The Hon. Maryka Omatsu

In 1992, Maryka Omatsu was the first East Asian woman appointed a judge in Canada. Before her appointment, she practiced human rights, environmental, indigenous and criminal law; worked for Government; taught law in Toronto, China, and Japan, and chaired the Ontario Human Rights Appeals Tribunal.

A 3rd generation Japanese Canadian (JC), Judge Omatsu was a member of the National Association of Japanese Canadian team that won a $450 million settlement for the incarceration of JCs (1988). She received awards for her book Bittersweet Passage: Redress & the Japanese Canadian Experience (1992) that documented that history and for her video Swimming Upstream (2018) that laid out the case against British Columbia. Judge Omatsu co-chaired the B.C. Redress campaign. In 2022, the province awarded $100 Million to the JC community for the decades of racism that resulted in their incarceration and dispossession.

Most recently, Judge Omatsu has been appointed to the Canadian Race Relations Foundation’s Special Advisory Council (2018). She has been awarded York University’s Senior Honorary Race & Gender Advocate (2024); Metropolitan Toronto University’s Doctor of Laws (2018); Order of Ontario (2015); US National Asian Pacific Bar Association’s Trail Blazer of the Year (2013); Federation of Asian Canadian Lawyers’ Lifetime Achievement Award (2010).