Samuel Hughes

Lieutenant-Colonel Samuel H. S. Hughes, QC (1913–2002) was a Canadian lawyer who served as a justice of the Supreme Court of Ontario. He had a less well-known background as a Canadian military historian during the Second World War.

Shortly after retiring as a judge he took on the task of chairing a Royal Commission known as the Hughes Inquiry into allegations of child abuse by members of the Christian Brothers of Ireland at Mount Cashel Orphanage in Newfoundland.

Early life

Born in 1913, Hughes was the only son of Garnet Hughes, who commanded the 1st and 5th Canadian Infantry Divisions during the First World War, by his marriage to Elizabeth Irene Bayliss Newling in 1910. He was named after his grandfather Sir Sam Hughes, Canadian Minister of Militia and Defence during that war. Thanks to the war, he grew up in the United Kingdom, accompanying his father, and they returned to Canada in 1928, when Garnet Hughes ended his military career and returned to life as an engineer. Sam Hughes was then educated at Upper Canada College and the University of Toronto, and then proceeded to Oxford, with a Massey College Scholarship. His subject was history, and he graduated from Oxford with no particular career in mind.

Hughes's father died in 1937, and he returned to Canada. He tried teaching, and then in 1939 began to read for a law degree at Osgoode Hall, Toronto.

After a year on active service, at the end of 1944, Stacey brought Hughes back to England to work with him to begin to collate the records the field historians had collected.

In 1945, Stacey and Hughes produced an illustrated volume on the Italian campaign called From Pachino to Ortona in December 1943. After the end of the war in Europe, in May 1945, Hughes wrote a booklet entitled After Victory - What? Hughes remained on Stacey's team, sorting documents and acting as research assistant for Stacey, who was appointed as an official historian of the war. They arranged for the interrogation of enemy officers on the losing side of the Italian campaign,

In April 1946, although Stacey had hoped to keep him longer, Hughes returned to Osgoode Hall to complete his training for the law,

Legal career

Hughes took his degree from Osgoode Hall in 1948 and from there was called to the bar. He unsuccessfully contested the 1949 Canadian federal election as a Progressive Conservative candidate in Welland. He had a distinguished legal career, and in 1955 was appointed as a Queen's Counsel, then became the first chairman of the Ontario Highway Transport Board, and in 1960 a Judge of the Supreme Court of Ontario. By 1960 he was a temporary Chairman of the Civil Service Commission of Canada. From 1966 to 1969 he chaired a Royal Commission inquiring into the failure of Atlantic Acceptance Corporation Ltd, ending with the publication of a four-volume report. He continued as a justice of the Supreme Court of Ontario, from which he retired in September 1988, at the age of seventy-five. However, six months later a scandal in Newfoundland brought him out of retirement.

Hughes Commission

On 31 March 1989, soon after The Sunday Express had alleged a cover-up of child abuse at the Mount Cashel Orphanage in Newfoundland by the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary, and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. John's, the acting premier, Tom Rideout, announced the appointment of a Royal Commission to be chaired by Hughes to investigate the allegations of obstruction of justice, particularly with regard to two police reports dated 18 December 1975 and 3 March 1976. On 18 April 1989, Hughes flew to St John's, Newfoundland, to begin his task.

Hughes died in 2002.

Select publications

S. H. S. Hughes, "Sir Sam Hughes and the Problem of Imperialism" in Historical Papers (1950), pp. 30–40 S. H. S. Hughes, Q.C., "The Law and Folklore in Transport Board Appearances" in Canadian Motorist (Ontario Motor League, 1954) S. H. S. Hughes, "The Formulation and Execution of Personnel Policy" in Public Personnel Review, Volumes 23-24 (1962) S. H. S. Hughes, "A Comparison of the Old and New Civil Service Acts", in Paul Fox, ed., Toronto: Canada (Toronto: McGraw Hill, 1962) The Hon. S. H. S. Hughes, Commissioner, Report of the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the failure of Atlantic Acceptance Corporation Ltd (Toronto: Queen's Printer, 1969): four volumes Sam Hughes, Steering the Course: a Memoir (McGill-Queen's Press, 2000)