Book Review Compte rendu

Unlucky to the End: The Story of Janise Marie Gamble by Richard W. Pound. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007

Reviewed by Ed Ratushny*

Richard Pound established a successful career as a tax litigator and is currently a partner in the Montreal office of the Stikeman Elliott law firm. He is a former Olympic athlete who has contributed greatly to the commercial success of the modern Olympics in his role as International Olympic Committee Vice-President. His passionate advocacy for “clean” athletes led to the creation of the sophisticated World Anti-Doping Agency and he served as its first President. He is also Chancellor of McGill University.

Pound is also an accomplished author. He has written and edited professional books on business and tax law and also has written in relation to the Olympics. He plunged into Canadian legal history with his important biography, Chief Justice W.R.Jackett: By the Law of the Land, which traces Wilbur Jackett’s early years in Kamsack, Saskatchewan, through his Rhodes Scholarship to the office of Deputy Minister of Justice of Canada and then first Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Canada.

In Unlucky to the End, he tells the story of a Canadian criminal case that weaves together human tragedy, legal processes and a pioneering fight for justice. The story is about the life of Janise Marie Gamble, yet she was mostly an innocent bystander to the dramatic and pathetic events that characterized that life. Her happy childhood and youth was transformed when she met John Gamble in Peterborough, where she lived with her parents. She was nineteen at the time and in her words, “You know, he could just be sweet and nice. You couldn’t help but fall in love with him.”

Unfortunately, he had a very dark side. He had problems with drugs and alcohol, had been in prison a number of times and could be described, in popular language, as a psychopath. He and Janise married and moved to Vancouver, where his addictions took hold and the mental and physical abuse rapidly escalated. Pound does not lecture the reader

* Professor Emeritus, University of Ottawa. 828 LA REVUE DU BARREAU CANADIEN [Vol.87 about spousal abuse, but his graphic description of their relationship provides a textbook example. In this narrative, the husband explains that it is rye whisky that makes him violent and he will switch to other booze to avoid harming her in future. She can’t leave him because she loves him and had vowed in a church to support him through good times and bad.

John and Janise Gamble traveled to Calgary with another couple and the two men committed a robbery there. A police officer in pursuit was murdered. The fugitives took hostages and occupied a home. The tension quickly reached a high level that was sustained throughout the police standoff. The telling of the hostage siege is enhanced by transcripts of the interception of telephone negotiations. Pound makes occasional wry observations such as the adoption of “good captor – bad captor” tactics during the negotiations, as the reversal of a police interrogation technique.

The role of the media is described as a disruptive dynamic that could destroy the relative calm the police were attempting to maintain in the potentially volatile situation. Former Premier Ralph Klein makes a cameo appearance as a radio journalist at the time. He was one of the first to call the house and was so surprised at getting through that he was at a loss as to what to say.

Following the story of the siege, there is a detailed description of the subsequent criminal trial and appeals. Pound is not a criminal lawyer but is meticulous in gathering and presenting the detailed procedures and related evidentiary issues. Lawyers who are familiar with criminal law and procedure are likely to skim some of this detail. It will be highly informative, however, for laypersons who want an accurate description of how the system works. It is also an excellent introduction for a law student who is embarking on a study of this subject.

The trial presented the classic dilemma for defence counsel as to whether or not to encourage the accused to testify as a witness in her defence. Janise might well have made a poor witness at the time. On the other hand, the Crown had a weak circumstantial case, and her failure to take the stand probably sealed her conviction. The various roles of the lawyers in the case are sketched clearly in the book.

The last part of the book deals with attempts to obtain relief from the injustice of her conviction of first degree murder and the harshness of the mandatory life sentence. It is interesting to note that this case occurred about a decade prior to the Royal Commission on the Donald Marshall Jr. Prosecution. The Commission report was the first official and 2008] Compte rendu 829 unequivocal acknowledgment that the Canadian criminal justice system had wrongfully convicted an innocent person. It inspired the reassessment of a number of other convictions and that led to other findings of wrongful convictions in many provinces. In Janise Gamble’s case, the success of this last legal battle was due to the skill and dedication of two lawyers, Allan Manson and Colin Irving.

In fact, Pound first heard of this case from Irving, “in and around” their squash games together. He was intrigued by Irving’s ongoing fight for justice and this led him to conclude “there might be a story worth telling.” A jazz musician once was asked if there was a message he was attempting to deliver in his music. His response was that a bird doesn’t sing because it has a message but because it has a song. There are many messages in this book but, mostly, Dick Pound has a story to tell and tells it well.