Craig Paterson was a familiar figure at coroner’s inquests, hired by surviving families to press for answers. In the early days of the AIDS epidemic, he was among the first to challenge the safety of Canada’s blood supply on behalf of the family of a hemophiliac millworker who died of AIDS.Courtesy of the Family
Lawyer Craig Paterson cut a swath through the heretofore quiet complacency of workers’ compensation adjudication in British Columbia. Over three decades, injured workers who felt they had been hard done by had no fiercer advocate than Mr. Paterson. He shattered precedents, took on cases that seemed unwinnable, and shook up the status quo with a pit bull demeanour in relentless pursuit of a fairer deal for his clients. He was equally passionate about the need for strong health and safety regulations to protect workers on the job and hold employers to account when workplace fatalities occurred.
From his modest office in the historic, 13-storey Dominion Building in what was once the heart of downtown Vancouver, the tall, burly lawyer would lash out in all directions, pushing legal boundaries as far as he could, often with flamboyant accusations of bias and conflict of interest that were not always well received in judicial proceedings. But little deterred him. While some cases may have seemed quixotic, one of them attracted attention across the country, when he sought, unsuccessfully, to have alcoholism recognized as an industrial disease, on behalf of a client who spent much of his working life in isolated work camps. Vancouver Sun columnist Denny Boyd wrote approvingly of Mr. Paterson, who died Jan. 26, at age 76, after several months of declining health. “He takes on cases lawyers in a bigger hurry wouldn’t touch. He opens cans and releases legal worms.”
Long-standing practices of the Workers’ Compensation Board of British Columbia (now WorkSafeBC), the agency that oversees workplace safety and compensation for workers injured on the job, were a red flag to Mr. Paterson. Most notably, in 1981, he overturned a WCB policy in place for years that did not allow disabled workers appealing an award to see the files on which their award was based. Before the B.C. Court of Appeal and a public gallery packed with disabled workers, Mr. Paterson questioned how that could possibly be fair. The judges wondered, too, with one likening the situation to Alice in Wonderland.
They ruled unanimously in favour of Mr. Paterson’s client, 55-year-old disabled railway worker Vincenzo Napoli, and ordered the WCB to hand over his file. The Napoli case was transformational for injured and disabled workers and changed compensation procedures for good.
In another, more complex case, Mr. Paterson sought survivor benefits for the widow of Edward Schulmeister, who had been permanently disabled in a workplace accident but drowned in a subsequent boating accident. Her request was denied on the grounds that his disability was not the only or even a major factor in his death. Mr. Paterson appealed the decision to the B.C. Supreme Court, which ruled that his injuries had only to be “a significant factor” in Mr. Schulmeister’s fatal accident for survivor benefits to be paid. This, too, is now standard practice at the WCB. “It was a stake in the heart of how they treated people’s injuries years later,” said Janet Patterson, a former appeals commissioner at the board.
Mr. Paterson was also a familiar figure at coroner’s inquests, hired by surviving families to press for answers. In the early days of the AIDS epidemic, he was among the first to challenge the safety of Canada’s blood supply on behalf of the family of a hemophiliac millworker who died of AIDS. Mr. Paterson subsequently withdrew from the case, after the family’s request for legal aid was turned down. “When poor people die, their deaths don’t get investigated, because they’re poor,” Mr. Paterson said at the time.
He was at his best during the high-profile inquest into the horrific deaths of four carpenters, who fell 36 floors when their fly-form collapsed during construction of a downtown office tower. Well prepared, with a sound grasp of the intricacies of construction, Mr. Paterson hammered away at company witnesses over the failure of the fly-form and lack of on-site safety inspections. The upshot was a province-wide inquiry that led to fundamental changes in construction practices. “He was a warrior in workers’ health and safety,” said lawyer Candace Parker, who worked in his office for a time.
John Craig Paterson was born Aug. 30, 1946, in the canal city of Welland, Ont., the first of five children born to Doris and Jack Paterson. Doris was a registered nurse from Virginia. Jack was born in Scotland. The two met in Canada while Jack was in the Royal Canadian Air Force, training Second World War Mosquito bombing crews.
John ran a car dealership. His father-in-law owned a thriving metal foundry in Welland. “We all lived in this fairly middle-class neighbourhood, very much of the 1950s and ‘Father Knows Best,’” said James Railton, a lifelong friend of Mr. Paterson’s. “There was no sign of his politics in those days.”
Mr. Paterson was smart and a good athlete. His combative nature became evident early, especially during hockey games. “My mother stopped going to games because he was so often in the penalty box,” his sister Janet recalled.
He graduated in law from the University of Western Ontario in 1970, and went on to obtain a master’s degree in law at Harvard University. By then he was married, with a young daughter. He taught law for a year at the University of Windsor, before heading west to Vancouver, after the breakup of his marriage.
He was quickly hired as a researcher at the WCB, where he became a disciple of Board chair Terry Ison, appointed by the new NDP government of Dave Barrett to overhaul the Board to make it more representative of worker interests. Under Mr. Ison, It became the most cutting-edge compensation board in Canada.
Mr. Paterson helped write groundbreaking regulations to put more onus on employers to ensure safer workplaces. When Mr. Ison was fired by the incoming Social Credit government, Mr. Paterson soon quit the Board in protest, and went into private practice, at a time when few lawyers specialized in occupational health and safety and workers’ compensation.
Best-selling author Dr. Gabor Maté helped with some of Mr. Paterson’s early cases, and the two remained friends. “He was the nemesis of WCB officials who minimized people’s injuries and denigrated their claims,” Dr. Maté said. “It became his passion and his profession too that their rights be recognized and proper compensation awarded.”
Mr. Paterson was never shy about his opinions, regardless of where he was. On a group trip to China, he interrogated his hosts about the woeful lack of safety and proper workwear he saw in their factories.
His quest for social justice extended beyond legal cases. He fought for civil liberties as an active member of the B.C. Law Union, and threw himself into many protests, particularly Operation Solidarity, the mass populist movement that rose up in opposition to a raft of regressive legislation brought by then-premier Bill Bennett in 1983. He had a deep streak of generosity, regularly giving large bills to homeless people and treating friends and families to hockey games. When the COVID-19 lockdown took place, Mr. Paterson gave his barber $1,000 to help tide him over. He was also a quirky collector, amassing large numbers of arcane books and filling his basement with chairs, picked up in alleyways and second-hand furniture stores. He had an abiding love of the arts.
In later years, Mr. Paterson became increasingly difficult and erratic in dealing with clients. He was diagnosed with a mental illness and folded his practice in 2010. Physical ailments took a toll, too. But he didn’t lose his sense of mischief and riling the status quo. At one of the last hockey games he attended as a long-suffering fan of the Vancouver Canucks, Mr. Paterson approached Canucks staff and demanded to know why same-sex couples were never featured on the Kiss Cam.
Mr. Paterson leaves his brothers, Scott, Robert and Cameron; sister, Janet Ohlman; daughter, Tamara; and grandson, Jack.