting impact on Manitoba legal community, friends and colleagues say

Winnipeg lawyer Brad Regehr's fondest memory of the late Anishinaabe judge and senator Murray Sinclair has only a tangential connection to his judicial career.

In 2007, Regehr's partner had recently given birth to their youngest child. Sinclair, who Regehr says had an interest in acting, convinced Regehr and his partner to participate in the Manitoba Bar Association's production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, as part of the association's annual Lawyers Play fundraiser.

To convince the couple, Sinclair volunteered to hold their baby during rehearsals and while the couple performed in the play's opening scene.

"And he just sat there, leaning back with Sanjay on his shoulder. The craziness behind the stage during the play, and he was just this island of calm, and Sanjay, he never made a peep when he was on Murray's shoulder," Regehr said in an interview.

Sinclair, a former senator and judge, and the chief commissioner of Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, died at a Winnipeg hospital on Monday, his family said in a statement. He was 73.

Regehr, a member of the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, was the first Indigenous president of the Manitoba Bar Association and the Canadian Bar Association.

He recalled meeting Sinclair in 1993, when Regehr was a law student. He had been assigned to observe court, and one of his classmates was Sinclair's nephew, Kelly Moar, now a provincial court judge.

Moar offered to introduce Regehr to Sinclair, who took the students out for lunch.

"Here was a bunch of first-year law students and we're getting to go for lunch with Murray," he said. 

"We all knew who he was from his work on the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry here in Manitoba. So it was like, here we are going out with this rock-star judge."

Sinclair was the first Indigenous person appointed a judge in Manitoba, and the second in Canada. As a commissioner on the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry, which delivered its final report in 1991, he examined the relationship between Indigenous people and the justice system.

'One of the giants of our time,' says former chief judge

Through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Sinclair "embedded ideas about reconciliation, about the history of residential schools in Canadian consciousness," said Glenn Joyal, chief justice of Manitoba's Court of King's Bench.

Former Manitoba provincial court chief judge Raymond Wyant said he first met Sinclair when they were young lawyers in the 1980s.

"I think he's going to be remembered … as one of the most important figures in the history of this country," Wyant said.

Chief Judge Ryan Rolston remembers being a lawyer and arguing cases in front of Sinclair during his time on the provincial court bench. Sinclair showed his humanity during sentencing hearings, he said.

"He just was so humble and really took the time to speak to the person as a human being," Rolston said.

Wyant says he and Sinclair kept in touch over their careers, often meeting in airports. Despite having known each other for years, Wyant says Sinclair continued to make an impression on him.

"I'm talking to Murray Sinclair, who's really … probably one of the giants of our time. And here I am sitting, having the privilege to know him as a friend and just talking to him," Wyant said.

"It's a tremendous loss for all of us."