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Law Times • February 14, 2011 NEWS Black History Month Still room for trailblazers: Falconer BY MICHAEL McKIERNAN Law Times of Black Lawyers marked Black History Month with a joint event celebrating trail-blazing black lawyers in Ontario's past last week. Th e two organizations T teamed up to produce the event, during which keynote speaker and law society Bencher Julian Falconer told the audience the journey is far from over. "I in- vite you to become the pioneers and become the trailblazers. It's time," Falconer said. While modern mountaineers mourn the lateness of their births, after others have conquered all of the most challenging peaks, Fal- coner said there are still plenty of fi rsts for black lawyers to aim for. He pointed out that there are no black judges on the Supreme Court of Canada or the Ontario Court of Appeal. Th e provincial and federal cabinets, which, ac- cording to Falconer, are impor- tant bodies for lawyers wishing to eff ect social change, include just one black person between them: Margarett Best, Ontario's minister of health promotion and sport. Th e law society itself got its fi rst black bencher just 12 years ago with the election of Leon- ard Braithwaite. "You were not born too late," Falconer said. "We have a re- sponsibility, as members of the black community, to change this. Nobody is going to do it for us. Th ere are mountains to climb, there is work to be done. You don't get to say it's been done." At an earlier roundtable dis- cussion, Patricia DeGuire, the he Law Society of Up- per Canada and the Canadian Association association's director of pro- fessional excellence, paid trib- ute to Robert Sutherland, the province's fi rst black lawyer who was called to the bar in 1855. "Black pioneers have made some inroads," she said. "But these gains have been marginal, and progress has been slow." After Sutherland, it took another 30 years before the second black lawyer joined him. It was more than a centu- ry before Ontario got its fi rst female black lawyer, Myrtle Blackwood Smith, in 1960. According to a recent re- port by the law society, On- tario now has 610 black prac- titioners, or about 1.9 per cent of the province's lawyers. In the meantime, black peo- ple make up about four per cent of Ontario's population. "Even by numbers alone, this is not really a signifi cant repre- sentation for peoples who have lived in Canada for 410 years," DeGuire said. Part of the reason for the gap in time between Ontario's fi rst and second black lawyers was the diffi culty black students found in acquiring articling positions. Delos Rogest Davis had to petition the provincial government to grant him an exemption from articling after years of searching for a princi- pal. He was eventually called to the bar in 1885. "If you were male, from a white Anglo background, you could became a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada," Falconer said. He sees Davis' experience refl ected in that of many recent racialized law school graduates who are disproportionately rep- resented among the ranks of sole Yola Grant says she benefited from mentoring early in her career as a Crown prosecutor. and small-fi rm practitioners. Falconer himself practised alone for many years. "I chose to hang a shingle. Sadly, there are many young lawyers who don't get a choice. Th ey're in not diff erent positions than Mr. Davis was in the 19th century. Th ey can't fi nd work, they can't fi nd mentors, they can't fi nd guidance. You end up in more regulatory hot water and you end up in more compromising positions when you don't have support. It doesn't matter if your face is white, black, woman, male. Absent support, you get into trouble." Falconer called on racial- ized lawyers to donate their time, energy, and money to building those supports for their younger counterparts. "Money has to be spent. Young lawyers are entitled to mentoring. We owe it to them. Th at's not social networking but mentoring. Mentoring has professional obligations attached." Yola Grant, a Toronto law- yer who also took part in the roundtable discussion, said she got help from mentors, particularly early in her career, when she worked as a Crown prosecutor with a focus on occu- pational health and safety viola- tions. "For the fi rst few years of my practice, I really benefi ted from being around a large group of lawyers," she noted. DeGuire takes pride in her mentorship and community work, although she said it has caused her problems as an ad- judicator for various admin- istrative law tribunals. In one case, she received an ultima- tum in which she was asked to resign from a tribunal or from her posts with the association because of potential confl icts when fellow members of the association appear before her. Another tribunal's unoffi cial policy was to prevent her from hearing cases in which one side was represented by a black law- yer. Th ese decisions went too far and showed elements of "either misunderstanding or systemic discrimination," ac- cording to DeGuire. "Th ey must have rules of eth- ics, of course. But often we are hired on the basis of our com- munity involvement, so they cannot ask you to drop it all when you become a member of the tribunal simply because one of your people could appear be- fore you. It's not only perverse, it's highly illogical." LT PAGE 5 When it comes to IP in Canada, We're Well Read Ridout & Maybee LLP: Editors of the Canadian Patent Reporter it all starts somewhere www.ridoutmaybee.com Ridout_LT_Feb9-16_09.indd 1 2/5/09 10:52:55 AM www.lawtimesnews.com