City’s legal community loses icon
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/04/2012 (5208 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Manitoba’s legal community has lost a legend.
Alan Sweatman, a lawyer whose career spanned more than a half-century in Winnipeg, died on Tuesday at the age of 91.
One of the founding partners of Thompson, Dewar, Sweatman, a firm that would later become Thompson Dorfman Sweatman, only stopped going into the office on a daily basis in the last couple of years.
“He was the pre-eminent corporate commercial lawyer in Winnipeg for decades,” said Michael Sinclair, former managing partner of TDS and a longtime colleague.
Some of Sweatman’s biggest corporate clients included Inter-City Gas, Blackwoods Beverages, TD Bank, Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting and Greyhound Lines.
Sinclair said he not only represented these and other firms, but he served on their boards and as a trusted business adviser. “He was rarely in the courtroom, except related to corporate transactions that required the court’s blessing,” Sinclair said.
Sweatman was enrolled in law school at the University of Manitoba when he joined the navy in 1942 and served in the Second World War. Upon his return to Winnipeg, he enrolled in a special program that accelerated his legal education. Sweatman was also chairman of the Save the Jets campaign in the 1990s, an effort that was unsuccessful in keeping the city’s first NHL hockey team from moving to Arizona.
He was an early adopter of a work-life balance and was an avid dancer, golfer and skier. He and his family also spent countless hours at their cottage at the Lake of the Woods.
Sweatman was far from the only lawyer at the firm who practised until well past the traditional retirement age. Fellow founding partners D.A. Thompson died at 88 in 1992 and Irwin Dorfman died at 85 in 1993.
“They enjoyed practising law. For them, it’s a very fulfilling challenge,” Sinclair said.
Sweatman is survived by his wife, Lorraine, six children, 15 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. His funeral will be held Monday at 1 p.m. at Westminster United Church.
geoff.kirbyson@freepress.mb.ca