Louise Arbour speaks after being named the next Governor-General during a news conference in Ottawa on Tuesday.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
In 1999, beside the charred skeleton of a village school in western Kosovo, Louise Arbour stepped out of a helicopter. Twenty-one bodies, mostly women and children, were piled in a nearby ravine.
Dozens of villagers awaited her arrival on the hot July morning. Television cameras crowded around Ms. Arbour, chief prosecutor of the United Nation’s International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. One journalist asked about the challenge of finding the perpetrators: “We have no choice,” Ms. Arbour said. “We owe it to these people. If there are expectations, we have to meet them.”
Ms. Arbour, appointed Tuesday to be Canada’s 31st Governor-General, has worked for others through her life and delivered.
Her three-year period at the International Criminal Tribunal was a high-water mark in international law. It culminated in the historic indictment of Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic, a sitting head of state, on charges of crimes against humanity. Thereafter she served five years on the Supreme Court of Canada, where she was among the top court’s more progressive judges.
Before the bench, she was a law professor and after her years as a judge, she was the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Her work there garnered critics and supporters. In recent years, she led a review of sexual misconduct and leadership in the Canadian Armed Forces.
Ms. Arbour at the release of the final report of the Independent External Comprehensive Review into Sexual Misconduct and Sexual Harassment in the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces in Ottawa on May 30, 2022.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
People who know Ms. Arbour will point to her intelligence and experience but also praise her wit and extol her comfort speaking with anyone anywhere.
“Often people of great renown and prestige don’t have much of a sense of humour but Louise has a kind of ironic gaze,” said Ian Binnie, a former Supreme Court judge who worked with her on the top court. “People are attracted to it. It’s a winning personality, quite apart from the intellect that lies behind it.”
Opinion: Louise Arbour ticks every box for the job of governor-general
Ms. Arbour was born in Montreal in 1947. Her parents divorced when she was a girl. Her mother, Rose, ran a small shop downtown and raised two children. “Some parts of it were not fun in my early life.” Ms. Arbour recalled in a 1996 interview. Her mother was a role model. “I have always admired people who can look after themselves in a broad sense and kind of get on with it all.”
After a decade at a strict all-girls school, Collège Regina Assumpta, where she first garnered a reputation for irreverence, Ms. Arbour pursued law school at the University of Montreal. In a 2014 interview, she remarked: “It was a miracle they even accepted me. In those days they were not very discriminating.”
Her climb into the elite echelons was under way. She landed a prestigious early job as a clerk at the Supreme Court – three decades before she’d return as a judge – and forged an academic career in Toronto at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University. She specialized in criminal law.
Ms. Arbour as a Supreme Court Justice in January, 2000.TOM HANSON/The Canadian Press
She was first named to the bench in 1987 to what is now called the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. Three years later, she was elevated to the province’s Court of Appeal when she was 43. But her biggest work during that time was outside the court.
First, she ran an inquiry into revelations of inhumane treatment at the former Prison for Women in Kingston. Kim Pate, executive director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies at the time, had pushed for the inquiry. She recalled Ms. Arbour’s integrity and moral clarity.
“She has a heart of gold and a spine of steel,” said Ms. Pate, a senator since 2016. “She is able to pierce through whatever the nonsense may be, or the smoke screens, and see with very clear eyes and very clear thinking.”
The job as UN chief prosecutor sent her to The Hague but the work put her in the middle of operations, from cajoling NATO countries to provide potential evidence to helping lead investigations in Balkan cities such as Belgrade and Sarajevo.
Michael Ignatieff, former federal Liberal leader, profiled Ms. Arbour in 1999 for Saturday Night magazine. He was on the ground with her in Kosovo. Mr. Ignatieff remembered the “full 50,000 watts of her personality.”
“She was an amazing combination of sang froid, political savvy and courageous determination,” he said. And she always had a personal touch. “She really locks into people when she talks with them. She listens.”
Then the call came from then-prime minister Jean Chrétien. She said yes to his offer of a seat on the Supreme Court. Among her important judgments was a 2001 ruling called Golden that regulated how police conduct strip searches under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The ruling called such searches “inherently humiliating and degrading.”
“She’s not only brilliant, she’s also wise,” said Frank Iacobucci, a former Supreme Court judge who co-wrote the Golden decision with Ms. Arbour.
“There were cases where she demonstrated of a high level of legal sophistication but also had a good street sense,” Mr. Iacobucci said. “That was, to me, striking about her. She was intellectually strong and pragmatically sensible.”
The summer Louise Arbour worked the phones for Expo 67
She was 52 when she joined the Supreme Court. It was a job she planned to keep for years to come. But, in 2004, another call came in. This one was from Kofi Annan, then-secretary-general of the UN. He asked her to become High Commissioner for Human Rights. She said no at first but the lure of the job’s possibilities drew her in.
The job launched her into a minefield of post-9/11 international politics. Among her critics were Vic Toews, a senior minister in Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, and John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the UN under George W. Bush.
In 2005, CTV released a TV movie entitled Hunt for Justice, a telling of Ms. Arbour’s work in the former Yugoslavia. Mr. Binnie recalled a screening of the film. After it was over, Ms. Arbour joked that the actress who had played her, Wendy Crewson, would do a great job taking on the role full-time 24/7.
“She likes people,” said Mr. Binnie. “So, I think it’s a very good fit as governor-general.” He said it’s been likewise for decades, going back to her teaching days at Osgoode Hall. “It was never the great Louise talking down to students. It was always: ‘Let’s approach all of this together.’”