Rose Toodick Boyko is a Canadian First Nations lawyer and retired judge. She was the first aboriginal woman appointed as a superior court judge in Canada. Her mother was Sekani, her father Ukrainian. She is a member of the McLeod Lake Indian Band. Born in 1950, her early memories are of life on the trapline on the Parsnip River near

Finlay Forks Finlay Forks (also called Finlay Junction and sometimes misspelt Findlay), is the confluence of the Finlay River and Parsnip River. The Finlay Bay Recreation Site, on the southeast bank, is about southeast of the former settlement (on the earlier ...

in northern

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

. Her family's trapline was flooded by the construction of the

W. A. C. Bennett Dam The W. A. C. Bennett Dam is a large hydroelectric dam on the Peace River in northern British Columbia, Canada. At high, it is one of the world's highest earth fill dams. Construction of the dam began in 1961 and culminated in 1968. At the dam ...

in 1967. She initially trained as nurse, receiving her R.N. diploma from the Royal Victoria Hospital in 1972. She served in remote Cree communities in the

James Bay James Bay (french: Baie James; cr, ᐐᓂᐯᒄ, Wînipekw, dirty water) is a large body of water located on the southern end of Hudson Bay in Canada. Both bodies of water extend from the Arctic Ocean, of which James Bay is the southernmost par ...

area and then as a critical care nurse at Kingston General Hospital. Deciding to shift her attention to law, she enrolled for pre-law studies in the Saskatchewan Aboriginal Law Program, followed by law school at Queen's University, from which she received her law degree in 1980. She was called to the Ontario bar in 1982 and to the Saskatchewan bar in 1988. She began her legal career with the Department of Justice in Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan. This was followed by an intergovernmental exchange with the Quebec Ministry of Justice in Quebec City from 1989 to 1991. This was followed by a move to the Indian Taxation Secretariat of the Department of Indian Affairs in Ottawa where she remained until she was appointed to the Ontario Superior Court in 1994. She retired from the court in 2008. In 1997 she received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Queens University. In 1999 she received a National Aboriginal Achievement Award, now the Indspire Awards, in the Law and Justice category. In 2008 she was elected to the United Nations Appeals Tribunal. In 2012 she received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.

References

1950 births 20th-century First Nations people 21st-century First Nations people Canadian people of Ukrainian descent First Nations lawyers First Nations judges 21st-century Canadian judges Indspire Awards Judges in Ontario Lawyers in Ontario Living people Sekani people 20th-century Canadian women First Nations women 21st-century Canadian women judges {{Canada-law-bio-stub