Eileen Gillese

INT:    So I’m going to start with the mandatory questions and good afternoon Eileen. It’s just a pleasure to interview you as part of the Rhodes Oral History Project. And I wanted to ask you what is your full name please?

RES:    Eileen Elizabeth Gillese.

INT:    Thank you. And do I have your permission to record this interview?

RES:    Yes absolutely.

INT:    Perfect, thank you. Thank you so much. So, Eileen I wanted to start a little bit with your early life and education and wanted to ask you where and when you born?

RES:    I was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

INT:    And when was that?

RES:    Oh yes sorry, in, when?

INT:    When.

RES:    1954.

INT:    Perfect, perfect. Tell me a little bit how was the community like when you were growing up and how was the place like where you grew up?

RES:    So in that day and age there was still, or I don’t know if it was everywhere, but certainly in Edmonton in the areas that I was in there was quite a divide between Catholics and Protestants. So my family was Catholic. And there was quite a lot of hostility between the two groups which is interesting. It did diminish as I went through school. So for example by the time I was in high school, our teams would play against each other but it was, that was a key characteristic, you stuck with your own. I was one of six kids and my mother was at home and my father did not have a regular paying job. He was an author so we were certainly financially very challenged. And so what we did as a family, including the kids was, what the expectation was that the minute that you could work, you did work and you gave the money to the family.

INT:    Thank you Eileen. And I understand that you worked as you were from a very early age.

RES:    Yeah truly, the month I turned 12 was the first time, it was July and I had, I started babysitting six kids a day from seven in the morning till six at night, five days a week for the whole summer. And then after that through babysitting and in Alberta at that stage you could work when you were 14, so I took a job in a shop when I was 14. I still was engaged in other things like I was very active at school and so on. But from a very early age the amount of work that I was expected to do by my family and that I needed to do for my family, did alter the choices I could make. I never had a summer vacation for example ever.

INT:    Wow. Thanks for sharing that. During your high school time, as you mentioned you were still very involved in school, was there any particular teacher that stands out in that time? Or any particular subject that you enjoyed a lot?

RES:    There was one teacher who was very special, Don Biamante. He was such a gifted instructor but I was always the top student, always through school. And so sometimes that translates into not much attention because a good student doesn’t really need much attention. But Mr B which is what we’d call him, Mr B was always gently pushing me to excellence. And so as I once mentioned to you, my parents did not believe in post-secondary education for females. They were quite adamantly opposed to it actually. And Mr Biamante would regularly take me aside, he wouldn’t interfere with what he knew my parents wishes were, he would just say, “You know, you would love university if you got to explore this offer more” and so on. So without ever, and as I said, he would not, nobody in the school would cross parents’ wishes and my parents had made it clear that they did not want me to go to university. They did not want guidance counsellors to talk to me and so on. But Mr B had quite a lot of, I don’t know, moral fortitude you might say. And so he didn’t cross the line, he did not cross the line. He would just say, like if we were engaged, he was such a good teacher, he was inspirational in terms of wanting to learn, regardless of whether you loved English or not, he was the first person that ever took students to see the theatre. And when I saw Othello for the first time, complete convert to those things. So he was a huge impact on me. Do we have time for me to tell you a story, not that this will find its way in.

INT:    Please do.

RES:    But it’s just an example.

INT:    Please do.

RES:    He had, he had a breakdown in his later years and had to unfortunately be institutionalised. And the psychiatrist that was treating him recognised and knew what a good teacher he was. And what he did was he asked Mr Biamante to help one of the other patients who was a young person with his studies. And if you want to know what really healed him and he came out and he was not quite himself but he was very much himself and had a full life. And I think it was that. I think it was the call to teaching.

INT:    Beautiful.

RES:    It is.

INT:    Did you, you know, you mentioned that your parents didn’t believe in higher education for women. But you did attend, you did go to undergrad. Tell me a little bit about you know how that went and your time at undergrad.

RES:    I had a great time. I loved it. I didn’t know anything about how to apply or what to do. I had to take three buses to get from my home to the university. I had never been on a university campus. I did not know what buildings to go into or anything else. So I stopped at one building and I explained the situation and a woman kindly said, “Well you know what’s your grades in this? What’s your grades in that?” And she suggested, “You could go to these three different faculties. Science or arts or business.” So I went to each of the admissions offices and spoke with their people. And interestingly what happened was because I really liked the sciences and I really liked the arts, especially English, but when I went to business, at the stage the University of Alberta’s first year in business and commerce programme was liberal arts. And I thought, it’s perfect because at that stage I had, by then, I had been working part time for a group of companies doing their books. It was a floral shop, so I did flower arrangements but I also did all their books and accounts receivables and payables and stuff like that. And I had gotten quite interested in it. So it was, just seemed like it was meant to be when I got there because I would be able to take some maths and sciences, some other arts courses but also a foundational course in business and figure out where I wanted to go. And I really liked the business programme and stayed there. It was fantastic.

INT:    Was that your major at the end of undergrad, or what was your major?

RES:    Yeah, it was. So well my, I had a double major in accounting and finance I had but at that stage I thought that I would be an accountant. But there was a programme called the Five on Four and there were five students selected in the faculty on the fourth floor of the building. And we tutored kids when they came in and everything. And so there was lots of opportunity within the faculty and within the university to do volunteer work and get a job. So it was perfect. I basically lived on the UofA campus for the, for the five years I was there. And then that’s where I got involved in student politics. I was the first female vice-president of finance administration for the students union ever.

INT:    Oh tell me a bit more about that. How did that happen? Well how did you get involved?

RES:    They were just beginning to have the idea of SLATE and the fellow who wanted to be the president of the students union had heard about me I think from Five on Four but I also was very heavily involved in other university organisations. So he approached me and said, you know, would you want to do this? The students union at the UofA was the largest in North America I believe. And so you had to agree to take a reduced course load and so it meant that instead of doing my degree in four years it would take me five years. So I had to think about it carefully because for obvious reasons there was no other support for me apart from whatever I earned and got by way of scholarship. So but then, but I got persuaded and one of the reasons was, he said to me there has never been a woman vice-president of finance.

[00:10:01]

And I said, “Why?” At least in the beginning years there there were a substantial number of women in business. They often leaned towards marketing and softer, those kind of things. In fact in my upper year accounting courses, I was either the only woman or one of two. But I thought, well this is crazy. We need diversity in our approach to this and so I did. So I ran and I won the position, yeah. 

INT:    Were you male classmates supportive?

RES:    I had lots of good, really good supportive male colleagues. Even then I never had an issue when we had group work, everybody wanted, you know, was happy to work with me, and yeah. And on the Five on Four, the Five on Four counselling little programme that we had, I was the only woman there. My colleagues were great. They were fabulous.

INT:    That’s wonderful. That’s wonderful. So you continued and majored in business and accounting as you were saying, correct. And then I guess the opportunity for the Rhodes came up at this time in your final, in your senior year. How did you learn about it? And in particular I am very interested, this is the very first time that the Rhodes Scholarship is open to women, this must be 1976 when you learn about this opportunity. So tell us a little bit about that. How did it come up? Did you realise that you were going to be selected in the first class ever of Rhodes women? Tell us about it?

RES:    So as vice-president of finance for the students union, I had to deal extensively with the administration of the university because the University of Alberta students union had been forward thinking and had built a building on campus that consisted of stores on the bottom and housing above it. But it had not been too financially savvy about it and we were bankrupt. And so the university and the students council, the students union had to figure out how to deal with that problem. And that was a major part of what I did. And I, so I dealt with the vice-president of finance for the university and the president. And often and carefully and closely because that was a huge thing in that it just, that would not have looked proper for anybody, the university, the students or anybody else. We had to resolve the problem and we did. But it took a lot of negotiation and thought and careful consideration on both sides. Anyway, so I never even saw the announcement saying that it was open, but I had gone across to the university administration building for meetings on this. And at the end the president took me aside and said, “I think you should apply for this.” And after I finished talking to him the vice-president of finance took me aside and said, “Eileen, you have to apply for this.” And then a very good friend of mine who was actually in law said, “You have to apply for this.” And then after that just across and everything else, so and I said, “Look, I don’t know anything about this. I have never been out of Edmonton.” Anyway, so people supported me and helped me and, and I should, Rodolfo, it was amazing. We had the process as many places do that the candidates have a reception with the committee on a Friday night. The women candidates, because we had a lot, there were, I think there were 30 women candidates because of course there was a complete glut of people who, women who had never been able- And they were dazzling and I thought, okay, well I won’t even get to the interview stage. But what a pleasure they were, you know, like lead athletes on our varsity teams and you know things like that. So anyway, so I didn’t really actually ever think about what it would be because I didn’t actually think that I had a shot at it really.

INT:    And then you got selected for the final stage on that reception that you were mentioning. And I guess the panel that interviewed you, do you remember your interview, any questions that you still remember? Or things about it?

RES:    I do. Well there were two changes that year for us in Canada. The first was that women could apply but the second was that they changed the rules so that the top three students would, from the Alberta selection process, top three from the Saskatchewan process, top three from the Manitoba process all went together for yet another round of interviews. We were considered Prairie scholars not an Alberta scholar. So I had, I do remember some of my questions at both the, at both levels. So at the Alberta level one of the fellows, and I think this was a smart question, he said to me, “You know that you can’t marry,” at that stage you could not be married and be a scholar, Rhodes scholar right. “You can’t marry. But what if you have a very, what would you say if you had a very serious relationship and you postponed marriage but you brought your partner over with you. Do you think that’s an infringement of the rules? And if it is, how would you deal with that?” It’s a good question. It’s a brilliant question. It’s a brilliant question because, I mean think about what the answers are, but I think for- Afterwards on reflection what I thought is they want to see if I’m really, if you looked at my transcript there is a lot of accounting and number crunching and statistics and mathematics and stuff like that. And I think that it was a way of seeing has this person thought outside of those things in a philosophical way about values and so on. Because by now remember they’d got my interview application which says, I want to be a lawyer, right. And I do remember another question, “Have you ever met a lawyer?” And the answer is, “No I haven’t even been in the same room as one.” So the obvious follow up question is, “Why do you think you want to study law?”

INT:    Exactly.

RES:    And at the final interview, we had nine finalists from which three of us were to be chosen, I do remember there was a female judge on the panel. And she said, “I have read your, I have your essay. You surely don’t believe that’s what law is all about.” But again it was a fair question because at that stage I don’t think that I had unpacked the differences between law and morality and norms and things like that. And that’s she wanted to do, she wanted to poke on that. So it was, I never forget it because she said, “Surely you don’t believe what you wrote in this essay.” I said, “Well I thought I did, can we talk about it?” you know, like which pieces in particular do you find are not consonant with law. And one of them was the relationship between law and morality. But great question and for sure in terms of getting ready for tutorials, both sets of interviews were really helpful.

INT:    How did you feel after these interviews, before knowing the decision did you feel, oh I aced it, or I don’t know, what was your feeling? Do you remember?

RES:    I remember second guessing myself on some questions. I remember thinking, oh I wish I had thought about that beforehand, I know I could give a better answer. But I think that’s typical of a young person. And whenever I thought, do you, you know, do you think you have a shot at it or whatever, I just shut that down. I just, it was going to happen or it wasn’t going to happen and it had been an excellent experience and I was thrilled to have been supported by so many people in that particular aspect of my journey.

INT:    Beautiful. Do you remember when they called the candidates, the successful candidates?

RES:    Yeah. We had to be at the phone, we were told. And I just, I, I, you know, I for sure the same as everybody else, you just think first, oh my God, really, with so many good people, I saw them in that room. And the second thing is for me was, oh my goodness, Oxford, like am I going to be able to succeed there? And I, again, I can’t imagine I was the only person that had that. I was very riddled with self-doubt.

INT:    I can imagine. I can imagine. And then I believe this is the time where the Americans and the Canadians still sailed together to England.

RES:    Yeah. Fantastic. From New York.

[00:20:03]

INT:    From New York City. So the journey began I guess in September ’77 when you went to New York City to set sail. You met your class there, I guess there was a reception or something and then you boarded the cruise ship, the Elizabeth, the Queen Elizabeth probably.

RES:    Yeah the Queen Elizabeth II, exactly, yeah. And that was magic. What a great class I had, yeah.

INT:    How was the feeling, I mean this is the first class with women and probably you met many of your other, you know, the other first class of Rhodes women there. Do you remember meeting them? Was there like a sense of curiosity, like you know, how, we’re pi- Did you feel that you were pioneers already, trailblazers in that seminal moment of setting sail off to England?

RES:    I would say Rodolfo that most of us had already been pioneering. I think that’s why we got chosen. Just like there had never been a women vice-president finance administration. And there were tons of things like that, you know. And I think most of the women, at least that was my impression, had had the same experience. That they’d exhibited leadership in areas that hadn’t had much female engagement. So I don’t remember us talking about that pioneering aspect as much as the fact that Oxford would not necessarily be used to women. So remember I’m in, I think there were only two classes ahead of me and maybe two women or five women at Wadham beforehand. So that was the real question. So one of the- There was one person, woman scholar from the States who was quite worried about accepting the Rhodes Scholarship because of the blood money aspect of Rhodes money. That was a topic that we would discuss. Were we selling out our souls for the opportunity was one of them. And then the second one is, for North Americans at that time, we’d all come through co-educational education schooling from forever. Never thought anything of it. Were we going to be with largely male situation, but not just male colleagues but male colleagues who had never had female colleagues.

INT:    Exactly. Exactly. British, yeah-

RES:    So it was- Right, so it was the British system, we knew we were going to be going into what we would call private schools, they call public schools. But mostly public school young men and tutors who had never taught women. So that was the question, is how will be find out footing. Not that we wouldn’t but what sort of, like have you given this any thought and any strategies and stuff like that? But the other, the other question is actually were in the group, the groups that I talked about had more discussion.

INT:    Yeah, yeah. Did you make any friends on that cruise to Oxford?

RES:    Absolutely, absolutely. Some of whom I’m still in touch with. I did know the, of course I knew the, of the three from the Prairies I knew one. And the other one I met. So it was partly, for me I actually had a wish to get to know my Canadian counterparts first and made that more of a priority. But there were some terrific Americans that we just hit it off right away and chummed around afterwards and several of them I’m still in touch with.

INT:    Any names that stand out that you would like to reminisce or just-

RES:    [s/l No, we’ll just leave it there 00:24:11]

INT:    Perfect. So you get to Oxford and as you said you are going here into a system that was basically not used to women or was not, had never really thought about how different this would be right. So tell us a little bit about your time then at Oxford as a Rhodes dcholar and which experiences were significant to you?

RES:    One of the things that’s a big difference is that there was very little involvement with Rhodes House and the scholars. I think we had our original photograph and stuff. And then there was a bit of a review after our into, when we were going into our second term, but very, very, very, hands off, little involvement, or opportunity to get involved. So it was really the people that you had met, for me the people on the way over, the people that I met within the college. And that was fine. But the, that was a shortcoming that I think has been addressed by the Rhodes Scholarship because now, and Rhodes House and everything, because in fact I was very ill prepared to, as a North American, to go into a brand new area. Law is hard anyway, I mean I taught for a bunch of years law, right. Law is a hard transition for anybody. But in particular, because of the different way in which you have to think and all of that kind of thing, but I was particularly poorly equipped because I hadn’t realised that it’s a self-taught situation. So if you get a list as I did for two courses a week every week to write essays on, and they were like 40 or 50 cases and you’re supposed to say, well what is the law of consideration and what are its shortcomings? I mean that’s not a normal North American thing. I would never have expected a brand new student who had never had any instruction in law to be able to deal with that. So, so my first term I wasn’t too very social because I was really- I didn’t know how to do what I was supposed to do. And I was struggling to figure it out. Because initially when I asked my Prof, “Am I supposed to read all of these cases and discern this?” And the answer I was given, “Well yes.” So I thought that that was in fact the case. And it wasn’t until I was well into the winter term of 1978, in the winter of 1978 that I understood, oh okay there will be treatises or there will basic textbooks that can at least give me the outlines so then I can try to figure out what the key cases are and how it, what kind of interesting issues they might raise and so on. So that first whole period was a complete blur. It’s one of the things later on that you ask me a question on and I’ll return to about how and why we need to really support our scholars when they go over there. If they’re in their discipline and stay in their discipline, then it’s not the same thing. But if they did choose as many Rhodes, at least in my year did, which was to step outside. I stepped outside. I didn’t carry on to become an accountant or do my MBA which is what I had intended to do until this happened. So if it’s a brand new area like that, we really do need to support and help our scholars so that they know how to succeed and get the most out of their time there. I don’t know, do you know the answer to that Rodolfo? I’m sorry I shouldn’t be asking you a question, but do you know if it’s still encouraged and that people are stepping out? So they might be studying medicine but they go there and do PPE or something like that? Use it as a broadening experience.

INT:    Yeah I think it’s very much left to, you know, the decision of the scholars. And I think that many, particularly North Americans, go into that direction that you are mentioning. Many of them come already with a good idea I think of what they want to accomplish because they already have like found their calling in life I would say.

RES:    Yeah, yeah.

INT:    So they already go into that specialisation kind of track. So I would say it’s very mixed but- I don’t know if it’s actually encouraged but I do know that some still do that in their decisions. And now you’ve made me very curious about why did you choose law? Was it you saying, okay, I will do accounting and business for my life, these years I will use to do something different and law will be useful probably for my business career? What was your motivation for law?

RES:    Two things. One was in, so you had to say what you would do but in the process of applying I actually thought, you know what, I haven’t, I’m not done with education. I haven’t gotten what I really wanted out of my undergraduate education and I don’t know why. I remember thinking I don’t know why. Like I had great profs, I had learned a lot. Sociology, psychology, accounting, it was all interesting but it wasn’t enough. And then one course that I found quite difficult and challenging was called business law. And I thought, oh this is, have you ever heard the expression that law is the invisible hand?

INT:    No I haven’t.

[00:30:03]

RES:    Well law is in our kind of democratic society, law is the invisible hand in the sense that how do you know you can’t walk into somebody’s house? You know it’s not, you’re not- You shouldn’t cut across the lawn, you can’t do this, you can’t do that. Law in a developed country with a developed democratic system is the invisible hand which civilises us and helps us as society to live in harmony. So I had that, I had that sense, even though it was a business law course and so you are doing contracts and torts and things like that, you’re going, oh I didn’t know that’s why this, and I didn’t know that’s why that. And that’s what I wanted. I had a fairly I thought good understanding, not perfect, not advanced, but a good understanding of the political system, the economic system and the financial system. But I knew I didn’t get it. I didn’t really understand what made us tick, how it worked, how those systems came together. And that in my business law course, I thought that’s, this is what’s happening. This is connecting all these things. And so I talked to that friend of mine that I mentioned who had encouraged me to apply and talked to him a lot about, you know, what he studied, he was in first year law, what he was studying and what it meant and everything. And I thought, I have the gift of time, I don’t have to work when I’m over there. I can actually, and I don’t have to worry about having a job as soon as get out or whatever, like this is a gift of time and the gift that I would like to spend it on is studying jurisprudence, studying law.

INT:    Tell us a little bit about your time, you described a little bit that how your interview was a good practice for the tutorials that would come in Oxford. But how did you find the tutorials? How did you find the whole experience? You mentioned, you know, there was little involvement from Rhodes House or support. So tell us a little bit more about what you enjoyed, your frustrations maybe.

RES:    Well I felt like I wasn’t doing a very good job. At least for me writing two essays every week, it wasn’t, that’s not true, I did two one week, one the next week, two the next week, one the- For a North American, we usually would like do one, maybe one paper or two papers in a term. So I found it hard to figure out how to plough through the reading and the amount a lot of times and allow enough time to write an essay, and allow enough time to think about the material so I could respond, and a brand new discipline. So I think, not only do I think, I’m pretty confident that I was hopeless at first, but with rare exceptions, the professors were helpful. They’d ask questions. But they don’t teach right. They just ask you questions.

INT:    Questions, yeah.

RES:    And so but by the time- I got, when I was in my second term there, I had a really good tutor in administrative law. And so that was encouraging because he was helpful. He was a teacher, like he would talk. He would say, “Well you know think about this” and so on as opposed to just asking you questions and then sitting there. You’d actually never know whether the answer of your question is good or bad. Different tutorial styles. And in the third year, my third year, so even though the programme is, the first law degree programme is three years, you can get advanced standing because you have a prior degree. So I actually did two degrees in the three years. So in my- By the time I hit my BCL, the LLM programme, it was fabulous because I understood how to prepare, what to think about and ask, also I was excited about the material because I felt more confident and so on. And so of course then it all works. And also you had a, I had more opportunity to say who my tutors were. Like not every tutor is the same and they’re not all in your college. So if you get traded out to another college you can have a, you know, a different experience.

INT:    I imagine. And were there any, you know that you were in Oxford and you had talked with your classmates, your women classmates about what to expect as a woman in Oxford. How was it when you were here for those years? How was actually the experience?

RES:    So in my first term, October to Christmas, there were two women in the law programme, in mine. Myself and a young woman from America. She dropped out at Christmas, so for the balance of the time I was the only female in my programme. Some came after and that included at the BCL level. So I was the only woman in the three years. It was nice. They asked me- I was small and scrawny and skinny and they asked me, the guys asked me if I’d be the, you know, the cox in the boat. So that was really good because you had fun with them and so on. And so after I started coxing an eight for Wadham, two of them, it was so sweet, came and said to me that they really had no interaction with women and they would like to because they didn’t know what to talk about. And would I have tea with two or three them every Thursday afternoon I think it was. So I said, yes. So it was hilarious. It was great. It was fun, you know. [unclear 00:36:44] we’d just talk about the same things that you would always talk about. But so I actually had very nice, very nice colleagues, all English in both degrees. And when my tutor, my primary tutor Jeff Hackney, retired and I went back for his retirement thing, you know, the guys from my years and I were- I mean it was, we were close. We had hilarious memories together and we had really fine friendships that came out of it.

INT:    That’s beautiful. That’s beautiful to hear.

RES:    Yeah. Yeah.

INT:    So how did this time at Oxford shape your intellectual and personal development?

RES:    So monumentally it’s so hard to describe. I don’t even- You know, here are some of the things, because I thought this is one of the questions that you’ve given me that I thought about so much. So one of the things is that Alberta is quite insular. Normally if you are born and raised in Alberta, you stay there, you go to university there, you stay there. So the catchment for Oxford is the world. It’s not just that it’s so different because it’s England, it’s that, you know, one of my closest roommates in the house that I was in was from Australia, a wonderful woman Rhodes scholar from Australia, is spectacular. So it just opened my mind to everything. And I don’t even, I don’t actually know how to tell you how fundamentally it changed. It made me realise that I had not dreamt dreams big enough. That I had been really focused about, you know, a solid work job to get money. That I had not, that I was too defined in my values, thoughts, morals, approach by quite an insular background. It challenges you at every core level. Oxford and particularly I think when you had Rhodes Scholarship challenges you at every core level, is not just about intellectual, it’s not just about if you can work hard, it’s about being able to live in a completely different environment and not just survive but thrive. It challenges your moral beliefs about what’s right and wrong and what’s good and bad. Like there is a much higher level of tolerance for example of personal idiosyncrasy in Oxford then there is elsewhere. And you just think, so many- Even, you know so that reveals to you prejudices, unrecognised prejudices that you would say, “Oh I’m not prejudiced against that.” Until you something and say, “You know what that person would go in an institution if that was in Alberta.” Like that’s, right. That’s divergent behaviour, that would not be well looked at.

[00:40:05]

[Overtalking 00:40:05] who cares, right? So I don’t know, is that a, it’s a partial answer at best, I don’t know. It radically- And the other thing was that by taking totally out of my environment and finding my way and doing well, in the end I ended up getting a First in the BCL in a Master’s level. So I had a real confidence. Before I sort of thought like I was a fraud, typical female honestly. Oh I just work harder than other people and so on. But I, I felt much more confident about my intellectual abilities and my capacity to deal with the unknown and all of that. Not [overtalking 00:40:57] I was always just going to stay in Alberta. And I just thought, well that’s kind of narrow minded isn’t it, for example.

INT:    Yeah. So is that one of the things that you think you would change in hindsight? Like that imposter syndrome that you were just describing. Or what else from your Oxford experience, Rhodes scholars in Oxford do you think you would like to have changed  otherwise?

RES:    I wish that somebody would have reached out inside the learning methodology and teaching methodology at Oxford is radically different than in a North America thing. These are the things you need to work on. I just did this, I did this for a young woman, she’s not a Rhodes but she is going over and I spent hours saying, “Here’s how you will be expected to approach your material and how you can do it.” So if we want to say well it’s because we have the imposter syndrome, but I think everybody needs that, everybody needs it. Not if you have your discipline. If you have your discipline and you are going over and carrying on in it, you do have foundational knowledge and you do have enough understanding of how to acquire the knowledge and skills you need to succeed. But where you have someone who is changing into a brand new discipline or stepping outside their sphere of accomplishment in North America, I think it’s absolutely critical. And it’s absolutely critical because it doesn’t matter. If they are good enough to be chosen as a Rhodes scholar, they are good enough to do well at Oxford but we need to give them the tools. We need to tell them what the expectations are. How to meet them. How to reach out. Where to reach out. Yeah. That’s the biggest thing. But I think a lot of that happens now. I think that some of the colleges themselves have sort of like a little booklet that they send to North Americans that says, you know, and stuff. But I should, I should have been working before I went to Oxford. I went in at a second year level in law where I had zero. They’d already all written their first year exams. So when we pick our scholars we need to make sure- They don’t know what they don’t know. So it’s up to us to reach out and help them to the extent they want some help. And as soon as they start in and realise, oh my God I didn’t know that I was supposed to- That’s exactly what happened with this young woman who is over there now that I helped in the summer. And I said, “Did you not get any reading lists?” “Well no.” I said, “Go to your admissions, get the reading list.” In comes the material and I said, “Look, I will show you how to read this. What you’ve got to do. You can’t read all of this now, it’s July, you’ve got to be there at the end of September.” I think we at least need to recognise that dislocation can happen. And at least in my year there was quite a loss of scholars. Some scholars didn’t write their exams or they changed their degree so often they never got a degree and so on. And that is reflective of what I’m talking about. Because if you can’t, if you don’t know how to, first of all well mostly, you know, A types are used to success and now suddenly we’re in a system where we don’t even know what it takes to succeed. So if somebody is doing, as I said, their PhD or they’re continuing on or they’ve had a year or two foundational, they’re okay although you should still check in with them. But I think that’s the biggest difference. If I were involved at some kind of management level with Rhodes, that’s what I would be systematically ensuring that every single person that went over was given an opportunity to get that information and repeatedly. I would do it again in the fall, I would do it again. I would just be like a, sort of a monthly or every two or three months check in.

INT:    That’s important, thank you. Thank you for your views on that important matter. Were there any like memorable successes, accomplishments in academics or otherwise while at Oxford Eileen?

RES:    Absolutely. I was thrilled when I got a First in the BCL given that when I got there I don’t think- I mean I was not performing well and when I left I had a First in the subject and nobody can ever take that away. So that was fabulous. That was a really big accomplishment. And I did have some wonderful personal relationships forged that were- Like my tutor and I, I was there, I was back in Oxford when I saw you, I saw him. He and I have been in touch ever since, since 1977.

INT:    Wow! Beautiful.

RES:    It is. He’s wonderful. His wife is wonderful. You know I adore the ground he walks on. So if you’re- It depends what you’re asking me about. From an academic perspective my achievement in my third year, I am very proud of and so happy that I had that. And it did change me because one of the things that happened was, I thought, I began to think then about an academic career. And I thought, you know what, I would be a good person to be a teacher because if you, if a subject always comes easily to you, you don’t always necessarily be the best teacher to those who are struggling. And so what I just realise is, look this is like a different language and all that kind of thing. So I think I was a much, much better teacher at the university than I would have been otherwise. And also another thing that it made me realise is that in North America we are dependent on instruction. In Oxford what you learn is, if you have a topic, you can find it, figure it out. [overtalking 00:47:19] Here, tell me about, like I said the law of consideration contracts, they don’t tell you what it is and then help you explore the- They just say do it. So that is a very, from a life perspective, that’s an extremely validating kind of core part of you after you do, depending on how you approach it, so that was good. But also just fantastic friendships that came out of it. Not lots but the ones that are very enduring and wonderful.

INT:    That’s beautiful. I think you have mentioned probably in your answers until now a little bit of the advice that you would give to present and future Rhodes scholars. Is there anything else that you would think of telling them before embarking on the journey and for their time at Oxford?

RES:    Yeah, I would say for sure from the moment you get your scholarship and have decided on what you think your programme of study is going to be, you should try to find some mentors, Rhodes scholars or otherwise to check. Because some people lost for example the opportunity to get a degree because they cast about a bit. They started in one programme or they went to another programme or whatever, that, in our year, so there is only as you know in Canada 11 and I think three or four did not get their degrees, which is high I think as a ratio. And you don’t want that. You want to- You want to spread your wings if that’s the right thing to do in terms of your fields of study but you also want to set yourself up to make the best decision for yourself. And I think you need- And, and I think you need to start to do foundational work before you go. It doesn’t matter what degree you are in, there will be an expectation that you have a certain shared foundational knowledge of those subjects. That may not be the case because we approach certain things differently here than there. So you need somebody, hopefully not, like maybe two or three different kinds of people to talk to. 1) about the areas that you think you are interested in to make sure you get to the best college for you when you apply. And even if you don’t get into the college of your choice, how for example your college can train you to the tutor that you want. So you have to have some sense of that. But you cannot possibly filter that information because we don’t do it in North America, so you’ve got to filter that, how do you do that?

[00:50:07]

Then you’ve got to figure out how to get some of your foundational work accomplished. How do you know what it is? How to get it. And then you need somebody who, I think who also talks to you about like, I think I missed, I basically missed out on a lot of extra-curricular things and so on in that first year because I was so- I, quite rightly I think, had my priority to be to try to figure out what I was trying to figure out in law. But I did miss some of the, I think some of the social things that you don’t want to miss. And you can- It doesn’t mean you can’t do them later and I was lucky because many of them I did get to. But you need to have a sense of what kind of extra-curricular things might you as an individual want to do where you will meet other people and it becomes more home and you become more immersed in the magic of Oxford. You don’t want to just be tied up with your academic studies. And the Rhodes is one avenue. But it’s not, that’s not the limit. I mean you don’t want to spend all your time either just with Rhodes scholars, sorry, this is not what they want to hear, but it isn’t. You don’t want to study in the Rhodes library and have your pals just Rhodes and so on. You want to have a broader experience than that. So you need, you need to kind of have somebody who is going to talk to you about what makes you tick as an individual and things you might think about. Not just the obvious things, oh you could into the Debate Society or you can go row. But some other things.

INT:    Yeah, that’s beautiful. Thank you for that. Before going into the continuation or, you know, what happened after Oxford, I just wanted to see if you have some, a reflection on the impact. And I think you have been offering glimpses of that until now but of the impact that the Rhodes Scholarship had on your life.

RES:    I would never be where I am now without the Rhodes Scholarship, period. 100%. I wouldn’t. I probably- I might have done an MBA somewhere but it may have just been at the UofA and I would have stayed in Alberta. I don’t think I would have been a lawyer. I certainly wouldn’t be a judge. And I certainly wouldn’t be a judge on the Court of Appeal for Ontario. I wouldn’t even have had my academic job. The way I got my academic job, and so I was actually practising in Alberta and my tutor, my primary tutor from Oxford had been invited as a guest to visit some faculties of law in Ontario, she said to the then Dean of Law at Western that if they were looking for somebody he should reach out to me because I would be a good candidate. So he reaches out to me, I’m in Alberta practising law. I would, never in a million years would I have thought that I would be a candidate to the academics. So I just wouldn’t have done any of it, any of it.

INT:    That’s beautiful. Really a life changing experience.

RES:    Absolutely. In every way. In every way, Rodolfo, not just my career wise and so on but in every way. In my thinking, in my approach to life, my values. Not maybe your core values but really your lived values. Different thing.

INT:    Thank you. So you mentioned a little bit, you know, how the opportunity, the academia opportunity came about. But how was the transition? So you finish at Oxford, get your law degree with a First and then back to Alberta I understand from what you just told us. So tell us a bit that transition. How you, you know, how that happened and how, what were the choices that you had to make at that point of let’s call it coming back to reality, to the real world.

RES:    So because all of my legal education was in England, there is a national committee who evaluates your qualifications and so on and tells you what you need to do if you want to become a lawyer, to be recognised as a lawyer. So the national committee said that, because I had the two degrees, I did not have to go back to full time study in a faculty of law. But I had to write compensating papers in I think four or five subjects like constitution, Canadian constitutional law and real estate, because real estate is so different here than it, or in Alberta, than it is in England and so on. So I had to write my compensating papers. I also had to do my articles and I also had to do all the bar admission courses. So that was the first 18 months of my time back. Very thrilling, exciting and interesting but man I just worked all the time from like seven, literally seven in the morning till midnight every day, because if I wasn’t- Articling is demanding but on top of that to have to do all the assignments to get your bar admission, and then on top of that I had to study all these courses in order to write my compensating papers. But see that’s an example. If you had asked me before I was at Oxford, okay, you’re going to write compensating exams, you’re never going to see a teacher, you’re never going to do anything, here’s a sheaf of material, you figure out how you’re going to do it. I couldn’t have done that but for my time at Oxford, I couldn’t have. Anyway, so that was- But it was exciting. I really liked practising law. And, and it was, I liked learning and stuff. So it was good but it was very demanding. And then I met Rob and we got married and then, and then I got the offer would I be interested in teaching at Western. Did I answer your question?

INT:    Yes you did.

RES:    Okay.

INT:    You did. So the whole transition including your marriage that’s beautiful. And since then, you know, your career has been law, the judiciary, academia, higher education administration. So on all of those fields what do you think are your main contributions, what the main contributions have been from point of view?

RES:    It’s a good thing that you sent me that question in advance Rodolfo. Well one thing was being on the panel of three of us that legalised same sex marriage in the country. Canada was only, then became the second country in the world to have legalised marriage for same sex couples. Other places Britain for example had what I consider a caste system of it. To people of the same sex could have a union but they could not be married. So and other, at the same time that the Ontario Court of Appeal was deciding the case, there was a case before the Alberta Court of Appeal and a case of the British Columbia Court of Appeal. Our Charter of Rights was in its infancy and the claim of course is that there was a discrimination under, yeah, in the law based on gender or gender related things. We had not had a constitution like that. We had the BNA Act which we received and was our constitution. But we hadn’t had something like the Charter of Rights. And there was a lot of tension in the country about the propriety of that because democracy rests on the notion that it’s our legislators and our parliament that make the rules. And that the judges do not make the rules. We can pass on the validity of something but we don’t make the rules because we’re not the elected officials. Who are three people on the Ontario Court of Appeal to make this actually earth changing, or earth shattering decision? So the way that tension is resolved is that typically what happens is the court is asked to pass on the validity of the legislation and if they say no, this law that says only one man and one woman may marry, which is a federal law by parliament, if you believe as the judge that that infringes Charter rights, you can’t fix it. Parliament has to fix it. So that’s the tension. So what you hear it called is judicial activism, in other words, you are not staying in your lane court, you’re stepping over into what we believe foundationally as part of democracy is not your right. So the other two provinces said that they believed that the rule prohibiting same sex marriages was contrary to the Charter. But they did not offer a solution.

[01:00:10]

They sent it back to parliament. Our decision did not, our decision said it is not only unconstitutional, the court has the power to declare that it should not, the law should not be one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others, had the right to marry. So as a direct result of our decision the day it was pronounced, the next day out of City Hall there were blocks of couples lined up. So that, to be part of that and to be empowered to do that was huge. But that’s like, I mean it’s a huge privilege to be a judge anyway but on something like that it’s off the charts. You know it’s changed the world, it changed our world, our literal world. If you ask my kids now they wouldn’t even, they wouldn’t even think anything of it. They wouldn’t, it doesn’t make any sense to them. That to them is the same as saying 200 years ago, you know, or 150 years ago a woman couldn’t vote let’s say, yeah. And now as you know there is many, many places in the world that have followed suit including many of the States in the United States.

INT:    Absolutely.

RES:    So that’s, that’s- The other thing that I would say is that but for the various positions that I have held, I would not have been selected to run that public inquiry into the long-term care system, the Safety and Security of Residents. That’s a combination of a whole bunch of things. And many times reports like that are on the shelf collecting dust but in fact I am very happy to say that the vast majority of them have been, all of my recommendations have been implemented. And that’s huge. And it doesn’t matter to me whether anybody knows, I know and the people that are operating and running and assessing and dealing with a long-term care home, know that we have improved the quality of their lives. It was huge. And on a personal level my kids, they’re the best. I am, I’m so proud of them, they’re fabulous kids.

INT:    That’s beautiful. How many kids do you have?

RES:    Four.

INT:    Four kids. That’s beautiful Eileen. And you know all of this is really profound and deep change that you, as you were saying you were instrumental in making happen. You have also been an academic and are there other similar- I mean probably not similar in terms of that scale that we were just talking about with the same sex marriage, but are there any other things that you can say in your academic life that have been equally consequential?

RES:    I think so, Rodolfo. See the thing is I wouldn’t have been able to do either of the things that I did but for my academic life because the one of the things, so we’re the top court in the province and that means that we supervise all of the other layers of court and so on. When I was an academic I had a lot of opportunity to teach in different areas. And so that was a particularly I think good schooling and also writing which is what- We’re not supposed, a sitting judge is never supposed to discuss his or her decisions, it’s not proper. If you want to understand what I said you read the decision just like everybody else. And then everyone has the same document and nothing else. I did by the way have to, for example, think about what I could say about the same sex marriage decision before I talked to you to make sure that I didn’t run afoul of my own regulations. So the academic, there are two things I think about academia that I- So that’s, so one thing is I couldn’t have done what I have done without that, for me, other people can do it without but for me it was, it was critical. But there were two things. There had never been a woman in administration at the faculty of law before. And I was the first woman Dean but I was also the first woman Vice-Dean and Dean of Students and all of that kind of thing. And that is in my view was important. It took me away from my strictly academic [unclear 01:05:02] because I just didn’t have enough time. But women have been in the faculties of law in Canada in equal numbers or more since the seventies. And I didn’t become Dean until 1995. Women students and men deserve to see that women can and should be in academic leadership positions. So that was good. But the other thing was I believe deeply in the value of mentorship. And there is such opportunity for that in academia. You know one of, a student who is now, a former student who is now a dear, dear friend and was a huge success, kid from the farm, and he was going to drop out, he was one of my first year classes and I talked to him, you know. You could change people’s lives in academia, you really can, whether it’s a teacher in high school or in the university and the opportunity to do that is wonderful. I mean not everybody wants to do it but if you do like mentoring and helping people, it’s a really wonderful opportunity.

INT:    That’s beautiful and so needed, it’s so needed. And you know we are talking also about your leadership right and the leadership roles that you have held in the justice, at the court of appeal for Ontario, as chancellor of the university, as Dean of the faculty of law at Western. Did your time as a Rhodes scholar influence your leadership style and if so how did it do so?

RES:    Well the two are intertwined right. One of the things that Oxford did was make me way more openminded than I was to the point when I went to Oxford. One of the things I would say, and this is not a direct answer and I apologise, but I would say to anybody who gets a Rhodes Scholarship, never find it a burden. Like never feel like I could choose this and it’s not going to look great on my resumé but I’m really excited about it. But maybe the mantel of being a Rhodes scholar is such that I need to either make money or have a big title or whatever. And I would just say don’t do that. Never do that. The Rhodes Scholarship is recognition of where you are and where you might go. And you do not need to have lots of letters after your name or titles or whatever. And I’ll just give you an example. Lots of the times some of the best people in your faculty are the people who don’t have all those accolades after them. Or they spend a lot of time mentoring people which means that maybe they don’t advance as fast or as high in their careers and so on. And that- So there is, it’s sort of complicated but that’s one of the things when I saw a couple of our scholars, friends of mine or whatever or did not get their degrees, I thought in some ways it was the result of this scholarship. They felt an enormous burden to prove that they were worthy of it and to stand up to people’s expectations. And it’s too much. Or it can be too much. And because I did so poorly when I got there, it’s very humbling, that’s a good thing. That’s a really good thing about Oxford. You may be a big fish in the pond at your home but when you go there, you are a small fish in a big pond with a lot of really smart accomplished people. That’s a good thing, that’s a very good thing.

INT:    Do you think the same applies then when you leave Oxford and, in a very different way I guess because you leave that pond of very accomplished individuals and go back to the real world and where a Rhodes Scholarship in some contexts may mean a lot but maybe nothing as well. So do you think that happens at all, or happened to you at all?

RES:    Yeah probably. I mean some people will dislike you just because you’re a Rhodes scholar. One of the things they do, and one of the reasons I agreed to this, is because they all assume you came from a life of privilege with a silver spoon in your mouth. And you know I’m not going to disabuse someone of that but that isn’t my experience. But it, again see how, what does that do for me? What that says is don’t make assumptions about people Eileen. You don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Even if they came from Oxford and so on.

[01:10:04]

Or they’ll make the assumption that you are thinking, you’re better than other people are and so on. So I mean, but that’s life. I mean I don’t think it matters. I think what, I do think one of the downsides is that when you’ve had such an exciting intellectual experience, that hunger for that continuing experience is perhaps magnified and you better respect it. Like you can’t stultify that afterwards. You have to really recognise that if you thrived at Oxford you need an intellectually rigorous opportunity to continue in your life.

INT:    Yeah, beautiful. Tell me about the challenges in your judicial career. I mean well you have talked a lot about that big accomplishment of course but what were the main challenges that you faced for your career, some that stand out?

RES:    Sentencing is probably one of the hardest things a judge ever does because the sentencing objectives are in conflict with one another. So, alas we are now seeing this in Toronto perhaps, otherwise, you know an 18-year-old boy convicted of first-degree murder. You put him in jail for serious penitentiary time. His chances or rehabilitation are really not very good. Many of the people who go into jails come out addicted to drugs. Their only friends are the people that they have there. They have, you know, life has passed them by. So you have the most serious offence apart from treason, the first-degree murder. You have a person who has probably come from a particular socioeconomic background which is very hard to fight against, you know, if there is no jobs, and there is money and there is no role modelling, might you get into a street gang? Yes you might. Might you get into drug dealing? Yes you might. If you get into drug dealing you’ll be using guns. That’s the way it goes. So sentencing, and it just goes on. Every single sentence is a calculus of figuring out who the offender is, what the real terms and circumstances of the facts are, and how do you protect society without killing that person, without ruining them, without crushing them [overtalking 01:12:40] chances for rehabilitation. So I don’t know about other judges but I would say I have no problem tackling head on heavy workloads with intellectual questions, complicated legal issues and so on. But from a human perspective, sentencing is to me one of the hardest things you’ll ever do. Yeah. Does that answer your question?

INT:    Yes, yes, no it does. Thank you for sharing that.

RES:    Sorry the other- Sorry I will add one thing.

INT:    Sure.

RES:    It’s a privilege to serve as a judge. The workload is crushing and the real challenge personally is how to not get jaded, how to continue to have intellectual and emotional energy for your job, for a lengthy period of time because the longer you’re at it, the better you’re at it. But in a lot of cases there is sort of a 10 to 15 year wall that people can meet and it’s just the weight of the responsibility and the weight of the workload. So that’s the other thing.

INT:    Yeah. Yeah. And you were doing a lot of these I assume while raising a family as well. You know that workload that you were just mentioning.

RES:    Yeah. That’s why I think I’m still here. Because the only way that I could do it was to figure out how to protect myself so I had time and energy for my children and spouse. And so those two rules which can be learned, can be cultivated, those enable you then even after some of your primary childrearing obligations and so on are lessened, but you have them anyway, they’re ingrained in your life and so you actually continue to have a lot of intellectual and energetic motivation.

INT:    Yeah. You know you have seen lots of things while you have been in the judiciary. How have you observed that the rule of law in society has changed in the time since you were appointed to the bench?

RES:    Okay, so the first thing is that as a sitting judge I am not allowed to comment on anything political. So I have to put to the side any aspects of political life which I might think are having an impact on the rule of law. So I won’t say anything in that regard. But I think that the rule of law has been diluted quite seriously, particularly in the last 10 to 15 years. So one of the things that we see in the media a lot is a growing distrust of government and the like. That includes the judiciary. I mean obviously we’re not the government but we’re an executive, there is the executive arm and the traditional arm, the administrative arm. And so when you have a mistrust in general about the people who are regulating society, leading society, that spills over into the courts. Also many countries outside of Canada did not have a well-established rule of law. England does obviously. Because what the rule of law is, boiled down to its most basic thing is that we have all agreed that we will abide by certain rules, regulations and so on so that we live harmoniously. But if you do not feel that those rules are being fairly applied to you, or that if you try to tap into the judiciary, you will not be heard, respected, or your concerns taken into account, then you lose faith in that rule of law and you lose motivation to abide by it. So for example everywhere in the world there are gangs, there didn’t used to be gangs in Canada. There is gangs in every city now and there’s gangs everywhere. Again, it’s antithetical to the rule of law because what it says is, I make the law, I make the rules. So I’m not supposed to shoot you but if you don’t pay me for those drugs I’m going to shoot you. And then the gangs come together and they fight each other. And that’s not saying, well you’re encroaching on my legal business. What it says is I have an illegal business which means I don’t believe in the rule of law. And I’m going to protect it through any means that I want, which is not. So there is a whole bunch of things happening which- And I don’t blame them, I mean what would happen is somebody came to me saying, you know, I’d like to kill so and so because he’s encroaching on my territory for drugs and prostitutions. And the answer would be, absolutely not, we’re not going to give you anything. So what do you think, any help, what are they going to do, they’re going to take it into their own hands. So there is all kinds of forces, some of it socioeconomic, some of it the fact that they’re coming from places where the systems political and judicial systems are so corrupt, they don’t believe any system is not corrupt. And then you have all the social media which fans the flames of distrust, mistrust, miscommunication and so on. So those are the factors which I think have eroded to a certain extent the rule of law in our country. But there are things that have changed. The face of the judiciary is now radically changed from where it was like 20 years ago. We have women, we have people of colour, we have different age groups, we have different styles. We have programming which brings in all students through the schools to show them that in the staff, the staff are all different ages, stages, colours and everything else. And I think that is starting, because if you can see that the people in the judiciary reflect at least some of the people you know and some parts of you, you have more faith that they will honour you, respect you, hear you and so on. Which means it’s more likely that you will do what we want with the rule of law which is when your marriage ends, you don’t kill your wife we hope, although we still obviously have that. You go to a court and get some help and dissolve it in a peaceful fashion. So there are a lot of initiatives that have been taken in, particularly in education and through the judiciary to help kids as early as in their very early years, to understand why we need to abide by those rules.

[01:20:22]

Because otherwise we just will devolve to the Wild West where there were people that lynched other people. That’s fine, they came in, they were strangers to town, we didn’t like the colour that they were so we hung them from a tree. So what we have to do, you know, we don’t want to go back there and kids are not stupid, they get it. There is rules. What we have to do is make sure that they understand why the rules apply to everybody and that they’ve got a fighting chance that the rules will be applied to them and fairly. But they have to do their piece too. But there is no question in my view there is an erosion of the rule of law. There’s no question about it. I just happen to think that if you think about it like this, you know Rodolfo, I think we were going down here, I think we’re on our way up. I do think, you see signs of buy in, of respect, you know, in different systems of law. Sharia law for example is now recognised to assist us when we resolve certain types of marriage things and so on. And so you’re beginning to see wholesale movements of people saying, no, no, this isn’t something that’s going to happen in the back alley or whatever. There is another method for us to resolve our differences and to get on with life. I’m saying this about Canada by the way. I’m saying that about Canada. I’m not saying, I’m not extrapolating.

RES:    INT:    Good to see you again Eileen and we are continuing our oral history project interview with outstanding Rhodes scholars like yourself. So I think you have had several prominent academic leadership roles including the Justice of the Court of Appeal for Ontario and several academic institutions. Tell us a little bit about what has influenced your leadership style in those positions of responsibility that you have held. And if the Rhodes Scholarship had any effect on that.

RES:    Thank you Rodolfo. I mean the unifying feature of my work, whether it was academic, how as a judge and in between, also serving on prominent tribunals within the province, all of them are based on my passion for and commitment to the judicial system. You know the judicial system can be thought of as simply law and legal. But it is more profound than that. The judicial system is an underpinning of democracy. And if we don’t have a robust judicial system and a population that adheres to the rule of law, then the foundations of democracy is, the foundations are threatened frankly. So that, you know, some people love academia and some people love being a judge. But for me I think the passion really is about the vital role that the judicial arm in our societies plays in underpinning and supporting democracy. Because in fact the judicial system is one of the biggest, or should be one of the biggest checks and balances on the unfettered exercise of power by the political arm. So I think that, and frankly that was one of the reasons why I wanted to study jurisprudence at Oxford. It’s a different programme than to study law. Law helps you understand how to negotiate the legal field and perhaps be a practitioner or whatever. And certainly Oxford what it does is include a large policy component and an understanding of the judicial system in that broader context. And so I suppose but for the Rhodes Scholarship I wouldn’t even have really conceived of becoming, you know, educated in the legal process. And then bringing that back, the leadership qualities that I think most if not all Rhodes scholars have is what tended to translate into movement up to the top in each of the fields that I was in. So I was, I mean when I went to Western faculty of law, I was the first female ever chosen as a Dean of Students. The first Associate Dean of Finance. The first female Dean of Law. So you know if you try to translate that into what did I learn from the Rhodes Scholarship, what the Rhodes Scholarship did was validate the leadership skills I had. It said, these are good things and you should find a way to marry your interest in leadership with your career position. And so there were things that I, seriously without the Rhodes Scholarship I never would have said yes to. Like when I was asked to be the Chair of the Pension Commission on Ontario, you know, I wasn’t a career civil servant, I hadn’t done any of that. But you know you have, I think you have more credibility not just externally, you have more credibility internally. And I thought, mmm, I think I can do that and I think I need to do that. There is a real need at this stage to bring judicial principles into the administration of that area. And the same thing happens in being a judge but it’s easier because- So I was a trial judge initially and very rapidly up to the Court of Appeal. But the Court of Appeal is a time where you often are called on to enunciate policy and help shape the way that an area of law should move ahead. And those are leadership skills. I don’t think I can necessarily say that I acquired those from being a Rhodes Scholar but I think I had more confidence in myself, in them. And also one of the things about being a Rhodes Scholar is it’s a very humbling thing. You realise that there is lots of people who are way smarter and more accomplished than you are. And that humbleness is a good leadership quality. It means you tend to listen more than to speak and to recognise that we need to capture the excellence each person brings to a discussion. I don’t know if that helps Rodolfo, I really don’t but-

INT:    That’s beautiful Eileen, thank you. We appreciate that. Just wanted to talk a little bit about, you know, your long and illustrious career in the judiciary. And you have mentioned tangentially some of the challenges that comes with that career. But can you tell us a little bit about some of the challenges and achievements that you are particularly proud about in that judicial career?

RES:    Well one of the biggest achievements was being part of the three-person panel where we legalised same sex marriage in Canada. At the time there was only one country in the world apart from us that had legalised it.

[01:30:04]

Other people had civil unions. I believe that for example England at that time had the recognition of the civil union. But a civil union is still not the same. I’m not sure that you would call it a second-class thing but it doesn’t say to people in a same sex relationship that they have the same rights and obligations in terms of a commitment to marriage. And marriage is in my view a cornerstone of a solid society. So that was a huge opportunity. And I was grateful because I was a very young judge at the time to be on that panel.

INT:    That’s beautiful and so consequential.

RES:    Yeah. The day after this we gave notice that our decision was coming out, the decision came out and the day after our building, our law courts building is right next door to City Hall. And the line-up of couples, same sex couples, to go and get a marriage certificate at City Hall was blocks long.

INT:    Oh wow.

RES:    I came through the crush of the couples and the camera is there and I said, “What is going on?” And they said, “It’s because the Court of Appeal gave the okay for the marriage.” So the line-up had come all the way from City Hall and come past my building, yeah.

INT:    That’s such a momentous, such a [unclear 01:32:00] for you as well, you know, seeing, witnessing that, you know, the power of that decision.

RES:    Yeah. The first, the very first- So of course there is always two sides to things. I had hundreds of hate mail missives which had to be scrutinised and so on for poison. But one of the first letters that came through was from a woman lawyer who said, “I have two children and they are both gay. And I cannot imagine that before today that I would be able to walk down the aisle with them and see them happily married.”

INT:    That’s beautiful.

RES:    It was, it was so touching.

INT:    That’s beautiful. Are you, probably you are aware that in the neighbouring country, the US, a Rhodes scholar also worked for the firm that made support, how do you call it, you know, the supporting part for the Supreme Court of Justice to also approve same sex marriage in the US. Are you aware of that?

RES:    No, I’m not sure exactly what you are talking about because to the best of my understanding it didn’t, the US did not say it was lawful. What they did was they left it to the states. So it may have been one of the states that- Because not all, it’s not lawful in all of the states of America to the best of my understanding. But there are states that have authorised, legalised same sex marriage. So it may have been in that context.

INT:    Probably that context, okay. So I will just send it to you and the name of the scholar just because I think there are parallels here, you know, a Canadian Rhodes scholar and an American Rhodes scholar both worked in their countries towards such a momentous decision. Different probably in the States [overtalking 01:34:06]

RES:    Yeah well I mean and certainly different than here because our marriage laws are federal. So when we changed it and then it got ratified by the Supreme Court, it was for the country. But there are still lots of Americans who come to Canada to have their marriages performed because they live in States in which it’s not legal.

INT:    Okay. So probably it’s what you are saying, that it was devolved to the States, yeah.

RES:    Yeah.

INT:    Have you seen the rule of law in society changed in the time since you were appointed to the bench?

RES:    Absolutely. There is pros and cons. There is a lot of different means Rodolfo to the rule of law. But if you boil it down to its essence, in my view it is the acceptance that if you and I disagree fundamentally about virtually anything, we agree that our differences will be settled in the court room. And we will abide by it and the reason why it’s so important is because obviously that’s how harmony survives. So has there been derogation from the rule of law? Absolutely. If you look at the amount of gang, for example, killings and so on, that’s antithetical to the rule of law because what that says is we’re unhappy with you so we’ll kidnap you or we’ll shoot you or we’ll kill you. So some of it is just societal in that way. Then there is I think a broader mistrust generally of the government in society. And so that spills over into a mistrust of any institutions that appear to be like the government. So the judiciary is not the government, we know that, it’s separate from the government. But there tends to be broader mistrust in my view in society, in the institutions, the historical institutions that have governed our lives, which includes the judiciary. On the other hand in the last 10 to 20 years, but the last 10 years for sure, there has been in Canada a concerted effort to restore faith in the judicial institutions. So for example all the students in high school now take a course and they come through the judiciary, and they watch court proceedings and so on, so that they can see that it’s open, openness and transparency is very vital to the rule of law. It’s not done behind closed doors. It’s open. And they see real people and they see themselves through that process. So that’s one step. A major step forward has been more inclusive judiciary. So if you are being sentenced for something, it’s important that you can see some people who look like you on the bench. So at least I would say starting in the nineties, there has been a huge push to have more women on the bench which was important. And then the later wave was to have a more diverse bench. And I think those things have started to redress some of the mistrust in the rule of law in that sense.

INT:    That’s great. Thank you very much. Tell me about your publications. You have published on trusts, pension law, property, wills and you know why these topics were of importance to you or are of importance to you.

RES:    Well one of the things that was interesting is that having studied my law in Oxford, I had a lot of training in equity. So there is two lines of jurisprudence from the courts of equity and from the King’s courts, or the common law courts. And typically many academics in Canada have not got much training in the equitable fields because we tend, many have tended to go and do their graduate and postgraduate work in the United States, which is more codified than we are. So one of those things about those areas is that they are important to me but one of things I should put in there is that the other area that I was very interested in as an academic was administrative law. So administrative law is how the government regulates everything basically in society. But it’s not the courts, right. So you want to have a restaurant with a liquor licence, you can’t just do that, right, you have to get a licence for that. And there is a tribunal. And so those tribunals, you want to run a daycare in your house, you have to get a licence for that. You want to drive, all of those things.

[01:40:00]

So that is a layer of regulation that pervades of all our lives. And it’s not the judiciary, it’s regulatory tribunals. And administrative law is the interface between the individual, those tribunals and the judiciary because if for example, oh I’m not going to give you a liquor licence because of the colour of your hair, you know, that could affect your livelihood, what do you about that, how do you redress that? You are one person and they are powerful. So the administrative law is that interface, the human being, the individual including corporations, the tribunal or the regulatory body with power over you and the court and how it balances, supervises and everything else. Anyway, so people used to think that I was a bit schizophrenic, I don’t know if you’re allowed to say that anymore, but anyway because trust law is about how you protect private wealth, which is a very, very different perspective than administrative law which is completely the opposite. And that is how do we, how do we supervise regulatory bodies and tribunals that have power over the individual? So one is completely public law and the other one is the, you know, sort of quintessential private law thing. Anyway, that’s what got me into property law. And those two areas became my focus and it’s how I got involved in provincial commissions. Does that answer?

INT:    Yes, yeah no, thank you. Thank you very much. So now in general your experiences as a Rhodes scholar, how did that experience inform your views on higher education in terms of accessibility and global engagement?

RES:    You know I- I’m not sure. I think I- I’m not sure Rodolfo how to answer that one. I think I’m just probably more elitist, which is going to sound bizarre, more elitist than when I got there. Because if you think that higher education is basically just for people of exceptional intelligence, I think you’ve cut out a whole segment of people who may not be cutting edge intelligent but who have lots of emotional intelligence, right and lots to bring to the world. And so if anything, the scholarship increased my view about the need for accessibility and global engagement because it made me realise how narrowly we can construe the idea of academic excellence. It can be gender based. It can be race based. It can be simply socioeconomically based. And think of it all the people then that our institutions are mixing out on and then how many people are missing out on the opportunities that higher education give you.

INT:    Yeah. That’s a beautiful evolution of that thought, thanks Eileen. Now going more into your, you know, kind of more personal reflections and legacy. We already talked a little bit about particular moments or achievements. You were mentioning the same sex marriage in Canada. So I’ll go into the next question on how do you balance your, all of the interests that you have, your legal interests, administrative duties, your personal life, giving back either to the Rhodes Trust or other institutions, how have you balanced that and how has that changed over time?

RES:    Let me answer that in a second. Let me also say that because I know how you- I believe I understand how you’re going to be using our information. I do think that there are times when if you are a woman or some other thing like that, that you should take certain positions. So when I was Dean of Law, when I took the post as Dean of Law, I did it in large measure because we had never had a female Dean of Law before. So it causes you to shortchange your academic career. You just cannot write as much. You cannot participate in the same number of conferences and so on. But by that stage, so I was appointed in the mid-nineties, by that stage for over 20 years in Canada, a majority of students in faculties of law had been female. And I think it is really important that you see women in leadership positions. So I would add that to achievements. And another one is the work that I did on the public inquiry and we can talk about that if you want. Balancing legal interests, administrative duties and personal life, that’s a challenge for everyone. And I will tell about how did that but that doesn’t mean that it is right for other people. So I had a very, very, very supportive husband which made it easier. But while we recognised early on, and remember we had four kids, that there had to be one of us with flexibility in our careers. For us that was a balancing thing. So for example when I was Dean of Law I had much less flexibility in terms of the family and Rob had, I could not have accepted and would not have accepted that position but for the fact that he by that stage had the ability instead to step up and take on. So one of the things is that, you know, if you have a committed personal relationship, you know you have to decide what is important to you in your personal life and you have to decide between the two of you how you will achieve that. In terms of work it’s really significant and important that you manage expectations around you. We’re, I think Rhodes scholars generally are not very good at saying no. There are many strategies for saying no in a very, very positive way and when you are wrong to say no, when you should say yes, you have to set boundaries and priorities. I think you need to learn how to cultivate your spiritual or essence side. We talk about you know physical exercise, eating properly, mental health, emotional health. I believe that there is a fourth part of us which is a spiritual component, there are different words for that. Soul, or whatever. But I think you definitely have to cultivate that and look after that otherwise you will just wake up one day and be hollow inside. And I also, Robbie and I had a motto and that is, we can have it all in our lives, it’s just that not necessarily all at the same time. You know life is long so you have to have that perspective and you have to understand the give and take and which periods of life are important to be giving and which periods of time perhaps to retract from that.

INT:    It’s beautiful. Tell me a bit more about your personal achievements and your personal life. I mean you have mentioned you have four children. Tell us a little bit about them.

RES:    All different as chalk and cheese as my grandmother would say. I am very proud of my kids. They are each and every one of them is a good person, they are loving. I think they know more about balance in life than I did at their ages by a long shot. They work hard, they’re financially independent. They have committed long term personal relationships which are thriving, three out of four of them have children. That’s hugely important to me and one of the things that Rob and I took the most delight and most pride in was how well our children were developing as young people and young Canadians. Did I answer your question?

INT:    You did. Thank you so much. Now a little bit more about kind of taking our future lens.

[01:50:00]

And I will begin with education in general, and your perspective on how leadership, you already talked about how you perceived education has evolved, in your personal perception of education has evolved over the years, but I wonder if you see, you know, how do you see the role of higher education changing in the next few decades? You know we have AI, legal profession, other professions. So what do you think that evolution could be looking like and what challenges do you think that educational institutions like Oxford or any of the other institutions you are involved with will be facing?

RES:    Well no surprise, there are two things that are different about places like Oxford. One is it has such a long and entrenched attitude towards measuring who entrance into its hallowed halls. And we see some places such as Wadham recognising that those barriers have to come down. And I think all of Oxford is going to have to recognise that. But then the second thing is that, you know, we do things in a certain in academic institutions. And the people that are there have excelled at what was, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to excel at what is coming or what is on us like AI. So the question is how do we adjust not just our entrance standards to become more inclusive, to better understand the needs of a changing world and a changing student population. The question is how do we then adjust our academic scholars’ scholarship, fields of scholarship, sources of funding, and all of that. That’s a challenge. That’s a challenge for every institution but particularly I think institutions such as Oxford where its excellence is based on a particular methodology. And so everybody that’s come through that largely has the same methodology. Now it’s going to change. How do we get ahead of that curve? Do we get ahead of that curve? So that’s, I think that’s a huge challenge.

INT:    Yeah. Thank you so much. Now going into advice and for Rhodes Scholarship for example and you know particularly for young scholars, Rhodes or other students today and those that aspire to leadership positions in the legal system and judiciary, what advice would you give to them?

RES:    You know and thank you for giving me these questions in advance because I really thought about it and I think one of the key things I would say is, everybody understands the need to have mentors. You need to do that. Academia, legal profession, judge, doesn’t matter what are you’re in, a mentor is a real, and can be a real help. What I would suggest is this. Choose your mentor wisely. If you look at someone solely on the basis of their success in their position, what you, and you don’t look at it more broadly- So just as an example, if I were a young lawyer and there was a superstar in the area that I was wanting to practice in, but that superstar had no children or had had three divorces or whatever, if I model myself after that person, or I go to them for advice, I have, I am perhaps inviting a skewed understanding of how to succeed because it doesn’t reflect my view of success. Yeah I want to be good and I want to have those accolades, I want that kind of work but at what expense. And I think that what happens often with young people, and I can certainly say it for myself, you get so overawed by those things that you don’t step back and say, wait a second, is it worth it to me, if I lose my personal relationships because I am never available for them, and so on. So what my bottom line is choose your mentors well. Do not, unless you, unless your measure of success is solely related to the quality of work and work accolades, then you cannot restrict your choice of mentor based solely on work success. If you have personal aspirations as well, you’ve got to look to somebody and find somebody who can help you by your vision of success, personal and work related.

INT:    Thank you.                     

RES:    Sorry, on that can I just add this.

INT:    Sure.

RES:    And avoid ageism, avoid ageism. I see it all the time. I think that a lot of people think oh she’s old, or look at his grey hair, he doesn’t understand. That should not come in your calculus. What you should do is you should look at the person and they can be juniors or not but they can be older, but you look and say, okay, that appears to be a person who has a measure of success as look for for myself in terms of work and personal contribution to society and to life. But ageism I see all the time.

INT:    Thank you, that’s important. What role do you think alumni of the Rhodes Scholarship should be playing in addressing global challenges and you know you named them today, again the rule of law, threats to the rule of law, inequality, climate change or political stability.

RES:    Well we all had the benefit of the scholarship on the basis that we had energy, intellectual strength and leadership skills. So we should each in our own areas be bringing those into play as much as we possibly can. I mean that’s part, that’s part of paying it forward. I mean we were given tools and recognition and the ability to make a difference so we should be. If you’re talking about concerted stuff, I don’t know. I think that’s really the role of the Rhodes House and each of the Rhodes societies within our countries. I do think that there is a role for them but I don’t think it’s exclusive. I mean I think each of us can be in all kinds of ways exercising leadership qualities in how we respond to all kinds of things. But it would be nice, I think that it's hard to do anything coordinated. But I don’t think it’s impossible. And so for example, you know, if I had something to do with the Rhodes Scholarship in Oxford, you know, I would be looking at the development officers in each country but also the selection committee secretaries to see if there could not be a bit more concerted efforts made to discuss these as a community. Because sometimes that’s all it is, you know, having a discussion and realising, you know, I hadn’t thought about that, I could do this or I could do that. But I accept that any kind of coordinated effort is challenging. Big challenging.

INT:    Well I mean any advice for young people, Rhodes scholars, others, wanting to follow in your footsteps? You mentioned mentorship. Are there any other pieces of advice that you might have?

RES:    So in my footsteps, does that mean which piece? I mean I think most Rhodes scholars would have a good idea how to succeed as an academic. If you are talking about maybe some of the administrative positions, like again I don’t think they need much advice because I think largely the selection committees have done a really good job of finding people with leadership skills.

[02:00:01]

And so that’s what often will propel you. If you’re talking about the variety of roles that I’ve played, which for me is a huge benefit, every time you sort of radically transform yourself, whether it is from academic to dean or dean to trial judge or tribunal administrator or whatever, there is a huge amount of intellectual energy and excitement that comes with that. And on that what I would say is don’t lean into your fear. There will be times when you, you know, in all our lives where we’re offered positions. And I think that sometimes we say no out of fear. Certainly I had to myself address the fear that I wasn’t good enough or that I might fail or whatever on a fairly regular basis. One, you know, one example was when I became the chair of major commissions in the province, I had no political background, here I was advising the relevant ministers. Or even as a judge, I mean when I was asked to run the public inquiry into the safety and security of residents in care, in long-term care. You know the first thing that I thought was, look I’m a well-respected judge, I could fail at that. Is that what I want to do at this stage and age in my career, is take something on when I could go down in flames for sure. And so my advice would be to say, don’t lean into your fear. I mean, you’ve got to look at who you are and what the opportunity is and ask yourself whether you have a passion for it and whether looking at history, because history does repeat itself, have you been able to usually bring to bear the qualities necessary to succeed? And the worst is, a thing you can say is if you did you best and it was a really worthwhile thing, then that’s probably enough.

INT:    Thank you. It’s beautiful. What is the hardest thing that you have done?

RES:    No question about that. Dealing, dealing with my husband’s death.

INT:    I’m sorry.

RES:    He wasn’t sick for even 48 hours and was a young man. And we had four kids and we were each other’s best friends.

INT:    What has guided you, or what guides your choices and decision making and is there a cost associated to that, to those choices and the process of decision making?

RES:    Absolutely. If a person chooses to have a family, anything you say yes to will be at the expense of your time with them. That’s the reality. You only have so many hours in the day. And so depending on the age and stage of the children, that was, that’s a major criterion to use because they deserve you and your energy and your emotion. So what you have to look at is say this is how I would do it, if I choose this job or to say yes to this, and as a result I’m saying no to those personal aspects of my life, is that worth the cost of it? That’s- And so oftentimes for example I have very fine offers of opportunities and recognition and all that kind of thing. And my typical criterion when the kids were younger particularly was, is there anyone else that I can think of who could do this as well as I could? And if the answer is yes then I wouldn’t take it generally. But then Rodolfo that’s what I’d say, you know. I’m sorry I can’t participate in that conference or give that paper or whatever the choice may have been, but may I suggest that you consider, and I’d try to give two or three other options. Because if I could think of two or three other options, that’s my own criteria. I don’t say that that’s for everybody. But that was I had a big job, Rob had a big job. So anything where there was actually an optional aspect to it, that’s how I measured it.

INT:    And such a valuable piece of advice also for, you know, maybe the next question, which is about, do you have any words of wisdom or advice to pass on to the Rhodes scholars in residence today in Oxford? Young future leaders. And especially when you reflect on your experience, you were a selector in Canada, are there any words of advice for them?

RES:    I think the young Rhodes scholars now are so much more clever and wise about how they approach this. And one of the things is that, you know, I’ll get calls, I’ll get calls from scholars that have been selected and not yet there and they will ask me like how do you succeed, if they’re in law. And I, you know, and I think now that the Rhodes does such a better job of doing that, of helping you prepare before you go over. What do you read? How do you read? You know, who do you see in your college and all of that kind of thing. And then if, then offer your experience, offer your experience back. You don’t have to be on the selection committee. But if you are a recent PhD in science or a recent whatever and you are willing to help those who are going to be in similar situations, let that selection committee know so that they can say, “Oh Rodolfo you want to go over and do medical research into x. We have y who would be willing to meet with you.” And part of that, there has to be a facilitation of mentoring for it to really happen. And it’s great when it does. I mean one of the scholars that I selected in the, I think it was in the early nineties, we’re still in touch on a regular basis. And it’s, he is a healthcare policy specialist and I’m in law. You would be amazed at how many common issues and pots and things that we have and how supportive that is. And that all came because after he had been selected he came back and said, “Happy to be keep the lines of communication open if there is anything I can do.” So we did. And that’s whatever that is, 30 years ago.

INT:    Beautiful. Thanks for sharing that. How would you like the future generations to remember you Eileen?

RES:    Yeah this was a- That’s a, you know, it’s sort of like writing your own epitaph you know. I think very much as a person committed to family and to public service. A person who was liberated no question by the scholarship. That’s an actual, the best word. It was liberating to go into a society characterised as the Rhodes Society is by those values, of leadership and public service and commitment and the opportunity to study at Oxford. I think also one thing that is very true is I don’t need a limelight. And I think that’s important because I think there are other scholars, some scholars naturally gravitate to a more prominent position. And some of us are happy to work behind the scenes. And what sometimes happens is that that translates into the other one because they say, oh we can count on you. But that they don’t- It’s not, it should not be seen as a yoke. It’s not necessary to have a big title or a big salary or big recognition of any sort. You can make a difference from behind the scenes whoever you are in whatever role you choose. And so what you need to think about is, don’t worry about accolades and money and things like that.

[02:10:01]

Think about what characteristics you want to be known by, you know. And then live by those things. And that’s, that’s what I would like to be remembered by as the things that were important to me more than perhaps the things on my resumé, if that makes any sense.

INT:    Beautiful. Thank you so much Eileen. I wonder if there is anything that we haven’t addressed in the interview, in my questions that you would like to raise or add.

RES:    [overtalking 02:10:38] I don’t think it’s possible that there would be any better- I have never seen such a good set of questions.