Richard Berrow’s Law/History Quiz:

My friend Richard Berrow designed this quiz for his colleagues in the legal profession, and kindly sent me a copy. I thought that my friends and colleagues in the local history community would also enjoy it, and give these esteemed lawyers a run for their retainers. If you’ve read Sensational Vancouver, you’ll easily answer three of these questions.

Let me know how you did!

Richard is a lawyer with Fasken Martineau in Vancouver.

1 Which judge pronounced the last death sentence to be carried out in BC?

2. Who served the shortest term ever as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of BC?

3. a) Which night club owner’s acquittal on obscenity charges in 1974 paved the way for Vancouver to become the most open city in North America for exotic dancing?

b)  Name the winning law firm and lead counsel for the accused?

4. Name the Vancouver police chief who fled to California, in disgrace, amid a 1950s corruption scandal?

5. a) Back in the 1920s and 30s, who reigned as Vancouver’s reputed king of vice (brothels, bootlegging)?

b) What notable lawyer (and later judge) regularly acted for the vice king?

6. a) Which BC Provincial Court Judge drew notice in the 1970s for remarking, from the bench: “women don’t get much brains before they’re 30”?

b) Was he removed from the bench?

7. a) Which ageing star of pre-war Hollywood expired during a yachting visit to Vancouver in 1959, in the company of his mistress, a 15 year old aspiring starlet?

b)  Her name was?

8. What leader of the 1960s Weather Underground, on the run from the FBI ever since a Manhattan townhouse explosion in 1970, fled to East Vancouver and lived here quietly under a new name, passing away in 1997?

9. Who blew up BC Hydro’s Cheekye-Dunsmuir power substation in 1982, in an act of environmental protest, and were later captured on the Sea to Sky Highway?

10. Name the Colorado brewing tycoon whose murder in a botched kidnapping led to the perpetrator, a former Fulbright scholar, being spotted by an alert Vancouver police officer and arrested in the old Maxine Apartment Hotel on Bidwell Street in 1960?

ANSWERS

1. Mr. Justice John Ruttan

2. Madam Justice Beverly McLachlin, who served as CJSC 1988-89 (in between the BC Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court of Canada)

3. a)   Gary Taylor

b) Tony Pantages of Russell & DuMoulin

4.  Walter Mulligan

5. a)  Joe Celona

b)   Angelo Branca

6. a)  Les Bewley

b)  of course not

7. a)  Errol Flynn

b)   Beverly Aadland

8. John “JJ” Jacobs

9.  The Squamish Five

10. Adolph Coors III