OSGOODE HALL LAW SCHOOL OF YORK UNIVERSITY | ALUMNI MAGAZINE WINTER 2016 Visual Advocacy in the Ascendant Osgoode sets its sights on areas where the fairness, accessibility and effectiveness of justice can be improved through visual media. 10 Visual Advocacy CONTINUUM in the Ascendant Osgoode Hall Law School Alumni Magazine Osgoode, with the generous assistance of Volume 40 Kathryn Podrebarac ’92, has established EDITOR the Fund for Innovation in Law and Media Anita Herrmann (FILM) to create and sustain experiential Director, Office of External education programs focused on the use of Relations & Communications visual advocacy. Initial projects include the 416-736-5364 [email protected] Gladue Video Project and the Justice Video CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Information Project. Virginia Corner Manager, Communications 14 Bridging Law WRITERS Suzanne Bowness and Community Meghan Carrington Osgoode Visiting Professor Jamil Jivani is Bev Cline Virginia Corner inspiring Osgoode students to put law into New Ways to Connect Anita Herrmann action through his Community Organizing Kaitlin Normandin and the Law course and initiatives such as Lorne Sossin mobilizing voter turnout in the Jane and Christine Ward Finch neighbourhood. PHOTOGRAPHY Ian Crysler New Paramount Studios Ltd. 16 Osgoode’s Helping Hand Sjoerd Witteveen Members of the Osgoode community go DESIGN AND PRODUCTION above and beyond to support Syria’s refugees SPARK | sparkbranding.ca at home and abroad. WINTER 2016 PRINTING RJM Print Group LINKEDIN FACEBOOK YOUTUBE TWITTER Continuum is published once a year by Osgoode 20 Celebrating our Illustrious Osgoode Hall facebook.com/ youtube.com/ @OsgoodeNews Hall Law School of York University for alumni and Law School osgoode OsgoodeHall friends. Ideas and opinions expressed in Continuum Osgoode Catalysts do not necessarily reflect those of the editors, Alumni Group LawSchool Five more trailblazing alumni have been added Osgoode Hall Law School or York University. to our list of exceptional individuals who We invite your letters and comments, and hope you will keep us posted on where you are and what you overcame barriers and paved the way for others. are doing. Please send correspondence to: Continuum 03 Message from the Dean Office of External Relations & Communications 04 In Brief Ignat Kaneff Building, Room 1016 Osgoode Hall Law School York University 22 Osgoode Knowledge 4700 Keele Street Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Telephone: 416-736-5638 24 Faculty News Fax: 416-736-5629 E-mail: [email protected] 28 Class Notes Website: osgoode.yorku.ca/alumni 32 In Memoriam Printed in Canada ISSN 0318-1295 WINTER 2016 Message from the Dean Community engagement is not just an rates in the country. From knocking on doors to giving away Thanksgiving turkeys, Osgoode students participating in the aspiration at Osgoode – it is embedded Community Organizing and the Law project all have come in the very mission and mandate of the to see law as embedded in community and community as embedded in law. I very much hope the ripple effects from this Law School (and York University). project within the Black Creek neighbourhood and throughout the Law School and the University continue to spread. This year, more than ever, through its research, Osgoode’s commitment to community always has access to teaching and outreach initiatives, Osgoode is justice at its heart. To complement the many other initiatives in this regard, and with the support of visionary donor putting community first. support, Osgoode launched the Fund for Innovation in Law and Media. Featuring the development of new visual and digital legal advocacy and information, this Fund will set in The global refugee crisis has galvanized many at Osgoode. motion new collaborations, new student opportunities and Our response has been taking place in many spheres of the new benefits to vulnerable participants in the justice system. Law School, including a directed research course aimed at supporting the Refugee Sponsorship Support Program in Finally, Osgoode’s impacts in and benefits to broader collaboration with the University of Ottawa, several distinct communities engage an ambitious research agenda. Osgoode sponsorship teams and campaigns in conjunction with the faculty seek not only to enrich academic scholarly output, but pan-GTA University Lifeline Syria Challenge, a host of to shape the public debate. In this issue, we profile some of volunteer initiatives mobilizing students, staff, faculty Osgoode’s most influential and original scholars. and alumni and ongoing research and advocacy, often in In these and many other ways, Osgoode continues to see collaboration with others throughout the University and community engagement as not only our commitment but through York’s Centre for Refugee Studies. also the mechanism by which we bring to life our motto, At the same time, the Law School was swept up in the “Per Jus Ad Justitiam/ Through Law to Justice.” excitement and promise of the election campaign. Many students, staff and faculty were engaged in various issues that lay at the centre of the campaign from the missing and murdered Indigenous women inquiry to physician-assisted dying, legalizing marijuana and various initiatives on civil liberties, national security and a host of regulatory and policy Lorne Sossin ‘92 spheres. Beyond the substance of the campaign (and wishing Dean our many alumni running for office well), we also turned our focus to our own front yard in the northwest part of the GTA. Led by Visiting Professor Jamil Jivani, a group of Osgoode students took on the challenge of deepening the engagement of a community with one of the lowest electoral participation 3 IN BRIEF WINTER 2016 WHAT’S NEW Osgoode students and JusticeFundr because they believe the the expertise, experience, availability law can be fairer, more responsive and of, and even languages spoken, by alumni are demonstrating better able to serve the public. any given potential stand-in, and entrepreneurial spirit in justicefundr.ca book the lawyer they feel best meets their client’s needs. The app is free to JUSTICETRANS the development of new download. Each potential stand-in sets is a mobile phone application and their own fee for an appearance. The approaches to increasing website offering free legal information app takes a transaction fee of $7.50 about transgender rights across access to justice, as these from whatever the stand-in charges. Canada. It was founded last spring by Payment happens seamlessly and latest ventures show. Benjamin Vandorpe ‘15, a 26-year-old virtually instantly within the app when transgender man. The transgender the court appearance is complete, using JUSTICEFUNDR community faces serious barriers to Stripe to process credit card payments. is a donation-based crowdfunding access to justice, and JusticeTrans’ The app is currently populated with platform for individuals and mission is to help alleviate some of courthouses in Chicago, New York, organizations to raise funds for legal those barriers. Los Angeles, San Francisco, Detroit, proceedings that are intended to justicetrans.com Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton, Calgary advance the public interest. Founded and Edmonton. by Martin Hui ’14, Douglas Judson ’15 STANDIN LAW standin.is and Avnish Nanda ’14, JusticeFundr was co-founded by Osgoode LLM improves access to justice by reducing student Andrew Johnston and Toronto financial barriers to litigation, lawyer Peter Carayiannis. It’s a new Five of the eight Indigenous graduates of the Class of 2015 with Justice Murray Sinclair and Justice Harry LaForme ’77, ’08 (LLD). iPhone app that lets lawyers who can’t From left to right: Joshua Tallman, Serena Dykstra, Jacob Dockstator, Justice Murray Sinclair, Justice Harry LaForme, Kendra d’Eon, Laura Mayer. empowering parties and intervenors in Photo: Ian Crysler public interest legal proceedings. make it to a court appearance find The platform also helps identify and other lawyers near their courthouse build a community of support for a legal to “stand in” for them. The location- THE START OF A NEW LAW SCHOOL TRADITION issue. Hui, Judson and Nanda founded based app allows lawyers to quickly see Osgoode held its first-ever everyone to the traditional territory Doctorate at Osgoode’s Convocation of the Mississaugas of the New Credit, ceremony later that afternoon, told Honour Ceremony for LaForme advised the graduates to stay the gathering “this is not a white man’s Indigenous graduates last close to each other as First Nations system. This is our system too and people and “surround yourself with we just need to make it work for us as INSPIRING OSGOODE STUDENTS TO TAKE ON THE WORLD June 19 as part of Spring whoever you are.” others have made it work for them.” Convocation celebrations. For graduating student Jacob “Jake” With that goal in mind, Fong, a “China represents “ I would like to see Dockstator, the Honour Ceremony consultant with King & Wood Mallesons, a vital part of “Even though this is the first, I can’t was “a moment of pride.” He said in Osgoode known as a the largest law firm in the world, has Osgoode’s future imagine a graduation in the future an interview that studying at Osgoode made a $60,000 donation toward as a global law global legal academy, without it,” Dean Lorne Sossin meant he “had the freedom to strengthening the relationship and school, and we are said of the start of the new Law introduce Indigenous methodologies inspiring lawyers to promoting collaboration between grateful to Felix School tradition. and perspectives