On Remembrance Day, the Ontario Bar Association looks back at the tradition of lawyers serving their country in practice and in times of conflict. This year we review the contributions of the late Arthur S. Bourinot (1894-1969); a soldier, lawyer, and accomplished poet.

In 1915, Ottawa lawyer Arthur Bourinot, a recent graduate of University College (University of Toronto) and a civil servant in Canada’s Department of Indian Affairs, enrolled at Osgoode Hall Law School with plans to begin a career in law.

His legal studies would be delayed, however, as battles of the First World War raged in Europe and Canadians were increasingly being called to action. The Law Society actively encouraged its members and Ontario law students to enlist, allowing students to advance one year without examination if they were to volunteer, enlist, qualify, go to the front and "return in good standing and having borne themselves as members of the Law Society and soldiers ought to do."[1]

Bourinot put aside his legal aspirations and enlisted with the Canadian Army and Royal Flying Corps (later Royal Air Force). He served in France and eventually was captured and held as a prisoner of war from 1918 to 1919 in Germany.

A talented writer and poet, Bourinot recounted his experiences in captivity in a series of sonnets:

Freiburg Camp

Here in the shadows of our cloistered walk,
Where all out life is narrowed to a square,
We prisoners sit; we sleep or read or talk,
Dreaming of halcyon summers spent elsewhere.

The towering trees strive upward to the sky
In semblance of our spirits’ liberty,
Which lives on recollections ne’er to die,
Although the earthly body be not free.

And sometimes through the vaulted, cloudless blue
There dives with thundering engine, swift as light,
An albatross, all painted, yellow, new,
Volplaning housetops, vanishing in flight.

Thus do we pass our close-sequestered life,
Hoping the hopes of freedom, following strife.
 

Bourinot endured the rigours of war by escaping into his memories of home; in When Peace Has Come, his words reflect the great love he bore for his home in Ottawa, his loved ones (as one may infer from his prose) and the country he held dear.

When Peace Has Come

When peace has come, and I return from France,
I know the places that I’ll long to see:
Those hunch-backed hills so full of old romance,
Where first frail beauty’s visions dawned for me,

And April comes, swift, dancing like a girl,
With golden tresses flowing in the breeze,
And where swart, autumn leaves disport and whirl,
In maudlin dance beneath the naked trees.

And I shall see the cottage on the hill,
With all the loveliness of summer days,
Whose memories to me are haunted still
By love’s sweet voice, the witchery of her ways.

And I shall climb the path and open the gate,
When peace has come, if peace comes not too late.
 

Upon his return to Canada, Bourinot resumed his studies at Osgoode Hall Law School and was called to the bar in 1920. He settled once again in Ottawa, where he practised commercial law until his retirement in 1959. 

In addition to his law practice, Bourinot maintained a second career as a writer and editor of poetry, having several works published and establishing a favourable reputation amongst famous Canadian poets such as his good friend Duncan Campbell Scott. 

The war continued to haunt Bourinot for many years, and he continued to write of it late into his life. In addition to his sonnets, his notable war poems include Canada at Dieppe (1942) and True Harvest (1945). His 1939 book of poetry, Under the Sun, addressed the impact of the Depression and the impending World War II and won him a Governor General’s award for English-language poetry.
 

One hundred and fifteen Ontario lawyers and law students lost their lives in service during the First World War, followed by many more in WWII and in conflicts that followed.

On Remembrance Day, we honour the many Canadians who have fought and fell in service of our country, including Ontario’s lawyers, everyday protectors of law and liberty who made the ultimate sacrifice to preserve the values of our great nation.  

Canada's Fallen

We who are left must wait the years’ slow healing,
Seeing the things they loved, the life they lost—
The clouds that out the east come, huge concealing
The angry sunset, burnished, tempest-tossed.

How will we bear earth’s beauty, visions, wonder,
Knowing they loved them in the self-same way—
Th’ exulting lightning followed by deep thunder,
Th’ exhilaration of each dawning day?

Banners of northern lights for them loom greener,
Waving as waves the sea-weed’s streamered head;
Where bent the swaying wheat, the sunburned gleaner
Will find in their remembrance flowers of red.

Oh, life must be immortal for their sake:
Oh, earth will rest them gently till they wake.

- Arthur S. Bourinot
 

Remembrance Day 2015: Remembering the sacrifice of the late lawyer, JM Langstaff. 

---

The Ontario Bar Association expresses thanks to Professor David B. Bentley of Western University and Paul Leatherdale of the Law Society of Upper Canada Archives.

Read more works of the late Arthur S. Bourinot on CanadianPoetry.org, maintained by the Canadian Poetry Press.