Lives shatter so quickly

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/07/2015 (3750 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It was two weeks ago, on a Saturday morning at the St. Norbert Frmers’ Market, when my wife, Athina, and I chanced to meet Barry Gorlick and Maria Mitousis.

I knew Barry casually.

But this was the first time since his separation and recent divorce I had seen the former president of the Canadian Bar Association with his new partner in life — he being 60, she 38, and both having law, specifically the speciality of divorce law, in common. Athina and Maria also have Greek ancestry in common, so they chatted briefly about that troubled country.

“She was buying greens for her grandmother,” Athina would recall later. Barry, meanwhile, wanted to talk about a recent column on Winnipeg Second World War hero Andrew Mynarski, where he had noticed a reference to a December 1965 Readers Digest story about Mynarski Barry said his mother had given him to read as a boy.

I said I had a copy he could have.

Less than a week later, he first texted and then arrived on foot at my house in a neighbourhood far from his own to pick up the Reader’s Digest. I invited him in and offered to fill his water bottle.

We ended up in my living room, him on the couch, me unconsciously assuming the therapist’s position in a winged chair.

And we talked.

Mostly about him; his upbringing as the son of working-class Romanian immigrants, his family, his divorce.

And that he had in fact just come from a visit to his therapist.

What I didn’t think to ask him — maybe because it felt too intrusive — was about his work situation.

The answer to the unasked question arrived just more than a week later on the front page of Friday’s Free Press: “Veteran city lawyer disbarred.”

Gorlick had admitted to 15 counts of misconduct: a tangled and bewildering knot of bizarrely botched and ignored divorce files, the misappropriation of trust funds and all the fantastic stories he told to cover the chaos. It read to me like a man whose personal and professional life weren’t the only things that had gradually unravelled over a 20-year period. So had his grasp on reality and what was really important in life.

It was 9 a.m. Friday when I texted him. “Barry, I just read the paper. I’m sorry. Puts our afternoon together in a deeper context…”

Then I asked if he wanted to say anything in the next day’s paper.

I closed with this thought.

“I just hope you’re OK in the moment and the long term.”

In retrospect, those words would sound chillingly ironic.

As would Barry’s own closing words in a text that arrived more than an hour later, at 10:20 a.m.

“Thank you for the thoughtful and supportive comments, Gordon. I have been working hard these past many months, assisted by our little borough’s best and brightest health-care givers, to address the issues that impaired my judgment so mightily. My closest and dearest colleagues and friends have also been magnificent. But then no surprise there — we’re all Winnipeggers, right?”

He ended with this.

“So I am and will continue to be OK. I am quite certain of that.”

Barry didn’t know then about the suspected package bomb that just minutes earlier had exploded at a law office on River Avenue.

First reports were simply of a woman being in critical condition.

Later, we would learn it was Maria.

It was just before 1:30 p.m. when I reached Barry on his cellphone. He was at Health Sciences Centre, and he said both his family and Maria’s were there.

“She’s just going into surgery,” Barry said. “It’s not good, Gord.”

The flat tone in his voice suggested he was in shock. As did his next comment about the bomb. “You know, the reason we live in Winnipeg is because it doesn’t happen here.”

Then Barry had to go. Police had just arrived.

I called Athina next and told her what had happened to Maria. How there was a news report she had lost a hand, and may lose another.

Athina was shocked. She recalled something else Maria said that Saturday at the St. Norbert Farmers’ Market. “She said she was in a hurry. She wanted to go golfing that afternoon.”

It was later that afternoon when I texted Barry again. By that time, he just wanted to be left alone but I needed to tell him something.

“There are countless people pulling for Maria,” I wrote. “And for you. Blessings to both of you.

“Thanks,” Barry responded. “Means everything to us!”

— — —

If police suspect, as I do, there may be a direct link between the reasons for Barry Gorlick’s disbarment and what happened to Maria, the first place they will look is at the list of clients who might want to get even by taking the life of someone he loves.

It’s a long list, but it will quickly get shorter.

Why?

Because there is a big difference between disgruntled. And deranged.

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca