partition supporting UNSCOP's majority report which led to the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. He became a supporter of the state of Israel once it was created in 1948 and visited in 1959 to dedicate a forest in Jerusalem named in his honour. Rand's meeting with William Lovell Hull, a fellow Canadian, changed Rand's understanding of Zionism. Rand became the central and most influential swing vote on UNSCOP in favour of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine and the eventual creation of the State of Israel. Assessment He has been described as 'probably the greatest judge in Canada's history' and 'perhaps the greatest exponent of the rule of law in the history of the Supreme Court of Canada'. Biographer William Kaplan describes Rand as "an intolerant bigot" who disliked French Canadians, Catholics, Jews and Canadians who weren't of British stock. When his sister married an Acadian, Rand refused to talk to her for 30 years. Nevertheless, as a judge, Rand was a civil libertarian who struck down restrictive covenants that barred property from being sold or rented to Jews or non-whites, acknowledged the rights of Japanese Canadians who were being interned as enemy aliens during World War II, defended the rights to free speech of the Communist Party of Canada when it was banned by the Canadian government under the War Measures Act as well as the rights of Jehovah's Witnesses being persecuted under Quebec's Padlock Law. During his tenure as dean of the University of Western Ontario's law school he was reluctant to hire a Jewish applicant claiming that a small town like London, Ontario could not abide "too many Jews". He would complain regularly about people whose names ended with vowels. Kaplan explained this contradiction in describing Rand as a person with a "first rate mind but a third rate temperament". Further reading References External links Ivan Rand and the UNSCOP Papers Supreme Court of Canada biography 1884 births 1969 deaths Canadian university and college faculty deans Companions of the Order of Canada Harvard Law School alumni Justices of the Supreme Court of Canada Mount Allison University alumni New Brunswick Liberal Association MLAs People from Moncton Canadian Zionists People of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict University of Western Ontario faculty