Phil Egan
It seems two Donohues in a courtroom is one too many.
As a boy, Joe Donohue was thrown out of a courtroom. Now, the only person forcing the 70 year-old Ontario Superior Court Justice to leave is his daughter, Sarah.
Since Sarah Donohue began practicing criminal law in Sarnia two years ago, Judge Donohue has occasionally had to leave for Goderich or another Southern Ontario city in his jurisdiction. Conflict of interest rules prevent Sarah from pleading cases in her father’s court.
Joe Donohue, the son of lawyer Bill Donohue and the nephew of lawyer R. John Donohue, attended the former Our Lady of Mercy school, and as a child often popped over to the courthouse, then located on Durand Street. It was a familiar environment, and he remembers once wandering into a divorce trial with a school chum and the judge ordering: “Get those boys out of here.”
That was the very day he decided to become a lawyer like his dad, he said.
Today, Justice Joe Donohue accepts the fact Sarah’s presence in his courtroom forces him on the road, but his pride in her accomplishments is fierce and undeniable.
“She has a real inherent sense of justice,” the judge said.
The extended Donohue family is saturated with lawyers on both sides of the border, with about a dozen in Ontario and Michigan.
The clan has been practicing law in Sarnia for over 100 years, and Aunt Ruth was the city’s first female city councillor.
Joe Donohue articled in Toronto, was called to the bar in 1971 and appointed to bench in 1999.
Twice each year, “Judge Joe of the North” presides over cases in Nunavut, giving him a geographical span of jurisprudence that might be unique in Canadian law.
His daughter, he said, appeared destined for a legal career after rising to defend a group of misbehaving students in her Grade 8 class. But before entering law school in 2010 she spent eight months in Ghana.
“I felt so fortunate in coming from a life of privilege that I needed to experience extreme poverty,” Sarah Donohue said.
She has also worked with mentally challenged youth and disadvantaged children in London, which has added an impressive sense of compassion to her legal career, her dad said.
During her third year of law school Sarah Donohue spent time in Yellowknife, and says she wants to make her own contributions in Canada’s north.
In the meantime, she and her father still enjoy discussing the law — just never in the same courtroom.