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Pamela Cross

making the law work for women & children

YWCA Toronto women of distinction award 2006:
legal reform

Pamela Cross is the Legal Director at METRAC, a Toronto community agency committed to ending violence against women and children.

Ms. Cross is equally approachable and wise as a colleague as she is sharp and determined on the finer points of legal education and law reform.  Generous with her time and knowledge, warm-hearted and blessed with a wickedly dry wit, Ms Cross has many admirers both in legal reform circles and among isolated women experiencing violence whose lives have been literally saved by her interventions. Ms. Cross receives the 2006 Woman of Distinction Award for Legal Reform.

Called to the Ontario Bar, 1994, with an LL.B, from Queen’s University, 1993, and a B.A., from the University of Guelph in 1975, Ms. Cross is an accomplished lawyer whose dedication to improving women’s access to the full benefit of the law has inspired a unique career of popularizing legal concepts. 

Ms. Cross has been a true champion and advocate for abused women and community agencies for whom the intrusion and necessity of the law can seem baffling at best, and another form of oppression at worst. It is her style, as much as her message that sets her apart. M.s Cross doesn’t weigh in with high-priced litigation and carefully guarded legalese.  Instead, she provides sound, legible and transparent legal interpretation anonymously and free of charge through print materials, websites, training and public speaking. And in the process, she has played a crucial role in developing and disseminating a legal analysis of the perils facing women experiencing and trying to escape domestic violence.

Sole legal mind behind the Ontario Women’s Justice Network, Ms. Cross has created a unique information vehicle for marginalized and isolated women without access to private legal advice.  The OWJN is a plain language website that guides women through the arcane and difficult concepts that govern their lives as they decide whether or not to leave an abuser, make safety plans for themselves and their children and make difficult decisions about whether to become involved with the criminal justice system. Ms. Cross hears from women across the province each day. Through their experiences she has a sound understanding of the unseen barriers to justice and safety that women face in spite of good laws and good intensions. Ms. Cross takes seriously the responsibility she has taken on to answer the questions that women tentatively send to her by e-mail. She answers each one personally, sometimes staying at her computer into the wee hours of the morning after long days of regular work, in order to make a timely intervention in a life and death situation. 

Ms. Cross has brought clear thinking and compassion to some major areas of family law reform. She has an extensive knowledge of what can go wrong when the realities of the isolated, racialized, poor and disabled are not imbedded in the letter and spirit of the law and the institutions that interpret it

The reform of Custody and Access law has seen her work as a tireless advocate along side her admiring colleagues on the Ontario Network on Child Custody and Access, and as the Coordinator of the National Association of Women in the Law’s National Advocacy Campaign.

As co-chair of the No Religious Arbitration Steering Committee (with Alia Hogben of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women), Ms. Cross gave sound legal and political advice throughout the successful campaign to have the Premier of Ontario declare that there would be no religious arbitration in matters of Family Law in Ontario. In this capacity, she has been a leader in the struggle to ensure that equality rights granted through the Charter are not given up through private agreements in the area of law that most affects women’s daily rights: the Family Law Act. Many in a similar role might have been pleased simply with the success of such a campaign. But it was evident throughout that for Ms. Cross, building relationships with allies and foes alike, and doing the work ethically, humanely and with the rights of those most marginalized in mind was at least as important as the outcome. 

Ms. Cross’ nomination came accompanied by testimonies from young women lawyers who have been mentored by her, and whose moral compasses have been set working under her tutelage.  She is the mother of two adult children and a committed and involved grandmother of two (ages 7 months and 4 1/2 years). Pamela Cross lives with her partner on 130 acres of rural land on which they grow much of their own food organically, and share labour and harvest with members of their community.  Her 11-year role as President of the Board of Kingston Interval House for abused women, her work at Elizabeth Fry, Kingston, as a sessional instructor at Queens University Law School and four years in private practice working in Family Law and Child Protection, round out the picture of a woman who thrives on building possibility and whose every fiber is engaged in improving the lives of other women and girls.

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