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CROSS EXAMINED Leslie McIntosh was greatly influenced in her public service by mentor Tom Marshall. A true public servant Leslie McIntosh retires from her job as a government lawyer in Ontario with many accolades and her ideals intact. BY ROBERT TODD had a passion for basketball, and partic- ularly one of the most storied franchises in National Basketball League history. "I thought I was going to grow up and be the first woman to play for the New York Knicks," she says with a smirk. Those who know McIntosh, a highly L respected general counsel with the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General's Crown Law Office (Civil), won't be surprised to hear she showed great resolve in trying to reach that goal. She certainly wasn't daunted by the fairly significant height eslie McIntosh is quick to admit she didn't initially plan to be a lawyer. She started out with far loftier goals. The Toronto native disadvantage she might face against her towering opponents. Keep in mind that her objective was to become a power for- ward, a position that typically demands an athlete who stands at least 6'9" tall and weighs about 250 pounds. So she turned to Dr. Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking and implemented its self-help wisdom by ducking under doorways. She figured it would help her eventually grow so tall that she would otherwise whack her forehead while exiting a room. She tried other tech- niques, too: "One day my mom found me hanging in the closet by my arms, trying to stretch so I would be what I thought would be a minimum 6'9"," McIntosh recalls. "She said, 'Kid, you've gotta set 22 SEPTEMBER 2011 www. CANADIAN Lawyermag.com your sights on a different career.'" Her mother proceeded to steer her to more literature — Irving Stone's Clarence Darrow for the Defense, a biography of the American criminal defence lawyer and civil libertarian. She loved the book, but unlike Darrow, her new plan was to repre- sent the state in court. She agrees her mom was on to something with the notion that her daughter was meant to be a lawyer. "She found it hard to keep me from talk- ing when I was a kid." The change in plans worked out in the long term (and not just because McIntosh reports topping out at a height of precisely five foot five and three quarters). She has gained recogni- tion throughout her 33-year career as one of Ontario's top civil litigators, leading JOhN hEGuY