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Le Canada anglais s'intéresse à L'arbitre

(Montréal) Bien connue au Québec pour avoir défendu une mère monoparentale dans la cause Éric et Lola, Me Anne-France Goldwater fait maintenant parler d’elle au Canada anglais. Ça tombe bien: Le Soleil a appris qu’elle pourrait animer une version anglaise de L’arbitre, dont elle est la vedette à V.

Something fierce makes Canada Reads interesting, for once

One of the authors at the centre of a nasty fight over CBC’s Canada Reads contest is now in Ottawa, performing a play based on her contentious book.

Carmen Aguirre is performing her one-woman show, at the Great Canadian Theatre Company & to Feb. 12. The play is based, in part, on her memoir Something Fierce – Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter, a memoir of her days as a teenaged member of the resistance movement in Chile. This week it brought unexpected and welcome excitement to CBC Radio’s otherwise tediously genteel book contest.

On Canada Reads, a handful of celebrities each champion one book that we all should read (because, you know, celebrities are, like, real smart, and best suited to tell the rest of us what we should read). Each celebrity challenges the other books, in the hope the book they represent will not be “voted off.”

One of the panelists is Anne-France Goldwater, a lawyer in Montreal who hosts a TV show named L’Arbitre. Goldwater savaged Aguirre’s book, and said, “Carmen Aguirre is a bloody terrorist. How we let her into Canada, I don’t understand.”

Well, sacre bleu! In the hypocritically polite world of Canadian literary chatter, such forthright opinion simply won’t do. The remarks prompted the usual outrage, demands for retraction, etc, with ominous suggestions of “libel” and “slander” (though, it must be noted, not from Aguirre, who to the best of my knowledge has not publicly commented on the fracas). Goldwater is, God bless her, unrepentant, and told The Globe and Mail, “That’s part of what life is in Canada. If you put your book out there, if it’s chosen to be in a debate – which is what this is, a literary debate, after all … you’re a free agent, withdraw your book. . . . In this country there is a tolerance for a difference of opinion, and if somebody just doesn’t buy your story, they don’t buy their story.”

I haven’t read Aguirre’s book, so I have no basis to gauge the verisimilitude of her memoir, and certainly no basis to decide if she is or is not a “terrorist.” But that’s not the point: the point is that Goldwater has read the book, and doing so has led her to her opinion, whether the sophists of Can-list like it or not.

Goldwater’s comments do not in any way harm Aguirre’s book, which, unquestionably, is now familiar to far more potential readers than it was before Goldwater injected a brief flicker of spark into the self-satisfied and clubby feel that defines Canada Reads. I’ll trust that Aguirre, having fought against and survived a violently oppressive government in her home country, understands the value of free speech, even if that free speech is not complimentary to her.

Ottawa theatre fans can see glimpses of her memoir and her life in Blue Box, which is part of GCTC’s Undercurrents festival, to Sun., Feb. 12. I called the box office at 11:25 a.m. Wednesday, and was told there are still tickets remaining for all performances – though sales have indeed picked up in the past couple of days as the Canada Reads scandal has played out. The play will move on to Vancouver, Toronto, Victoria and Calgary.

“It’s a story of terror, romance and abandon,” the GCTC web page says, breathlessly, “that takes us from the dangerous mountain passes of Chile to the perilous roller coasters of Hollywood; from an ardent love affair with a TV star, to a passionate love for a revolution that strove to change an entire nation.”

Sounds more like titillation than terrorism, but I don’t want to sound impolite.

Peter Simpson is arts-editor-at-large for The Ottawa Citizen, and he writes about visual arts, music, books, film and other arts and entertainment in Canada’s capital city.

Canada Reads caught in fact-fiction divide

In extending Canada Reads to include works of non-fiction for the first time since the contest’s inception 10 years ago, the CBC has inadvertently transformed a friendly, domestic literary debate into a geopolitical furor focused on volatile questions of truth and justice in distant totalitarian regimes.

Canada Reads 2012 Day Two

Canada Reads Day Two begins. The 2012 books still in the competition are:

The Game, by Ken Dryden, defended by actor Alan Thicke.

Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter, by Carmen Aguirre, defended by rapper Shad.

On a Cold Road, by Dave Bidini, defended by supermodel and music producer Stacey McKenzie.

The Tiger, by John Vaillant, defended by Quebec reality TV star Anne-France Goldwater.

Canada Reads 2012 Day One

Canada Reads: True Stories is underway, with five celebrity panellists debating the merit of five non-fiction titles during the annual CBC book debate.

“Lola” lawyer Anne France Goldwater said WHAT to Linda Hammerschmid???

You wouldn’t believe it… but Anne-France Goldwater and Linda Hammerschmid actually know one another, and they really like one another! They’ve known each other for MORE THAN 30 YEARS but you certainly wouldn’t be able to tell by the way they attacked one another tooth-and-nail… the segment was supposed to last for half-an-hour … we extended it by 30 minutes… and then we extended it yet again by another 30 minutes. The calls and the texts never stopped. You HAVE to hear it to believe it! I’d love to hear what you think about these two..

Lola vs Eric goes to the Supreme Court of Canada

Anne France Goldwater is Lola’s former lawyer and said, “What hasn’t happened in Quebec, uniquely in Quebec, unlike the rest of Canada, and it’s very weird, is that common-law couples have not attracted the same protection. So you have a whole chapter of our civil law called THE FAMILY, that completely excludes common-law families.”

Top court maps out approach to support changes

Anne-France Goldwater of Montreal’s Goldwater, Dube, counsel for the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) and the DisAbled Women’s Network Canada (DAWN-RAFH) who intervened in L.M.P. v. L.S., said the groups were “thrilled” with the Supreme Court’s judgment.

“What [they] wanted to establish is that, where there is long-term support provided for in an agreement between a husband and a wife, a husband should not be able to come back with impunity and merely say: ‘We have been divorced this amount of time — cut the support,’ ” Goldwater said.

Au-delà de la vengeance: l’année en justice avec Anne-France Goldwater

De l’affaire Turcotte au procès Shafia, de nombreux dossiers judiciaires ont monopolisé l’attention médiatique en 2011, suscitant à la fois la colère et la fascination du public. Bien connue pour son langage coloré et ses prises de position tranchées, l’avocate en droit familial (et maintenant animatrice d’une émission judiciaire au canal V), Anne-France Goldwater, commente pour Métro les cas les plus marquants de l’année.

No shrinking violet

Anne-France Goldwater, BCL’80, is a one-of-a-kind presence on the Quebec legal scene. Her frank manner and shoot-from-the-hip style stand out in a world soaked in protocol and civility. It doesn’t hurt that she has a knack for court cases that grab newspaper headlines.

Judge Judy n’a qu’à bien se tenir

Le moins que l’on puisse dire au sujet d’Anne-France Goldwater, c’est qu’elle ne passe pas inaperçue, que ce soit par son franc-parler ou par les causes qu’elle défend. Rencontre avec celle qui fait désormais la loi le vendredi soir sur les ondes de V et dont la dernière cause—celle de Lola contre Éric—a tant fait jaser dans les chaumières du Québec.

Meet Canada Reads panelist Anne-France Goldwater

Quebec litigator Anne-France Goldwater may not be familiar to many Canada Reads fans outside la belle province. But that doesn’t mean you should count her out. Known for her tell-it-like-it-is ways, this family law lawyer is known as “Quebec’s Judge Judy.” And with a rep like that, the other Canada Reads panelists better watch out!

Ruling the airwaves with “L’Arbitre”

Anne-France Goldwater, BCL’80, brings her no-holds-barred attitude with her as she rules on small claims arbitration cases on her new television show, L’Arbitre. Finally, a depiction of the hearing of a live case and the rendering of a verdict that is stimulating without insulting the participants – or the viewers’ intelligence!