Authored by Ruth Roberts

I am constantly amazed by the incredible power of small things. How a kind word can heal a heart; how a smile can defuse an argument. And how a nickel can speak volumes about integrity and honesty.

In the beautiful Quinte Consolidated Courthouse in Belleville there is a private lounge for the lawyers. It’s a working area, with a telephone and access to the library. It’s a quiet space for lawyers to work, chat to colleagues, and catch their breath. The telephone sits on a small table – next to a nickel which, as far as I remember, has been there for more than two years. The cleaners clean around it, lawyers push it to one side when they are using the telephone, and sometimes people fiddle with it when they are chatting. But it is always there. As is the briefcase and running shoes, left in the closet by some itinerant colleague well before Covid.

I am fascinated by the power of these objects. Fascinated by the space they occupy and the stories they tell. Because it would be so easy for them to NOT be there.

It’s understandable that no one would remove the shoes or the briefcase. They are, after all, unique, identifiable objects. They belong to someone who may, one day, wander in and claim them. But a nickel? It would be so easy for someone to casually scoop it up, small change for coffee or parking. What makes this coin unique, inviolable?

What makes it unique is that everyone who uses the lounge knows it does not belong to them. To take it would be, in some small way, a breach of trust, an erosion of the inherent honesty and ethics that bind us together.

It seems to me that over the past few years the world has become angrier and more chaotic. Old certainties are shaken, old loyalties abandoned. And in the whirlwind of events in the Courthouse it is sometimes difficult to remember that some truths are unchanging.

When I sit at the table and see the reassuring presence of that nickel, I am reminded that integrity, honestly and the extraordinary power of ordinary things is eternal.

What’s a nickel worth? As much as the World can hold.