Introduction

In June 1982 the delegates to a Special Commission that was to prepare for the Fifteenth Session of the Hague Conference on Private International Law met for the first time. They represented twenty-one states which were members of the Hague Conference, a number that was to swell to thirty-two at the meeting of the Fifteenth Session in October 1984. The common law states represented were the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and Canada. There were observers of various international organisations both to the Commission and to the Fifteenth Session. The task of the Special Commission, set by the Fourteenth Session in 1980, was to design a Convention for presentation to the Fifteenth Session on the applicable law to govern trusts and on the recognition to be accorded the trust by a state that ratifies the Convention.

The text of a draft Convention was completed in October 1983, and a year later, following a full consideration of this text and significant changes, the final text of the Convention was adopted by the Fifteenth Session held in October 1984. The Convention came into force on 1 July 1985.

The present writer, representing Canada, was one of those delegates. This chapter looks back to the Convention that the Fifteenth Session adopted, and to the reception of the Convention during the following twenty years. It is intended as an entirely personal view of both events, the international agreement and its reception. There is one caveat.