Douglas Stollery

Douglas Stollery is a lawyer and community volunteer whose philanthropic efforts, along with his work on groundbreaking human rights litigation, have helped create a safer and more just place for all Canadians. His leadership of numerous non-profit organizations, including the Stollery Charitable Foundation, has furthered the fight against poverty, disease and discrimination around the world.

Douglas Robert Stollery was born in Edmonton on August 1, 1953, and grew up alongside 2 older sisters, Carol and Janet. Their parents, Bob and Shirley, were raised during the Depression in very modest circumstances, lived through World War II, and like so many of their generation, worked hard to strengthen their community and build a good life for their family.

When he was in Grade 10 at Victoria Composite High School, Doug applied for and won an Alberta government scholarship to attend, with students from around the world, the United World College of the Atlantic – a boarding school in Wales dedicated to promoting international understanding. This proved to be a life-changing experience.

On his return to Alberta, Doug began thinking about his career, and after a summer job at an Edmonton law firm he decided to pursue law. Doug obtained a LLB from the University of Alberta in 1976, clerked for Supreme Court of Canada justice Ronald Martland (AOE 1984) and obtained a postgraduate degree from Harvard Law School. In 1980, he joined the Edmonton firm of Reynolds Mirth Richards and Farmer, where he built a specialty in construction law. Later in his career, Doug would join PCL Constructors, Canada’s largest construction company, as general counsel, corporate secretary and a member of the board of directors.

Doug’s law practice largely involved negotiating and drafting complex construction contracts and looking to develop legal structures that would help to deliver better results for owners, contractors and the community.

Given his professional focus to that point, Doug may have seemed an unlikely candidate to appear before the Supreme Court and argue one of the most important human rights cases in Canadian legal history.

Doug first heard about the Vriend case through a chance meeting with Sheila Greckol, an old law-school acquaintance. Delwin Vriend, a gay man, had been fired in 1991 from his job as a lab coordinator at The King’s College in Edmonton because of his sexual orientation. But his attempt at filing a complaint with the Alberta Human Rights Commission was refused, as Alberta’s human rights code provided no protection against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Greckol had taken up Vriend’s cause pro bono and was preparing an appeal against the Alberta government, challenging the law under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Despite Doug’s lack of experience with Charter issues, Greckol felt it was important to have his perspective as a gay man represented on the legal team and quickly recruited him to serve as co-counsel.

The case wound up before the Supreme Court of Canada, and the urgency with which Doug presented his closing argument reflected his personal investment in the case. “I wasn’t nervous,” he recalls, “but it was just such an emotional moment for me, I thought I might cry. When the justices and opposing counsel are talking about ‘these people’… well, I'm one of these people. And this case is going to impact me and my friends in a truly fundamental way. I kept thinking, ‘Keep it together, Doug, because you know this is your shot.’”

The Vriend team had little in the way of legal precedent to rely on; there had never been a successful gay rights case before the Supreme Court of Canada. Remarkably, though, the Court found unanimously that Alberta’s refusal to include legal protections against sexual orientation discrimination had breached the Charter, a victory that teed up further advances in 2SLGBTQ rights, including rights for same-sex couples and the legalization of same-sex marriage.

“Maybe another case involving gay rights would have come along at some point and been successful,” Doug says. “But a finding against us would have set a precedent that would have made it more difficult for that to happen. And so Canadian society would have been much different, too.”

The Vriend case was far from the only thing occupying Doug’s time during this period. He was a prominent figure in the legal community, serving as president of the Canadian Bar Association – Alberta Branch and taking on board positions with the Legal Education Society of Alberta and the Alberta Law Reform Institute.

He was also giving his time to organizations such as the Stephen Lewis Foundation, Grant MacEwan College (now MacEwan University) and the Stollery Children’s Hospital Foundation. He was the founding president and chair of the Victoria School Foundation for the Arts and spent nearly 10 years on the board of CARE Canada, raising funds to fight poverty and achieve social justice around the world. He provided legal advice to Dignity Network Canada and ARC Foundation and served on the board of the Certified General Accountants’ Association of Alberta. He even briefly dipped a toe into the sports world as part of the board for the Edmonton 2001 World Championships in Athletics.

In 1994, Doug’s parents launched the Stollery Charitable Foundation. Doug joined the board and would become its president in 2011. An endowed fund, the Foundation provides grants every year to the community, primarily in the areas of health, education, poverty alleviation and human rights. “We don't take the perspective that we know better than those who are doing the hard work on the ground,” Doug says. “We trust that they have the best ideas about how to find solutions. I think that’s helped us build strong relationships with charities and other funders. And I think we've been a bit of an incentive for others to join in and help in the charitable sector. It's challenging work, to be sure, but I think that we have made a difference in society.”

In 2016, after serving the University of Alberta as a sessional lecturer in the Faculty of Law, a director of the Alberta Law Reform Institute, a member of the Faculty of Law advisory committee, a supporter of the Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services and Chancellor of St. Stephen’s College, Doug was selected as Chancellor of the University of Alberta. This also included serving as a member of the university’s board of governors and chair of the university’s Senate. He saw the role as an opportunity to develop closer ties between the university and the non-academic world. “The university is part of the community and ultimately serves the community,” he says, “and it seemed important to build a strong relationship with the nonprofit sector. I have experience there through the Stollery Charitable Foundation, so it was a chance to bring those two worlds together.”

Doug has received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal (2012) and the King Charles III Coronation Medal (2025), and he became a member of the Order of Canada in 2020. His many other recognitions include the Suzanne Mah Award from the Alberta Human Rights Commission and the Canadian General Counsel Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a founding fellow of the Canadian College of Construction Lawyers and serves as King’s Counsel. His honorary degrees include a Bachelor of Arts and a Doctor of the University from MacEwan University and a Doctor of Laws from the University of Alberta. He also received a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Alberta.

Doug continues to practice law part time as an arbitrator in Edmonton while enjoying much of his time on the west coast with his husband, Scott Graham. His latest project has been serving as executive producer of the 2024 documentary Pride vs. Prejudice: The Delwin Vriend Story, directed by actor, playwright and gay historian Darrin Hagen. “We're still working like mad on it,” he says, “trying to get it out to as many people as we can. It’s been a real labour of love. It’s taken an enormous amount of time, but I've loved every single minute of it.”