Supreme Court of Alberta, Trial Division, Calgary, August 18, 1959 – September 26, 1968
Supreme Court of Alberta, Trial Division, Chief Justice, Calgary, September 26, 1968 – February 14, 1979
The Honourable James Valentine Hogarth Milvain was born near Lundbreck in the Livingstone District of the Northwest Territories during a snow storm on Valentine’s Day, 1904. The son of an English immigrant to Canada in 1888, his mother Winnifred Helen MacKintosh was the niece of G.H. MacKintosh, Lieutenant Governor of the NWT. Raised on a ranch, Milvain was educated at Lee School near Pincher Creek, at high school in Pincher Creek, and attended the University of Alberta where he had hoped to graduate in electrical engineering. Lacking language credits, he entered the Arts program and became a leading debater. Entering the Faculty of Law, he graduated with an LL.B. in 1926. Milvain articled with the firm of Virtue and Paterson of Lethbridge, and credited A.G. Virtue with shaping his work ethic and mastery of detail. He moved to Calgary in 1927, where he worked with Fred Scott, and his close associates, J.J. Saucier and Max Peacock. He was admitted to the Alberta bar on November 14, 1927. From 1930 to 1945, Milvain was a member of the Calgary firm of Scott and Milvain. Both he and his wife, Edwina Belle, whom he married in 1932, were active in politics. She ran for the Unity Party and he unsuccessfully sought a federal seat as a Conservative in Calgary in 1935. He was named KC on December 31, 1943. Milvain formed another firm with F.L. Shouldice and Hugh John MacDonald in 1946, which became Milvain, MacDonald, Cheeseman and Moore in 1954. He left these associates in 1956 for the firm of Nolan, Chamber, Might, Saucier, Peacock and Jones, which was later renamed Chambers, Might, Saucier, Milvain, Peacock, Jones and Black. In 1959, Milvain was among those who argued and won the last Canadian case heard before the JCPC, Wakefield v. Oil City ([1959] 29 WWR 638), and he served as President of the Law Society of Alberta, 1958-1959. Appointed to the Supreme Court of Alberta, Trial Division, at Calgary on August 18, 1959, he was made Chief Justice of the Trial Division on September 26, 1968, Alberta’s first native born Chief Justice. After his retirement on September 14, 1979, he again practiced law as a consultant with the firm of Atkinson, McMahon, Tingle and Harrison, the firm he founded. He received an honorary LL.D. from the University of Alberta in 1979 and from the University of Lethbridge in 1989. The Chief Justice Milvain School was named for him in Calgary in 1983, and in 1987 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada. An avid hunter and fisherman, Milvain died 25 years ago on October 22, 1993.
