Signing up enhances your TCE experience with the ability to save items to your personal reading list, and access the interactive map.
Create AccountThis article was originally published in Maclean’s magazine on December 2, 1996. Partner content is not updated.
On the morning of March 16, 1946, children playing on the mountain that dominates Hamilton stumbled upon a headless and dismembered corpse partly concealed by a rocky outcropping.Murray Sinclair or Mizanay (Mizhana) Gheezhik, meaning “The One Who Speaks of Pictures in the Sky” in the Ojibwe language, lawyer, judge and senator (born in 1951 in Selkirk, MB). Called to the Manitoba Bar in 1980, Sinclair focused primarily on civil and criminal litigation, Indigenous law and human rights. In 1988, he became Manitoba’s first, and Canada’s second, Indigenous judge. Sinclair joined the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2009, before becoming a senator in 2016. He retired from the Senate in 2021 but continues to mentor Indigenous lawyers. The breadth of public service and community work completed by Sinclair demonstrates his commitment to Indigenous peoples in Canada.
