The Halls were Roman Catholics, and Emmett served as an altar boy at Saint Paul's Cathedral in Saskatoon.

[4] Hall was in the audience on July 29, 1910, when Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier laid the cornerstone for the University of Saskatchewan.

They had two children, John Hall, who became a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Marian Wedge, who like her father, entered the legal profession and was appointed to the Saskatchewan Court of Queen's Bench.

[3] In 1928, at 29 years of age, Hall appeared in the Supreme Court of Canada as counsel for the appellants in Glenn and Babb v.

The Supreme Court ruled that Hall's clients had taken reasonable steps to store their grain from spillage and dismissed the action against them.

[citation needed] In 1935, Hall, along with a fellow Saskatoon lawyer, Peter G. Makaroff, defended the cases of many of the On-to-Ottawa trekkers against charges brought against them for their part in the Regina riot of July of that year.

One police officer, Charles Miller was killed in the line of duty, and a trekker later died of injuries from the riot.

[12] In 1957, Hall was appointed Chief Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench for Saskatchewan by his old law school classmate, John Diefenbaker, who had just won a minority government.

One of Hall's most influential judgments was Calder v. British Columbia (Attorney General), dealing with aboriginal title.

[13] Hall wrote compelling reasons arguing that aboriginal title existed in British Columbia under the common law.

[3] In 1967, Hall was the sole dissent in the Supreme Court's reference decision upholding the 1959 conviction of Steven Truscott for capital murder.

[14] In 1961, while Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench, Hall was appointed by the Diefenbaker government to chair a royal commission on the national health system.

In the 1960 Saskatchewan general election, the CCF government of Tommy Douglas had run on a platform of implementing a universal health care plan.

Eventually, the federal government implemented the medicare system which was at the core of Hall's recommendations, on a cost-share basis with the provinces.

[4] After he retired from the Supreme Court, Hall conducted an inquiry into the rail system in western Canada, with a particular focus on grain transportation.

He also served as an arbitrator and mediator in strikes by national railway workers, grain handlers, and air traffic controllers.

[5] In 1979, the federal government appointed Hall to conduct a follow-up inquiry into the current state of the Canadian health care system.

One of his friends and fellow Saskatchewanian, Ramon Hnatyshyn, former Governor General of Canada, commented: "They were tough times.

Despite reaching the elite heights of his profession, he never forgot his own humble origins or the needs of the ordinary people that he encountered during his long life.

Hall believed that Canadian society ought to embrace ethnic diversity, alleviate poverty, and redress the shameful treatment of Aboriginal peoples.