Black Lawyer-ish Issue 3 Volume 1 | Page 11

she recounted that when she began to practise law in Quebec, the only other Black lawyer in Quebec was Frederick Phillips, who had graduated from McGill in 1956. Westmoreland-Traoré was the first Black woman

to teach law at the Université de Montréal and at the L’Université du Québec à Montréal. She was a Commissioner for the Canadian Human Rights Commission, the first chair of Quebec’s Conseil des communautés et de l’immigration, the chair of the Employment Equity Commission, Ontario (a position that helped shape the legislation, systemic policies, and the law of employment and pay equity in Ontario), and the first Black Canadian Dean in Canada, at the University of Windsor, Faculty of Law from 1996 to 1999.

"[Dean Westmoreland-Traoré] considered herself an 'equity dean, striving to maintain the principles of access and equality in legal education'. She modelled equity, and created lasting policies and strategies [to] further inclusion, and eliminate systemic discrimination," remarked Karen A. Momotiuk, Windsor Law School's B.A., LL.B. Alumni and Fund Development Officer, who worked with others to establish a scholarship in honour of this icon. "The scholarship was to benefit an upper-year student who demonstrated leadership qualities, and was involved in the University of Windsor community, with preference given to leadership in the Black and Aboriginal communities," Momotiuk states. The Judge Juanita Westmoreland-Traoré Leadership Scholarship was conceived in 2003, but was created in 2010. See here

In 1999, Westmoreland-Traoré was appointed to the Cour de Quebec, Criminal and Penal Division and Youth Division. She was the first Black person

to be appointed to any court in the province of Quebec's history. On April 10, 2012, having issued her last judgement a day earlier, Judge Juanita Westmoreland-Traoré, retired gracefully.

Westmoreland-Traoré was the first Black woman to teach law at the Université de Montréal and at the L’Université du Québec à Montréal.

I hasten to add that although she retired from the bench, she certainly has not retired her passion and resolute commitment to social justice, law, equality, mentoring and community building. She has a huge "congregation" of protégé and protégées that she has cultivated and sustained throughout her legal career. No doubt, they will be wishing to tap into her encyclopaedic knowledge and expertise that she is wont to give generously garnished with humility. One such former protégé, Mary Cornish, an erudite human rights, and labour and employment lawyer, muses about her first encounter with Westmoreland, as she then was, "in the early 1970s when [Juanita] was practising in Montreal. [Juanita's] work inspired me to be[come] a human rights and labour lawyer". Cornish remarks that Westmoreland-Traoré "has made an enormous contribution to securing and protecting human rights in Ontario and throughout Canada and internationally."

Juanita was the mentor of many students who have gone on to careers in law, e.g., Professor Blackett, who recalls being told about Juanita by her school librarian. Blackett states that she was not only fortunate enough to have had Juanita as a mentor, but also as a friend. "She draws people to her, builds people up and does what she can to make sure what she has learned through her experience is shared," Blackett, proudly states.

The most notable soft characteristics of Westmoreland-Traoré are her warmth, humility, and selflessness. For instance, Juanita requested that the raising of funds for a scholarship that was launched in her honour be suspended until the full endowment for the Julius Alexander Isaac Scholarship was raised. (That scholarship was set up at Windsor Law School, under the aegis of CABL, in honour of the late Isaac, former Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Appeal).

Blackett, whose early admiration for Westmoreland-Traoré 's muse, would later state:

"She draws people to her, builds people up and does what she can to make sure what she has learned through her experience is shared," Blackett, proudly states.

9 BLawyerisH/July, 2017