The Court of which I have the honour to be a member is what is often called a “front-line” court. The Judges of the Provincial Court interact with members of the public every juridical day, and we hear stories that sometimes make one weep, sometimes laugh, and sometimes just shake one’s head. There seems to be no end to the cavalcade of extraordinary and diverse factual scenarios which parade before us. Indeed, what I hear at work makes me realize how… what is the phrase I want… oh, right… how dull and sheltered my life is. I remember that not long after my appointment I went home quite wide-eyed after spending the day listening to evidence which included descriptions of the sexual practices of a particular couple. I said to Gloria, “You would be amazed at what some people do with carrots!” I was right; she was amazed while pronouncing it to be an unjustifiable waste of good food.
Having now been on this bench for 26 years, I thought the days of being surprised by human conduct were behind me. It took a family event to prove me wrong.
Gloria’s mom, at age 96, passed away this year. While still competent, she had left strict instructions as to what was, and was not, to occur: cremation, and no funeral. We were directed to scatter her ashes on the farm which she and her late husband had worked for almost 50 years. Happily, the farm still belongs to a family member; I had no interest in having to explain to some large, and disbelieving RCMP officer why I was tiptoeing around someone’s farm yard in the middle of the night while carrying a small, suspicious-looking box.
Gloria’s parents lived almost the entirety of their very long lives in the same small Alberta town in which they eventually died. Now, without doubt, there are some wonderful aspects to small towns, but living one’s life in anonymity is not one of them. Mom’s obituary appeared in the local weekly paper which, conveniently, had a publication date within a day or two of the death. It explained that, in accordance with mom’s clear instructions, no service would be held. Within hours of the paper hitting the streets (well, truth be told, it was more akin to a small flyer hitting a few roads), one of Gloria’s cousins who still lives in the community received a telephone call from a local resident.
“Did you see the obituary?”, asked this current events aficionado. “Who wrote it?”
“Yes, I saw the obituary, and the family wrote it,” replied the cousin as she wondered where this might be going.
“I don’t know why they did not have me write the obituary… it is what I do!” Before the poor cousin (not in the traditional economic sense; rather, in the “Alice trying to make sense of the Queen of Hearts” sense) could respond to that comment (personally, I was unaware that obituary writing was a distinct career field), the woman at the other end of the line asked, “Why is there no service? Some of us would like to have a service.” My own view is that “some of them” would like a free lunch, but I digress.
“She was clear that she did not want a service. Her children are going to meet privately and spread her ashes on the farm.”
Undeterred by fact (reminiscent of some submissions I have heard), the woman continued on: “May I have some of the ashes?” It was at that very moment when this woman won the 2016 Nobel Prize for Weirdest and Most Macabre Question Posed By A Person Who Is Not Subject to a Mental Health Warrant. Other nominees for the award have had their application fees returned to them because it just wasn’t a fair fight.
When I heard this story, and after I had retrieved my jaw from where it had dropped in immediate free fall, I felt significant relief, and profound gratitude, that our instructions had been to cremate. Otherwise, the request would have been more along the lines of “may I have her left leg?” The spectre (I knew I could work that word into this story) of Criminal Code section 182(b) [indignity to a dead body] appeared before my eyes.
Inexplicably, Gloria’s family rejected my conciliatory suggestion that we collect some ashes from the fire pit of a local campground, and tearfully deliver them to the woman with our warmest wishes. What a lost opportunity. Since the family does not seem to appreciate creativity, I think I had best not tell them my carrot story.
The Honourable Judge A.A. Fradsham is a Provincial Court Judge with the Criminal Court in Calgary. His column “A View From the Bench” has been a highlight in the Canadian Bar Association newsletters for over 15 years.