Last Friday, A Call to Action Canada hosted a $125-a-ticket, soup-and-sandwich lunch at the top of the Sheraton Hotel to a small group of mostly young lawyers. The organization’s goal is to increase diversity in the law profession by convincing in-house counsel to look at firms’ diversity numbers when contracting out.
So it seemed a bit of a stretch at first that ACTAC and its leader, lawyer Joy Casey, should be bringing to the podium a smartly dressed — trim grey suit, dark-rimmed glasses, orange socks — Michael Bryant.
The former attorney general of Ontario has been flaunting his book 28 Seconds: A true story of addiction, tragedy, and hope for the past month or so. The book has nothing to do with diversity and he’s about as far as you get from being a diverse face.
No one cared. The lawyers in attendance — who did not quite fill the mid-sized room — were keen to hear Bryant and see if he was going to spill any more dirt on his life; his run-in with bike courier Darcy Allan Sheppard, who died as a result; the dropping of all charges in the accident; and his divorce from entertainment lawyer Susan Abramovitch.
(Some, including one in-house counsel from a diverse background, had not heard of Casey’s organization until they got the invitation to the event.)
Casey introduced Bryant with her own take on why he was chosen as a speaker at her event: his struggle with alcohol makes him an invisible minority. She argued that her group wanted to push for diversity in the profession on a wider scale, including people with disabilities. “The non-obvious disabilities are huge issues,” she said.
It was a set-up no one was that keen to hear. It seemed the crowd would be in for some preaching on temperance, not gory details.
Yet, from the start, Bryant proved himself a charming, self-deprecating speaker with enough to say to keep the audience sated. Even before he took the mic, when Casey suggested he might be convinced to sign copies of his book, Bryant chirped from his chair: “Oh, I’m willing to sign books.”
He set everyone at ease at the start of his talk with charming tales from the book industry (apparently, you can’t ever get enough books for speaking engagements and book reviewers don’t make sense: one reviewer complained the book contained too much Bryant, to which Bryant’s retort was, “It’s a memoir!”).
Bryant then launched into a simple but frank telling of his life with alcohol. Of keeping booze in the trunk in case there wasn’t enough at parties, of embarrassing his former wife. He called alcoholism a “path of insanity.”
He then hit the audience with some sobering stats about the incident rates of alcoholism in the general population (about 10 percent) and those who are incarcerated (90 percent plus are dealing with substance abuse problems in some way, most commonly alcohol). He made a case for rehabilitating inmates and moving away from our focus on punishment.
Bryant did touch, ever so briefly, on his accident. He said that moment impacted him like the Grinch Who Stole Christmas: “I just opened up a little bit after that day,” he said.
In the end, that was about it for inside gossip. But no matter: Bryant’s authoritative sounding voice (bit of gravel in there), his humour and his truly gripping story of personal discovery made for an unusually satisfying lunch.
Photo: David Artemiw courtesy of Penguin Group