The Essex County Law Association was incorporated in April 1884. This was a direct response to the 1879 Convocation’s decision to help fund branch libraries in the county towns. These libraries were meant for the courts and the profession. Interestingly, the first president was not a practitioner but a judge: the Honourable Charles R. Horne, former Mayor of Windsor. The Town of Sandwich was the county seat. The County Court House (Mackenzie Hall) was built there in 1855-1856 by Alexander Mackenzie, the second Prime Minister of Canada.
By 1884, most lawyers practiced in Windsor, leading the Law Society to approve the library’s location there that same year. To fund this new library, the corporation obtained a $147 loan from the Law Society, and each of the original fourteen members contributed $10. The first expenditure for $187 ($6,200.00 in today’s dollars) was for a set of the English Law Reports from 1880 to 1884. We still have those volumes on our shelves, and the service continued until 1983. Over the next 80 years, the library was housed in four separate lawyers’ offices until, in 1963, the courts were relocated to a new County Court House in Windsor’s city core. At that point, the library moved from the law office of Mr. William McKay Wright to the new courthouse.
Mr. Wright was the fourth and last of the Lawyer/Library managers, stepping down as Librarian after 41 years. After his retirement, he was replaced by Murdena MacDonald. In 1979, Anne Mathewman was hired as the first full-time professionally trained librarian and stayed until 1984. Anne went on to serve as the Library Manager of the Toronto Lawyers Association from 1984 to 2010, and later as the Chief Law Librarian at Dalhousie University Law School. Since Anne’s departure, the library has had three professional librarians, with Doug Hewitt as the current librarian. Over the last 142 years, there have been 112 different Presidents, but only nine library managers and six library assistants/technicians.
The library takes up about a quarter of the ground floor of the south-west corner of the Superior Court of Justice. It is a very functional rectangular space, seventy feet long and forty feet wide. The south wall has nine knee-high ceiling windows that look out on Windsor’s City Hall and civic square. When you enter the library, you see seven rows of stacks on the right-hand side. These go from floor to ceiling, holding 4,500 monographs, 8,000 serials, reporters, government documents, and loose-leaf services. Behind the stacks is a boardroom table for small-group meetings and two public-use workstations. On the right-hand side is the library reception area. This area also holds three public workstations, the librarian’s office, and the technicians’ work area. In front of the stacks are seating and worktables for up to twenty patrons.
Our staff has always been the most important asset in the library. The most recent staff member, Cathleen Croshaw, works in the reception area as the first contact for visitors. Her main tasks are to organize association social events and run local continuing education programs. Before joining us, Cathleen worked for 17 years with the Canadian Armed Forces and for 14 years with the Air Force. Later, she was one of the first women selected for crew trials with the Canadian Navy and served for 3 years on HMCS Provider.
Another staff member, Kemala Vranjes, originally trained as a journalist and worked for ten years as a news anchor and editor at the TV station of Bosnia and Herzegovina. She also worked as an official French-language announcer at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Sarajevo. The war brought her and her family to Canada, where she began a second career. For the last 22 years, Kemala has maintained the library collection, cataloged and processed books, and emailed information to ELA members. One job that, in a small way, keeps her connected to her previous life is editing and sending the ELA library newsletter to the ELA membership each month.
Doug Hewitt was hired in 1989 as the solo librarian. At that time, one of his tasks after turning on the lights in the morning was to collect the faxes that had come in overnight on our thermal paper fax machine (one of only two in the legal community) and hand-deliver them to the various law firms in the downtown core. The two things I learned from this experience are: always make sure the library is in good order before starting the day and recognize that introducing new technologies — such as fax machines, Quicklaw, and artificial intelligence —to the profession is an ongoing role and service we provide to the local bar.
Today, The Essex Law Association Library is operated by an elected board of directors of 22 and supported by over 450 members from Essex County. The library provides its services to all Ontario lawyers, their staff, paralegals, articling students, judiciary and courthouse staff. After-hours access can be arranged for members and visiting lawyers. Staff are available during regular hours to answer reference questions, give advice on research and aid in locating and using library materials. All print materials can be borrowed for a short time by members and their staff. Borrowing privileges can be extended to visiting lawyers. The library participates in interlibrary loaning with other Ontario courthouse libraries, including the Great Library. Computers in the library provide access to the LiRN electronic suite of legal resources, including Westlaw Advantage — AI assisted research. Free wireless internet access is also available in the library and throughout the courthouses. Developed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and continues today is our popular curbside service. We strive to provide a friendly, first class, experience to all patrons.