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| RENDERING STOLEN FROM WZMH Architects website. (WZMH designed the new courthouse in downtown Toronto) |
The room was about the size of two high-school classes stuck together.
Half the space was taken up by church-pew type benches, four rows on either side of a centre aisle.
That's where the public sat.
The other part contained a few desks and chairs and, raised a few feet above them, against the wall opposite the double doors that the public entered through, the judge's dais.
Hanging to the right of the dais was an oversized video screen accommodating 20 or so zoom participants, some from jail cells.
To be precise, there was no judge in the room yesterday; rather, a justice of the peace named John Jeremy MacNair Scarfe, who acted with such profound sensitivity and kindness I want to tell the world about it.
By 9:00 a.m., the pews accommodated about 30 individuals.
The man beside me looked like he was in his early 50s and appeared as though he'd just stepped away from a job as a building maintenance worker.
To his right, a man taller than me (I'm six foot); but much wider, and younger. He actually had paint spattered on his workclothes, his unruly curly hair and on his six-o'clock shadow. He was also trying to keep a hyperactive three year old miniature version of himself under control. There were no other children in the public gallery. But there were three women.
Dress code: hardworking, extreme casual. A few younger men wore low-hanging jeans and oversized shirts; many present had been sporting headwear of some sort that they were asked to remove when they entered the court.
One man, a pew ahead and four feet to my right, writhed in his seat, as if suffering some horrible itchy problem. He rubbed his hands so feverishly I thought they would chaff.
Nobody talked; about half clutched manila envelopes or wrinkled sheaves of paper.
And they weren't there to face trial. Yet. Yesterday's session was one in an inevitable series of preliminary court encounters these people would face: legal triage.
As a JP, Mr. Scarfe's job was not to determine guilt or innocence. It appeared that he was doing his best to ensure every soul in that room received the full co-operation of the Canadian legal system, with the best efforts of Mr. Scarfe bolstering them.
These men faced difficulties most of us will never know. Some involved domestic strife; many had to do with alcohol; the common thread was almost all of them appeared financially restricted and scared. Broke and vulnerable.
In the short time I was present, I saw the court provide translators for a Hindi-speaker, a Sri Lankan, the Spanish dad with the curly hair, two Turkish speakers, and, on the zoom screen, a man who spoke an Eastern European language that I think was Hungarian.
Imagine being one of those gentlemen.
You're new in Canada. You don't have much money. For whatever reason, you're facing a scary bureaucracy. One wrong answer and who knows what could happen?
Court is intimidating under the best of circumstances. But these men, if they had jobs, had to risk time off for this experience. What sorts of fines might they be looking at?
The reason I'm writing this, though, is that Mr. Scarfe treated each person as if he and his legal problem were the most important crisis Mr. Scarfe ever encountered.
Mr. Scarfe chose every word with care and treated no two cases with the same language. Selecting the words you're going to employ to address a specific individual's issue is a lofty compliment, even if the person you're talking to doesn't realize it.
There was nothing "automatic pilot" about Mr. Scarfe's proceedings.
When a non-English speaking--and frightened--man approached the microphone to talk to the court through an interpreter, the first thing Mr. Scarfe did was ensure that the interpreter said "good morning" to the person, addressing him by name. The justice of the peace did not have to do that.
When the Spanish speaking curly haired dad was standing in front of Mr. Scarfe, his hyperactive son kept whacking the side of his dad's head. The JP appeared to not even notice, and that signaled, "I get it."
He also spoke directly to the man, and not to the interpreter, which is what most of us would do. Exhibit A: When the arraigned individuals answered questions, they looked at the interpreter.
Mr. Scarfe spoke firmly, but in a kind voice, smiling from time to time. And he appeared interested solely in ensuring that every one of those people left the court room feeling more secure about their future than they did when they arrived.
Mr. Scarfe treated every charged person with the same respect he would have accorded a senior colleague.
He exuded kindness.
You don't often hear about this side of your court system. But it's there.
