World Refugee Awareness Month: Rosalie Abella — from a Displaced Persons Camp to Canada’s Highest Court

June is Refugee Awareness month. The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), released data in June of 2025 that stated over 122 million people—one in every 67 individuals—are forcibly displaced. This number has doubled in only the last 10 years. Then, as it is today, Canada is seen around the world as a beacon of hope in their journey toward safety. Every time there is a worldwide crisis, we see people arriving in Calgary with hope in their back pocket.

Today we highlight once such story - Canadian Rosalie Silberman Abella

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Rosalie Silberman Abella’s life is a striking example of how a refugee childhood can shape a lifelong commitment to justice. Born on July 1, 1946 in a displaced persons camp near Stuttgart, Germany to Polish Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, Abella came to Canada with her family in 1950. She went on to study at the University of Toronto (BA, LLB), build a distinguished legal career focused on human rights and equality, and was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada on October 4, 2004 — becoming the first Jewish woman and one of the first people who had arrived in Canada as a refugee to sit on that bench. She retired from the Court on July 1, 2021.

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Early life and the formative experience of displacement Abella’s parents survived Nazi concentration camps; after the war they worked in the Allied zone helping other displaced persons and then sought resettlement. When they applied to emigrate to Canada, Abella’s father — a law trained man back in Poland — was told his legal training was not a “useful” skill and that he could not practise law in Canada until he became a citizen. Abella has described how hearing that family story as a child crystallized her own sense of purpose.

"The world was supposed to learn three lessons from Nuremberg: One, indifference is injustice’s incubator. Two, it’s not just what you stand for, it’s what you stand up for. And three, we must never forget how the world looks to those who are vulnerable." - Rosalie Abella

On that theme she has reflected in public remarks: “It is hard to be a refugee, and it is twice as hard to be a refugee and a lawyer.” And of her motivation to enter the law she recalled, “The moment I heard that story as a child... I decided to become one.” Those lines—spoken in public addresses and commencement remarks—connect her personal origin to the career she chose.

A legal career shaped by equality and human rights Called to the Ontario bar in 1972, Abella quickly moved into public service and the judiciary. At 29 she was appointed to the Ontario Family Court in 1976 (becoming one of its youngest judges and the first pregnant appointee), later served on the Ontario Court of Appeal (appointed 1992), and chaired the 1984 Royal Commission on Equality in Employment. That commission coined and developed the practical framework of “employment equity” to reduce systemic barriers for women, Indigenous peoples, visible minorities and people with disabilities — a concept that has had lasting influence in Canada and abroad. In 2004 Prime Minister Paul Martin nominated her to the Supreme Court of Canada; her judgments and speeches frequently draw on international law and human rights reasoning.

“I was raised with a sense of obligation to prove that Canada was right to let us in.” - Rosalie Abella

Refugee roots and a sense of obligation Abella has often linked her family’s refugee background to a sense of gratitude and duty toward Canada. In public conversations about Holocaust remembrance and citizenship she has said, “I was raised with a sense of obligation to prove that Canada was right to let us in,” describing how her parents’ gratitude and resilience informed her outlook and work on behalf of vulnerable groups. That conviction — that a country’s welcome must be repaid through service to others and defence of rights — is a throughout in her speeches and judgments.

Jurisprudential legacy and public impact Abella’s work spans family law, human rights adjudication, and major contributions to equality jurisprudence. Her Royal Commission report framed employment equity as a structural remedy to systemic disadvantage; on the bench she wrote opinions and dissents that frequently engaged comparative and international materials to interpret equality and rights questions. Beyond law reports, she has been an outspoken public intellectual—delivering commencement addresses, participating in human rights dialogues, and speaking about the lessons of the Holocaust for contemporary legal and civic life.

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