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Toronto honours a T&T civil rights icon

sgtdjones 2018-08-01 20:45:43

Toronto honours a T&T civil rights icon

There is now a Charley Roach Lane in the Canadian city of Toronto, named for the late Belmont-born civil rights activist/attorney/writer/painter and co-founder of the Caribana Festival who died of cancer close to six years ago at the age of 79.

Charles Conliff Mende Roach was involved in numerous campaigns on behalf of Canadian blacks and minorities over the years, and is widely known for his longstanding effort to have a pledge of allegiance to the British monarch removed from the country’s oath of citizenship.

Though he fought hard for the right of others to stay in Canada, he himself never became a citizen of his adopted homeland.

He insisted in a speech to supporters outside the Ontario Supreme Court, where he was having his oath case argued in 2012, that the question of the oath was “part of the struggle against racism and part of the struggle for equality for all groups.”

Roach first entered the country in 1955 as an aspiring priest enrolled to study theology at the University of Saskatchewan. He died in 2012 following a battle with brain cancer and an unfinished case against the Canadian oath.

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Dan_De_Lyan 2018-08-01 21:12:39

Roach and Dudley Laws did nothing for toronto black community.

Unless you are militant.

Most Jamaicans cant stand laws.

He was the trigger for toronto's rodney king riot. Rape of a young girl in the nineties.

DirtyDan 2018-08-02 08:25:43

In reply to Dan_De_Lyan

How so?

Dan_De_Lyan 2018-08-02 08:31:06

In reply to DirtyDan

Look it up and talk to pps who lived in TO is the 80s and 90s.

These guys were the equivalent of ambulance chasers for human rights.

Everything had the ulterior motive of legal representation. Holistic and pure?

sgtdjones 2018-08-02 08:57:32

In reply to DirtyDan

Thats this poster opinion, unfortunately in a democracy
all are allowed such.

If one were to talk to the city of Toronto they have
a positive opinion of this individual. He represented many pro bono and was instrumental in getting see below the SIU.

SIU director Ian Scott wrote to his widow, June Williams-Thorne, saying: “the SIU owes its genesis in no small measure to Mr Roach’s untiring efforts for a system of independent investigation of police use of force.”

Eternal Rest Mr Roach , you represented many minorities
against a system that needed change.

cool

Dan_De_Lyan 2018-08-02 09:15:18

In reply to sgtdjones

Thats this poster opinion, unfortunately in a democracy
all are allowed such.

If it does not fit your "I am great...bend over for me" democracy, it is deemed unfortunate.

sgtdjones 2018-08-02 18:02:19

In reply to Dan_De_Lyan

Roach’s work in having police abuses, particularly against Canadian minorities, investigated is credited with helping establish the city’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU).

SIU director Ian Scott wrote to his widow, June Williams-Thorne, saying: “the SIU owes its genesis in no small measure to Mr Roach’s untiring efforts for a system of independent investigation of police use of force.”

In the early years, Roach was popular among the Caribbean cultural community when, fresh from law school in the early 1960s, he opened the Little Trinidad Club. Through the doors of the club flowed visiting entertainers such as the Mighty Sparrow and Lord Kitchener, together with steel bands, dance and folk arts troupes and entertainment-hungry West Indians resident in Toronto.

Roach and his associates provided pro bono legal services in support of social justice cases including advocacy on behalf of asylum seekers. Among his notable work in this area was assistance to members of the Black Panther movement in the United States who were fleeing prosecution during the civil rights disturbances there in the 1960s.

The thread is about Mr Roach, no one else.

The above are facts, this is the reason I came to my conclusion, not gossip.

Any simpleton would understand such.

Dan_De_Lyan 2018-08-02 19:59:29

In reply to sgtdjones

Any simpleton would understand such.

stop bragging

In 1999, he travelled to Rwanda to defend Hutu journalist Mathieu Ngirumpatse, accused and convicted by the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal of human rights violations in the 1994 slaughter that claimed an estimated 800,000 Tutsi lives.

BLM to him? Or a good payday?

sgtdjones 2018-08-02 22:22:31

In reply to Dan_De_Lyan

Thanks for agreeing you are a simpleton.

Dis done.

razz razz razz razz