Lamer practised in partnership at the firm of Cutler, Lamer, Bellemare and Associates and was a full professor in the Faculty of Law, Université de Montréal, where he was also a lecturer in criminology. On December 19, 1969, at the age of 36, he was appointed to the Quebec Superior Court and to the Queen's Bench of the province of Quebec. In 1978, he was elevated to the Quebec Court of Appeal and was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada in 1980. Brian Mulroney named Lamer as Chief Justice on July 1, 1990. Justice Bertha Wilson became the first woman appointed to the Ontario Court of Appeal in 1976 and to the Supreme Court of Canada in 1982. Justice Lamer refused to rise from his chair along with the rest of his colleagues when Justice Wilson entered the conference room for her first judicial conference. On January 7, 2000, Lamer took an unexpected early retirement after having served as Chief Justice for ten years. Several years after his death, former judges spoke about the situation surrounding his retirement. According to a 2011 article in The Globe and Mail, in February 1999, a "delegation of three veteran judges" including former Supreme Court judge John C. Major, selected by their colleagues met with Lamer to tell him that "his performance was not what it had been up until this time." To which he immediately responded, "Well, then I'll resign." Lamer finally agreed to resign following a second meeting with Justices Major, Peter Cory and Charles Gonthier in the spring of 1999. He announced in an August 1999 talk to the Canadian Bar Association, that he would be resigning from the Supreme Court in January 2000. After he retired, Lamer joined a large law firm, Stikeman Elliott, in a senior advisory role and was appointed Associate Professor of Law at the Université de Montréal in 2000. He was appointed Communications Security Establishment Commissioner on June 19, 2003, a position he held until August 1, 2006. He also served as Honorary Colonel of the Governor General's Foot Guards. In a CBC interview, Lamer described how the Supreme Court of Canada was transformed following the 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms under then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau which expanded the role of the judiciary. Lamer described it as "somewhat of a shock to see their job description changed so fundamentally." Eugene Meehan, who was Lamer's first executive legal officer at the Supreme Court of Canada described Lamer as "a foundational builder", who was "one of the key architects of how courts interpret" the 1982 Charter"..."building on the work of his predecessor as chief justice, Brian Dickson." In March 2003, the government of Newfoundland and Labrador asked Lamer to head a high-profile inquiry into several wrongful convictions in Newfoundland specifically to oversee an inquiry into how the criminal justice system dealt with three discredited murder convictions. The hearings lasted about three years. Lamer was tasked to conduct an investigation into the death of Catherine Carroll and the circumstances surrounding the resulting criminal proceedings against Gregory Parsons, and an investigation into the death of Brenda Young and the circumstances surrounding the resulting criminal proceedings against Randy Druken. Lamer was also asked to inquire as to why Ronald Dalton's appeal of his murder conviction took eight years before it was brought on for a hearing in the Court of Appeal.
Personal life
Born in Montreal, Quebec, Lamer served in the Royal Canadian Artillery from 1950 to 1954 and in the Canadian Intelligence Corps from 1954 to 1960. In 1956, he graduated in law from the Université de Montréal and was called to the Bar of Quebec in 1957. In 1987, he married Danièle Tremblay-Lamer, who was later appointed a judge on the Federal Court. During his tenure he was well known among the bench to be a frequent consumer of alcohol, especially wine, and have various drug prescriptions to deal with his declining health. Various commentators and even other judges have vocally critiqued these habits of his as reason for him to resign from the court. He died in Ottawa of a cardiac condition on November 24, 2007, and was entombed at the Notre Dame des Neiges Cemetery in Montreal.
