Michelle O'Bonsawin was born on May 2,1974 and is a Canadian jurist who is serving as a puisne justice on the Supreme Court of Canada since 2022.
14 Facts About Michelle O'Bonsawin
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Michelle O'Bonsawin was born in Hanmer, Ontario, a Franco-Ontarian community near Sudbury on May 2,1974.
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Michelle O'Bonsawin's father was a machinist and her mother worked as a teacher.
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Michelle O'Bonsawin is a Franco-Ontarian and an Abenaki member of the Odanak First Nation.
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Michelle O'Bonsawin began her legal career working for Royal Canadian Mounted Police legal services.
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Michelle O'Bonsawin worked as in-house counsel for Canada Post for nine years before she joined the Royal Ottawa Health Care Group in 2009.
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Michelle O'Bonsawin appeared as counsel for the organization on mental-health cases before the Ontario Superior Court and Ontario Court of Appeal as well as tribunals such as Ontario's Consent and Capacity Board and the Ontario Review Board.
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Michelle O'Bonsawin's practice focused on mental health, labour and employment, human rights, and privacy.
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Michelle O'Bonsawin taught a course on Indigenous peoples and the law at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law.
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In 2017, Michelle O'Bonsawin was the first indigenous Canadian to be appointed to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Ottawa.
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Concurrently while working as a judge, Michelle O'Bonsawin worked on earning a doctorate in law from the University of Ottawa, and successfully defended her thesis on Gladue principles in February 2022.
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In 2017, Michelle O'Bonsawin was the trial judge for the case CM Callow Inc v Zollinger, which applied the general organizing principle of good faith contractual performance from the 2014 Supreme Court of Canada case Bhasin v Hrynew.
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Michelle O'Bonsawin is the first Indigenous person to sit on Canada's highest court.
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Michelle O'Bonsawin is Franco-Ontarian and fluently bilingual, and as of May 2022, was taking lessons in the Abenaki language.