Louise Arbour is set to be installed as Canada's next Governor General, the representative of the King who is tasked with helping to maintain the country's constitutional order. The ceremony is to take place on Monday morning at the Senate of Canada building in Ottawa, with proceedings beginning at 9 a.m. Eastern Time. Her arrival at Rideau Hall brings to the office one of the most experienced legal figures the country has produced.
If there is a single thread running through Arbour's long career, it is a deep belief in the rule of law and a determined pursuit of justice. She has said plainly that she would not be in this line of work if she did not believe in the law, and has spoken of victims being entitled to expect protection from those accused of harming them. That conviction has guided her across courtrooms, prisons and international tribunals over several decades.
Born and educated in Montreal, Arbour was appointed to the Supreme Court of Ontario in 1987. Three years later she moved to Ontario's Court of Appeal, continuing a steady rise through the senior ranks of the Canadian judiciary. By the middle of the 1990s she had become a nationally recognized name in legal circles.
Part of that recognition came from a scathing report she produced into conditions at the Prison for Women in Kingston, Ontario, in which she described an institutional culture that was not respectful of the law. The findings drew significant attention and reinforced her reputation as someone willing to confront failures within powerful institutions rather than look away from them.
Her next role would carry her onto the world stage. As chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, she helped secure the first genocide conviction since the Genocide Convention of 1948. She also brought the indictment of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, a case tied to the murder of more than 340 identified Kosovo Albanians.
In 1999 she left that post to take a seat on the Supreme Court of Canada. She retired four years later to become the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, pledging to ensure that people everywhere receive what they are entitled to, not because of their accomplishments but because of their humanity. More recently, Canadians saw her present the findings of her inquiry into sexual harassment in the Canadian military, warning that the situation in the military system was not sustainable.
The Prime Minister has pointed to that body of work in describing her as uniquely qualified for the vice-regal role. Running through her career is a conviction that institutions are the load-bearing walls of a civil society, a theme that is expected to shape what she brings to Rideau Hall. The installation ceremony in Ottawa will formally mark the start of her term as the representative of the Crown in Canada.