David Johnston - Academic Career

Academic Career

Johnston has had a long academic career, during which he came to specialise in securities regulation, corporation law, public policy and information technology law. After 1966, he worked for two years as an assistant professor at the Queen's University Faculty of Law and then joined the University of Toronto's law faculty, where he taught until 1974, eventually being promoted to the rank of full professor. Johnston was then appointed as dean of the University of Western Ontario Law School, serving between 1974 and 1979, at which time he was elevated to become the fourteenth Principal and Vice-Chancellor of McGill University. It was during his time in that role that he became acquainted with Pierre and Margaret Trudeau, as the Johnston children played with the Trudeau children when the families were at their adjacent cottages in the Laurentians.

Johnston stepped down in 1994 as principal of McGill to remain at the university only as a law professor until he was in 1999 installed as the fifth President of the University of Waterloo. At that time, the couple acquired a home in Heidelberg, Ontario, and began operating an adjacent horse training ranch, Chatterbox Farm. Following his departure from the presidential post to become governor general, Johnston received at the end of 2011 a final $610,506 in pay from the University of Waterloo for administrative leave (the university president is granted a leave of one year for each term served) and unused vacation time.