The Lawyers Weekly - June 3, 2011

Kenneth Ramsden successfully appealed his ticket for erecting posters on utility poles to the Supreme Court.

Peter Jervis represented Ramsden at the Ontario Court of Appeal and Supreme Court.

A poster boy for freedom of expression

DECISION: Ramsden v. Peterborough (City), [1993] S.C.J. No. 87

his is the story of a little guy who proved you can fight city hall.

Kenneth Ramsden didn’t have much money or any kind of formal understanding of the law. But he believed it was wrong that he was given a $108 ticket for erecting posters on utility poles in his hometown of Peterborough, Ont. So he decided to fight. With the assistance of a like-minded lawyer his case went to the Supreme Court of Canada. In winning that battle he unintentionally helped advance and clarify the courts’ interpretation of the Charter’s s. 2(b) guarantee of freedom of expression.

Ramsden was, and still is, a small-town Ontario musician. In his youth he travelled the continent and played for dimes and nickels “from California to Memphis, from Vancouver to New Orleans.” Later he and his band “Reverend Ken and the Lost Followers” moved up to gigs on Canadian TV. But in the end they returned to Peterborough.

To promote the band’s local shows, Ramsden would go around town putting up posters. He recalls a warm April day in 1988 when he was stopped by police as he taped one of his notices to a lamp post. He was issued a ticket for contravening a city bylaw.

Ramsden recounts his version of that
ticketing with a storyteller’s fine apprecia-
tion of the absurd. “I have often thought
the scene might be good movie material”
he recalls. “Six cops, three in plainclothes,
and three squad cars blocking the traffic.
[It] looked like either a multi-car pile-up
or the takedown of a violent offender. I
was handed my ticket for $108, the police-
men all took off, and I was left there with
my bag of posters and masking tape. Took
me another hour or so to get the rest of
them up.”
But Ramsden wasn’t just a good-
humoured musician ready to pay the fine
and quietly move on. He enlisted the help
of a friend, Simon Shields, who was a para-
legal. Shields was well-known for charging
his clients an hourly rate equivalent of
their hourly wage rate. Ramsden says
Shields agreed a principle was at stake.
“We decided to challenge the by-law…that
its intent was to silence people. It was a
freedom of speech case [and] I would fight
what I considered an unconstitutional by-
law” Heady stuff for a free-thinking musi-
cian and a politically progressive paralegal
who usually dealt with landlord and tenant
issues. Shields incidentally went to law
school afterwards and became a lawyer.

STORY BY GEOFF ELLWAND

yer, he could no longer act for him. What Ramsden needed was a fully-qualified and sympathetic barrister. A law professor whom Shields contacted, Lorraine Weinrib, recommended approaching a young and rising Toronto lawyer called Peter Jervis.

Jervis was successful then and is even more so today. He is the quintessential big time Toronto lawyer. Jervis is a senior partner in a prominent firm which boasts an impressive list of Grade A corporate clients. He’s been to the Supreme Court numerous times, he has a corner office on the 60th floor of an office tower at King and Bay. Among his degrees is one in philosophy and religion from Cambridge. But scratch the corporate surface and underneath he remains a dedicated, passionate advocate with some well developed ideas on social justice. Jervis says when he learned the facts of Ramsden he almost instantly decided to take the appeal, “this was an important case dealing with free expression and this wrong decision [from the lower court] could not stand.” Eighteen years after the Supreme Court ruling he crosses his legs in his office and quickly warms to the issues. “From time immemorial public streets have been a place of public communication,” he says. “For the City of Peterborough to completely forbid postering doesn’t pass s. (1) [of the Charter]