1972-1973 Yoine Goldstein

I was President of the Society in 1972-1973. My term was successful, though mostly uneventful except for the fact that my status as President led to my being the “Jewish” representative on the council of the Montreal Bar in 1976-1977 when Bill 101 was passed.

A large group of Anglophone-Jewish lawyers got together at a Downtown hotel and we decided, collectively, that the provisions of Bill 101 requiring the language of legislation, the legislator and the courts to be unilingually French, should be challenged.

I was co-Plaintiff along with Peter Blaikie and Roland Durand. We were represented by Robert Litvack and later, by André Brossard, against the Procureur Général du Quebec. We won in Superior Court, in the Court of Appeal and in the Supreme Court of Canada.

The active and unanimous participation of the Society in this effort led to its ultimate success.