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Canadian government. Yet it took eight years for Ottawa to acknowledge that it was indeed a bomb that felled the plane named Kanishka, which plummeted 31,000 feet into the Atlantic Ocean off the west coast of Ireland. In March 2005, British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Ian Josephson, acquitted Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri of their alleged roles in the bombing. The court decision came after an estimated $130 million was spent on the investigation and prosecu- tion of the incident. Meanwhile, the man suspected of masterminding the bomb- ings, Talwinder Singh Parmar, was killed in 1992 before charges against him were laid. The only person convicted in the attacks, Inderjit Singh Reyat, received a five-year sentence in 2003 on a man- slaughter conviction for helping build the bomb (he is currently facing perjury charges for allegedly lying at the trial of Malik and Bagri). Later that year, then public safety minister Anne McLellan asked former Ontario premier Bob Rae to issue a report on whether "outstand- ing questions of public interest" regard- ing the bombing remained unanswered after the court decision. In the report, Rae remarked, "Many Canadians think that it was '9-11' that initiated us into the modern world of terrorism. It should have been June 23, 1985." Rae went on to recommend a "focused, policy based inquiry" into the incident. What was needed, said Rae, were answers to ques- tions such as how Canadian authorities assessed the threat of such a bombing, how well the investigation was man- aged, and the adequacy of the country's airport safety protocols. That brings us to March 2006, when Canada's prime minister, Stephen Harper, rang up Major. The new PM had long backed a full judicial inquiry into the bombing, and was seeking advice on whether it remained worthwhile two decades after the tragedy. The request came at a particularly awkward time for Major. He had just returned to his old firm in Calgary after spending 12 years in Ottawa serving as a justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. Having left the top court a mere three months earlier, he was settling back into The Air India Flight 182 Memorial in Toronto's Humber Bay Park East. It wouldn't be until June 2010 that John Major's judicial inquiry report on the events of and leading up to the 1985 bombing finally gave some closure to families touched by the tragedy. life in Calgary, reacquainting with old friends, and likely getting his golf swing back in shape. Nevertheless, the 75-year- old Major agreed to put his retirement on hold. At the prime minister's request, he canvassed victims' families to get a feel for their desire for an inquiry. Harper received Major's findings, and on May 1, 2006, appointed him commissioner of the inquiry that would provide a "thor- ough and compassionate investigation" into the bombing. From all accounts, Major was an inspired selection to lead the inquiry, which threatened to go off the rails early on and dragged on years longer than expected. Major was born in Mattawa, Ont., about five hours north of Toronto, where he lived until age nine. The family moved throughout his childhood to various Ontario mining towns, as his father William Major worked for the Canadian Pacific Railway, eventually becoming a station agent. The family ended up set- tling near Sudbury in Espanola, Ont., where Major, the middle child of five, graduated from high school. He went on to attend Loyola College, now Concordia University, in Montreal, receiving his bachelor of commerce degree in 1953. He obtained his LLB from the University of Toronto in 1957, and was eager to get started in legal prac- tice. But Law Society of Upper Canada rules at the time would have forced him to spend two more years at Osgoode Hall before qualifying for a call to the bar. He planned to sidestep that require- ment by moving to Calgary to receive his call to the bar in Alberta, and then 28 SEPTEMBER 2010 www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com return to Ontario through a transfer. The first part of the plan worked — he was called to the Alberta bar in 1958 — but he never returned to Ontario. He says "inertia" and an affinity for his new home kept him in Calgary for good. "It was a pretty attractive place: 280,000 people compared to Toronto," says Major. "There was a need for lawyers, so you got more significant work much earlier than you would have in Toronto, where the tradition of those days was carrying a briefcase for some senior for a certain period of time. It just was a bet- ter place for a young lawyer to be." He joined the firm that has become Bennett Jones, where he became a liti- gation partner in 1967. While there he represented several major clients, acting as counsel to the Calgary Police Service and the Canadian Medical Protective Association. Major also acted as coun- sel to a pair of key public hearings: the 1986 Commission of Inquiry into the Collapse of the Canadian Commercial Bank and the Northland Bank, and for the province of Alberta in the 1987 Code Inquiry into the collapse of the Principal Group of Companies. Major stayed with Bennett Jones until 1991, when he was appointed to the Alberta Court of Appeal. Prime minister Brian Mulroney quickly appointed him to Canada's top court the following year. He wrote majority reasons in cases such as 1999's R v. Ewanchuk, which assert- ed that there is no defence of implied consent in sexual assault cases; 2004's Peoples Department Stores Inc. v. Wise, with Justice Marie Deschamps, on the GAIL J. COHEN