NEWSLETTER: September 2024
Editors – Allen Mendelsohn, Larry Markowitz and Stephanie Perlis
President’s Message
Erin Lesser, President
(cliquez ici pour lire le mot du président en français)
Dear Colleagues, Honourable Judges, and Friends of the Society,
I hope everyone had a great summer. I am thrilled to extend a warm welcome to you to the 76th season of the Lord Reading Law Society! I am truly humbled and honoured to serve as this year’s President, and I am excited to continue to lead the Society into the future. I hope I can live up to all of the formidable Past Presidents of the Society; I certainly have big shoes to fill.
I would like to begin by thanking and congratulating our immediate Past President, Rob Steinman, for all his hard work during our monumental 75th Anniversary season and particularly for organizing the 75th Anniversary Gala, which was an incredible feat and an amazing evening. Not only was Rob a smashing success last year, but he continues to provide his time, advice and his sense of humour as well on a daily basis, which has already greatly facilitated my presidency. Thank you, Rob!
I would also like to sincerely thank my Executive and all our Board members, who continue to uphold and support the Society. Your time, input and contributions are absolutely indispensable and so greatly appreciated. In that vein, I would like to take a moment to remember Hershie Frankel, who sadly passed away this summer. Hershie was an invaluable member of the Board and the Society. He served for over 30 years as our membership chair and the gatekeeper of our membership list, and I know that we will all miss seeing his smiling face at the registration desk this year. A Shiva meal and sincere condolences were sent to Hershie’s family on behalf of the Society upon his passing. You can read more about Hershie further below in this newsletter.
This year, I plan on inviting interesting and engaging speakers who will hopefully enlighten, entertain and inspire our Society members. We will host our usual series of dinner-lectures that will follow the luxurious Lord Reading-style format (roast beef included!), and I am looking forward to bringing new types of events to the Society as well. I am excited to announce our very first Lord Reading hockey game, which will take place in February 2025. Thank you to Board member Jacob Falutz, who has been an essential driving force to help make this happen. More details to come in the future, stay tuned!
Our Season Opens Next Week!
Our 2024-25 season will begin with the annual Alan B. Gold Advocacy Lecture on September 11th, 2024. I am thrilled to say that the Society will be hosting John Baird, who is currently a Senior Advisor at Bennett Jones LLP, had along and impressive career in politics, and was notably a Senior Cabinet Minister in the Government of Canada. Rob Steinman, immediate past president of the Society and amateur observer of all things politics, will be interviewing Mr. Baird in a fireside-style chat entitled Navigating Political, Legal, and Diplomatic Storms: A fireside chat with Canada’s Former Top Diplomat. I will be pleased to welcome Senator Marc Gold, son of our honoree, who will be introducing our speakers and kicking off the evening.
Thank you to our generous sponsor for the evening, Davies, for continuing to support the Society. You can register for the dinner-meeting here.
Your Membership for the 2024-2025 Season
I encourage you to sign up for membership for the season. Without your membership, the Society cannot continue to fulfill its very important mission, which I know we all believe in. Membership provides you with incredible discounts on our traditional dinner-meetings (a great deal!) and grants you access to our members-only events, which I hope will be particularly worthwhile this year, as we will be hosting several extremely interesting CLE lunches. You can sign up for membership online here.
Save the Dates!
I am delighted to announce that our Human Rights Lecture will be November 7, and we will be honouring Indigenous activist Nakuset, who has spent her career advocating for Indigenous people experiencing homelessness through the Native Women’s Shelter and Resilience Montreal. Relatedly, I wish to thank Neil Hazan for his involvement, effort, support and time in organizing our very first Human Rights Essay Contest, the winners of which we will announce at the Lecture.
I am also thrilled to announce that the Annual Student Dinner will take place January 16, 2025, and will feature Professor Adam Dodek of the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law, who has written a new book entitled Heenan Blaikie: The Making and Unmaking of a Great Canadian Law Firm. Should be a great talk!
*****
I look forward to seeing you in-person and wishing you all a (touch premature) Shanah Tova on September 11th!
Sincerely,
Erin Lesser, President 2024-25
The Lord Reading Law Society
president@lordreading.org
Our Annual Human Rights Lecture 2023-24
We concluded our historic 75th anniversary season with the timely topic of “Fighting Internet Hate: The Online Harms Act and Bill C-63” for the Society’s annual Human Rights Lecture featuring Dr. Michael Geist, Prof. Karen Eltis and Society Communications Director Me Allen Mendelsohn. We also had the pleasure and honour of awarding the Lord Reading Human Rights Award to Me Neil G. Oberman for his ongoing efforts fighting antisemitism.
For a full set of pictures from the event, please click here.
Remembering Hershie Frankel, 1936-2024
Allen Mendelsohn
Hershie Frankel, longtime Lord Reading Board member and Membership Chair, passed away suddenly this summer on June 20th, in his 88th year. On behalf of the Society, we express our deepest condolences to his sister Hannah and his children, grandchildren, great-grandchild and entire family. Words are insufficient to express the loss to the Society, the legal profession, and everyone who knew him.
I truly believe it is my responsibility to at least attempt to explain what Hershie meant to the Society, and to me personally. I cannot. His contributions were endless. His warmth (in his own cantankerous way), and his dedication to the Society were endless. His dedication to me was endless. We spoke on the phone and emailed about Lord Reading business constantly, maybe an average of five times a week over the last 15 years. By my math that is about 4000 communications. I am guessing that is a gross underestimation.
I have a confession. For the last dozen years or so, whenever Hershie had a comment, question, or (usually) a complaint about something related to Lord Reading, his first contact was to me. Always. In the beginning I found this frustrating. I am not the President! Tell someone else! I used to dread seeing his name or “Frankel Spina” pop up on my phone. “Oh no, not again” I would think to myself. But as those years wore on, I came to appreciate what it meant that he only wanted to talk to me about these things. He trusted me, and my opinion, about Lord Reading. More than anyone. I cannot express what that means to me. I cannot express how much I will miss seeing his name on my phone now.
But what did he mean to the Society, and specifically its smooth functioning? By this point I think I, and maybe Lara, are the only ones who know. For the record, this is what he was doing for the Society, up until the very end. In his 88th year.
- Keeping the membership list. This was no easy task. He manually cut and pasted more than 300 names, addresses, emails, and other information into his Excel sheet. He kept it updated throughout the year, told me about changes in email addresses so I could update my mailing list, and a long list of related tasks.
- He kept track of and communicated with several large firms who were demanding and had their own special ways to sign up members for the season outside the normal sign-ups.
- Oh, you were a member last year but did not sign up this year? Hershie would personally email you, or call you, to cajole you to sign up again.
- Oh, you signed up for dinner as a member but are not actually a member? Hershie kept that list too, and you heard from him (or me or Lara, because Hershie could be brutal with those people, it was the bane of his Lord Reading existence, believe me I know).
- I am just getting started. Not only was Hershie the Membership Chair, he was the CLE Chair. That means he sent out CLE certificates to the hundreds of people who attended every dinner and every other CLE event. Look at one of your CLE certificates. Do you see how it has your name on it? Hershie did that. By himself.
- Of course he was there at every Board meeting and dinner, in my memory at least (and that goes back to the Montefiore days). He never missed one, unless he was out of town, or for health reasons.
- And without fail, he was there at the welcome desk, checking you in. And handing you a membership form if you had not signed up. I know what it will mean to all of us to not see him behind that check-in desk on September 11. I know how I will feel by not going to the bar to get him a Bloody Mary, like I always did. He stayed at that desk so long, until the last stragglers had arrived, he would usually end up stuck at the worst table at the back with myself, Lara, Steph and other volunteers. But he never complained.
- I know I am missing a bunch of stuff.
Hershie had a long, distinguished legal career after being called to the Barreau in 1961. Hershie had a wonderful family life, and was lucky enough to find companionship after the passing of his dear wife Marilyn. Hershie was a deeply spiritual man who was a Past President of the Shaare Zion Beth-El Congregation.
But I am not here to write about that, I am here to write about what Hershie meant to the Society. And because of our relationship, I know what he would want me to write, in his memory, to you right now:
Contributions in Hershie’s memory may be made to the “The Marilyn and Hershie Frankel Memorial Page” c/o Jewish General Hospital Foundation, (514) 340-8251.
Mazel Tov to Lord Reading Members Reaching an Anniversary at the Barreau!
The Society celebrates our long-standing members and friends who have reached important milestones at the Barreau:
60 years – The Hon. Morris J. Fish, C.C., Q.C.
50 years – Robert Cohen, Julius H. Grey, Ad. E., Irwin Liebman, FS Liverman, Donald Michelin, Howard Nemeroff, Leonard E. Seidman, Martin Sklar, Neil Stein
The Society salutes your longevity and your contributions to the legal profession!
Society Humour
News from the Mishpocha
Mazel Tov
- To longtime Society member and dear friend Judge Suzanne Handman on the publication of her book, Mediation for Lawyers – A Practical Guide for Effective Representation of Your Clients
- To longtime Society member and past Board member Elliot Lifson on being named to the Order of Quebec
Sincere Condolences
- To the family of Maître Lionel Blanshay
