John Howard “Jack” Sissons (1892 - 1969)
Jack Sissons grew up in Orillia, Ontario and set up a law practice in the Peace River Country in 1921. He spent five years in the House of Commons [Liberal MP 1940-45] and became a judge in Lethbridge. The Territorial Court of the Northwest territories was established in 1955 and Alberta Chief Judge Sissons was appointed to the new position of NWT Supreme Court Justice.1)
The first court circuit in the NWT took place in April 1956, with the party travelling in a single-engine Otter. They flew nearly three thousand miles from Yellowknife over to the Mackenzie River and down to Fort Good Hope and Aklavik, then over the mountains to Old Crow in the Yukon before following the Arctic coast from Tuktoyaktuk to Paulatuk, Coppermine and Cambridge Bay. There was no Yukon justice of the peace in Old Crow so Sissons considered it his duty to fly there and sit as magistrate. During the Second World War, the people of Old Crow raised several thousand dollars for the relief of bombing victims in London. In recognition of this, Chief Peter Moss was awarded the Order of the British Empire. Vincent Massey distributed the money and in 1955 planned to visit Old Crow to present Chief Moses with a new pair of glasses. Massey's plane could not land in Old Crow, which had no regular airfield, so Frank Carmichael, a trapper and trader at Aklavik and an elected member of the territorial council, was with the court party to present the glasses.2)
The 1956 trial at Old Crow was the first in the community and the Community Hall was packed to hear the case of Elias Kwatlatye, charged with stealing two small pieces of firewood from Joe Netro, the local trader who had been losing firewood. Elias was seventy-three and sick and the wood he could collect was too small to last all night. Sissons gave Elias a year suspended sentence and ordered the wood be returned to him, a judgement that shocked his own staff. Sissons reasoned that the ownership of the wood was not clear and that it may have been cut on lands still belonging to the First Nation. It was later arranged that the Indian Agent supply Elias with firewood.3) Several of Judge Sissons' decisions, relating to hunting rights and adoption among others, became legal landmarks. 4)