Honour in the court

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This article was published 11/07/2015 (3771 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The first hint something unusual was happening in the courtroom was when the judge that Crown attorney David Rampersad was addressing suddenly ducked behind the wood-covered bench.

That’s when Rampersad decided to turn and look behind him… and saw a loaded gun being pointed in court. And what appeared to be dynamite wrapped around the intruder’s waist.

“Holy man,” recalled Rampersad recently.

Within seconds, in court that day in 1973, two veteran homicide detectives tackled the man and wrestled him to the ground.

Turned out the dynamite was cut pieces from a broom handle taped together — but the gun really wasn’t fake.

“They escorted him to the Vaughn (Street Jail),” Rampersad said. “Court started back again after an hour, and the now prisoner was re-escorted back into court to be dealt with.”

It’s just one incident in his 46-year career with the province’s criminal prosecutions branch, which recently ended in retirement.

Former colleagues say Rampersad was not only the longest-serving Crown attorney in Manitoba, he may have had the longest career of any Crown in the country.

Crown attorney Keith Eyrikson, vice-president of the Manitoba Association of Crown Attorneys, said he doubts if anyone will ever match Rampersad’s longevity in his department.

“And he was doing (court) breaches right to the end,” he said.

It’s a career that only played out in Manitoba because of a man of the cloth who came to teach in Rampersad’s native home of Trinidad.

“One of our professors was Weldon Grant,” Rampersad said. “He taught English literature, and he was from Manitoba.”

Rampersad worked for about three years as a clerk after he graduated, but wasn’t satisfied with his job.

“I decided I’d leave and it was between England and Canada. I chose Canada because Rev. Grant was so kind to us, and I decided to come to Manitoba because I thought all of the people must be good and kind like him.

“At least that was my perception — I was young.”

Glenn Joyal has known and worked with Rampersad from the time he started as a prosecutor to his present position as chief justice of the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench.

“He is a throwback to another era,” Joyal said.

“He is quite unique. He has this presence of avuncular wisdom and a wise outsider… he had a knack of courtesy and deference that some people could confuse for sycophantic, but that’s not being pejorative. He meant it.

“His generation really had a fairly defined notion of what the Crown attorney’s duty is — in some ways it was an easier role back then.”

Veteran defence counsel Greg Brodsky called Rampersad “a fierce competitor.”

“He was a tough fighter. And he had a gentlemanly way about him.”

Rampersad is also the last Crown attorney honoured with the Queen’s Counsel designation, QC for short. The honour, discontinued by the province in 2001, allows a lawyer to wear silk robes in the Court of Queen’s Bench and the Court of Appeal, instead of regular material, and to speak first in court.

“You would find it difficult to find anyone who will say a bad word about him — and everybody you talk to will say he’s from a different generation,” Eyrikson said.

“In court he was a force to be reckoned with. But he was also unfailingly polite, focused, and always a gentleman. He will be missed, no question.”

Rampersad, the son of a labourer and a stay-at-home mother, was the sixth of 11 children born in Trinidad.

His family would never have been able to afford to send him to high school, he said, but he was lucky enough to win a scholarship to Naparima College, at the time run by Canada’s United Church.

Rampersad came to Manitoba in August 1961, with his wife and baby daughter, to enrol in a bachelor of arts program at United College.

“I had never even seen snow before, except in Christmas cards,” Rampersad said of his new city. The family found a small third-floor downtown suite for $13 per month.

To pay the bills, while an undergraduate, he worked each summer as a porter with CN Rail.

“I mastered the art of making beds, taking tickets and shining shoes. And, most of all, shouting out for the passengers to get on board,” he said.

“I had to pass a porter’s exam. The classes were held where The Forks is now. You had to show you knew how to shine shoes.

“When I found out I graduated (from university) I made one last trip as a porter and said, ‘That’s it for me shining shoes.’ “

Because Rampersad hadn’t spent the last few summers with his family, he came up with a proposal for his wife.

“We made a deal,” he said.

“I wasn’t satisfied with just an arts degree. A lot of Trinidadians went into teaching, and I didn’t think I wanted that. I broached a brilliant idea with Maureen. I said I think I want to go to law school. When I graduate, you can do the degree you want to go into.

“So she worked, and after I graduated she then went to university and got her bachelor of social work and then her master’s of social work.”

Rampersad was part of the last class that was taught at the Law Courts Building.

He graduated in 1969 in a class that included future Court of Appeal Justice Michel Monnin, Court of Queen’s Bench justice and former chief provincial court Judge Kris Stefanson and provincial court Judge Charles Newcombe.

Rampersad wouldn’t say he experienced racism in the early days of his career, but after having no trouble getting through law school, he was surprised he received only one articling offer from a law firm — in Brandon — compared with others in his class. After going to Brandon, he decided to apply and was hired by the prosecution’s office in Winnipeg.

“I was the only black prosecutor in the basement of the legislative building with six prosecutors,” he said.

“I was totally accepted, but deep down you couldn’t help but notice the difference. What I purposely did was work twice as hard to prove myself.”

During Rampersad’s career he handled several high-profile cases, including homicide prosecutions and other violent crimes. Most notably, though, Rampersad was the Crown in court who faced a St. Boniface man — Georges Forest — who challenged a parking ticket in 1976, saying it should have been printed in both English and French. That case went to the Supreme Court and resulted in Manitoba translating its statutes into French.

“I looked at the 1870 Manitoba Act and it said pleadings will be in English only,” Rampersad recalled. “I said in court I have some paper here in a language other than English so I said I have no case to answer.

“Holy man, I got a decision. It was tossed out… I have nothing against the French, I was just being a lawyer and applying the act.”

After prosecuting hundreds of criminals, there became one villain he didn’t want to deal with anymore.

“The real clinching part of me deciding to retire is because of the dreaded computer,” he said chuckling.

“I’m really in the dark with computers. I still write with a fountain pen. I fill it every morning. Maybe that’s what curmudgeon means?”

 

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca