December 12, 1939 – February 16, 2026
Justice Brian Stevenson, of Calgary, Alberta, passed away on Monday, February 16, 2026, at the age of eighty-six.
Justice Stevenson grew up in the small community of Wakefield, Quebec, a short twenty-minute drive north of Ottawa. His parents, Harold and Jean, worked hard to ensure a better future for him and his older brother, Graham.
He went on to receive a Bachelor degree in arts with a focus on English and History from Bishop’s University in Lennoxville, Quebec, in 1961. He went on to receive an LL.B. from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
In 1965, he moved to Calgary with his wife and raised four daughters and began a sixty-year criminal law career. He practiced with many other luminaries of the bench, including the Hon. Arthur Lutz, the Hon. Willis O’Leary, and the Hon. Sandy Park. He was appointed to the Provincial Court of Alberta (now Alberta Court of Justice) on July 9, 1974, by Premier Peter Lougheed.
On December 11, 2024, Justice Stevenson concluded an extraordinary fifty-year tenure on the Bench, a remarkable achievement that made him the longest-serving judge in Canadian history.
What follows is a reprint of a speech Justice Stevenson delivered in May 1999 at the unveiling of LASA’s Crown Prosecutors’ exhibit in the old Provincial Court building at 323 – 6th Avenue S.E.
Legal Archives & Crown Prosecutors’ Historical Display Opening
May 4, 1999
On behalf of my colleagues on the Provincial Court Bench, I am pleased to participate in the presentation of this “Evolution of Crown Counsel” display here in our Court’s Main Lobby, and extend my thanks to Graham Price and the Legal Archives Society of Alberta for the opportunity.
Having history as my major course of study when pursuing my Arts Degree, I am keenly aware of the importance and need to preserve and to record our history. The history of the legal profession in Alberta mirrors the establishment and growth or our provinces since the arrival of the Northwest Mounted Police at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow Rivers in what is now Calgary in 1874.
As we in the Legal Profession know the prime objective of these police officers was to establish the effective rule of Canadian Law in Western Canada. Clearly, as it is written in one of the Legal Archive Society’s publications, since 1874 “…events in the history of law and justice have determined the course of many developments in this province. The activities of lawyers, judges and legal organizations have had a profound influence on government, communities, business and institutions.”
Those who have served as Crown counsel over the past 125 years have come from differing backgrounds. For most of the period the prosecution of alleged criminal conduct was handled by members of the police. The last 50 years have seen prosecutions handled by lawyers. My personal experience as a lawyer and judge for the past 35 years has brought me into contact with most of them.
With few exceptions, the individuals who have held the position of Agent of the Attorney General (Provincial or Federal) have fulfilled their prosecutorial obligations objectively and fairly in a dispassionate search for the truth.
Crown counsel symbolically represent, in the words of the late Chief Justice Bora Laskin, the “personification of the State”. In the celebrated Supreme Court decision Boucher v. The Queen (1955) 110 C.C.C. 263, Mr. Justice Rand had this to say at page 270:
The role of the prosecutor excludes any notion of winning or losing; his function is a matter of public duty that which in civil life there can be none charged with greater personal responsibility. It is to be efficiently performed with an ingrained sense of the dignity, the seriousness, and the justice of judicial proceedings.
In our Alberta Code of Professional Conduct, Chapter 10, Rule 28, that same philosophy concerning prosecutorial obligations is enshrined:
(a) A [prosecutor’s] prime duty is not to seek to convict, but to see that justice is done through a fair trial on the merits…to act fairly and dispassionately.
I am pleased to state that those with whom I have come into contact have adhered to that high standard of professional conduct.
The public of Alberta has been served well by our Crown counsel.
Many Crown counsel have been appointed to serve in the Alberta judiciary and in other Canadian jurisdictions.
Currently, we find:
Donna Martinson — British Columbia
Bruce Duncan — Ontario
In Alberta, on our Court of Appeal:
Madam Justice McFadyen (Federal Dept. of Justice)
On our Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench:
Justices –
Chrumka, Paul
Martin
Bensler
Langston
McKenzie
Perras
Nash
McIntyre
Jones
Sanderman
and Park (Federal Dept. of Justice)
In the Provincial Court in other cities:
Judges –
McNab
Abbott
Allen
Greaves
Smith
Ayotte
Casson
Chrumka, Albert (Federal Dept. of Justice)
Demetrick
Fraser, Brian
Patterson
Plosz
Wenden
In Calgary, you may (and should) remember those distinguished jurists who came from the prosecutorial branch of the Department of Justice:
the late Fred Thurgood
Leo Collins
Ed Adolphe
Dwayne Rowe
Lou Justason
Robert Nelles
Bill Stilwell
And today, in Calgary, these former prosecutors serve on the Provincial Court:
Bill Troughton
Bob Davie
Sandra Hamilton
Bruce Fraser
Manfred Delong
Bill Gilbert (Federal Dept. of Justice)
Sharon Prowse-O’Ferrall
and myself (Federal – 1969-1974)
I again congratulate the Legal Archives Society for arranging this display and urge the Society of pursue compiling a complete history of this Court since its inception. After all, it has had, and continues to have, the most relevance and impact of any Alberta Court upon the lives of the citizens of this province.
