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Kerr’s wife, and Livingston’s sister, Jane died of colon cancer less than two years after the couple’s twins were born, and Kerr wiped tears as he talked about Livingston’s tender — and enduring — care of Jane, him and their family.

“I love David so much,” he said at one point. “He is a beautiful person who has enriched the lives of so many.”

When he left the witness stand, Livingston gave him one of his crooked smiles.

His lawyers, Brian Gover and Fredrick Schumann, read aloud many of the 27 character letters, including from Livingston’s wife of more than four decades, Anne Grittani, and their daughter Megan Pollock.

Pollock lives in British Columbia; Grittani was present, but like her husband, seemed shattered by the conviction.

The couple’s other daughter, Emma Livingston Cook, who lives in Toronto, read aloud her letter about her dad, and like her mother, spoke about the toll the last four-plus years have taken on him.

They described a deeply private person, who took on the chief of staff job only because then premier McGuinty had asked him and who didn’t even belong to a political party, for whom the publicity and media scrutiny have been excruciating.

All of those who spoke or wrote in Livingston’s support asked the judge, in essence, to consider “the good he’s done in his life,” as youngest daughter Livingston Cook put it.

How do you measure a man’s life and weigh a single transgression against decades of good work?

The group included business executives, prominent lawyers, figure skater Dylan Moscovitch (who won a silver medal in pairs at the Sochi Olympics, and whom Livingston financially supported), and those who have served on charitable boards with Livingston, a former TD Bank senior executive. Many of them credited him with making Infrastructure Ontario, where Livingston worked before taking on the job with McGuinty, the fiscally responsible, successful organization it is.