Background
Van Camp was born in 1920 in the farming village of Blackstock, Ontario, to William John Weir and Mary Jane (Smith) Van Camp.
Van Camp was born in 1920 in the farming village of Blackstock, Ontario, to William John Weir and Mary Jane (Smith) Van Camp.
She finished high school at age 16, and then became the first person from Blackstock to attend university. At the University of Toronto, she studied liberal arts, with an interest in Latin, English, economics, and history.
Despite the dean of Osgoode Hall Law School telling her that life in the legal profession would be too difficult for a woman, she attended nonetheless, and graduated cum laude in 1947. She practiced law at—and became a partner in—the Toronto firm of Beaudoin, Pepper & Van Camp, which had previously been all-male. In 1971, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau appointed her to the Ontario Supreme Court, giving her the distinction of being the first woman on that court.
She retired in 1995, having reached the mandatory retirement age of 75.
She was honoured with an appointment to the Order of Ontario in 2003. She died April 19, 2012, in Amherstview, Ontario, at the age of 91.