Sam Filer; lawyer, judge & advocate for Soviet Jews & disabled
Hyfler/Rosner
April 21, 2007 Saturday
SAM FILER, LAWYER, JUDGE AND ACTIVIST 1935-2007;
Even after ALS stripped away his motor functions, he
remained a judge, championing the rights of the disabled and
of thousands of refusenik Soviet Jews he never met
BYLINE: RON CSILLAG, Special to The Globe and Mail
Sam Filer was an indefatigable fighter with an enviable
won-lost record. He fought for justice here at home, first
as a lawyer and then as an Ontario Superior Court judge. He
fought for the rights of the disabled, for those of Canada's
Jewish community and for thousands of Soviet Jews he'd never
met. And for 20 years, he battled a debilitating disease
that never clouded his sharp and subtle mind, and that did
not finally claim him.
He lived with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's
disease, a progressive neuromuscular illness that is
ultimately fatal. But he continued to serve on the bench
even as he rapidly progressed to near-complete paralysis,
amid several brushes with death. "The doctors told me that
ALS is a virtual death sentence," Mr. Filer was fond of
saying. "But I am not dying from a life-threatening disease.
I am living with a life-enhancing condition."
Beneath his owlish visage, accented by trademark aviator
glasses, lurked a tough, tenacious spirit. The loss of
speech and mobility, and reliance on a ventilator barely
dented his determination. His refusal to be sidelined
inspired many in the legal and disabled communities.
Mr. Filer "debunked pervasive stereotypes about disability
when he showed how rewarding a life can be even with ALS,"
said David Lepofsky, a blind lawyer in Toronto and prominent
figure in Canada's disability rights movement.
Mr. Filer continued to dispense justice with the aid of
adaptive technologies, first through a laptop-like console
on which he could type, and then via a computerized voice
synthesizer. "It's better than nothing, but I wish it were
otherwise," he once said, singling out his daughter, who was
born one month after he was diagnosed. "My greatest source
of pain was wondering how I was going to convince a very
young child that a man who cannot talk to her, nor kiss her,
nor hug her, really loves her."
He felt he earned the right to continue sitting as a judge
and to utilize fully his one remaining major faculty: his
mind. And he considered it "an insult to my dignity to have
my intellectual abilities challenged by judging me on the
basis of my physical limitations," he said in a speech
inaugurating National Access Awareness Week in 1995.
He grew up in Saskatoon with five older sisters, the son of
Moishe Filer, a Polish immigrant who owned a men's wear
store and was a leader in the city's small but tight-knit
Jewish community. From the ages of 11 to 14, Sam was sent to
Chicago to attend a yeshiva, a religious school for boys,
where he honed his vast knowledge of Jewish law and lore and
explored the big city.
Back home, he tore up his knees playing high-school football
for the Saskatchewan Hilltops. At the University of
Saskatchewan, he earned bachelor's degrees in economics and
commerce in 1956, and completed law school in 1959.
That summer, he travelled to Israel and met his first wife,
Betty Shakerdge, on the voyage over. The couple married in
1960 and moved to Calgary, where Mr. Filer practised for a
few years before heading to New York University to earn a
master of laws degree in 1967.
The growing family then settled in Toronto, where Mr. Filer
got his first taste of Jewish activism. Western pressure was
increasing on Moscow to allow free emigration of Soviet
Jews, who faced brutal harassment and oppression at home. In
1972, just after the Canada-Soviet hockey summit, Mr. Filer
travelled to Moscow and Leningrad, officially as part of a
legal conference, but really to meet with Jewish refuseniks
and to deliver prayer books and religious items. It was a
frightening time.
"We were followed everywhere. We had to switch taxis
constantly to try and lose the KGB's tail," recalled Toronto
lawyer, Bert Raphael, who accompanied Mr. Filer. The pair
would communicate with desperate dissidents by writing on a
plastic toy tablet that could be erased immediately. Knowing
their hotel room was bugged, the activists spoke to each
other on park benches.
"Sam, God bless him, really got into it," Mr. Raphael
recalled. "The refuseniks hung onto him physically and said
'Don't forget us.' " He didn't. He and Mr. Raphael founded
Canadian Lawyers and Jurists for Soviet Jewry, which grew to
400 members, and became an important force. He also worked
closely with Liberal MP Jim Peterson to establish a
parliamentary group that lobbied on behalf of Soviet Jews.
"I felt like such a dilettante," acknowledged human-rights
activist Toni Silberman, who married Mr. Filer in 1986.
"Here I was holding rallies and here was this man, doing."
Mr. Filer also became active in Canadian Jewish Congress on
several issues, including kosher slaughter, hate literature
and tax breaks for religious schools. The CJC would later
establish an award in his name, and he would win several
awards for his advocacy and human-rights work. As well, he
chaired the civil-liberties and human-rights law section of
the Canadian Bar Association and its Ontario wing.
Meantime, recalling his own bucolic roots, Mr. Filer bought
a 46-hectare working farm near Orono, Ont. "It was my dad's
definition of relaxation," said his son, Michael. "There
were bats and mice everywhere, and he loved it."
He also loved klezmer music and was known for dumping a can
of tomato juice into a perfectly good beer, calling it a
"Saskatchewan Red Eye."
He was named a judge of Ontario's County and District Court
in 1984, and sat in Brampton, Ont., where he heard all kinds
of cases, about half of them criminal. His secretary was the
wife of Eddie Shack, the hockey legend.
"He did it all, with grace and great dignity," said his
friend, Patrick LeSage, former associate chief judge of the
District Court and later Chief Justice of the Ontario
Superior Court.
(Because of court restructurings, when Mr. Filer retired in
2004, it was as a judge of Ontario's Superior Court.) After
a 1986 car accident, Mr. Filer noticed a lingering pain in
his shoulder. He then had difficulty lifting his right arm.
"Very quickly, they discovered it was more just than his
shoulder," his son said.
A diagnosis of ALS came in July, 1987. His speech soon began
to slur and by the next summer he was using a wheelchair.
He considered resigning but felt that "as long as he had
something worthwhile to contribute, he'd stay on," said
Michael Filer. The Canadian Judicial Council weighed the
matter, but decided there was nothing preventing Mr. Filer
from carrying out his duties.
He did not regard that decision as an act of charity but one
of courage on the part of his colleagues - "as an acceptance
of the fact that a person is a process, not a product" - and
as recognition that to treat someone equally does not mean
one has to apply standards of sameness. "I am different," he
said. "I have a physical disability."
The sole concession to his condition was that he ruled on
cases not requiring direct communication with lawyers, such
as in consent matters, liens, and ex parte applications
(proceedings where one party is neither present nor
represented). When he could no longer sign his decisions, he
used a rubber stamp. When he could no longer go to his
office, work was sent to his house.
In early 1989, Mr. Filer's lungs failed. "The doctors would
not allow Toni into my room because they, in their mercy,
didn't want her to watch me die," he would recall. "We thank
them for that. What we don't thank them for is their
reluctance to proffer to her, except under extreme duress,
an alternative to my death."
Six doctors encircled his wife, offering various scenarios:
It would be inhuman not to let him die with dignity; they
had an infant at home; his care would become financially
ruinous; he would have no quality of life if ventilated. She
had 10 minutes to make a decision.
Ms. Silberman recalled: "Sam threw the ball back into my
court and said, 'It's up to you. You know what your limits
are. But I don't ever want to be a burden.' When I told him
I'd rather have him on a ventilator than not at all, he
said, 'Then you make your decision.' " She chose the
ventilator.
The myoelectric conductor that was hooked into the voice
synthesizer, meanwhile, followed the path of his strongest
muscles. First, it was taped beneath his baby finger, which
would tap out Morse code at furiously fast rates to the
computer voice. When his hands failed, the switch went to
his cheek and then to his brow. About two years ago, even
that became too difficult.
But he never stopped communicating. "In the last year, his
eyes were still very strong," said Ms. Silberman. "He would
turn his eyes away for no and towards you for yes. And I
played 20 questions to try and establish what his needs
were. If his eyes went to the middle, I'd know something
needed adjustment. There wasn't a thing I didn't talk to him
about."
Despite his resilience, Mr. Filer conceded there was a time
"when I used to wake up in the morning wondering what else I
was going to be unable to do."
His wife did too. "I asked him every month if he had had
enough, if he was tired, if it was time," she said. "And he
would say no. I would say 'Yay,' and we would go on with our
lives." Over the past 18 years, he had two heart attacks and
last winter, nearly died of sepsis.
Throughout his life and work, Mr. Filer was guided by a
central Jewish tract, the Ethics of the Fathers, which
teaches that in life, there are three crowns: The crown of
Torah, the crown of priesthood and the crown of royalty. But
the crown of a good name surpasses them all. He believed it
fully.
Sam Norman Filer was born
on June 15, 1935, in Saskatoon and died on March 28, 2007,
in Toronto of smoke inhalation in
a house fire. He was 71. He leaves his wife, Toni Silberman,
children Michael, Robert and Marni, and eight grandchildren.
Brad Ferguson
<rel...@rcn.com> wrote:
> He also loved klezmer music and was known for dumping a can
> of tomato juice into a perfectly good beer, calling it a
> "Saskatchewan Red Eye."
Best thing in the piece.
Saskatchewan Red-Eye is actually salad dressing, sort of. In dumping
tomato juice into beer, Mr. Filer simply redacted the recipe. See:
http://www.astray.com/recipes/?show=Saskatchewan%20red-eye%20salad
Charlene
> In article <jrmdnXpJQuWqibfbnZ2dnUVZWhedn...@rcn.net>, Hyfler/Rosner
Actually, I believe the salad is a very recent reconstruction of the
drink. Red-eye is a common drink in Alberta and Saskatchewan and has
been since at least Depression times, if not earlier. It's normally
called a "Calgary red-eye", though. Some younguns think it should be
made with Clamato and Tabasco - anathema!
I suspect it derives from some Ukrainian tradition - half the things
around here do.
wd43