Canadian Lawyer

RegIonal wRap-up WeSt Calgary lawyer looking for a fight a PROFEssIONaL DIRECtORY Announcing CanLNC Experts Case Merit Service: An invaluable early assessment of case facts, issues, players and strength MEDICAL MALPRACTICE PERSONAL INJURY The experts you need, The quality you deserve. CLASS ACTION TESTIFYING OR CONSULTING www.CanLNCExperts.ca 855-278-9273 (toll free) Experts@CanLNCExperts.ca PLAINTIFF OR DEFENCE Supreme Court of 12-10-23 Canada Counsel and Agency Services ntitled-2 1 Henry S. Brown, QC D. Lynne Watt Graham Ragan Guy Régimbald Matthew Estabrooks With the assistance of: Brian A. Crane, QC Eduard J. Van Bemmel, Law Clerk 160 Elgin Street Suite 2600 Ottawa Ontario K1P 1C3 T 613-233-1781 montréal 10 ntitled-2 1 ottawa august toronto 2013 hamilton waterloo region www.CANADIAN calgary vancouver beijing moscow london Gabor Zinner has set up Hyde Park Cornerstyle public debates. is off limits. Zinner's debaters have already tackled a prickly proposition here in Oil Town: that the Keystone pipeline should be abandoned. The litigation lawyer has put up about $2,500 dollars for sound speakers, microphones, "and a cut-off switch." The city demanded $2 million dollars in insurance and a weekly civic permit. Zinner gets the best speakers he can find to give the controversy of the week a good airing, then he throws it out for public debate. He says he will stick to being a moderator. "This is more about civic-mindedness than Zinner-aggrandizement," smiles the Montreal-born litigator. His eclectic resume includes a trip to the Supreme Court, climbing Kilimanjaro, running federally for the NDP "a long time ago," and being a backer of a revolutionary new type of chainless bicycle. "It operates on the same principle as a child's top," he says, vigorously pumping an imaginary spinning top. But for all its airiness Zinner's life has some dark early shadows. During the Second World War both his parents were in Nazi death camps: his mother in Auschwitz, his father in Mauthausen. He grew up in Hungary in the midst of the revolution, and in 1956, as a seven-year-old, he remembers Soviet tanks in the streets of Budapest and a nighttime escape to Austria across a field with flares and machine guns in the distance. While Zinner says he doesn't "perceive a connection" between his 9:27 AM celebration of free speech and open debate and the experiences of his family under authoritarian regimes he acknowledges it "forms part of my subconscious." Want to participate? Zinner's debates have five simple rules: 1. no slander; 2. no hate speech; 3. no vulgarity beyond what might be "contextually appropriate"; 4. speakers must stay on topic; and, 5. perhaps most importantly, no long-winded bores. — geoFF eLLWAND writerlaw@gmail.com L a w ye r m a g . c o m 13-01-14 2:30 PM geoff ellwanD s veteran Calgary lawyer Gabor Zinner sits in his art-bedecked office expounding on his love of a courtroom battle, it is hard not to notice he's got a black eye. But Zinner's shiner was not the result of some bizarre legal dust-up; he picked it up in a master's water polo tournament in California. Zinner, you see, relishes a good game of water polo as much as he likes a good legal tussle. And that competitive spirit, still burning at 65, is behind his latest project. He is helping sponsor and organize a weekly public debate in a Calgary park, which kicked off later than expected in July due to the floods. Everybody is invited. It is modelled on London's famous Hyde Park Corner and is dedicated to free speech, vigorously held differences, and a good time. No subject

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