Frank Manning Covert: Fifty Years in the Practice of Law

Fifty Years in the Practice of Law is the engrossing autobiography of a public citizen who worked almost non-stop at a career he both loved and cherished. A power - often behind the scenes - in big business, high finance, and Liberal Party politics, Frank Manning Covert advised Pierre Trudeau to seek the leadership of the federal Liberal Party. He was the brains behind Sun Life's head office move from Montreal to Toronto, introduced labour relations as a practice area for corporate lawyers, and reorganized two universities.

A member of what Peter Newman christened the "Munitions and Supply Gang" in World War II Ottawa, Covert was a protégé of the legendary minister of everything, C.D. Howe, for whom he later helped create the post of chancellor of Dalhousie University. Appointed an officer of the Order of Canada in 1982, Covert's citation noted that he had "given generously of his counsel and leadership to universities, hospitals and charitable organizations" - an understatement typical of the man, who believed that successful work was its own best reward.

Covert was the most prominent and influential Atlantic Canadian lawyer of his time. His memoirs, completed in 1980 on the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of his call to the bar, are a distinguished contribution to the genre of legal biography. Based in part on diaries that he kept and carefully preserved for some sixty years, they provide a significant primary source for the history of the Canadian legal profession in the twentieth century.