Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Against the Odds is Book 11 in the Durvile True Cases Series. Thomas Berger's earliest cases astonished the legal community by asserting Indigenous rights that had not been considered previously by Canadian courts. The success of these cases, over only a decade, encouraged First Nations across Canada to take a more assertive stance in the years that followed. Mid-career, Justice Thomas Berger accepted the challenge of leading the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry. He organized the inquiry to give Northern First Nations Peoples an equal voice in the proceedings by holding thirty community hearings in which all were invited to participate. Berger's careful, reasoned arguments prevailed time after time. His Indigenous cases pushed the margins of the legal debate: they demanded that governments take greater accountability for honoring their commitments to Indigenous communities. Thomas Berger's principal gift was to see the law not as a rigid, inflexible structure, but as a framework that could adapt to different circumstances through changing times.