A fish oil factory worker who rose to become an internationally recognised jurist and judge of the Supreme Court of Canada, will retire this autumn, leaving one of the most controversial records of any justice in the history of the high court.

Claire L'Heureux-Dub reaches the court's mandatory retirement age in September. In the next few weeks, she will be hearing her last case.

The departure of L'Heureux-Dub, hailed by many on the political left as ''the Great Dissenter'', will leave ''a gaping hole on the Supreme Court,'' said Constance Backhouse, professor of law at the University of Ottawa.

"She's been a path-breaking decision-maker," said Backhouse. "She promotes social justice. That's been the big motivator in her life.''

"This is not somebody who can be replaced easily. The replacement needs to be not just someone who is female, but also someone with an exemplary record in social justice," Backhouse added.

Bonnie Diamond, executive director of the National Association of Women and the Law, which threw a party for L'Heureux-Dub at National Arts Centre here earlier this month, said "she very clearly took not only her legal analysis, but her analysis of substantive equality to her judgments.''

"Other justices do that as well, but she's been very, very clear in her decisions,'' said Diamond.

''Some of the language that she used and some of the clarity that she brought very much captures the reality of women's experience, and she puts it in a way that's very clear and understandable by the public."

Promoting own bias

L'Heureux-Dub's activism has drawn complaints, however, from groups like the anti-feminist Real Women, which filed complaints to the Canadian Judicial Council charging the Supreme Court judge failed in her duty "to impartially apply the law and decide cases in accordance with their legal merit.''

"She has consistently used her appointment to the Supreme Court to promote her own bias — in particular, her personal belief in and support of feminist ideology," the group wrote in its complaint.

Born in Quebec City in 1927, L'Heureux-Dub was appointed to the Superior Court of Quebec in Feb 1973.

Six years later, she joined the Quebec Court of Appeal. On April 15, 1987, then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney appointed her to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Her most famous decision, in Canada v Baker, allowed undocumented, or ''illegal'', immigrants who also were parents of Canadian-born children to remain in the country unless they had committed serious criminal offences.

"Because they necessarily relate to people of diverse backgrounds from different cultures, races and continents, immigration decisions demand sensitivity and understanding by those making them," she wrote.

Her most famous fight came in 1999, when she confronted Alberta Court of Appeal justice John McClung, who had sided with a man accused of sexual assault. Judge McClung had said the conduct of the defendant, Steve Ewanchuk, was "less criminal than hormonal."

"It must be pointed out the complainant did not present herself [to the accused] in a bonnet and crinolines," McClung wrote in his ruling. The implication was that Ewanchuk's victim in some way had aroused him to the assault.

Ewanchuck had forced himself upon a 17-year-old woman during a job interview. He had continued to grope her after she had told him several times to stop. The appeals court had acquitted Ewanchuk of sexual assault but in Feb1999, the Supreme Court of Canada convicted Ewanchuk and sent the case back to the Alberta courts for sentencing.

"Complainants should be able to rely on a system free from myths and stereotypes, and on a judiciary whose impartiality is not compromised by these biased assumptions," L'Heureux-Dub wrote at the time.

Controversial letter

McClung retorted, in a letter to a Toronto newspaper: "Whether the Ewanchuk case will promote the fundamental right of every accused Canadian to a fair trial will have to be left to the academics. Yet there may be one immediate benefit. The personal convictions of the judge, delivered again from her judicial chair, could provide a plausible explanation for the disparate (and growing) number of male suicides being reported in the province of Quebec."

The letter caused uproar because L'Heureux-Dub's husband Arthur, a metallurgy professor, committed suicide in 1978.

Her years of outspokenness earned her recognition overseas. In 1998, she served as president of the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists and was awarded the Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award by the American Bar Association Commission on Women in the Profession.

Back home, however, L'Heureux-Dub had begun to find herself increasingly isolated from the Supreme Court's mainstream, which had begun to drift further to what it perceived as the political centre under Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin.

A recent study by Peter McCormick, a University of Lethbridge political scientist and longtime Supreme Court watcher, described her as "isolated at one edge of the court."

L'Heureux-Dub also drew the anger of conservatives with her high-profile campaign for gay and lesbian rights.

"There is much work to be done," she told a 2000 law conference in London. "The day has not yet come when all laws in Canada recognize same-sex partnerships as equally worthy and valuable as those between members of the opposite sex."

That speech moved Real Women to file its complaint with the judicial council. (IPS)