Justice Cory was appointed to the Supreme Court of Ontario High Court in 1974 and elevated to the Ontario Court of Appeal in 1981, the Supreme Court noted in its statement. On February 1, 1989 he was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada. He served on the Supreme Court of Canada for ten years, retiring on June 1, 1999.

Among Cory’s law clerks at the Supreme Court were Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada David Lametti; Federal Pay Equity Commissioner Karen Jensen; and Vicki White, CEO of The Advocates’ Society, of which Cory once served as president.

“There's a little clerk community who are all expressing that this is indeed the wrong moment to lose a man of Justice Cory’s character and spirit and generosity,” White told Canadian Lawyer.

“Justice Cory was an exceptional human being,” Minister Lametti, who clerked for Cory from 1989 to 1990, during the latter’s first year on the high court, said in a statement to Canadian Lawyer. “He served his country in war, and he served it again in peace through his intellect, his sense of justice and his profound kindness and love for people. While obviously brilliant, he never lost the humility that was also one of his hallmarks. He was always a Windsor boy.”

Born in Windsor, Ontario, on October 25, 1925 to Andrew and Mildred (Beresford Howe) Cory, Peter deCarteret Cory was educated at the University of Western Ontario (Assumption College), receiving a B.A. in 1947, and at Osgoode Hall Law School, receiving his law degree in 1950. He was called to the Ontario Bar in 1950. As a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force, he had served overseas with the 6th Bomber Group during the Second World War.