Michael Bryantʼs second life: Once he

wielded the power of the state, now

he challenges it
Itʼs been nearly a decade since the death of Darcy
Sheppard and the Ontario attorney-generalʼs fall from
grace. Now he says heʼs set ego aside to fight for
Canadians' civil liberties
Published January 6, 2019

Michael Bryant used to be Ontario's attorney-general, until he was accused in the death of Toronto cyclist Darcy
Sheppard in 2009. The charges were ultimately dropped, but his political career was over. Now he is general
counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

Moe Doiron/The Globe and Mail

Michael Bryant knows the power of the state.

At 37, as Ontarioʼs youngest attorney-general, he wielded it. Five years later,

out of politics, sitting in the back seat of a Toronto police car in the summer
of 2009, he felt it – a juggernaut aimed directly at him.

“I saw what it felt like to be on the other side,” he says.

The other side is his side now.

As general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) since

last January, he fights the perceived excesses of state power. And as an
author and public speaker, he sets out to help judges and lawyers
understand what addiction means for the criminal-justice system – and
shares his own struggle with alcoholism.

Almost a decade since his fall from grace, the 52-year-old says he has
arrived at who he really is: a fighter for causes larger than himself but
emanating from his experience.

Everything he was known for – ego, flair, personal ambition, a charmed life –
is either gone or kept in check or no longer matters to him, he says in an
interview over a coffee.

“When I was in government, there was an element of me playing a role.

Youʼre on a pedestal, youʼre in an office and you play the role of attorney-
general. That was my job.”

So, is the civil libertarian who bares his struggles and humility in public
simply another role?

No, he says, it is simply who he is.

Mr. Bryant's observations in bail court have built on his experience of being charged in connection with Darcy
Sheppardʼs death. 'I learned primarily about the fear that overwhelms any individual who has been charged,' he
says.

Moe Doiron/The Globe and Mail

The event that altered his life – and ended the life of another – is well
known. It happened on an August night in 2009 as Mr. Bryant, a father of
two, went to dinner to celebrate his 12th wedding anniversary with his then-
wife, Susan Abramovitch.

As they drove home, a cyclist, Darcy Sheppard, jumped on to the driverʼs

side of their car – a Saab convertible with the top down. The car swerved
before coming to a stop on the wrong side of the road. When it started off
again, Mr. Sheppard was leaning over Mr. Bryant when the cyclist bumped
into a fire hydrant and fell off, striking his head, either on the curb or on a
raised portion of asphalt. Toronto police charged Mr. Bryant with dangerous
driving causing death and criminal negligence causing death.
Sept. 7, 2009: A picture of Mr. Sheppard hangs in the spokes of a bicycle outside Toronto's Native Canadian
Centre, where his father joined Indigenous leaders in a ceremony commemorating his son.

Pawel Dwulit/The Canadian Press

But evidence presented in court showed Mr. Sheppard had been the
instigator – he had a history of aggressive behaviour toward drivers, as
recorded in video and still photos and recalled by several people who had
been on the receiving end of his outbursts – and there was no evidence Mr.
Bryant had been drinking, had driven on to the curb or was speeding.
Lawyer Richard Peck, brought in as an independent prosecutor from British
Columbia, dropped the charges in open court nine months later.

The legal case was over, but Mr. Bryantʼs inner journey had just begun.

As he told it in his 2012 memoir, 28 Seconds: A True Story of Addiction,

Tragedy and Hope, an epiphany came in the months after the death of Mr.
Sheppard, at a downtown Toronto community centre, Sanctuary Ministries.
There, he saw himself as someone volunteering to help the impoverished –
until the revelatory moment he overheard organizers describing him as the
one receiving the groupʼs charity. He suddenly felt he was being brought
back to life – and to a connection with other human beings.

His private journey was the subject of a powerful TED Talk he gave this fall
in Toronto.

“I, to change and to be useful, had to give up my idea of who I was, smash
the self and get rid of all my old ideas, all the fears and prejudices and ego
trips,” he said.

He also spoke of descending the ladder of supposed success, meeting

“broken people” – and finding “the broken in me.”

The ladder is a guiding metaphor for Mr. Bryant. His grandfather was a
labourer and city councillor in Esquimault, B.C.; his father, rungs higher, was
a lawyer and mayor of the city; and Mr. Bryant in his turn was achievement-
obsessed, earning four degrees.

His climb was steep and fast. After completing his masterʼs in law at
Harvard (his dissertation was on aboriginal rights), he was elected at 33 as
a Liberal MPP in Toronto and, four years later, was appointed Attorney-
General. He banned pit bulls in Ontario and dealt with a controversial
attempt to use Sharia law in the province.

But his glibness, his showmanship and his talent for drawing media
attention did not always win him friends in his own party. He left the
government after a decade in office, just two months before the encounter
with Mr. Sheppard.

His descent into alcoholism began as a student and continued in his career.
His memoir contains some uncomfortable personal scenes: In one, he is
face down on the basement floor, unable to recognize his own home (this
was while he was Attorney-General and nearing 40); in another, an
ambulance attendant finds him unconscious in a bush when he was a
university student in his early 20s. He sought treatment and stopped
drinking in 2006, he says in the book.

Last year he published a second book, Mere Addiction, aimed at judges and
lawyers, who he has found have next to no knowledge of the health issue,
producing disastrous results when courts set bail terms that are impossible
for addicts to meet. The title is drawn from a C.S. Lewis book, Mere
Christianity, on the fundamentals of the religion.

“I think we overdramatize addiction and I wanted to bring it down to earth,”

he says. His goal is to “destigmatize it, to normalize it. Itʼs a tricky business
because I constantly have to be questioning and getting advice from people
in recovery on whether Iʼm speaking on something for the right reasons or
the wrong reasons – the wrong reasons being the ego hits that come from
getting attention.” He adds that ego, for him, is “something to be tamed.”
In his 2018 memoir Mere Addiction, Mr. Bryant set out to destigmatize substance abuse and address how it's
treated by the legal system.

Moe Doiron/The Globe and Mail

His last job wasnʼt a big ego boost. It came about because the people he
met at Sanctuary often asked for help in court – help he initially refused to
give.

“Eventually I saw I was ducking those [requests] because I was afraid to do

it,” he says.

So, he became a duty counsel in Brampton, northwest of Toronto. Duty

counsel are free, government-subsidized lawyers provided to accused
people in immediate need – for instance, to secure bail.
He would meet his clients as they emerged behind Plexiglas in the
prisonersʼ box in courtrooms, sometimes in handcuffs or shackles. He
would consult with them for a minute or two, get his instructions, then face
the judge or justice of the peace – some of whom he had appointed.

“He walked the walk in defending indigent people in bail court,” says lawyer
Mahmud Jamal, a board member of the CCLA.

It was another pivotal experience. The system, Mr. Bryant felt, was “upside
down,” so risk-averse when accused people are seeking bail that a majority
of inmates in provincial jails are simply awaiting their trials rather than
serving a sentence. “The system needs to be really broken down and blown
up, and CCLAʼs going to do that,” he says.

His observations in bail court built on his experience of being charged in Mr.
Sheppardʼs death.

“I learned primarily about the fear that overwhelms any individual who has
been charged,” he says. The result is that people protect their short-term
wishes, often pleading guilty to win release, at the expense of their long-
term interests – a criminal record can certainly impede oneʼs ability to work
or travel, he adds.

“Even though I had appointed so many judges and knew so many

prosecutors and understood the charge that had been laid against me, I
was terrified and felt as if the system was a juggernaut and I felt as if it was
out to get me.”

In January, his organization will be in court arguing against the Ontario

governmentʼs revised sex-education curriculum, which the CCLA says
discriminates against the LGBTQ community. It has also argued that the
practice of solitary confinement in federal prisons should be ruled
unconstitutional. The CCLA is increasingly bringing court challenges rather
than simply intervening in cases brought by others.
“The point of the CCLA,” Mr. Bryant says, “is that it fights for things that no
government is ever going to do until it doesnʼt have a choice.”

Never would he return to politics, Mr. Bryant says. He knows what happens
to people with power – their ego takes over, he says, and they lose touch
with what matters. (One thing he wonʼt bare for this article: his salary. But
he says, “No sacrifice here.”)

The outreach worker who introduced him to Sanctuary Ministries is torn

about Mr. Bryantʼs future. “Is he capable of being seduced, like the rest of
us, by power?” Jay Barton said in an interview. “One hundred and 50 per
cent. But thereʼs a side of me that wants him to be really powerful again.
Because if he gets really powerful again, I think he will do a lot of good.”

What the former attorney-general has learned he now feels compelled to

share with authority figures in the legal system.

“Itʼs only in the material world that the ladder matters and youʼre above or
below anybody,” Mr. Bryant says. “I tell judges and JPs [justices of the
peace] when Iʼm given the opportunity that they need to look at the person
in the prisoners' box and on the witness stand as an equal.”