Colleagues, I rise today to pay tribute to my dear late sister, April Burey, and to express my appreciation for her.

Her life was far too short, but she left an indelible and unique mark on Canada, her family, her students, her professors and her friends — some of whom are present here today. We continue her legacy as a fierce defender of human rights, disability rights and gender and racial equality.

In 1997, April appeared before the Supreme Court of Canada as intervener counsel for several Black groups. For the first time, after centuries of racial inequities within the courts, the Supreme Court finally considered a complaint of judicial racial bias. Professor Constance Backhouse, author of the recently published Reckoning with Racism: Police, Judges, and the RDS Case, has called it our “. . . country’s most momentous race case.”

April was a prolific thinker, writer and teacher. In an article published in the Dalhousie Law Journal, April took time to reflect on this landmark case in Canadian history. Her purpose, she writes:

. . . is to call us all to a sober, thoughtful and compassionate return to the essential value underlying Section 15, the Charter as a whole, and indeed the laws of any society based on the equality of all. This essential value is the equality of those most vulnerable and disadvantaged among us. . . .

She goes on to say:

I have faith that R.D.S., by its outer creation of no dichotomies, will lead us all to the inner discovery that equality is indivisible.

This marks the week when I was sworn into this hallowed chamber as a Canadian senator — and the week that my sister April Burey passed from this life to the next, on December 12, 1999, some 24 years ago, at the tender age of 39 years due to multiple sclerosis.

April was born on March 30, 1960, to Eric and Mary Burey, a civil servant and a teacher. April was rarely seen without a book in her hand. April was conferred a Bachelor of Arts in French and Spanish and a law degree from Dalhousie University, where she was valedictorian. Her Master of Laws degree was from Harvard University, where she specialized in public international law.

Former Supreme Court Justice Ian Binnie and lawyer Lois Lehmann, both friends of April, memorialized April’s work and life in a “Lives Lived” article in The Globe and Mail.

April Burey, a fierce human rights advocate, was one of Jamaica’s most exuberant exports to Canada — lawyer, Black activist, poet and scholar.

I close with the words of another of April’s friends, former law professor Leon Trakman:

April, my dearest friend, and I say — my dearest sister, you are of the spirit. You always were. That was your charm. Your faith was your being. The body was only incidental. Your faith was also your humanity. Through it, you shone. The stars will not be disappointed.

I love you, my dear sister.