Emmett Matthew Hall (November 29, 1898 – November 12, 1995) was a Canadian lawyer, civil liberties advocate, Supreme Court of Canada judge and public policy advocate. He is considered one of the fathers of the Canadian system of Medicare, along with his fellow Saskatchewanian, Tommy Douglas. Early life Hall was born in Saint-Colomban, Quebec, the fourth of eleven children of James Hall and Alice Shea. His parents were descendants of generations of impoverished farmers of Irish descent in the Saint-Colomban area. Seeking a better life, his family moved to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in 1910, when Hall was age 12, to take over a dairy farm. The Halls were Roman Catholics, and Emmett served as an altar boy at Saint Paul's Cathedral in Saskatoon. Hall was in the audience on July 29, 1910, when Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier laid the cornerstone for the University of Saskatchewan. Hall studied law at the College of Law at the University of Saskatchewan, putting himself through by teaching French in local schools. One of his classmates was John Diefenbaker, future Prime Minister of Canada. He received his law degree from the University of Saskatchewan in 1919. Hall attempted to enlist in 1917, but was rejected as medically unfit, because he had been born blind in one eye. In 1922, Hall married Isabel Parker, a legal stenographer from Humboldt, Saskatchewan. They had two children, John Hall, who became a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Marian Wedge, who like her father, entered the legal profession and was appointed to the Saskatchewan Court of Queen's Bench. Legal career Hall was called to the bar in 1922 and spent the next thirty-five years in private practice. He became a leading litigator in the Saskatchewan bar, with a reputation for being hard-nosed. In 1928, at 29 years of age, Hall appeared in the Supreme Court of Canada as counsel for the appellants in Glenn and Babb v. Schofield. His clients were farmers who were being sued by the owner of some free-range horses. The horses had eaten a large amount of grain which had spilled from the farmers' grain bins. One of the horses died from over-eating, and others were sickened. The Supreme Court ruled that Hall's clients had taken reasonable steps to store their grain from spillage and dismissed the action against them. The case was the first of Hall's six appearances in the Supreme Court. Hall