Advocate Jan 2014

THE ADVOCATE VOL. 72 PART 1 JANUARY 2014
131
LETTERS TO
THE EDITOR
By R.C. Tino Bella*
Dear Sir,
Re: New Books & Media
(2013) 71 Advocate 931
I was most pleased to read the
review of P.W. Bridgman’s collection
of short stories in the November
2013 Advocate. Roberta Rich,
whose own work is positively
assessed in the same issue, provides
the insight of a successful
author to good effect.
The short story has long been
undervalued, in my opinion. One
hopes that the vault of Alice Munro
to Nobel limelight may initiate a
welcome change. The attention of
the Advocate may not have the
same international impact [Says
who? We’re under new management!
—Ed.], but it serves to bring focus
and no doubt encouragement to a
skilled and subtly nuanced practitioner
of this lapidary-like art.
Yours truly,
Michael G. Coleman
Duncan
t t t t t
Dear Sir,
Has the time not come for
reforming the procedure relating
to indictable offences? Is it still
necessary to have preliminary
inquiries?
Our current system of preliminary
inquiries, followed by trials
in the superior courts, has its origins
in the days when neither prosecutors
nor magistrates had legal
training and when the Crown was
under no obligation to disclose its
case to the defence before the hearing
commenced. It enabled the
defence to know what case it had to
meet in the superior court, and,
theoretically, enabled the magistrate
to dismiss a case without
merit.
Those considerations no longer
apply.
Preliminary inquiries greatly
delay the conclusion of proceedings.
They cause both the accused
and the witnesses for the prosecution
unnecessary stress, and add