Duff, Hon. Lyman P.
Hon. Lyman P. Duff, a justice of the supreme court of the province of British Columbia, and one of the abler representatives of a bar which numbers many men of talent, was born in Meadfield, Ontario, on the 7th of January, 1865, and is descended from Scotch ancestry. His father, the Rev. Charles Duff, was born in England, in which country he acquired his education and ordained to the ministry of the Congregational church. When a young man he crossed the Atlantic to Ontario, where he formed the acquaintance of Miss Isabelle Johnson, a native of the Dominion, whom he made his wife. For many years he devoted his time and energies to the active work of the church but has now retired from the ministry and resides in Ontario, in the seventieth year of his age.
Judge Duff, the only member of the family residing in British Columbia, obtained his literary education in Toronto University, where he won the degree of Bachelor of Arts upon his graduation of the class of 1886, and in 1890 the same institution conferred upon him the degree of Bachelor of Law, when he had qualified for admission to the bar. He entered upon the practice of his profession in Ontario in 1893 and he came to Victoria in 1895. In less than ten years he has been elevated to the supreme bench. In his law practice his success came soon because his equipment was unusually good. Along with those qualities indispensable to the lawyer, a keen, rapid, logical mind plus the business sense, and a ready capacity for hard work, he brought to the starting point of his legal career certain rarer gifts — eloquence of language and a strong personality. An excellent presence, an earnest, dignified manner, marked strength of character, a thorough grasp of the law, and the ability to accurately apply its principles are factors in his effectiveness as an advocate, and on the bench his course has shown him to be the peer of older justices of the court of last resort.
Judge Duff was married in 198 to Miss Elizabeth Bird, a native of Ontario, and they have one of the delightful homes which adorn Victoria. Mr. Duff is a member of the Church of England and he attends its services and contributes to its support. During his residence in British Columbia he has won warm personal friendship as well as high professional regard, and his position socially and at the bar is a merited tribute to his worth and talents.
R. E. Gosnell, A History of British Columbia, (Vancouver, B. C.: Lewis Publishing Co., 1906). pp. 721-722.