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| Ron Dalton |
His was a life of extraordinary suffering, yet his life experiences did not leave him bitter nor could the adversities he suffered overcome his strength of spirit. As a young man, he suffered the tragic loss of most of his immediate family in a tragic house fire in his hometown of Saint John, N.B. That tragedy left a permanent mark on Wally and coloured his outlook on life, which could be summed up by his philosophy of taking things as they came one day at a time.
He came from a tough working-class neighbourhood, and he became a dedicated part of the hardworking and rough-living community where he found himself alone at a young age and forced to make his way in the world. While he did not have a lot of formal education in his early years, he learned self-reliance at an early age and that trait stayed with him throughout his life. Little did he know, in those early days, how much he would have to depend on his self-reliance through the difficult years ahead and how invaluable his self-preservation lessons would become.
A man of few, well-chosen, words, Wally would occasionally confide that his young daughter was his proudest accomplishment even though he recognized his lack of parenting skills. The life he was trying to build with his daughter came to a crashing halt in the mid-1980s when he was accused of being involved in a brutal homicide along with a friend from his old neighbourhood. It was indeed a brutal killing but Wally and his friend had absolutely no involvement in the crime, although the authorities pursued them relentlessly. After two trials, Wally and his friend were convicted of the crime and handed life sentences, which would take 40 years to overturn, ending only earlier this year in their acquittals.
Wally was not the main target of the deeply flawed police investigation and prosecution that led to their convictions. In fact, he was offered the opportunity to walk away from the charges if he would only implicate his friend. Wally refused to say he had seen something he had not seen nor would he state he had heard anything he had not heard. He paid dearly for sticking resolutely to the truth, it cost him 40 years of his freedom, a full half of his life. We all like to think we would have the strength of character Wally demonstrated in those circumstances, but I can safely say very few could adhere to such a moral code.
I served several years of a life sentence alongside Wally and his friend before my own wrongful conviction was overturned, and I was privileged to watch as both of those men carried themselves with dignity and honour despite their desperate circumstances. I watched Wally become his own advocate for justice years before there was an organization such as Innocence Canada fighting to free the wrongly convicted. Wally served time with Donald Marshall Jr. and David Milgaard during his 40-year ordeal, not ever knowing if or when he would join their ranks as proven wrongfully convicted individuals.
As a co-president of Innocence Canada, I am grateful to our dedicated staff and volunteers who led the fight to finally allow Wally and his friend to stand before the Chief Justice of the New Brunswick Court of King’s Bench on Jan. 4 of this year and be formally acquitted. It was the culmination of a 40-year journey and a long overdue triumph of truth over injustice; I was proud to have shared 34 years of that journey with them.
Wally leaves a mark on the fabric of the Canadian justice system in our country by raising awareness of the scourge of wrongful convictions, but his true legacy is the example of his strength of character and friendship. His passing is a sad end to a difficult, but honourable, life.
In 1988, Ron Dalton was a 32-year-old bank manager when he was wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife. It took the next 12 years to prove his innocence, restore his freedom and return him to his family, including the couple’s three children. Since that ordeal, Dalton has tried to reintegrate into family life and earn a living, and he is co-chair of Innocence Canada, a non-profit organization working to free other wrongly convicted individuals.
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