Charles Dubin, who was best known for heading an inquiry into steroid use by athletes, has died.

A spokesman at the Ontario Court of Appeal has confirmed that the one-time chief justice of Ontario died Monday at age 87.

Dubin's assistant at Torys LLP, the Toronto law firm where he worked, says the former judge died of pneumonia and was in hospital for the last week.

Dubin was well known in the legal world for his keen intellect and a no-nonsense manner.

He had vast legal experience, but also happened to be a "huge sports fan," said longtime friend, Ontario Court of Appeal Justice Robert Armstrong.

"Basically, his approach was to leave no stone unturned — to go out and get the evidence and then put it before him," he said.

Dubin was perhaps best known to the public for a high-profile commission he headed in 1989.

Known as the Dubin inquiry, the commission was formed after sprinter Ben Johnson lost his gold medal at the 1988 Seoul Olympics because a banned drug was detected in his urine samples.

In a groundbreaking report, Dubin exposed doping secrets that had been unknown outside the secretive world of track and field, and he recommended a broad range of anti-doping measures.

The inquiry also broke the "code of omerta" about the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sports, said Canadian Olympic official Dick Pound, who served as president of the World Anti-Doping Agency.

At the time, doping was particularly prevalent in the former East Bloc countries, but few realized how common it was among western athletes, he said.

"Nobody talked about it and it was just ignored, but certainly everybody was doing it," Pound said.

"I mean Charlie Francis, who was Ben's [Johnson] coach, said, 'Listen, if I'm not giving my athletes this stuff, they start a metre behind in a 100-metre race."'

Francis said Monday that while he didn't agree with all of Dubin's recommendations, he believes he was treated fairly during the inquiry.

"He wanted to get both sides of the story," he said.

In 1981, Dubin held a federal inquiry into aviation safety that strongly recommended a more significant role for enforcement of safety measures.

Born in Hamilton in 1921, he was appointed to the Ontario Court of Appeal in 1973.

Dubin was a strong opponent of capital punishment before it was abolished in Canada in 1976. He defended 14 men charged with first-degree murder — none of whom was hanged.

He even defended a dog condemned to death for savaging a boy, and won a last-ditch defence before the Ontario Court of Appeal.

"He was just so good that people thought he should be on the bench, and he was appointed to the [Ontario] Court of Appeal," Armstrong said.

Dubin was appointed associate chief justice in 1987, and chief justice in 1990.

He served until 1996 and rejoined Torys after his retirement, where he worked in arbitration as well as litigation and dispute resolution.

In 1997, he was made an officer of the Order of Canada.