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HALIFAX – Susan Ursel of Toronto is the winner of the Canadian Bar Association’s (CBA) 2011 Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Conference (SOGIC) Hero Award. Ms. Ursel receives the award in recognition of her contributions in support of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and two-spirited (LGBTT) communities in Canada.

“I can think of no one more deserving of the SOGIC Hero award than Susan Ursel,” says Krista Piché, SOGIC Awards Selection Committee Chair and Co-Chair of the Manitoba Bar Association’s SOGIC Committee. “She has been at the forefront of important litigation on LGBTT rights for many years at both the national and provincial levels. Her passionate commitment to equality has helped to significantly advance the rights of Canada’s LGBTT community.”

After graduating from Osgoode Hall Law School in 1984, Susan Ursel went on to become one of the first openly lesbian lawyers in Ontario. Early in her career, she was counsel to the applicant Joe Oliver in the Hamilton Pride Day case regarding denial of a municipal proclamation; to Gary Thornton in one of the first Ontario cases on HIV/AIDS discrimination in employment; and to Mary-Woo Sims in a successful challenge to Toronto’s denial of same sex benefits to employees.

Throughout her career, Susan Ursel has appeared before the Supreme Court of Canada in numerous groundbreaking cases about the rights of the LGBTT community, including Egan v. Canada, which resulted in the first Supreme Court decision concerning the Charter equality rights of gay men and lesbians. She has represented LGBTT organizations and community supporters before the Court in such cases as the Trinity Western case, and in Chamberlain v. Surrey School District, which resulted in an affirmation of the rights of children in the LGBTT community to full and equal education at all grade levels.

As director of the Foundation for Equal Families, Ms. Ursel also helped spearhead the Federal Omnibus Challenge in response to the federal government’s lack of legislation recognizing the status of same-sex common-law spouses. The challenge led to the introduction of the federal Modernization of Benefits and Obligations Act, which confirmed the equality of same-sex families before the law.

More recently, Ms. Ursel has represented applicants in the transgender communities in Ontario. In Hogan v. Ontario, she represented three human rights applicants contesting Ontario’s delisting of sex reassignment surgery. The decision led to the re-listing of such surgery in the provincial health plan. She is currently representing a transgender applicant who has brought a human rights challenge to the surgical requirements for correction of the sex designation on birth certificates under the Vital Statistics Act (decision pending).

A partner at Green & Chercover in Toronto, Susan Ursel was listed as one of Canada’s “Top 10 Lesbians” in Siren Magazine’s 1998 Pride Issue, and was inducted into the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives’ National Portrait Collection in 2000 in recognition for her contributions to the LGBTT community. She has written and spoken widely on LGBTT human rights and issues for well over 20 years.

Ms. Ursel was a founding director of Pro Bono Law Ontario, and was a recipient of the CBA’s Young Lawyers Pro Bono Award in 1998. Additionally, she helped found SOGIC’s precursor, the Canadian Bar Association (Ontario)’s Ad Hoc Lawyers Group for a Lesbian and Gay Committee/Section.  She is a past executive member of the Ontario Bar Association’s Constitutional and Civil Liberties Section and the Education Law Section.  She is currently a member of the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario Practice Advisory Committee.

The SOGIC Hero Award recognizes contributions made in the cause of equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and two-spirited (LGBTT) people in Canada by a member of the LGBTT community.

The 2011 CBA SOGIC Hero Award will be presented to Ms. Ursel at the Touchstone Reception on Tuesday, August 16th at 5:00 p.m. in the Windows room of Halifax’s World Trade and Convention Centre, on level 8. The reception is held in conjunction with the 2011 CBA Canadian Legal Conference and Expo, taking place in Halifax from August 14-16. The event is open to accredited media. Please contact Hannah Bernstein for accreditation.

The Canadian Bar Association is dedicated to support for the rule of law, and improvement in the law and the administration of justice. Some 37,000 lawyers, law teachers, and law students from across Canada are members.

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MEDIA CONTACT:

Hannah Bernstein
The Canadian Bar Association
Aug 12-16: 902-492-7889
E-mail: hannahb@cba.org