Dear Candidate,Due to circumstances beyond the control of the Law Society of Upper Canada, please be advised that the Barrister and Solicitor Licensing Examination dates for June 2010 have changed....
Do the time“It seems like a no-brainer: convicted criminals shouldn’t get a break for prison time served prior to court dates. And yet, it’s taken four years for the federal government to enact legislation ending two-for-one jail credits. As the old saying goes: you do the crime, you do the time—the whole time, not just half. Convicted criminals have been gifted shorter sentences by the justice system for too long. It’s time to get tough.”
(a) to denounce unlawful conduct;(b) to deter the offender and other persons from committing offences;(c) to separate offenders from society, where necessary;(d) to assist in rehabilitating offenders;(e) to provide reparations for harm done to victims or to the community; and(f) to promote a sense of responsibility in offenders, and acknowledgment of the harm done to victims and to the community.
"We have the opportunity to build a new civilization. Your bankers, lawyers and politicians -- GONE because they are NO LONGER RELEVANT."
"One cell phone having been found, [the officer] was searching for other telecommunications devices."
(a) held up the baggie of crack and asked, "What's this?", thereby posing an incriminating question before advising the accused of his right to remain silent [officer mistake #3],
OR(b) held up the baggie and said "Look what I found!" or words of like effect, thereby -- according to defence counsel -- attempting to elicit an incriminating statement from the accused before advising him of his right to remain silent,
(a) obtained in a manner that gravely violated some or all of sections 7, 8, 9 and 10(b) of the Charter, such that, having regard to all the circumstances, admission of the evidence would bring the administration of justice into disrepute;(b) obtained in a manner that violated some or all of sections 7, 8, 9 and 10(b) of the Charter, such that admission of the evidence would not bring the administration of justice into disrepute;
OR(c) not obtained in a manner that violated the Charter.
Day Twelve was a wash: His Honour was called away and I was left in a conference room to finish preparations for my seminar the following day. The seminar was abominable and in retrospect, my time would have been put to better use by running at top speed in the opposite direction from Osgoode Hall, but -- hindsight, what can you do!
The following Monday I attended mental health court with Justice S--------. My notes from that day begin as follows: "It smells like cheese in here." And from that promising beginning, the day only improved.
I don't wish to make light of mental illness. I believe that the mental health court performs an invaluable service and that its officers deserve notice and commendation. But as they will be first to tell you, a lot of funny stuff happens in there.
Consider Ms. X. His Honour informed me that Ms. X was a fixture of the court, and that her court appearances had taken on a critical significance in her life. (Apparently this is not uncommon.) She was doing legal research on her own behalf, and it showed, much to the chagrin of her lawyer. Mrs. X proved the adage that a little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Also a hilarious thing.
When her name was called, Ms. X was in the body of the court. She drawled "ho-o-o-ld on a moment" as she hauled herself up; "you can hold the matter down for a moment while I get something out of my knapsack." Just like that -- languorous, like a veteran clerk that everybody's scared of.
Her lawyer wanted to put the matter over a week or so. Ms. X gave her about four seconds to speak -- "I think if we could come back on the 22nd" -- and then she went off. I recorded her as accurately as I could manage:
"ONCE AGAIN, you don’t have my interest in mind. I’m entitled to an election, OKAY? So I’m not obligated to have a preliminary inquiry, OKAY?1 Once again I’m the only one here with any brains. [Addressing her lawyer] You don’t know how to use your brains because your father lives in a city. [Addressing duty counsel, His Honour and the court staff] Your father lives in a city, and your father lives in a city, and your father lives in a city. And on the day you retire your father will be in a city. None of you could do what I do in custody. I was at Vanier and Algonquin.2 None of you can do what I do because you don’t know how to use your brains."
Everyone remained silent until this tirade ran out of gas, and then her lawyer resumed. "If we could come back on the 22nd, please." The court was agreeable.
I wasn't completely unprepared for the mental health courtroom. It was depicted on the short-lived CBC series This Is Wonderland, which I have mentioned before. (TIW took place at Old City Hall and didn't spare the details of life in the bowels of the Toronto justice system. A week into my placement, I hunted down the DVDs of the first season.) One early episode featured a mentally-ill homeless man who was campaigning for a municipal government seat. The day after I watched that episode, I saw the real deal. When I arrived at the front doors of the courthouse in the morning, a crowd outside was listening to a homeless man whom I had seen often. He was announcing his candidacy in the upcoming Toronto mayoral election. Not only that -- he was maligning his opponents George Smitherman, Rocco Rossi and Adam Giambrone (obviously this was way back in early February). I see him often, as his campaign headquarters is on the sidewalk at the corner of Bay and Queen. I call him Mister Mayor and I wish him the wildest success.
But back to the real mental health court: midway through my morning in the cheese-smelling courtroom, a group of high school boys entered the courtroom. They were about five minutes too late to get wind of some sordid charges involving a man who stood in the window of his house, naked, waving his genitalia at children passing by on their way to school. I thought it was fortunate that they didn't hear this, not because it would have affronted their delicate sensibilities, but because they would have found it hysterical.
Inexplicably, the young men were accompanied by Mister Mayor. He sat with them for five minutes, then stood up and broke wind. It was audible from my seat on the opposite side of courtroom. He took the opportunity to address His Honour. "How ya doin, Judge S--------?" His Honour greeted him in kind, by name. Evidently Mister Mayor too is a fixture of this court. "God bless you," the mayor continues. "Take care of these young kids; they're just learning. God bless." He took his leave. Outside the courtroom he could be heard to announce, "I just farted in the courtroom!" The high school boys lost it. They will never forget this field trip.
During the morning recess I made friends with a fellow observer from the body of the court. She had a matter coming up -- that is to say, she was one of the accused. I showed her how to get to Coffee Court, the snack bar on the other side of the courthouse. En route she told me that she had had a bench warrant issued against her because had been confused and had attended at the wrong facility on the right day.
My new friend told me that the government wants to take away judges' decision-making powers, so that all they can do is sit on the bench and go to sleep. This is (more or less) my understanding of the government's intentions too. She went on to opine that this was unfair to those who couldn't afford to retain experienced counsel. Other people, not her, of course -- she was rich. She laughed when she told me this. I chose to believe it despite the context.
Observations
mental illness → family estrangement → poverty → alcohol → crime → arrest → cat death → guilty plea for diversion and treatment
Young [A] passes his undergraduate career drinking with his friends, lying in bed, and working on his novel. The novel-within-the-novel is a work of meta-fiction: its protagonist, [B], another indolent writer, devises characters who spring to life to do as the writer’s pen commands — though they don’t always do so willingly. The characters include a fetching young woman whom B writes as a lust object and whom he then cannot resist. He has his way with her, notwithstanding that she is the product of his imagination.
Following?
Their coupling produces a half-fictitious/half-corporeal (-but-still-fictitious, remember) bastard son, [C]. He is an angry young man, with a talent for writing inherited from his father. He uses this skill to help his fellow fictional characters have their revenge on their progenitor, [B]. Meanwhile, the original protagonist has managed to snooze his way to the top of his class and all is well.
Then the camera cuts away before the top topples.
On the whole, I recommend it highly. Unless you’re not from Toronto — in which case, Robert Fulford has no time for you and neither do I.
A friend recently reported that her Creative Writing professor discouraged writing about children because “children don’t have sex or agency”. Charles Dickens gave the lie to this claim 160 years ago (though not the sex part, thank God — we don’t need that kind of blog traffic around here). It’s true, for the first part of his life (and half the book) young Davie isn’t the engine of his own fate. Rather he is buffeted to and fro by the rising and falling fortunes of his family and acquaintances. No matter what happens to him in this period, he maintains an aspect of perfect, childlike guilelessness. As he gets older, David gets better at judging character but always remains earnest in his dealings with people. Over nine hundred pages (or about thirty years) he only thinks ill of maybe four people, fleetingly, and only speaks his mind to one of them. By and large, fate/karma delivers to the villains of the book their just deserts, without David having to sully his hands by interfering.
Dickens acknowledged that David Copperfield was semi-autobiographical, and the writing sparkles where the author drops any pretense to the contrary and the description might be ascribed to either author or character:
“I have been very fortunate in wordly matters; many men have worked much harder, and not succeeded half so well; but I never could have done what I have done, without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one object at a time, no matter how quickly its successor should come upon its heels, which I then formed. Heaven knows I write this, in no spirit of self-laudation. The man who reviews his own life, as I do mine, in going on here, from page to page, had need to have been a good man indeed, if he would be spared the sharp consciousness of many talents neglected, many opportunities wasted, many erratic and perverted feelings constantly at war within his breast, and defeating him. I do not hold one natural gift, I dare say, that I have not abused. My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well; that whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely; that, in great aims and in small, I have always been thoroughly in earnest. I have never believed it possible that any natural or improved ability can claim immunity from the companionship of the steady, plain, hard-working qualities, and hope to gain its end. There is no such thing as such fulfilment on this earth. Some happy talent, and some fortunate opportunity, may form the two sides of the ladder on which some men amount, but the rounds of that ladder must be made of stuff to stand wear and tear; and there is no substitute for thorough-going, ardent, and sincere earnestness.”
The book also sparkles when David is in love (often), when David is admiring of a peer (often), and whenever Wilkins Micawber embarks on a speech or letter.
According to Wikipedia, a big screen adaptation of David Copperfield is in the works, featuring Simon Pegg as Uriah Heep. IMDb, however, discloses no such plan.
In order to overcome the difference between McCarthy-era-L.A. and contemporary New York, where Crooked Little Vein is set, Ellis describes a city full of degenerates with truly astounding sexual proclivities — another hallmark of urban decay. Those hallmarks feature more prominently in the short work than perhaps they ought: instead of undergirding a detective story with sexual preoccupations, Ellis makes contemporary American sexual deviance the central driving force. The square-jawed private dick (hardboiled? check) is conscripted by forces beyond his understanding (led by a man who may or may not be John Ashcroft with a heroin addiction — still hardboiled? check) to recover a mysterious McGuffin document bartered for sexual favours by President Nixon (hardb — what?).
Here the book departs the realm of the hardboiled and becomes something like a Dan Brown book with naughty bits: the missing document is an alternate Constitution which, when read aloud, would cleanse the country of sexual deviance and restore it to its Puritan beginnings. The author has a great time peopling his underworld with villains both in favour of and opposed to such a cleanse and is relatively successful at obfuscating his anti-hero’s stance on the subject until the end. The detective can either rail against the putrification of America or he can throw in with its corruptors. You can guess the outcome by the fact that America is still, happily, awash in filth and depravity. The fact that it’s not the 50s anymore and the degenerates have won, is both the problem with contemporary pulp fiction and its solution.
Readers of English novelists (even Japanese English novelists) of the last two or three centuries can count on a class sub-text. It’s inevitable, at least until the Windsors themselves start publishing. Kazuo Ishiguro wrote the ultimate treatise on the nuances of English social behaviour (less sub-text than simply -text), The Remains of the Day, in the form (mostly) of an aging butler’s ruminations on the proper etiquette and philosophy to be adhered to by servants such as himself.
In Never Let Me Go, Ishiguro takes a less direct, more allegorical approach, crafting a world just like ours in all but one major respect: that world’s solution to illness and disease. [Spoiler] Generation after generation of clones (never explicitly identified as such) are bred, raised and educated in pastoral seclusion until each is of the appropriate age to fulfill the purpose for which he or she was created — namely, to “donate” his or her organs to normal people. The clones’ “guardians” don’t really come out and tell the young replicants that this is their sole function until it’s necessary that they know, which occurs some time around puberty. In the mean-time, they’re taught to excel in art, academe and sport. The guardians are mindful that the outside world should view the “donors” as equals, as human beings with souls; but even they can never wholly accept the notion. They walk a fine line, telling their charges enough that they might harbour the delusion of some day leading normal lives, but not so much that the clones ever actually rebel against their lot or seek out such a life for themselves.
Instead of eliminating the pain and grief associated with ill-health, the advent of cloning burdens one group with it at the expense of the other. The practice has created a dual society; master and servant, Eloi and Morlock — only in this case the inhabitants are indistinguishable.
After twenty pages or so, a curious parallel reveals itself. It is an injustice of our age that a reader (this reader, at least) approaching Never Let Me Go might find it reminiscent of Michael Bay’s big-budget sci fi flop The Island, minus the chases and with a great deal more pathos and character (apologies to Michael Clarke Duncan). If Ishiguro weren’t already established as a master at capturing mortality and Englishness, this book might have been pigeonholed as speculative fiction and its human elements overlooked. Never Let Me Go is sci fi the way P.D. James’ Children of Men is sci fi: its strengths lie not in imagining the technology of the future but in fully realizing the regular people who will have to live with that future. It’s more notably a coming-of-age novel and a reflection on aging, death, and a life lived with an expiry date.