Portrait of Retired Judge Anne E. Crawford Unveiled

It is fitting that the portrait of retired Provincial Court Judge Anne E. Crawford is among the first to be hung in the new Bridgewater courthouse on High Street. She was a part of the courthouse’s planning committee from its inception. She presided full time in the new building for just a few months before retiring. But she has worked in Bridgwater, serving Lunenburg and Queens County, for 18 years; “eighteen happy years”, she says.

Judge Crawford officially retired on September 30, 2009, but continued to work part time for another year.

On Friday, December 2, 2011, a small group of her former colleagues on the Bench and members of the courthouse staff gathered in the Provincial Court courtroom to mark her retirement and unveil her portrait. It depicts Judge Crawford with her trusty computer, an early generation laptop (circa 1995). The portrait has been hung in that same first floor courtroom.

Anne Crawford was born in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia but was raised in all three Maritime Provinces. Her father was a Baptist minister.  

She started school in West Jeddore, Nova Scotia then attended elementary and junior high in Hampton, New Brunswick and finished at Riverside Consolidated School in Riverside, Albert County, New Brunswick.

From there, she moved on to Teachers' College in Fredericton. It was the early 1960’s, the beginning of Canada’s bilingualism-biculturalism era. So, she enrolled in a specialized program designed to produce bilingual teachers for English speaking students.  In 1967, she graduated from Acadia University with a B.A., majoring in French and philosophy.

After teaching for a few years near Bridgewater, she attended Dalhousie Law School, graduating in 1979. She was called to the bar in 1980, sworn in by the Honourable Constance Glube (who was a Judge at the time but in later years became Chief Justice of Nova Scotia).

After practicing law for a short time in Bedford, she moved back to the South Shore; “as quickly as I could”, she says. and practiced with Gerald Freeman, Q.C. (he later became the Honourable Gerald Freeman, Justice of the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal).

Judge Anne Crawford was appointed to the Bench in January of 1991 and sat as a Provincial Court Judge in Bridgewater for the next two decades until she fully retired in December of 2010.

Anne Crawford and her husband, Michael, still live on the South Shore where, she says, she is “thoroughly enjoying my retirement”.