Through the generosity of gifted lawyers Charles Dubin (BARR ’44) and Anne Dubin (BARR ’51), who rose to the top of their profession, The Honourable Charles and Anne Dubin Entrance Award has been established at York’s Osgoode Hall Law School.
Charles, who received an honorary doctorate of laws from York in 1990, died in 2008 and Anne in 2007. It is through his estate that Charles and Anne have given $100,000 to establish the award.
Right: Charles and Anne Dubin
The endowed award, matched by the Ontario government through the Ontario Trust for Student Support, will be given annually to as many as five students entering the Juris Doctor Program at Osgoode who have high academic standing and demonstrate financial need.
“This entrance award honours the memory of an extraordinary couple who went to Osgoode, loved Osgoode and held it in the utmost esteem,” says Francie Klein, one of Charles’ two nieces.
A superb jurist as well as a lawyer, Charles became a national figure after chairing the 1989-1990 royal commission into drug use in amateur sport. He also served as chief justice of Ontario from 1990 to 1996. Anne was a pioneering corporate lawyer at Tory, Tory, DesLauriers & Binnington (now Torys LLP), who served on the boards of many companies and non-profit organizations, including York’s Board of Governors.
Together, they were a team who were devoted to one another during their 55-year marriage. The couple, who did not have children, shared many of the same interests, recalls Klein. “They were best friends. They discussed each other’s lives in great detail. They challenged one another intellectually. It was never just idle chit-chat around their table. They also had fun together. He had a wonderful sense of humour and was so charismatic.”
Charles, whose professionalism, persuasiveness and keen ability to hone in on the nut of a legal problem catapulted him into the ranks of such legendary Canadian lawyers as Arthur Maloney and John J. Robinette, was “so thankful and grateful for what he was able to do,” Klein says.
“He wanted to be able to give back.”