Ed. here. The NHL Canadian Division playoff series between the Montréal Canadiens and the Toronto Maple Leafs gets under way in Toronto in about an hour. Walt and our National Sports Editor, Poor Len Canayen, are holed up somewhere -- neither Toronto or Montréal -- to watch the proceedings on TVA, so they won't have to listen to the insufferably woke Ron MacLean on CBC.
They are therefore incommunicado. Besides that, I can't reach them on the phone. So, to fill this space, I present an amusing anecdote from Court Jesters, a book of funny and (mostly) true stories about Canadian lawyers and judges, by Peter V. MacDonald QC, a barrister and solicitor from Hanover ON, not 1000 miles away from Fort Mudge. Here's one of the tales he collected.
Mr Justice James Mitchell, of the Supreme Court of Alberta, delivered a line that's considered to be a western classic in a bestiality case involving a man and a pig.Three neighbours testified against the accused farmer, but since all three denied reporting the incident and there were no other witnesses, defence counsel submitted that their evidence was not trustworthy.
"My Lord," the lawyer said, "if they were the only persons who allegedly saw anything, and they deny reporting anything to the authorities, who did report this alleged incident? How did the authorities even know about it?"
"Maybe," Mr Justice Cairns suggested, "the pig squealed."
