UBC Law: History

Chapter 8: Experiences at Law School

Attending the Annual Law Ball

Without a doubt, the annual "Law Ball" was the most important social event on the early law student’s calendar. It was a formal event to suit the times, characterized by tuxedos, ball gowns, and "booze under the table". Madam Justice Southin recalls the ball as "the social event of the year":

[T]hey were always held at the Commodore and they were black tie for most of the boys, although those that couldn’t . . . I mean I was going out at the time with a chap who was an Agriculture student. . . . and his budget did not extend beyond a dark blue suit for every serious occasion but that was all right. But the girls, the women who went to them wore all evening dress. The judges came, the faculty came. . . . there were always quite a number of people there in tails. A lot of men had tails in those days . . . . And of course as always at such affairs as this in Vancouver, the boys, the men brought a date . . . the bottle was put under the table. I remember the party as being great, and actually, I was underage and shouldn’t have been drinking anything, but I had no difficulty by the time I was eighteen getting into a pub.
. . . the Commodore had a marvellous dance floor . . . . And there would be an orchestra, and an occasion was always followed by a group of people going down to Chinatown after for dinner. There were in those days [rules of propriety] . . . young ladies were taken home . . . I know we had to be home at a reasonable hour, that first year I was living with my sister and my brother-in-law and you know . . . my sister would not at all have been pleased if I had not been home by 1 or 2 in the morning. Well she felt she was in loco parentis, and so she was, . . . I was not a kid to get into trouble anyway so the Law Ball was the great social occasion of the year.

The annual law ball was the highlight of the social year for early University of British Columbia law students, 1947.

Founding of the UBC Law Review

It would be misleading, however, to imagine that student social life at mid-century was entirely focused on political chatter, balls, drama societies, coffee evenings, bridge, and pubs. Overall, Madam Justice Southin remembers "a relatively quiet life I suppose, by modern standards". She recalled the veterans as "mature men" who "were getting on with their lives and they weren’t fooling around. They were married men, so they weren’t out gallivanting". Even the younger students "weren’t all running downtown to the pub, most of us didn’t have enough money for that kind of entertaining, and in those days the girls, you know the boys took you out when they could afford to take you out, you didn’t pay anything".

The scholarly side of extracurricular activities at the faculty was soon elevated when some ambitious students decided the University of British Columbia should follow the practice of American law faculties and established its own student-run law journal. This bold initiative did not immediately receive enthusiastic support from the dean. At the time Dean Curtis thought that Canada could not sustain another law journal. Madam Justice Southin served on the editorial board but does not remember "it as being a very strenuous contribution to the life of the faculty. It was fun though. . . . it seems to me that is what we did and wrote something for it. . . . you know, that was the idea. . . . make a little contribution." Dean Curtis, who in later years became very proud of the publication that grew into the University of British Columbia Law Review, gives full credit to the students who initiated the project. He told Murray Fraser during a 1980 interview that it:

started with a Victorian, Barney Russ, A. D. Russ, way back in those veteran days. Barney, of course, was agile with his pen and fluent and he got some of his colleagues to start it up and it was entirely a student initia tive and it was called "Legal Notes". To some extent, I am afraid I may have influenced that because, you know, we were then four hundred, yes but, what was going to happen. We might get small and could we maintain a decent Law Review so they went along with Legal Notes. It is better to walk than to run and that, of course, became a great success and then they turned it into the Law Review and that has again, let me say, with student initiative right through, been excellent, really excellent.

Legal Notes editor Ted Pearce and staff member Ralph Sullivan. The magazine, which contained articles by students and members of the British Columbia bar and discussed points on most pertinent legal cases was a tremendous success. In time it grew into the University of British Columbia Law Review.

Chapter 8 continued