Lawyer.
Born at Winnipeg in 1936, he was educated at the University of Manitoba then called the Manitoba Bar in 1963, working at the firm of Walsh Micay under Harry Walsh and Joseph O’Sullivan. He co-founded the law firm of Taylor McCaffrey in 1979. He was made a Queen’s Counsel in 1975. After being co-counsel and later senior counsel in the commission of inquiry into the Churchill Forest Industries affair between 1971 and 1974, he made two attempts to enter politics. In June 1975, he lost a provincial byelection as a Liberal candidate. In 1978 he was nominated as a federal Liberal candidate but was ousted after making critical remarks about Pierre Trudeau.
In the 1980s he was the lead lawyer on behalf of Indigenous people who negotiated the Northern Flood Agreement with the Manitoba government. He also acted as counsel in the Manitoba language reference to the Supreme Court of Canada in 1984. He was a guest lecturer at the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Law, a Life Bencher with the Law Society of Manitoba, and a member of the American Trial Lawyers Association, the Saskatchewan Law Society, and the Alberta Law Society.
He died at St. Petersburg, Florida, while on a family vacation, on 18 January 1998.
“Manitoba names 9 new QCs,” Winnipeg Free Press, 1 January 1975, page 43.
“Legal community mourns loss of brilliant light,” Winnipeg Free Press, 20 January 1998, page A4.
Obituary, Winnipeg Free Press, 21 January 1998, page C7.
“They are gone, but not forgotten,” Winnipeg Free Press, 31 December 1998, page A4.
We thank Wendy Cairns for providing additional information used here.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 1 August 2019
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