Peter H Howden

I took courses in history before selecting a career, both my BA and my Juris D. are from the University of Toronto. Since then ,I have had three careers: i) practicing law mainly doing litigation mostly involving people with injuries in motor vehicle acccidents , defending people charged with criminal offences, and representing others before tribunals including workers compensation, planning law where I acted for people who had objections to major projects like an apartment complex or a shopping center or fast food restaurants near residential areas; ii)a second career as a member and Vice-Chair of a tribunal whose principal work was hearing municipal planning cases where there were conflicts between developer and neighbors, and iii) graduating from the Ontario Municipal Board to the Superior Court of Justice in Ontario,Canada. I have recently retired after 22 years on the court. I guess the largest memory from all the criminal , family and civil trials I presided over, were several homicide trials.

An interesting case was my first one. A husband and wife were in the midst of family court proceedings. The husband became enraged by the proposals of his wife. Outside Family Court ,he was becoming visibly angry. Three days later, with his 10 year old son in his car , he went to meet his wife at her parents' home . She was not there. He became furious, grabbed a hammer, and killed his father in law and severely injured his mother in law , bashing in their heads. There wereno witnesses except his son. The mother in law had little memory of it. At trial, the husband pleaded not guilty , saying he either did not do it, or if he did, he was provoked by his wife's conduct. The husband denied he had an explosive temper and was very mild and polite throughout until the prosecutor started cross-examining him about his wife and the proposals she had made for their home and support . The prosecutor kept at him about his denials of what had happened, that he had no temper, etc., all was calm until she asked one question too many for him about him being a controlling person.Suddenly the quiet in the court-room was shattered. his hand became a fist, he smashed it down on the lectern in front of him and shouted his denial , lost his temper but only for about 3 seconds. This was followed by absolute silence as the prosecutor let the jury take in what had just happened.The man knew then what he had done. For that moment, he showed what he was capable of and his pathological need for control. It spoke volumes. He was found guilty.HIs son had to testify to what happened, in specialcircumstances in a separate room connected to the courtroom . It was a very sad, dramatic case.

Since then I decided to write this book because of my continuing interest in history, whether we can learn from history, and what happens when the wrong lessons are learned or the session from prior events is mistaken. As well, I was fascinated by what may have been, if President Kennedy had lived to serve a second term. Would the course of the war have remained the same or would it have been quite different. This exercise in deconstructing history and in comparing decisions about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq led to a discovery of a flaw or built in bias in reasoning about the use of force or finding a less damaging way to proceed that has lessons for future elections. The title of my book Blood and Glass refers to the double meaning of blood - basis of a claim to the English crown or the result of the continuing wars during the late Middle ages, and a glass lens that can make things that are not clear become visible, like the ideas that each of the five leaders profiled in the book brought to their work.

I live in Barrie, Ontario, Canada with my wife . My two children are , I can't believe this , middle-aged, and they are doing well.

My website is at peterhhowden,com. My book is availableonAmazon and most booksellers throughout North America.