Morris C. Shumiatcher

Morris Cyril Shumiatcher was born in Calgary, Alberta, to Abraham Isaac Shumiatcher, Q.C. (1890–1974), a lawyer, and his wife Luba (née Lubinsky).

He had one sister, Minuetta, who became a concert pianist in the United States.

He was Jewish.

After attending primary and secondary school in Calgary, he set his career sights on becoming a professor of English.

Advised that his religion would restrict his employment opportunities, he pursued a legal education instead.

Morris Cyril "Shumi" Shumiatcher (September 20, 1917 – September 23, 2004) was a Canadian lawyer, human rights activist, philanthropist, arts patron, art collector, author, and lecturer.

He studied in Japan on a Rotary scholarship from 1940 to 1941 and earned his Bachelor of Arts in 1940 and Bachelor of Laws in 1941 at the University of Alberta.

Shumiatcher began collecting art in his twenties; he returned from his study year in Japan in 1941 with "masks, woodblock prints and kimonos".

He received his Master of Laws in 1942 from the University of Toronto.

He was the first candidate to be accepted into the new doctoral program in law at the University of Toronto in 1942, entitling him to the Rowell Scholarship.

World War II intervened, however, and he served with the Royal Canadian Air Force as an air gunner from 1943 to 1945.

He completed his doctorate in jurisprudence in 1945 under the supervision of Bora Laskin, submitting the doctoral thesis A Study in Canadian Administrative Law: The Farmers' Creditors Arrangement Acts.

He was admitted to the bars of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and the Northwest Territories.

In 1946, he moved to Regina, Saskatchewan, at the invitation of Tommy Douglas to become Law Officer of the Attorney General.

Afterwards he became the personal assistant to Douglas.

He drafted several statutes, including the Farm Security Act and the Trade Union Act.

He was the legal advisor for the Union of Saskatchewan Indians and chaired a July 1946 meeting between Treaty Indians and the provincial government.

As senior legal counsel in the provincial government of Tommy Douglas, he drafted the 1947 Saskatchewan Bill of Rights, the first such bill in the British Commonwealth.

Shumiatcher drafted the 1947 Saskatchewan Bill of Rights, which was the model for the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the Canadian Bill of Rights (1960).

The bill was the first of its kind in the British Commonwealth.

It codified the rights of due process, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association, and freedom of the press, and included protections against discrimination.

In 1948, he was appointed King's Counsel by the government of Saskatchewan, becoming the youngest person in the Commonwealth of Nations to receive that honour.

He established a successful private law practice in Regina in 1949 and argued numerous cases of constitutional law before the Supreme Court of Canada.

He and his wife Jacqui contributed millions of dollars to support the arts, universities, and other charities in Regina, and also amassed a significant private collection of Inuit art in Canada.

Shumiatcher left government employ in 1949 to start his own legal practice in Regina.

Regarded as a brilliant lawyer, he specialized in labour, tax, and corporate law and argued numerous cases in constitutional law before the Supreme Court of Canada.

In 1954 he visited Lac la Ronge, northern Saskatchewan, where he purchased four Inuit sculptures.

He continued to advocate for First Nations people with a 1967 article in Saturday Night magazine that criticized the government for restricting them to reserves rather than allowing them to own private property, and with the 1971 publication of his book Welfare: Hidden Backlash: A hard look at the welfare issue in Canada; what it has done to the Indian, what it could do to the rest of Canada.

He represented Joe Borowski before the Supreme Court of Canada in the latter's 1980s challenge to the constitutionality of abortion law; the court declared the case moot in 1989.

Shumiatcher frequently lectured and wrote on "literature, the arts, philosophy, law, human rights and obligations, the monarchy, politics and international relations".

He was regularly interviewed in the media and appeared on a current affairs daily radio program; The World in Focus television program; and Civil Liberties and the Law, a lecture series broadcast nationally by the CTV Television Network.

Shumiatcher and his wife Jacqueline were prominent supporters of the arts community in Regina, distributing millions of dollars in support of symphonies, theatres, universities, art galleries, and other charities.

He was the recipient of many awards and honours, including the Order of Canada in 1981 and the Saskatchewan Order of Merit in 1997.

His appeal on behalf of Eleanor Ellen Farr in Farr v. Farr in 1984 led to changes in Canada's matrimonial property law.

After his death in 2004, Jacqui Shumiatcher continued to make donations in both their names.

Their endowments include:

Dr. Shumiatcher endowed the A.I. Shumiatcher Memorial Prize in Advocacy at the University of Alberta Faculty of Law in honor of his father, Abraham Issac Shumiatcher, Q.C., who attended the university, to be awarded annually to a student who shows superior academic achievement in the field of advocacy.

The Saskatchewan Bill of Rights is still in force, as Part 2 of The Saskatchewan Human Rights Code, 2018.

Shumiatcher included a protection against gender discrimination, but it did not appear in the final draft.

However, the bill lacked an enforcement mechanism, making it "more a symbol than an instrument for defending human rights".