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In his first public appearance since resigning in October as chair of the residential schools truth and reconciliation commission, Mr. Justice Harry LaForme said that within months of taking the job, his fellow commissioners tried to usurp his authority.

Speaking on ethics to an audience at Toronto's Ryerson University, Judge LaForme said his moral code dictated that he could not agree to the changes that were being pushed upon him by commission chairs Claudette Dumont-Smith, a native health worker, and Jane Brewin Morley, a lawyer and mediator from British Columbia.

In a brief explanation of the extraordinary turn of events that led to his resignation, Judge LaForme outlined the selection criteria that governed his appointment: that he would “provide leadership; hold responsibility for the integrity of the commission and authorship of the report; lead and promote public awareness and education initiatives; exercise leadership internally and externally; set strategy, objectives and direction and supervise and direct the work of the commissioners.”

The commissioners, he said, were required to “support the leadership of the chair.”

“The two commissioners subsequently formed the opinion that all three of us; the two commissioners and the chair were virtually the same. That is, there was no hierarchy of leadership and authority; the chair was merely the first among equals and was to preside over meetings. Their view was that decisions of the commission were to be based upon majority rule. The national chief of the Assembly of First Nations and at least some of the churches agreed with them.

"My moral code dictated that I could not agree."

Mr. LaForme, a member of the Mississaugas of New Credit First Nation, has since returned to his seat on the Ontario Court of Appeal, where, since 2004, he has been Canada's highest ranking aboriginal jurist.

He went on to describe his upbringing as an impoverished native child who read voraciously and eventually became one of the first of his people to attend law school.

He said that by telling his life story, the audience would understand why he couldn't abdicate or surrender his dreams and visions for the truth and reconciliation commission to the other two commissioners.

"Indeed, to two others who are relative strangers to me and to the historical and complex relationship that exists between aboriginal people and Canada."