Born in Mexico City, educated in Montreal, and fluent in English, French and Spanish, Roy Heenan is an internationally respected practitioner and scholar of labour and employment law and a leader in community service.
When Quebec's Labour Code had existed barely a decade, and labour and employment law was considered a mere branch of litigation, he co-founded Heenan Blaikie, based on a philosophy that labour and employment law deserve to be a specialty as well as a field of study in its own right. The firm has since established offices in Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Quebec City, Sherbrooke, Trois-Rivières, Calgary, Vancouver, and Kelowna.
Mr. Heenan has also been one of the first Canadian labour law practitioners to recognize the growing importance of international labour law development. In this regard, he serves as a tribunal member of the Inter-American Development Bank, and a roster member for dispute settlement procedures under the North American Free Trade Agreement. In 1999, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada.
A Fellow of the College of Labour and Employment Lawyers, and of the American College of Trial Lawyers, Mr. Heenan is listed in the International Who's Who of Business Lawyers as among the top 15 labour and employment lawyers worldwide, and the only one from Canada so recognized.
An influential voice within ius laboris, an international alliance of labour law firms, Mr. Heenan has not only been a successful and respected practitioner, but has also written extensively on labour law, and has taught as Adjunct Professor at McGill University, and as a lecturer at the Queen's Industrial Relations Centre, Laval University, and the University of Ottawa.
Still today the driving inspiration for a 400-lawyer firm, Mr. Heenan finds time to pursue a passion for Canadian contemporary painting. He has served as Chairperson of the International Historic Heritage Foundation and President of the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. He has also acted as Chairman and founding director of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, and as a director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Legal Studies and Alliance for Higher Education and Enterprise in North America.
For more information about Roy Heenan, go to his Heenan Blaikie profile page.
Throughout a long and distinguished legal career with the law firm of Myers Weinberg, Mel Myers has been Manitoba's pre-eminent advocate for labour, and a vigorous defender of fundamental human rights. As a labour lawyer, among numerous notable cases he successfully defended the constitutionality of the Rand formula under the Charter of Rights, and the prohibition against mandatory retirement as age-based discrimination under the Manitoba Human Rights Act. As a human rights advocate, he served as the first chairperson of the Manitoba Human Rights Commission from 1974 to 1978.
However, Myers' contribution has gone beyond litigation before labour boards, arbitrators and the courts. Besides teaching labour law at the University of Manitoba, he has mentored countless union lawyers and advocates in the presentation of cases, and has tirelessly advanced the education of union members. Indeed, an annual conference on labour law has been established in his honour, the Mel Myers Labour Conference. Proceeds are donated to a charitable cause espousing economic and social justice.
Mr. Myers is a co-founder and past president of the Canadian Association of Labour Lawyers, an association of 500 lawyers representing trade unions and professional organizations across Canada. Since his retirement from active practice he has served as Chair of the Automobile Injury Compensation Appeal Commission, where he has established an advisor's office to assist citizens dealing with Manitoba's public auto insurance plan.
Nominations of Mr. Myers for this award have referred to “his willingness to work himself to the point of exhaustion, his fierce commitment to fairness and due process, and his conviction that protecting the rights of labour is fundamental to the preservation and strength of Canadian democracy.” In addition to his professional activities, Mr. Myers has maintained a broad range of interests in arts and the theatre, history, jazz, and sports of all kinds. He is known for his immense and varied collection of trade union memorabilia, as well as his readiness to discuss or debate any topic with passion and energy.
