The following notification was recently received from Temple Shalom:

Dear members and friends of Temple Shalom,

As you all know by now, Temple Shalom suffered significant damage when part of the building flooded during the intense storm last week. I wanted to take this opportunity to provide you with a quick update on the situation at this time.

The flood primarily affected the entryway, the stairs, the lobby outside the sanctuary and the lobby downstairs.  There is also a smaller amount of damage to other areas of the building, including the kitchen, the music room and the sanctuary. The damage is extensive and we have now learned that asbestos is present in the flooded area of the building and that we will need to undertake a major abatement project before the actual repairs can begin.

Steve has been managing this project and is working with our insurance company, restoration company, roofers, electricians and other trades. Flynn Roofing was able to assess and make temporary repairs to the roof, and so far, there have been no further leaks. Steve and Bernie have been working tirelessly to remove water, clean up debris and move furnishings and other material out of areas that will need repair. Cynthia has been answering phone calls and emails and making arrangements for the next steps in this process.

It is now clear that we will not be able to use the building this summer.  By next week, no unauthorized individuals will be permitted in the building, and our staff will be working from home. We are still working on a location for our services this summer and will let you know the arrangements as soon as they are finalized; we are grateful to the congregations and community organizations that have already reached out to us and offered space.  Currently, our Torahs are safe at Shaarey Zedek. Until the location for in-person services is confirmed, we will hold our services on Zoom (details to follow).

We are planning ways to keep our community together during this time. 

Judith

President, Temple Shalom

Chesed Shel Emes is looking for a daytime “Shomer Plus” – an individual who understands and appreciates the depth and significance of Shmira, who is able to assume some of the day to day tasks managing our facility, and who can take on some of the administrative work –  be it graphic design, social media management, Board support, or providing back up for our 24/7 on call staff.  

This is a unique position which calls for a blend of the spiritual and the practical. We are offering a part time, salaried, daytime position, with employee benefits.  The successful candidate will need to be flexible, patient and have a sense of humor. 

For more information contact Rena Boroditsky, executive director of Chesed Shel Emes at chesedwinnipeg@gmail.com or phone 204-582-5088     

By GRANT MITCHELL (Grant Mitchell is a well-known lawyer in Winnipeg whose father, Leon Mitchell, was Sid Green’s law partner for many years.

Following are remarks Grant delivered at the meal of remembrance which was held following Sid Green’s funeral on June 9:

Sid was a Gold medallist in law in the class of 1955.
He knew that my Dad, Leon Mitchell, was in sole practice in the Confederation Building. Leon was 13 years older than Sid but graduated just the year before. Leon had been the business agent for the Civic Employees Union of the City of Winnipeg before and during law school, and his union connections gave him a client base to start a practice.
After obtaining his call to the Bar, Sid attended Leon’s office and informed him, “You need me.”
Leon was taken aback. He was physically disabled from a major bout of Guillen-Barre syndrome, but felt fully capable of practising solo. He told Sid he didn’t need anyone.
Sid told Leon, “You don’t understand. I don’t mean you need me to advise clients, I mean I can do the physical side for you, attending court and hearings and other functions that require mobility.”
With that understanding, they became Mitchell & Green, and later Mitchell, Green and Minuk when Sam Minuk joined the firm. They were the only labour firm in Winnipeg at that time that acted exclusively on the Union side.
In around 1960, a Mitchell & Green client did not have the money to pay for his legal fees and offered the partially constructed cottage he was building at Big Whiteshell Lake to the firm as payment, with the excess to be refunded to the client. Sid and Leon became co-owners of that cottage. For years it had no plumbing and an incomplete ceiling. When Leon died in 1987, Sid got the cottage.
When Sid went into politics, Leon supported the move, and in fact delivered the nomination speech for Sid to be leader of the NDP when he ran against Russ Paulley and then Ed Schreyer.
When Sid was made a Cabinet Minister in the Schreyer government in 1969, Leon also left practice to go into public service, as Chair of the Municipal Board, Chair of the Mental Review Board and Commissioner in the Churchill Forest Industries inquiry. Sam Minuk became a Provincial Judge. It was the end of Mitchell Green and Minuk. That practice was the foundation of what has become the Myers firm.
Sid and Leon’s paths would cross again when Leon was mediator of the Northern Flood Agreement and Sid was the Minister responsible for Manitoba Hydro.
They had been professional partners with profound mutual respect, but they were also personal friends and remained so for the rest of Leon’s life.
Leon had a huge admiration for people he thought were unusually intelligent. Sid was at or near the top of that list.

At the funeral, I spoke of Sid’s relationship with my father, Leon Mitchell.
I will just add that during their years at the Confederation Building and then in the Crown Trust Building, they hired an articling student named Bill Rachman, who made Sid and Leon nervous about everything he did. When the articling period ended, Sid told Leon that notwithstanding their reservations about Bill’s ethics and practicing skills, Bill would be far more financially successful than either Sid or Leon. Leon agreed. They were correct.
When Sid returned to private practice after his time in government, the unions and he had a falling out and he found himself acting against unions rather than on their behalf
Sid’s philosophy on unions was that protective labour laws produced weak unions, who would not represent their members’ interests effectively. He felt that Wagner Act type labour legislation, now universal in North America, was a tragic compromise by unions. He believed that the recognition strike and the wildcat strike were fundamental weapons for successful trade unions, and that certification of unions, the duty to bargain in good faith and mandatory grievance arbitration were the poor cousins of the recognition and wildcat strikes. This was opposite to the position of the union movement at that time, which lobbied strenuously for union-friendly legislation in the form of greater and greater regulation of the union employer relationship.
In fact, Sid said that the only labour laws that unions should need were to protect the right to picket, and to take away a court’s power to order a person to work. These 2 provisions are found in sections 56 and 57 of the King’s Bench Act to this day, more than 50 years later, and still known to people of my generation as the “Sid Green amendments”. No injunction to enforce a personal services contract. No injunction to restrict assembly on a public thoroughfare to communicate accurate information, that is, a picket sign.
Sid supplemented professors at the law school, Robson Hall, by delivering several lectures in each term about the fundamentals of labour law. I taught that course for 22 years and I had Sid come for a guest lecture, as he had done in the labour law class when I was a student.
He had a powerful and persuasive way of making his points. For example, he felt that a legislated duty to bargain in good faith was a mistake – let the parties fight it out, and let the stronger survive. If employers don’t bargain genuinely, the response is to hold a strike, not run to the labour board.
“If I offer $1, $2, $3, $5, $10 then I’m bargaining in good faith. If I offer $10, $10, $10, $10, then I’m bargaining in bad faith. But it’s still $10!”
He didn’t like certification and preferred the recognition strike. Settle disputes through battle, not argument. Conflict rather than compromise. He particularly objected to certifying unions by card count as opposed to secret ballot vote. A card signer had no meaningful way of revoking their support for the union if they changed their mind after the union applied for certification.
Sid said, “If I buy a vacuum cleaner from a door to door salesman, under the CPA I have a month to change my mind and get my money back. But if I sign a union card, the next day may be too late to change my mind. Which is more important, having a union take over my bargaining rights, or buying a vacuum cleaner?”
Apart from representing employees against unions, Sid also built a practice of representing lawyers who faced disciplinary action from the Law Society. When he ran to be a bencher, he received more votes than any other candidate, even though he was not affiliated with any of the larger law firms. As a bencher, he would send out a “Report from a Bencher” after each Bencher meeting, giving his analysis on the decisions the Society was making, often critical of the majority.
In so many ways, he believed in a “survival of the fittest” approach to human differences. He did not care for protectionist legislation like Human Rights laws. He particularly objected to affirmative action or any other form of “reverse discrimination”.
In one case I had with him, he was acting for Nabila Malik, an economist in the Cabinet secretariat who had been laid off. I was acting for the employer. He called me to tell me that he wished to amend his statement of claim. “I want to add a paragraph to the claim to say that in letting my client go, the government violated its own affirmative action policy because the policy said that there should be more women in senior civil service positions and yet my client, a woman, was let go when many men in senior civil service positions had remained employed.
“Do you object to my amendment?” “No.”
“You don’t think I believe in that affirmative action bullshit do you?” “I don’t know.”
“I DON’T!” But I say, ‘If you are going to preach bullshit, you have to practice bullshit.’”
Sid took up hockey when he was 50. As a young man, he had been a good athlete, quarterbacking the law school football team. It was a late stage of life to learn to skate and join a new sport but Sid approached it with the same gusto he applied to everything else. When he awoke after cardiac surgery a few years later, his first question was, “Will I still be able to play hockey?” You don’t have to be great at something to love it, as I well know. And Sid loved to play hockey, indoors or out.
An employer client of mine had one of its managers vilified in the union newsletter – the “Golden Turkey Award”. My client said, “We want a lawyer for the manager, and we want that lawyer be one with the kind of reputation that when the other side sees who is threatening to sue them, they will involuntarily cringe uncontrollably.” I gave them 2 names, with Sid’s being the second one. “Sid Green, that name sounds familiar. Who is he?” “Oh, he was once the Minister of Labour in the NDP government, but after he left politics, the unions treated him as a pariah, and now he fights them regularly.” “That’s the guy we want.” Sid took the case. He got a settlement offer so generous that the manager desperately wanted to accept it: full page retraction, apology, substantial payment. He may have been a turkey, but he was not foolish. Sid said it was not enough. He got more, before yielding to the client’s wish to settle. And oh, yeah, there were no more golden turkeys awarded.
Sid loved to litigate. He would rather fight than settle. His adversaries knew that, and as a result, he achieved great settlements. Sid’s rejection of an offer was never a bluff.
He had a fundamental belief in democracy, that the rules should be made by people who were elected, not appointed. If he had the choice, he would prefer to be a law maker rather than a lawyer or judge. He also felt that if a matter was worth taking on, it was worth taking all the way. I doubt that any private lawyer has been involved in more appeals.
Others know more about Sid’s career as a politician than I do. He did love to tell one story about his time in government. In 1975, Bob “Junior” Wilson had just been elected in a Wolseley by-election, narrowly defeating Sid’s friend, D’Arcy McCaffrey. In his first appearance in the Legislative Assembly, Wilson stood up to make his maiden speech. The protocol had long been that when a member speaks for the first time, they give a benign speech about how honoured they are to serve their constituents and how they look forward to working with everyone in the house. Instead, Wilson launched into an attack on the governing Schreyer government, accusing them of every misdeed known to politics, and demanding that they immediately resign and call a general election. It fell to Sid to respond on behalf of the NDP majority.
“The Honourable Member has ignored the usual protocol for new members. I don’t mind that. I have no particular affinity for protocols. I think members should say what they genuinely feel. So I commend the Member for being so frank. I have some difficulty with his message, however. He says that we should resign and cease to govern. But that would be undemocratic. A majority of Manitobans have elected us to run the Province. That is our duty. He may not like it, but the fact is that we are his government. But if he feels badly about that, he should imagine how I feel. He is my member!!”
I’ll close by saying that in Sid’s pre-politics practising days, there were many colourful lawyers that made being a lawyer a fascinating profession. By the time he returned to practice, there were only a few of the wild ones left. The profession needed a gadfly like Sid to make practice fun. The reason he got so many votes from the profession is that Manitoba lawyers recognized that in Sid there was a fearlessness mixed with skill, humour, joy and a profound understanding of the policy reasoning behind the letter of the law. There was no one like him, and I doubt that there will be one. I will miss him.