Abstract
Thomas R. Berger practices law in Vancouver, British Columbia. From 1974 to 1977 he served as the commissioner of the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry. His report, Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland (1977), recommended a ten—year moratorium on the building of a pipeline so that native land claims could be settled in the interim. He is no longer opposed to the construction of a gas pipeline as land claims of the Inuvaluit, the Dene, and the Metis of the Mackenzie Valley have now been settled.
In July 1983 he was appointed head of the Alaska Native Review Commission which was sponsored by the Inuit Circumpolar Conference on the effects of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. The findings of that inquiry are published in Village Journey: The Report of the Alaska Native Review Commission (1985). Mr. Berger is also the author of Fragile Freedoms: Human Rights and Dissent in Canada (1981). He represented the constituency of Vancouver—Burrard as an MP in 1962—63 and was later MLA and leader of the B.C. New Democrats. He served as justice of the Supreme Court of British Columbia from 1973 to 1983.