text:
Home › Rolljunkie Jiu-jitsu Blog › Jiu Jitsu History
Jiu Jitsu History
Jiu jitsu, specifically Brazilian Jiu jitsu (or BJJ for short) is one of the most popular and fastest growing martial arts in the US today. In this article, we'll discuss what BJJ is, it's history, future, and several topics related to the art.
What is Jiu jitsu?
Jiu jitsu as we know it today in America is one of the fastest growing martial arts around. The art focuses on using leverage and body position to control your opponent in order to apply joint locks and chokes that could potentially break bones or leave an opponent unconscious. Although strength is a factor when training Brazilian jiu jitsu, there are many other factors and skills that are required. These skills can allow a significantly smaller individual skilled in BJJ to out maneuver bigger and stronger opponents. Years of dedication and thousands of hours of mat time are required to reach the highest levels of black belt level and beyond.
BJJ focuses largely on ground techniques. Unlike many other martial arts, practitioners become skilled in fighting and attacking from ground positions, including laying on the back. Jiu-jitsu also includes takedowns, throws, and stand up techniques although most practitioners prefer to focus largely on ground work.
In addition, BJJ is different than most other martial arts from a sparring perspective. Students train live or spar regularly in a practice known as rolling. This live sparring is considered a regular part of jiu jitsu training. Unlike other martial arts such as those that involve striking, jiu jitsu allows competitors to spar at live speed or near live speed while still remaining relatively safe. Opponents who are caught in a submission or choke during training or competition will acknowledge defeat by tapping their opponent or verbally saying the word tap. Once an opponent taps, the hold should be released immediately to prevent injury to the opponent.
There are two major variants of jiu jitsu as it pertains to training and competition. They are no-gi and gi. A gi or kimono is a uniform worn when training traditional BJJ. It normally consists of a heavy durable jacket and pants designed to withstand the demands of the grabbing and pulling performed when training in the gi. The kimono is typically secured with a colored belt that signifies the rank of the practitioner.
No-gi jiu jitsu is trained without the kimono and is considered a from of submission grappling. A typical uniform for no-gi is fight shorts and a rash guard. Rash guards are commonly substituted for t-shirts. During competition, it is common for some competitors to compete shirtless as this makes it more difficult for an opponent to grab on, especially when the competitors begin to sweat.
A Brief History of Jiu jitsu
The roots of BJJ can be traced back to Mitsuyo Maeda. Maeda was a Japanese immigrant who came to Brazil in 1914. He was a fighter with a background in Kodokan Judo and Classical Jiu jitsu. It was in Brazil that he befriended Gastão Gracie. Maeda would go on to teach students in Brazil his knowledge of Martial Arts. His students included Carlos Gracie Sr., Luis Franca, and others. Some of his students would go on to open their own martial arts schools and Brazilian Jiu jitsu was born.
The lineage of those practicing Brazilian jiu jitsu is important as all lineages lead back to Maeda.
The Gentle Art Comes to America
The Gracie's and other families were instrumental in sharing the art of Brazilian jiu jitsu with others. Eventually in the early 1990's America would get it's first major exposure to BJJ when Royce Gracie competed in the original Ultimate Fighting Championship. That event showed spectators what someone with the knowledge of BJJ could do. Royce was defeating opponents significantly larger than him using technique and leverage. Fast forward several years later. The UFC was reformed and reborn under Dana White and his partners. The UFC and MMA grew in popularity and with it so did jiu jitsu. Now both MMA and BJJ are seeing unprecedented growth in the United States and around the world. Jiu jitsu academies can be found in all over America and more and schools continue to open as people become exposed to the art.
Self Defense, Martial Art, or Sport
Is jiu jitsu self-defense, a martial art, or a sport? In our opinion, it's all three.
Knowledge of jiu jitsu can be extremely valuable and practical when it comes to self-defense. Many altercations that may require self-defense will end on the ground or at least grappling with an opponent. This is where a jiu jitsu practitioner feels at home. In addition, those who have trained for a long time are often conditioned not to panic while grappling. They can efficiently and effectively improve their position, particularly against an unskilled opponent.
BJJ is constantly evolving. There are always new techniques being developed and countered. Each practitioner has their own unique style. It requires creativity, planning, strategy, and dedication. For this reason, it can be considered an art. Adaptation and innovation are regular components of training.
Anyone who has been to a jiu-jitsu competition or competed in one knows that jiu-jitsu is also a sport. There are rules like any other sport when it comes to competing. And like other sports, many competitors have adapted their skillset to focus on winning competitions. Because competitions usually incorporate a point scoring system, the focus on points versus submissions is a common occurrence. From this standpoint, sport jiu jitsu differs greatly from self-defense jiu jitsu. In self-defense, points do not matter, you must end the fight or escape. The different rules for competition including point systems and submission only tournaments have created some debate in the BJJ community about which rule set is better and more pure to the roots of the martial art. As a sport, BJJ has grown rapidly. Competitions exist in countries all over the world. Some of the most prestigious events including tournaments hosted by the IBJJF and the ADCC submission grappling tournament continue to grow in interest every year. Many events now offer streaming video feeds. Professional level competitions with cash earnings are becoming more common. In addition, some have even pushed for BJJ to be considered for the Olympics as a future sport.
Jiu Jitsu in MMA
Jiu jitsu has become a major component of Mixed Martial Arts. Many top level MMA competitors have some background in BJJ and almost all have trained jiu jitsu in some form or another (or at least defenses to it). There have been many top level jiu-jitsu competitors that have crossed over into MMA. Some have had great success while other have not. It's clear that MMA requires many highly developed skills beyond that of just jiu jitsu. That said, BJJ is a critical skill for most MMA fighters once the fight hits the ground.
BJJ Community
The BJJ community is a strong and growing one. Most people out there will never understand what it's like to train, get choked out, or to share the mats with teammates. Those that do share a unique bond. Strong friendships and bonds are commonly made by members of academies and teams. In addition, several online communities exist in forums and other social networks just for those that practice the martial art. More and more events and expos are appearing regularly and most will find the jiu jitsu community consists largely of good people and we are proud to be a part of it.
This article on jiu jitsu history was written for those who may not be familiar with the martial art. If you found the article informative or useful, please feel free to share by linking to it. We will be updating the article as needed with additional information as necessary. If you have suggestions on how we can improve the article, please contact us.
Want to know more about jiu jitsu belts, check out our jiu jitsu belt guide.
Beginning BJJ and want to know what to expect, read our bjj white belt tips.
Have you wrestled before? Here is our take on jiu jitsu vs wrestling.
Learn about what to expect on your first day of BJJ class.
Back to Rolljunkie Jiu-jitsu Blog


text:
William McDonough » The Living City (2002)
The Living City (2002)
Nature, Design and the Greening of Chicago
By William McDonough
Over the past several years, Mayor Richard M. Daley has been putting forth a vision for the future of Chicago that would have made the city's old ward bosses blanch. In a town once best known for the railroad and the stockyard, the smokestack and the Board of Trade, the mayor is saying that he wants to make Chicago the "greenest city in America."
Whether the Chicago of your imagination was shaped by Carl Sandburg, Saul Bellow, or the blues; by bustling LaSalle Street, busy O'Hare or pastoral Wrigley Field, Chicago has not been widely known as a green city. But Mayor Daley does not believe that history is destiny. Since taking office in 1989 he has been working to restore Chicago's environment with programs that turn the conventional notion of the big, industrial city on its head. Now Chicago sits on the edge of a new frontier, ambitious and energetic as ever. As Department of the Environment Commissioner Marcia Jimenez said: "We might even become the greenest city in the world."
The mayor got started by inviting trees back into town. Sowing saplings block-by-block, neighborhood-by-neighborhood, Daley's administration has now planted more than 300,000 trees throughout Chicago. Other long-term projects are devoted to restoring Chicago's 29-mile Lake Michigan shoreline and creating a 3,000-acre wetland preserve within the city limits. An industrial restoration program, meanwhile, is cleaning up hundreds of acres of land contaminated by heavy industry, making the City's brownfield redevelopment effort the largest in the United States.
With each of these programs contributing to a resurgence of health and natural beauty, Chicago could probably begin to wear the "green city" mantle without doing much more. But Mayor Daley understands that a 21st century metropolis must go beyond beautification and make environmental initiatives an integral part of a long-term strategy for growing economic and social health. To that end, says DOE First Deputy Commissioner, David Reynolds, the City is working "to bring industry back to Chicago while also revitalizing local ecology." The mayor is committed, he says, to "making the city a national model of how industry and ecology can exist side-by-side."
Sounds great. And Chicago's not just talking the talk. Mayor Daley's "greenest city in America" idea has recently been reinforced by the City's announcement that it had signed an agreement to buy 20 percent of its electricity—for schools, libraries, subways and streetlights—from renewable sources of power by 2006. That's the largest purchase of renewable power in the United States. And because the power must come from within the state of Illinois, it is spurring the local development of renewable energy technology. Indeed, some renewable energy companies, such as the solar panel manufacturer Spire, have moved their headquarters to the Chicago Center for Green Technology, a newly renovated, environmentally intelligent facility built on a restored industrial site. Spire is already supplying Chicago with locally manufactured solar panels, which the City has installed on a number of buildings, including the Field Museum, the Mexican Fine Arts Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago.
This is not your father's Windy City.
A Green Constitution
If Chicago's streets are lined with trees, it's power increasingly renewable, and its industries and institutions tapping into the benefits of green technology, has the city not already arrived as a national environmental leader? Well, yes. But to insure that its environmental initiatives last, the City has realized that it needs a set of enduring principles to guide decision-making over the long haul. The greening of Chicago can only be sustained, City officials believe, if each strategic choice makes ecological, social and economic sense, not just during the Daley administration but well into the future.
David Reynolds put it this way:
"We have been saying that we are going to be the greenest city in America. But to truly become a thriving green city we need to carefully define what that means and what we should be striving for, day-by-day and year-by-year. No city in the United States has really gotten this right yet, and we believe that part of the problem has been that no American city has developed a set of guiding "green" principles—akin to the timeless principles of the Constitution—that describes its ideals, sets its course and defines its means. That's what we are doing in Chicago. And we hope the principles we develop become so well known and so well understood that they define how we operate as a city government for the next one hundred years."
As Chicago's environmental initiatives picked up steam behind the mayor's "greenest city" rallying cry, Daley and former DOE Commissioner, Bill Abolt (now in the City's Budget Director), hired William McDonough + Partners to help draft its new principles. Working closely with the DOE and other government agencies, our community design team is crafting a set of design guidelines—The Chicago Principles—that will serve as a reference point for the City as it develops a holistic, integrated plan for the greening of Chicago.
Like the Constitution, the Chicago Principles will be based on timeless values. In essence, they will extend the rights and responsibilities of a democratic government and its citizens into the realm of nature and design. For example, in 1992 when my colleague, the German chemist Michael Braungart, and I developed design principles for the City of Hannover, Germany, for the 2000 World's Fair, we crafted nine declarations with the City that reflected its commitment to sustainability. The Hannover Principles included declarations such as:
Insist on the rights of humanity and nature to co-exist in a healthy, supportive, diverse and sustainable condition.
Recognize interdependence. The elements of human design interact with and depend upon the natural world, with broad and diverse implications at every scale. Expand design considerations to recognize even distant effects.
Eliminate the concept of waste. Evaluate and optimize the full life-cycle of products and processes, to approach the state of natural systems, in which there is no waste.
Rely on natural energy flows. Human designs should, like the living world, derive their creative forces from perpetual solar income. Incorporate this energy efficiently and safely for responsible use.
If these principles seem serious and demanding, well, they are. The language is meant to suggest the rigor required to live up to them. At the same time, we have found that striving to recognize interdependence or rely on natural energy flows in everything we do—from designing buildings to community plans—turns out to be inspiring and extraordinarily satisfying as well as a lot of fun.
And it yields a very unconventional perspective on urban design. Most responses to today's environmental woes aim to limit the impact of human activity by minimizing pollution and waste. We'd rather eliminate waste altogether and create delightful, healthful places designed to ultimately generate more energy than they consume, like the solar and geo-thermal powered facility we are building at Oberlin College. There, students and teachers not only reap the benefits of clean renewable energy, they also enjoy copious daylight, fresh air and a landscape alive with trees and flowing water. The building even teaches how nature works. One can see the workings of wetlands, for example, by observing how a series of botanical gardens filter the building's wastewater. Indoors and out, the building and its grounds celebrate both human creativity and the abundance of the natural world.
In Chicago our goals are the same. With the City, we will be drafting principles that encourage planners, developers, engineers and architects to pursue designs that create more positive effects, not fewer negative ones. This goes for everything from transportation systems to factories to commercial products to neighborhood plans, all of which can be designed to enhance the city's economic, environmental and social health. How? By following principles derived from nature's laws. In the city, as in the countryside, sustainable design is grounded in the rules of the natural world.
Design and Nature's Laws
Design for sustainability has its roots in the desire to discover fitting ways for humans to inhabit the landscape. As designers, we study the landscape of a particular place by assessing its natural systems: its landforms, hydrology, vegetation, and climate. We tap into natural and cultural history; investigate local energy sources; explore the cycles of sunlight, shade and water; and observe the lives of local fauna, flowers and grasses. As we carefully explore the landscape we might ask: How does the water flow down the hillside and through the valley? How did indigenous people build and live here? What local trees provide abundant shade? From which direction do cooling breezes flow? Out of these investigations comes an "essay of clues," a map for developing healthy and creatively interactive relationships between our designs and the natural world.
This emphasis on the way nature works results in buildings and communities that sustain and enhance the qualities of the local landscape. The "living roof" we designed for a corporate office building in San Bruno, California, for example, creates acres of habitat for local birds and grasses. When birds fly overhead they don't see a flat, ugly rooftop broiling in the sun, they see a rolling, flowering landscape that looks like home. In Chicago, the green roof we helped design for City Hall is covered with mostly native vegetation, which offers urban habitat to the butterflies and birds of the region. Not incidentally, City Hall's green roof absorbs storm water run-off and insulates the building from the hot sun, provides relief from the urban heat island effect.
In every landscape, nature is our guide. Natural forces express themselves differently from place to place, but as we have worked on projects and products worldwide, we've identified three key principles that allow us to apply our knowledge of natural systems to human designs. We imagine these principles may have a role in shaping Chicago's future.
Waste=Food. The life cycle of every organism contributes to the health of the whole. A fruit tree's blossoms fall to the ground and decompose into food for other living things. Bacteria and fungi feed on the organic waste of both the tree and the animals that eat its fruit, depositing nutrients in the soil in a form ready for the tree to take up and convert into growth. In these perpetual cycles—which we call cradle-to-cradle cycles—one organism's waste becomes food for another.
Designs modeled on these cradle-to-cradle cycles eliminate the very concept of waste. A textile we designed, which is woven from wool and ramie and processed with completely safe chemicals, can be tossed on the ground to nourish the soil when it wears out. At the Swiss mill where the fabric is produced, the trimmings serve as garden mulch and the water leaving the factory is as clean as the water flowing in. Synthetics like plastics and metals can flow in cradle-to-cradle cycles too. They can be designed for continual reuse as high-quality materials for industry. A new recycling process, for instance, allows carpet manufacturers to reuse nylon fiber perpetually. Materials and processes such as these can make manufacturing a restorative act and they will power Chicago's emergence as a green manufacturing hub.
Use current solar income. Living things thrive on the energy of the sun. Trees and plants manufacture food from sunlight, an elegant, effective system that uses the earth's only perpetual source of energy income. Buildings can tap into solar income using direct solar energy collection or passive solar processes such as daylighting, which makes effective use of natural light. The winds, too, can be tapped. Winds are thermal flows fueled by sunlight and, along with the sun, can generate enough power cost-effectively to meet the energy needs of entire cities, and indeed, entire nations.
As we have seen, Chicago is already using the power of the sun and the wind. Yet even as it purchases 20 percent of its energy from these sources it has only begun to tap the incredible power of the driving winds of the Great Lakes and the Plains. Encouraging the large-scale development of wind power, and fully integrating solar and wind into Chicago's energy infrastructure will make the City a world leader in the renewable energy industry. Clean power, economic development, thousands of jobs—all by using the energy of the sun.
Celebrate diversity. Healthy ecosystems are complex communities of living things that have developed diverse responses to their surroundings. They provide many models for design. Architects and planners, applying a diversity of design solutions, can create and restore buildings, industries, landscapes and neighborhoods that fit elegantly and effectively into a variety of niches.
Why not a diversity of healthy landscapes in Chicago? Imagine inner-city streams, lakes and marshes becoming home to local endangered species like the black-crowned night heron and the yellow-headed blackbird. Imagine lively street life and prosperous small businesses in neighborhoods blessed with the shade of trees. Imagine restored industrial sites that generate economic prosperity while creating habitat alongside river corridors.
One can see this vision emerging in Chicago and elsewhere in the industrial Great Lakes. Consider, for example, the restoration of the Ford Motor Company's River Rouge plant in Dearborn, Michigan. There, on a formerly shopworn industrial site, newly planted trees, a ten-acre living roof, and a series of constructed wetlands and swales are restoring soil, creating habitat, and revitalizing the landscape while effectively filtering stormwater runoff for $35 million less than conventional technical methods. When design tunes into biodiversity, even heavy industry can be a regenerative force.
The City as Organism
While nature's laws shape our sense of cities, they don't force us into a static view. We see each city, and we see Chicago, as part of a dynamic ecosystem, a singular evolutionary matrix. And we see the future of the City as an ever more harmonious and creative participation in the surrounding landscape. Claude Levi-Strauss put it well when he described the city as the place where "nature and artifice meet."
A city is a congestion of animals whose biological history is enclosed within boundaries, and yet every conscious and rational act on the part of these creatures helps to shape the city's eventual character. By its form as by the manner of its birth, the city has elements at once of biological procreation, organic evolution, and esthetic creation. It is both a natural object and a thing to be cultivated; individual and group; something lived and something dreamed.
Cities are made. One can look at a metropolis like Chicago and get the sense that it has always been there. Yet in 1830s Chicago, as William Cronon has written, "one did not have to walk more than a few minutes to be out on the prairie." Just 60 years later booming, urbane Chicago hosted the famous Columbian Exposition.
Cities are designed. The tree-lined boulevards and elegant storefronts of Paris are not the result of lucky happenstance but of an ambitious 19th century renovation that remade the city from the sewers to the rooftops. It is no coincidence that Paris has remained a cultural capital in spite of the mercurial fortunes of France.
Cities are organisms. They have metabolisms. They are linked to their regions through complex networks, both natural and cultivated, that circulate biological nutrition—food, wood, fiber, water—and technical nutrition—the hardware and software of the 21st century. These flows of nutrients are the twin metabolisms of the living city. If we are to make our cities truly sustaining we need to take this literally, not just as the beautiful and moving idea about cities that Levi-Strauss blessed us with, but as a literal, strategic truth that informs all of our designs.
What might this look like? What might Chicago be in 2020?
Nutrient Flows: A New Relationship Between City and Region
One thing seems clear about the future of Chicago: it will be, as it has always been, a regional hub. But what kind of hub? Cronon explains in his history of Chicago, Nature's Metropolis, how the city's grain, meat, and timber markets transformed the landscape of the West. Railroads, grain elevators, stockyards, and wheat farms stretching from Illinois to the Rocky Mountains all emerged in relation to Chicago's markets. All of these "landscapes of production" created a "gritty web of material connections" that fed, clothed, and sheltered the people of Chicago and its hinterland. But not without cost. The harvest of commodities from the woods and prairies, and their processing in the city, created degraded landscapes on both ends of the rails that carried nature to market. As we saw in the floods of 1998, the Great Plains are dramatically losing their ability to hold water and the great flush of toxins has created a 100 square mile area of the Gulf of Mexico known by scientists as the Dead Zone.
There are other, more positive ways in which Chicago might be a hub. What if Chicago became a different sort of "Nature's Metropolis," a city bound to its region by healthy, reciprocal relationships in which nutrition flowed both ways? From the countryside would come biological nutrition and from the city, technical nutrition.
Supporting a regional organic food system would be a good place to start. In this new model, Chicago's markets could support the rebirth of the American prairie. Organic farming works with natural cycles of water and natural flows of nutrients. By returning the carboniferous material to the soil it heals the land and the watershed, a dire need in a region in which conventional farming is exhausting the earth. As Chicago's markets for organic food grow, the city would become an ever-stronger catalyst for the restoration of economic, social and environmental health in the rural Midwest—not to mention the health of Chicago's citizens.
In a similar way, Chicago's status as a hub city could make it the Midwest capital of green manufacturing and transit, energy effectiveness, and cradle-to-cradle recycling. Following principles derived from nature's laws provides the framework for developing these new systems.
Consider again Waste=Food. When industrial and architectural systems are modeled on the earth's perpetual flows of energy and nutrients, human productivity can be positive and vital. The biodegradable and infinitely recyclable textiles I've mentioned are just the beginning. We are also working with industrial designers to develop materials, products, supply chains and manufacturing processes that replace industry's cradle-to-grave manufacturing model—the one-way trip to the landfill—with cradle-to-cradle systems. In cradle-to-cradle systems, products are conceived with safe, healthy materials, which are managed within closed-loop cycles. The materials go back to soils safely, or they go back to industry. Every material is either a biological nutrient or a technical nutrient. No waste. No pollution. Just two discrete regenerative metabolisms feeding the urban organism. If Chicago's industrial sector re-invents itself using a cradle-to-cradle model, the nation's hub of green manufacturing and resource recovery may well turn out to be on the shores of Lake Michigan.
Using energy effectively will also support the living city. Along with Chicago's strong commitment to developing solar and wind power, the City is also building three libraries and a police station using LEED standards (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) and spending more than $100 million to make existing city buildings more energy efficient and providing grants and incentives for others to do the same. The use of renewable energy sources, already stimulating the emergence of green technology in Chicago, could further charge the growth of new industries, such as the manufacture of wind turbines. Indeed, Chicago could jumpstart the entire wind industry and become known as "the city that makes wind turbines for the world." This could supercede traditional coal generated energy and simultaneously begin to power Chicago's transit system. Going to work? Ride the wind. It's not so far fetched; in Calgary the subway is partially powered by prairie winds. Gives a whole new meaning to "Windy City."
With these pieces in place, we can begin to see Chicago's metabolism rendered visible. We can imagine the flow of biological and technical nutrition between city and hinterland in an entirely different landscape of "material connections." The ecologically connected city receives food, water and energy from a very broad nexus of solar-powered, biologically-based, photosynthetic systems. The energy of the sun is harvested on rooftops; rural windmills power city buildings; water falls on hard urban surfaces but also on rooftop gardens and a connected network of green spaces, and it all flows safely into the ground, into the watershed, into the air. In the countryside, farmers grow good food using implements manufactured in the city—technical nutrients—and the city, a visceral, breathing body, receives its nourishment from the hinterlands, digests it and then excretes it back to its source, returning biological nutrients to replenish the rural soil. The windmills on the farm, source of a new cash crop, are forged in the city, produce power for the region in the countryside, and then are returned to the city every 20 years to be refurbished and returned to the farm. Everything moves in regenerative cycles, from city to country, country to city, all the polymers, metals, synthetic fibers and communications software flowing safely in the technical metabolism, all the photosynthetic nutrients flowing in the biological metabolism. The organic and the esthetic bring the city to life.
Creating Community Wealth
This vision comes home in Chicago's neighborhoods. Clean, vital industry; energy effectiveness; safe, affordable housing; and good mobility systems provide the infrastructure and the wherewithal for strong community life. They are the basics that no one should be without.
Why not go beyond the basics? The neighborhood, with the street as its lifeblood, is perhaps where economic, social and environmental concerns mix it up most strongly. For us, that signals opportunity. Areas in urban communities where commerce, patterns of travel, and opportunities for sociability bring people together respond eagerly to attention. They are ripe for "community seeds."
A community seed might be as simple as a laundromat, which can be much more than a place where one's clothes are washed. Imagine, for example, a laundromat on a busy neighborhood street that shares a public courtyard with a daycare center. The laundry is run by a small group of retirees and it serves an older clientele too. The machines are manufactured for disassembly and reuse and are powered cost-effectively by the sun and the wind. The wash water is purified in a botanical garden in the courtyard, where children and their parents mingle with elderly people as they wait for their clothes to dry. The garden's flowering plants brighten what turns out to be a local transit hub. It's not a flashy place, but it's a viable business that provides needed services while bringing the generations together in pleasant surroundings. Places such as these can be important centers of neighborhood life.
Natural areas are important to city neighborhoods too. Developing a plan for a local park can build strong community ties and, once realized, green spaces provide opportunities to relax and reflect among the trees and flowers, a needed respite from active streets. Along with planting trees city-wide, Chicago is supporting the green neighborhood idea with efforts like Greencorps Chicago, a community gardening program. Over the past several years, Greencorps Chicago crews have worked on nearly 500 sites, planting trees, tending flower gardens and receiving on-the-job training in skills such as landscaping and community outreach. Even in small city parks, the experience of getting ones hands in the dirt and planting a living thing provides Greencorps members a meaningful connection to the natural world. At the same time, it helps create places everyone can enjoy and welcomes non-human nature back to Chicago.
On a larger scale, the City's efforts to protect and restore the lakefront, the Chicago River, and the city's bigger parks are also crucial. These are key areas of Chicago's commons. They are the city's lungs, its habitat for other creatures, its vital threads of landscape, the home of the trees and the earth that absorb and filter water while providing pleasure for all.
The commons are also the baseline of the city's health. To preserve and enhance them we must watch how the water flows. Is storm water absorbed where it falls? Is its passage into the river a slow, percolating flow or a headlong rush? Does rainfall erode the soil or restore it? What kinds of toxins does water pick up on its way to the river?
Ideally, the city would release water at the same rate it would be released if the landscape were in its native vegetated state, the water flowing slowly to the river, clean and ready for reuse. The flow of water, the most basic element of life, will be the measure of our progress. When we can say with confidence that the Chicago River runs clean, the city will be well on its way to being the greenest in America.
As we tread that path, our work on The Chicago Principles will be guided and enhanced by our collaboration with the City and Chicago's citizens. It is our hope that we will together create strategies that provide everyone in Chicago with good health care, clean energy, safe water, hugely effective business models, and daily opportunities to engage the natural world. These changes will make the city an ever more safe, delightful and productive place. And before long, Chicago just might find a new place in the national imagination with an inspiring, restorative vision for urban America.
The Living City © 2002 William McDonough
Urban Ecology Institute

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Postings for library jobs continued their upward trajectory in 2015, according to LRS's popular library job posting website, LibraryJobline.org. In 2015, 656 jobs were posted—the most ever since the service's launch in 2007—and almost 3 times that of 2009's low of 228 postings. Average hourly salaries for Academic ($21.79) and Public ($20.80) library positions were at an all time high, though the average salary for School libraries ($16.62) fell by 20% since its high in 2012 ($20.74). Read on to learn more about how the rest of 2015 shaped up.


Official English Translation: Reasons of Wagner J.
Coram: LeBel, Fish, Abella, Rothstein, Moldaver, Karakatsanis and Wagner JJ.
2012: December 13; 2013: June 7.
Present: LeBel, Fish, Abella, Rothstein, Moldaver, Karakatsanis and Wagner JJ.
Criminal law — Defences — Charge to jury — Defences that are incompatible in theory — Accused charged with being party, together with her spouse, to murder of their three children — Alternative defence that accused had abandoned common intention to kill children — Whether it was appropriate to exclude defence of abandonment from defences put to jury on basis that it was incompatible with defence's principal theory, absence of mens rea.
Criminal law — Defences — Abandonment — Participation in crime — Accused charged with being party, together with her spouse, to murder of their three children — Alternative defence that accused had abandoned common intention to kill children — Essential elements of defence of abandonment in context of forms of participation in crime provided for in s. 21(1) and s. 21(2) of Criminal Code — Whether defence of abandonment raised by accused met air of reality test.
G was charged with being a party, together with her spouse, L, to the murder of their three children at the dawn of the year 2009. According to the Crown's theory, G was a party to the murder in planning it as part of a murder‑suicide pact and in supplying the murder weapon. She did not act to prevent the children from being poisoned with drinks served by her spouse, which contained Gravol and oxazepam. Thus, she aided L to kill the children. At her jury trial, G submitted in her defence that she had not bought the medication to poison her children, that she was in a dissociative state on December 31, 2008 when she wrote some incriminating documents, and that this state meant she could not have formed the specific intent to commit the murders. In the alternative, should her argument based on the absence of mens rea be rejected, she claimed to have abandoned the common purpose of killing the children and to have clearly communicated her intention to do so to her spouse. The jury found G guilty of the first degree murder of her three children. The Court of Appeal upheld the guilty verdict, concluding that the trial judge had not erred in refusing to put the defence of abandonment to the jury, since it was incompatible with the defence's principal theory.
Held (Fish J. dissenting): The appeal should be dismissed.
Per LeBel, Abella, Rothstein, Moldaver, Karakatsanis and Wagner JJ.: There is no cardinal rule against putting to a jury an alternative defence that is at first glance incompatible with the primary defence. The issue is not whether such a defence is compatible or incompatible with the primary defence, but whether it meets the air of reality test. In any case, the trial judge must determine whether the alternative defence has a sufficient factual foundation, that is, whether a properly instructed jury acting reasonably could accept the defence if it believed the evidence to be true.
The defence of abandonment must be submitted to the jury only if there is evidence in the record that is reasonably capable of supporting the necessary inferences in respect of each of the elements of this defence. The defence can be raised by an accused who is a party to an offence on the basis that he or she did or omitted to do anything for the purpose of aiding any person to commit the offence, or abetted any person in committing it (s. 21(1) of the Criminal Code ), or on the basis that he or she had formed with other persons an intention to carry out an unlawful purpose and to assist each other therein and that an offence was committed in carrying out the common purpose (s. 21(2) of the Criminal Code ), if the evidence shows (1) that there was an intention to abandon or withdraw from the unlawful purpose; (2) that there was timely communication of this abandonment or withdrawal from the person in question to those who wished to continue; (3) that the communication served unequivocal notice upon those who wished to continue; and (4) that the accused took, in a manner proportional to his or her participation in the commission of the planned offence, reasonable steps in the circumstances either to neutralize or otherwise cancel out the effects of his or her participation or to prevent the commission of the offence. There will be circumstances in which timely and unequivocal communication by the accused of his or her intention to abandon the unlawful purpose will be considered sufficient to neutralize the effects of his or her participation in the crime. But there will be other circumstances, primarily where a person has aided in the commission of the offence, in which it is hard to see how timely communication to the principal offender of the person's intention to withdraw from the unlawful purpose will on its own be considered reasonable and sufficient.
In this case, G's evidence that she communicated her withdrawal from the deadly plan and that her communication was timely and unequivocal is insufficient. The only relevant passage from her testimony is one in which she used the plural pronoun "we" (using the French pronoun "on" as an equivalent for the plural "nous") in saying "I told Marc we couldn't [do that]". But even if it were assumed that this evidence would be sufficient for a jury to reasonably conclude that G had communicated her intention to withdraw from the plan and that her communication was timely and unequivocal, that communication would not on its own have sufficed, in the circumstances of this case, for the judge to put the defence of abandonment to the jury. G did more than merely promise to take part in the murder‑suicide pact. She supplied her spouse with the intoxicants he used to cause the children's deaths. She therefore had to do more either to neutralize the effects of her participation or to prevent the commission of the offence. For example, she could have hidden or destroyed the medication she had purchased, remained watchful and taken the children to a safe place for the evening, insisted that her spouse give her verbal confirmation of what he intended to do, or simply called the authorities. The record did not therefore contain evidence upon which a properly instructed jury acting reasonably could have found that G had abandoned the common unlawful purpose, and could accordingly have acquitted her, if it believed the evidence to be true. The defence of abandonment therefore did not meet the air of reality test, and the trial judge was not required to put the defence to the jury.
Per Fish J. (dissenting): Canadian courts have for more than 70 years held that the defence of abandonment comprises only two essential elements: (i) change of intention; and (ii) where practical and reasonable, timely and unequivocal notice of withdrawal. This test has been repeatedly and consistently applied in prosecutions under s. 21(1) and s. 21(2) of the Criminal Code alike. The defence of abandonment does not require that the accused take steps to neutralize prior participation in the criminal enterprise or to prevent the commission of the offence. While such evidence may strengthen a defence of abandonment, failure to take neutralizing or preventative steps is not fatal.
In light of the state of the law universally accepted in Canada at the time of G's trial, it would be fundamentally unfair at this stage to fault her for failing to demonstrate anything more than a change of intention, plus timely and unequivocal notice of withdrawal from the murder‑suicide pact. Since G's testimony provided some evidence on these two essential elements, there was an air of reality to the defence. The trial judge therefore erred by withholding the defence of abandonment from the jury. Incompatibility between G's defence of abandonment and her primary defence should not be relied upon to deprive the accused of a defence for which an air of reality has been established.
G testified that she told L his plan did not make sense and he "could not do it". She also told him that she did not want to be a part of it. She demonstrated her disapproval of the murder‑suicide pact by tearing up two documents: a last will and testament written by her and a story of L's life containing references to the pact. She was convinced by his facial expression that the murder‑suicide pact was off. This testimony provides some evidence that G no longer intended to participate in the murder‑suicide pact and that she provided timely and unequivocal notice of this change of intention to the principal offender. That the evidence could have left the jury with a reasonable doubt as to G's guilt is all that was required. It was for the jury to determine whether G's words and conduct were believable and sufficient to demonstrate timely and unequivocal notice of withdrawal.
G is entitled to a fresh trial, where the jury will not be wrongly prevented from considering on its merits her defence of abandonment, however weak and unpromising this Court might believe it to be.
Considered: Wu v. The King,  S.C.R. 609; R. v. Whitehouse (1940), 55 B.C.R. 420; referred to: R. v. Cinous, 2002 SCC 29,  2 S.C.R. 3; R. v. Caron (1998), 126 C.C.C. (3d) 84; R. v. Graveline, 2006 SCC 16,  1 S.C.R. 609; R. v. Faid,  1 S.C.R. 265; Miller v. The Queen,  2 S.C.R. 680; Henderson v. The King,  S.C.R. 226; R. v. Kirkness,  3 S.C.R. 74; R. v. Bird, 2009 SCC 60,  3 S.C.R. 638; R. v. Fournier, 2007 QCCA 1822 (CanLII).
R. v. Whitehouse (1940), 55 B.C.R. 420; Henderson v. The King,  S.C.R. 226; R. v. de Tonnancourt (1956), 115 C.C.C. 154; R. v. Merrifield, 1977 CarswellOnt 1806; Miller v. The Queen,  2 S.C.R. 680; R. v. Wagner (1978), 8 B.C.L.R. 258; R. v. Joyce (1978), 42 C.C.C. (2d) 141; R. v. Kirkness,  3 S.C.R. 74; R. v. Johanson (1995), 166 A.R. 60; R. v. Fournier, 2002 NBCA 71, 252 N.B.R. (2d) 256; R. v. McKercher,  O.J. No. 5859 (QL); R. v. Forknall, 2003 BCCA 43, 176 B.C.A.C. 284; R. v. Lacoursière (2002), 7 C.R. (6th) 117; R. v. P.K., 2006 ABCA 299, 397 A.R. 318; R. v. S.R.B., 2009 ABCA 45, 448 A.R. 124, rev'd 2009 SCC 60,  3 S.C.R. 638 (sub nom. R. v. Bird); R. v. Ball, 2011 BCCA 11, 298 B.C.A.C. 166; R. v. Leslie, 2012 BCSC 683 (CanLII); R. v. O'Flaherty,  EWCA Crim 526,  2 Cr. App. R. 20 (p. 315); R. v. Otway,  EWCA Crim 3 (BAILII); R. v. Fournier, 2007 QCCA 1822 (CanLII); R. v. Edwards, 2001 BCSC 275 (CanLII); R. v. Cinous, 2002 SCC 29,  2 S.C.R. 3.
Criminal Code, R.S.C. 1985, c. C‑46, s. 21 .
Campbell, Mark. "Turning Back the Clock: Aiders and the Defence of Abandonment" (2010), 14 Can. Crim. L.R. 1.
Manson, Allan. "Re‑codifying Attempts, Parties, and Abandoned Intentions" (1989), 14 Queen's L.J. 85.
Smith, John C. Commentary on R. v. Mitchell,  Crim. L.R. 497.
Stuart, Don. Canadian Criminal Law: A Treatise, 6th ed. Scarborough, Ont.: Carswell, 2011.
APPEAL from a judgment of the Quebec Court of Appeal (Rochette, Morin and Bouchard JJ.A.), 2011 QCCA 1395 (CanLII), SOQUIJ AZ-50774324,  J.Q. no 9850 (QL), 2011 CarswellQue 7766, upholding the accused's convictions for first degree murder. Appeal dismissed, Fish J. dissenting.
René Duval, for the appellant.
Sonia Rouleau, Régis Boisvert and Mélanie Paré, for the respondent.
Grace Choi and Christine Bartlett‑Hughes, for the intervener.
 Under Canadian law, individuals who intend to commit crimes may change their minds and avoid criminal liability by abandoning that intention. This appeal concerns, first of all, the circumstances in which a trial judge may put seemingly incompatible defences to a jury. Another question it raises is in what circumstances the trial judge must put the defence of abandonment to the jury in the context of the form of participation in a crime provided for in s. 21(1) of the Criminal Code, R.S.C. 1985, c. C‑46 .
 The appellant, Cathie Gauthier, was charged with being a party, together with her spouse, to the murder of their three children at the dawn of the year 2009. On October 24 of that same year, upon completion of a trial by judge and jury, she was convicted on all three counts of first degree murder.
 She submits that the trial judge erred in deciding not to put to the jury the defence of abandonment of the common intention to kill the children. For reasons that differ from those of the Court of Appeal, I find that the judge did not err in doing so, and I would dismiss the appeal.
 The facts of this case reveal a set of circumstances, as dramatic as they were tragic, that engendered the despair that ultimately led to the murder of three young children.
 Before I discuss the questions of law raised by this appeal, a brief review of the facts is therefore in order.
 The appellant met Marc Laliberté in 2000 and decided to move in with him in Chibougamau with her daughter Joëlle from a previous union. The couple had two other children: Marc‑Ange, born in 2001, and Louis‑Philippe, born in 2004. They moved to Amos in 2002. Misfortune seemed to dog the family. The appellant was sexually assaulted, and this caused her considerable emotional distress as a result of which she was unable to leave the family home for very long. Marc Laliberté lost his mother and fell into a deep depression. Hoping for better luck, the family left Amos for Saguenay, where Kathie Ouellet, a childhood friend of the appellant's, lived. Marc Laliberté sold the family home and quit his job, and the family settled into their new surroundings. However, their new life got off to a rough start.
 Once in Saguenay, Marc Laliberté had difficulty finding a stable job and resigned himself to receiving employment insurance benefits. Meanwhile, the appellant was unable to hold on to the few short‑term jobs she was able to find. In short, the couple encountered ever greater financial difficulties, and were forced to make an assignment in bankruptcy in October 2008.
 The holiday season was drawing near. On Christmas Eve, despite their bad luck, the couple decided to give the children the chance to enjoy this "festive" period. Marc Laliberté refused to pay the rent for December, and used the money so saved to buy numerous gifts for the children and for friends.
 On December 27, 2008, the appellant renewed her and her spouse's prescriptions for oxazepam, a soporific drug used to treat anxiety attacks, giving false reasons for doing so early. She told the pharmacist that her spouse was going through a difficult period and that they were about to go on a trip. While at the drug store, she also purchased some children's Gravol. That same day, the family went to Normandin to visit members of Marc Laliberté's family for a few hours.
 On December 28, 2008, the appellant sent an e‑mail message entitled [translation] "a miracle, please" to the Fondation maman Dion in which, after recounting the family's difficulties, she asked for help. She wrote: ". . . I would like a miracle for Dec. 31, 2008".
 The evening of December 29, she visited her friend Kathie Ouellet and told her that she did not know what she would do with her children if her spouse was not there. The next day, the appellant gave her nicest clothes to Ms. Ouellet.
 On December 31, according to the appellant, her spouse spent the morning working on the computer, and he turned the screen off every time she came near. Around noon, he joined her in the kitchen. He told her that he had made a decision and that the whole family would be leaving together. He then dictated some documents to her that she wrote down like a robot, she said, after which she had no memory of what was in them. Marc Laliberté then left the house. According to the appellant, it was then that she noticed some papers left on the kitchen counter, and after reading them, she realized what was going on. When her spouse returned in the afternoon, she told him she did not agree with the murder‑suicide pact, and she tore up the documents. She claimed to have understood from the expression on her spouse's face that he had resigned himself to abandoning the dark plan.
 The appellant testified that the rest of the day was uneventful. That evening, as planned, the family sat down in front of the television to watch a movie together. Marc Laliberté prepared some drinks and popcorn for all the family. Shortly after that, the appellant noticed that one of the boys had fallen asleep, and then she too fell asleep. She said she had not suspected that their drinks had been poisoned.
 The physical evidence that was filed included two torn‑up documents that had been found in the garbage can: a handwritten joint will, in the appellant's hand, and a document prepared on the computer by Marc Laliberté in which he told his life's story. Another copy of the will, typed out and signed by both spouses, was found on the kitchen island. Three handwritten letters from Cathie Gauthier to her friend Kathie Ouellet, to her biological mother and to her last employer completed the evidence. All these letters mentioned that the couple had decided together to end their and their children's lives. Some empty medicine bottles, as well as the prescriptions for oxazepam and the drug store's sales slip dated December 27, 2008, were also found in the kitchen.
 During the evening of January 1, 2009, the appellant called the emergency services number, asked for an ambulance and told the operator that her left wrist was slit, saying that [translation] "it was a pact, my husband killed our three children", and adding that "we told ourselves we wouldn't start 2009, but . . .".
 When first responders arrived on the scene, they found the appellant with an injured wrist and pronounced her spouse and their three children dead. The evidence shows that the children were poisoned with Gravol and oxazepam. Traces of oxazepam were also detected in the appellant, whose left wrist had allegedly been slit by her spouse, Marc Laliberté.
 At her jury trial, the appellant submitted in her defence that she had not bought the medication to poison her children, that she was in a dissociative state on December 31, 2008 when she wrote the incriminating documents, and that this state meant she could not have formed the specific intent to commit the murders. In the alternative, should her argument based on the absence of mens rea be rejected, she claimed to have abandoned the common purpose of killing the children and to have clearly communicated her intention to do so to her spouse.
 The Crown's theory was based on the proposition that the appellant was a party, together with her spouse, to the murder of her three children in that they planned it together as part of a murder‑suicide pact and in that she supplied the murder weapon. She did not act on December 31, 2008 to prevent the children from being poisoned with the drinks containing the medication. Thus, she aided Marc Laliberté to kill the children.
 In his final instructions, the trial judge told the jury that three possible verdicts were open to it: first degree murder, second degree murder or acquittal. On whether it was appropriate to put the defence of abandonment of the common purpose to the jury, the judge pointed out to counsel, in the jury's absence, that when the defence of abandonment has come before Canadian courts, it has been in the context of the form of participation in a crime provided for in s. 21(2) of the Criminal Code , and he questioned the availability of this defence in the context of s. 21(1) . Although he mentioned the defence of abandonment in summarizing the argument of counsel for the appellant for the jury, the judge did not put this alternative defence to the jury. After three days of deliberations, the jury found the appellant guilty of the first degree murder of her three children.
 Cathie Gauthier appealed that decision to the Court of Appeal, which upheld the guilty verdict. Bouchard J.A. concluded that the trial judge had not erred in refusing to put the defence of abandonment to the jury. In his view, an alternative defence that is incompatible with the defence's principal theory cannot be put to the jury (2011 QCCA 1395 (CanLII)).
(2) [Common intention] Where two or more persons form an intention in common to carry out an unlawful purpose and to assist each other therein and any one of them, in carrying out the common purpose, commits an offence, each of them who knew or ought to have known that the commission of the offence would be a probable consequence of carrying out the common purpose is a party to that offence.
 There are two main issues in this appeal. First, was it appropriate to exclude the defence of abandonment from the defences put to the jury on the basis that it was incompatible with the defence's principal theory, the absence of mens rea? If not, did the defence of abandonment meet the air of reality test? For the reasons that follow, I find that the answer to both these questions is no.
A. Was It Appropriate to Exclude the Alternative Defence of Abandonment From the Defences Put to the Jury Solely Because It Was Theoretically Incompatible With the Defence's Principal Theory?
 It is well established that any defence with an air of reality should go to the jury (R. v. Cinous, 2002 SCC 29,  2 S.C.R. 3, at para. 51). This Court has held that a defence meets the air of reality test if there is "(1) evidence (2) upon which a properly instructed jury acting reasonably could acquit if it believed the evidence to be true" (Cinous, at para. 82).
 The reason why the trial judge is required to screen the defences that can be put to the jury should be borne in mind. This requirement is essentially rooted in a concern not to confuse jurors by putting to them a defence that lacks an evidential foundation. This premise gives rise to two principles: On the one hand, a trial judge must put to the jury all defences that arise on the facts, regardless of whether they have been specifically raised by the accused. On the other hand, the judge must withhold from the jury any defences that lack an air of reality.
 The burden on the accused is merely evidential. If the trial judge properly applies the relevant principles, he or she must identify the evidence that is most favourable to the accused and assume it to be true, regardless of whether it was adduced or mentioned by the accused. The judge must not enquire into whether the witnesses are credible or assess the probative value of this evidence. If each element of a defence is supported by direct evidence or may reasonably be inferred from circumstantial evidence, the judge must put this defence to the jury.
 In this case, I agree with the Court of Appeal, although for different reasons, that the defence of abandonment should not have been put to the jury. Let me explain this.
The rule, therefore, that an accused person at trial is entitled to have the jury pass upon all his alternative defences is limited to the defences of which a foundation of fact appears in the record. Even then the rule, in my opinion, is not without exception, and one exception is, that it has no application where the accused, by the defence which he sets up at the trial, has negatived the alternative defence for which he afterwards seeks a new trial.
 The passage from Wu quoted in the Court of Appeal's reasons, at para. 71, in support of the proposition that the trial judge is not required to put to the jury an alternative defence that is incompatible with the primary defence is merely an obiter dictum that could be a source of confusion and should not be relied on. An accused might, for example, raise an alibi defence and testify that he or she was not in the city where the crime was committed at the relevant time, whereas certain Crown witnesses say that the accused was at the scene of the crime but was highly intoxicated. Even though the defences of alibi and of self‑induced intoxication are incompatible in theory, the trial judge should, in my view, put both of them to the jury if they both meet the air of reality test.
. . . the particular defences in issue here — automatism and self‑defence — are, as the Crown suggested on the hearing of this appeal, incompatible in theory, though perhaps not always in practice. That is because self‑defence implies deliberate conduct that is at odds with the fundamental premise of automatism, a state of dissociative, involuntary conduct.
 Nevertheless, the Court had held in R. v. Faid,  1 S.C.R. 265, that the trial judge had not erred in refusing to put the defence of provocation to the jury as an alternative to the primary defence of self‑defence. Although it is true that these two defences are incompatible in theory — self‑defence involves reasoned conduct, whereas provocation, on the contrary, presupposes a temporary loss of self‑control — it is important to point out that the refusal was not based on this incompatibility. Rather, the Court found that there was no evidence in the record to support the argument that the accused had acted in the heat of passion. That case was not therefore one in which the effect of the primary defence was to deprive the alternative defence of the support of evidence that was actually in the record. In Faid, the defence of provocation quite simply did not meet the air of reality test, because there was no evidence related to its elements. Faid is one illustration of the principle that any defence with an air of reality should be put to the jury.
 In conclusion, there is no cardinal rule against putting to a jury an alternative defence that is at first glance incompatible with the primary defence. The issue is not whether such a defence is compatible or incompatible with the primary defence, but whether it meets the air of reality test. In any case, the trial judge must determine whether the alternative defence has a sufficient factual foundation, that is, whether a properly instructed jury acting reasonably could accept the defence if it believed the evidence to be true.
B. If the Defence of Abandonment Was Not Incompatible With the Principal Theory, Did It Meet the Air of Reality Test?
 The defence of abandonment had to be submitted to the jury only if there was evidence in the record that was reasonably capable of supporting the necessary inferences in respect of each of the elements of this defence. That being said, it is necessary to begin by identifying the essential elements of the defence.
 In Canadian law, the defence of abandonment, which has rarely been raised, was first referred to in R. v. Whitehouse (1940), 55 B.C.R. 420 (C.A.). That case concerned the application of the defence in the specific context of the offence of participation in a crime provided for in s. 21(2) of the Criminal Code .
I would not attempt to define too closely what must be done in criminal matters involving participation in a common unlawful purpose to break the chain of causation and responsibility. That must depend upon the circumstances of each case but it seems to me that one essential element ought to be established in a case of this kind: where practicable and reasonable there must be timely communication of the intention to abandon the common purpose from those who wish to dissociate themselves from the contemplated crime to those who desire to continue in it. What is "timely communication" must be determined by the facts of each case but where practicable and reasonable it ought to be such communication, verbal or otherwise, that will serve unequivocal notice upon the other party to the common unlawful cause that if he proceeds upon it he does so without the further aid and assistance of those who withdraw. The unlawful purpose of him who continues alone is then his own and not one in common with those who are no longer parties to it nor liable to its full and final consequences.
 Thus, it was held that a defence of abandonment has three essential elements: (1) there must be an intention to abandon or withdraw from the unlawful purpose, (2) there must be timely communication of this abandonment or withdrawal from the person in question to those who wish to continue, and (3) the notice so communicated to those who continue to participate in the common purpose must be unequivocal.
 This appeal raises the issue of the application of the defence of abandonment in the context of the form of participation in a crime provided for in s. 21(1) of the Criminal Code .
 The reasons for recognizing the defence of abandonment in Canadian law bear repeating. There are two policy reasons in criminal law for making this defence available to parties to offences. First, there is a need to ensure that only morally culpable persons are punished; second, there is a benefit to society in encouraging individuals involved in criminal activities to withdraw from those activities and report them.
 This Court implicitly acknowledged that the defence of abandonment applies in the context of s. 21(1) in R. v. Bird, 2009 SCC 60,  3 S.C.R. 638, in which it found that this defence did not meet the air of reality test in the case of an accused who had aided in the commission of a crime (see also R. v. Fournier, 2007 QCCA 1822 (CanLII)). However, since the Court found that the defence did not have an air of reality in that case, it did not on that occasion rule on the content of the defence in the specific context of the form of participation in a crime provided for in s. 21(1) of the Criminal Code .
Looking at the defence of abandoned intention in respect of parties, the key issues relate to the quality of withdrawal from the original plan and whether more is required to exculpate. These questions take on different significance depending on the form of accomplice liability in issue and the particular circumstances of a given case.
It is my view that since aiders and abettors have been treated differently from common intenders by Parliament, some difference between these two subsections must be recognized.
 Section 21(2) of the Criminal Code provides that a person who forms an intention to carry out an unlawful purpose in common with other persons is a party to an incidental offence committed by one of those other persons to the same extent as the person who actually committed it. This result derives from the first person's promise to devote physical and intellectual resources to the achievement of the common unlawful purpose. The person's liability in respect of the incidental offence therefore stems from his or her decision to participate in carrying out the unlawful purpose and to contribute resources needed to achieve it.
 In such a context, an intention to withdraw from the common purpose will — if a timely and unequivocal communication of this intention is addressed to the co‑conspirators who persist in carrying out the unlawful purpose — be sufficient for the defence of abandonment to succeed. Communicating the intention to abandon the common purpose reduces the resources available to carry out the unlawful purpose and in so doing cancels out the effects of the participation of the withdrawing or abandoning person.
 The situation is very different in the context of the form of participation in a crime provided for in s. 21(1) of the Criminal Code . Aiders and abettors generally do much more than promise their support in carrying out an unlawful purpose in the future. They perform concrete acts to aid the principal offender to commit the offence or to abet him or her in committing it. Their criminal liability and their moral culpability are proportional to these acts and stem from the fact that they have performed them. Thus, merely communicating in unequivocal terms their intention to cease participating in the commission of the offence will not be enough "to break the chain of causation and responsibility", to repeat the words of Sloan J. from Whitehouse.
 In the Quebec Court of Appeal's judgment in Fournier, the accused was convicted of the first degree murder of her husband because she had hired a contract killer to murder him, had promised and later paid financial consideration to the killer, and had provided the killer with the necessary details of time and place and with information needed to identify the target. Because of the numerous acts that had been performed to aid in the commission of the murder, communicating an intention to withdraw by merely leaving the message [translation] "cancel" on the killer's answering device was found to be insufficient to exculpate the accused. The acts of abandonment were not proportional to the acts performed in support of the commission of the offence.
 For all these reasons, I would reformulate as follows the test already established in Whitehouse and Kirkness for determining whether the defence of abandonment applies, in order to adapt it specifically to the various degrees and forms of participation in crimes.
(4) that the accused took, in a manner proportional to his or her participation in the commission of the planned offence, reasonable steps in the circumstances either to neutralize or otherwise cancel out the effects of his or her participation or to prevent the commission of the offence.
 I recognize that there will be circumstances, even where the accused is a party within the meaning of s. 21(1) of the Criminal Code , in which timely and unequivocal communication by the accused of his or her intention to abandon the unlawful purpose will be considered sufficient to neutralize the effects of his or her participation in the crime. But there will be other circumstances, primarily where a person has aided in the commission of the offence, in which it is hard to see how timely communication to the principal offender of the person's intention to withdraw from the unlawful purpose will on its own be considered reasonable, and sufficient to meet the test set out in the preceding paragraph.
 In conclusion, and more specifically in the context of s. 21(1) of the Criminal Code , the defence of abandonment should be put to the jury only if there is evidence in the record that is capable of supporting a finding that a person who was initially a party to the carrying out of an unlawful purpose subsequently took reasonable steps in the circumstances either to neutralize the effects of his or her participation or to prevent the commission of the offence.
 In the case at bar, the defence of abandonment did not have an air of reality.
 The evidence showed that the appellant had written several documents, including some incriminating letters that were evidence of the couple's intention to end their and their children's lives. The couple explained in the letters how they planned to kill the children and take their own lives: by intoxication using a soporific drug. It was the appellant who purchased the medication that caused the children's deaths.
 What evidence could therefore have justified the trial judge's putting the defence of abandonment to the jury?
 The evidence is incomplete, to say the least.
[translation] When I saw the papers and looked at what was written on them, I said that's crazy. And I told Marc we couldn't . . .
 Counsel for the appellant argues that, in light of this evidence, the trial judge had sufficient reasons to put the defence of abandonment to the jury. I find this argument wanting.
 In my view, the appellant's evidence that she communicated her withdrawal from the deadly plan and that her communication was timely and unequivocal is insufficient for the purposes of the air of reality test. To meet that test, it is not enough to simply identify "some evidence" or "any evidence"; the evidence must be "reasonably capable of supporting the inferences required for the defence to succeed" (Cinous, at paras. 82‑83).
 The only relevant passage from the appellant's testimony is the one in which she used the plural pronoun "we" (using the French pronoun "on" as an equivalent for the plural "nous") in saying "I told Marc we couldn't [do that]". This passage stands alone in the appellant's principal narrative to the effect that she never agreed to the murder‑suicide pact, that she wrote the incriminating letters while in a dissociative state and that she told her spouse she disagreed with what he was planning to do as soon as she realized what it was.
 Nevertheless, even if it were assumed that the evidence the appellant relies upon would be sufficient for a jury to reasonably conclude that she had communicated her intention to withdraw from the plan and that her communication was timely and unequivocal, that communication would not on its own have sufficed, in the circumstances of this case, for the judge to put the defence of abandonment to the jury.
 The appellant did more than merely promise to take part in the murder‑suicide pact. She supplied her spouse with the intoxicants he used to cause the children's deaths. She therefore had to do more either to neutralize the effects of her participation or to prevent the commission of the offence. For example, she could have hidden or destroyed the medication she had purchased, remained watchful and taken the children to a safe place for the evening, insisted that her spouse give her verbal confirmation of what he intended to do, or simply called the authorities.
 I conclude that the record did not contain evidence upon which a properly instructed jury acting reasonably could have found that the appellant had abandoned the common unlawful purpose, and could accordingly have acquitted her, if it believed the evidence to be true. The defence of abandonment therefore did not meet the air of reality test, and the trial judge was not required to put the defence to the jury.
 For these reasons, I would dismiss the appeal.
 Justice Wagner has set out with care and sensitivity the tragic and desperate circumstances that culminated in the murder by the appellant's husband of their three children and his own virtually contemporaneous suicide.
 In the wake of that tragedy and despair, the appellant, Cathie Gauthier, now stands convicted of first degree murder. And she has been sentenced to imprisonment for life without eligibility for parole for 25 years.
 The Crown's case against Ms. Gauthier is that she and her husband entered a murder-suicide pact that was executed with her help. She testified at trial that she had demonstrated her disapproval of the pact before the children were murdered and had notified her husband of this unwillingness to go through with the plan.
 Defence counsel urged the trial judge to leave open for the jury's consideration Ms. Gauthier's defence of abandonment. The trial judge declined to do so. The Court of Appeal upheld the trial judge on the ground that it was an [translation] "incompatible . . . defence": 2011 QCCA 1395 (CanLII). Both courts below erred in law in this regard.
 The Court of Appeal did not consider whether the appellant's defence of abandonment had an "air of reality" ― that is to say, whether there was any evidence upon which a properly instructed jury might entertain a reasonable doubt on that issue.
 On the law as it was then understood, the trial judge was bound to put abandonment to the jury if there was evidence that the appellant (a) had changed ― or "abandoned" ― her earlier intention to aid or abet the murder of her children, and (b) had adequately communicated to her husband that she had withdrawn from their pact.
 This Court has repeatedly held that the defence of abandonment includes no other essential elements. And our attention has not been drawn to a single Canadian decision to the contrary, at any level.
 In my view, there was evidence at Ms. Gauthier's trial upon which a properly instructed jury might well have found that she had abandoned the suicide pact in respect of which she was charged and convicted of murder. Or at least have been left with a reasonable doubt on this issue, which would of course have sufficed to warrant Ms. Gauthier's acquittal.
 As a matter of law, the appellant is entitled, in my respectful view, to a fresh trial, where the jury will not be wrongly prevented from considering on its merits Ms. Gauthier's defence of abandonment, however weak and unpromising we might believe it to be. I am aware of no legal principle that permits us to deprive her of that right.
 In his thorough and thoughtful reasons, Justice Wagner proposes that we now adopt additional requirements for a valid defence of abandonment where the accused, as in this case, has done something to aid or abet the commission of the offence before satisfying the two established elements of abandonment. As we shall see, there are strong reasons of policy and precedent for resisting the proposed changes.
 As we shall see as well, I am not persuaded that the modifications we endorse should be made applicable on a retrial of the appellant. But even if we decide that they are, the appellant would at least be entitled to a fair opportunity to satisfy those newly recognized requirements. Her failure to do so at her first trial ― prior to their recognition by this Court or, it seems, by any Canadian court ― can hardly deprive Ms. Gauthier of a proper opportunity to do so now.
 With respect for those who are of a different view, I would therefore allow the appeal, set aside the appellant's convictions and order a new trial.
 Canadian courts have for more than 70 years held that the defence of abandonment comprises only two essential elements: (i) change of intention; and (ii) where practical and reasonable, timely and unequivocal notice of withdrawal.
 These requirements emanate from R. v. Whitehouse (1940), 55 B.C.R. 420 (C.A.), a decision that has been repeatedly approved and followed by this Court, as I mentioned earlier, and has long been firmly entrenched in Canadian law: see Henderson v. The King,  S.C.R. 226, at pp. 236-37; R. v. de Tonnancourt (1956), 115 C.C.C. 154 (Man. C.A.), at pp. 176 and 201-3; R. v. Merrifield, 1977 CarswellOnt 1806 (C.A.), at para. 3; Miller v. The Queen,  2 S.C.R. 680, at p. 708; R. v. Wagner (1978), 8 B.C.L.R. 258 (C.A.), at pp. 260-61; R. v. Joyce (1978), 42 C.C.C. (2d) 141 (B.C.C.A.), at p. 150; R. v. Kirkness,  3 S.C.R. 74, at p. 89; R. v. Johanson (1995), 166 A.R. 60 (Prov. Ct.), at para. 23; R. v. Fournier, 2002 NBCA 71, 252 N.B.R. (2d) 256, at para. 22; R. v. McKercher,  O.J. No. 5859 (QL) (Ct. J.), at para. 77; R. v. Forknall, 2003 BCCA 43, 176 B.C.A.C. 284, at paras. 51-53; R. v. Lacoursière (2002), 7 C.R. (6th) 117 (Que. C.A.), at paras. 25-29; R. v. P.K., 2006 ABCA 299, 397 A.R. 318, at para. 12; R. v. S.R.B., 2009 ABCA 45, 448 A.R. 124, at paras. 10, 19-20 and 24-30, rev'd R. v. Bird, 2009 SCC 60,  3 S.C.R. 638, at para. 1; R. v. Ball, 2011 BCCA 11, 298 B.C.A.C. 166, at paras. 44-47; and R. v. Leslie, 2012 BCSC 683 (CanLII), at paras. 552-58.
 Justice Wagner does not suggest that the defence of abandonment, as it stood at the time of Ms. Gauthier's trial, required anything more than a change of intention, accompanied by timely and unequivocal notice of withdrawal. Rather, my colleague proposes a new and different test.
 To this end, my colleague distinguishes for present purposes between s. 21(1) and s. 21(2) of the Criminal Code, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-46 . The former deals with liability for aiding or abetting another in the commission of a specific offence; the latter, with liability for an offence committed by another in carrying out a common unlawful purpose.
 Justice Wagner would impose additional requirements on the defence of abandonment, particularly with respect to liability under s. 21(1) , where the accused would need to adduce evidence that he or she took steps to neutralize any prior contribution to the commission of the offence or, in the alternative, to prevent the commission of the offence.
 With respect, this approach overlooks the fact that both s. 21(1) and s. 21(2) can involve active participation by the accused: see for example Henderson and Miller.
 Moreover, the Whitehouse test has been repeatedly and consistently applied in prosecutions under s. 21(1) and s. 21(2) alike.
 The application of the Whitehouse criteria to an aiding and abetting case was endorsed very recently by this Court in 2009, and even more recently by other Canadian courts: Bird (affirming Costigan J.A.'s dissent); Ball, at paras. 44-47; and Leslie, at paras. 552-58.
 Indeed, Whitehouse itself involved parties to an offence who had "aided and abetted in the commission of the crime": p. 424. They had "performed part, at least, of the tasks assigned to them": again, at p. 424.
 It was out of this factual context that the test for abandonment was born. And the court identified only two requirements: the first, change of intention; the second, timely and unequivocal notice of withdrawal ― that is, the accused must clearly communicate to the principal "that if he proceeds upon it he does so without the further aid and assistance of those who withdraw": Whitehouse, at p. 425 (emphasis added).
 As the language of this oft-cited passage makes clear, the Whitehouse test for abandonment expressly contemplates prior aid and assistance.
. . . the premise upon which Whitehouse is based: "Let it be known, if you go then you go alone." Unequivocal withdrawal and the element of timeliness are sufficiently expansive to accommodate abettors and aiders alike because, as in Becerra and Gundy, the aim is to compel the principal to reconsider the objective in time to abandon it. This, after all, is the preventative rationale for party responsibility. Thus the defence of abandonment as structured in Whitehouse can apply with equal fairness and effect to all parties including aiders by interpreting timeliness in relation to the offence and the goal of ultimate abandonment.
 Even the most ardent proponents of a more stringent abandonment defence recognize that to require neutralizing or preventative steps would necessitate a change to Canadian law: see M. Campbell, "Turning Back the Clock: Aiders and the Defence of Abandonment" (2010), 14 Can. Crim. L.R. 1, at pp. 16-17.
See also R. v. Otway,  EWCA Crim 3 (BAILII), at para. 32, where the court held that efforts to prevent the crime were relevant but not required for withdrawal.
 Justice Wagner relies on R. v. Fournier, 2007 QCCA 1822 (CanLII), to support his position that mere communication of changed intention should henceforth be insufficient for abandonment in s. 21(1) cases (para. 48 of Justice Wagner's reasons). However, in Fournier, unlike this case, the defence of abandonment was not kept from the jury. Indeed, the Court of Appeal held that the trial judge properly instructed the jury that abandonment required timely and unequivocal notice of withdrawal: Fournier, at paras. 18-20.
 I agree with my colleague that the internally repentant archer cannot, having let the arrow fly, seek refuge in the defence of abandonment (para. 47 of Justice Wagner's reasons). The defence fails in Sir John Smith's illustration not because preventative or neutralizing steps are required, but rather because notice of withdrawal comes too late, or not at all.
 These authorities all make clear that the defence of abandonment does not require that the accused take steps to neutralize prior participation in the criminal enterprise or to prevent the commission of the offence. While such evidence may strengthen a defence of abandonment, failure to take neutralizing or preventative steps is not fatal. Thus, for example, in R. v. Edwards, 2001 BCSC 275 (CanLII), at para. 186, the accused's efforts to stop the commission of the offence were treated as evidence that the Whitehouse requirements were met ― not as additional requirements of the defence.
 But on any view of the matter, in light of the state of the law universally accepted in Canada at the time of the appellant's trial, it would be fundamentally unfair at this stage to fault the appellant for failing to demonstrate anything more than a change of intention, plus timely and unequivocal notice of withdrawal from the murder-suicide pact. Since the appellant's testimony provided some evidence on these two essential elements, there was an air of reality to the defence. The trial judge therefore erred by withholding the defence of abandonment from the jury.
 I agree with Justice Wagner that the "incompatibility" between Ms. Gauthier's defence of abandonment and her primary defence did not justify the trial judge's decision to prevent the jury from considering them both. And I am therefore content to add only these brief comments on the issue of incompatibility.
 Incompatibility should not be relied upon to deprive the accused of a defence for which an air of reality has been established, particularly where ― as in this case ― defence counsel has requested that it be included in the judge's charge: A.R., at pp. 1018 and 1037-38.
 As Kellock J. stated in Henderson: "It is a paramount principle of law that when a defence, however weak it may be, is raised by a person charged, it should be fairly put before the jury": p. 241. Taschereau J. likewise emphasized the accused's "fundamental right . . . to have all the features of [the] defence adequately put to the jury": Henderson, at p. 237.
 For abandonment to be left for the jury, there must be some evidence upon which a properly instructed jury could form a reasonable doubt on the two essential elements of the defence: R. v. Cinous, 2002 SCC 29,  2 S.C.R. 3, at paras. 2, 49, 52-54 and 83. In my view, the appellant's testimony satisfied this modest evidentiary threshold.
 Indeed, there was no suggestion at trial by the Crown― nor finding by the trial judge or the Court of Appeal ― that the defence of abandonment lacked an air of reality.
 The appellant testified that she told Marc Laliberté his plan did not make sense and he [translation] "could not do it" ("pouvait pas faire ça"). She also told him that she did not want to be a part of it. She demonstrated her disapproval of the murder-suicide pact by tearing up two documents: a last will and testament written by the appellant and a story of Marc Laliberté's life containing references to the pact. She was convinced by his facial expression that the murder-suicide pact was off: A.R., at pp. 834-35 and 910-11.
 This testimony provides some evidence that the appellant no longer intended to participate in the murder-suicide pact and that she provided timely and unequivocal notice of this change of intention to the principal offender. That the evidence could have left the jury with a reasonable doubt as to the appellant's guilt is all that was required.
 Whether the appellant ultimately "did enough" to communicate timely and unequivocal withdrawal was a question of fact that should have been left for the jury to decide: P.K., at para. 11; O'Flaherty, at para. 60; Cinous, at paras. 52 and 54.
 With respect, I feel bound to conclude that the trial judge, by declining to instruct on the defence of abandonment, encroached "on the jury's traditional function as arbiter of fact": Cinous, at para. 56.
 For the foregoing reasons, I would allow the appeal, set aside the appellant's convictions, and order a new trial.
Appeal dismissed, Fish J. dissenting.
Solicitors for the appellant: Duval Lauzon Ménard, Trois‑Rivières.
Solicitor for the respondent: Directeur des poursuites criminelles et pénales du Québec, Chicoutimi.
Solicitor for the intervener: Attorney General of Ontario, Toronto.