TRIBUTE TO PAUL COPELAND

Paul gets me needless publicity advertising I went in cold, cap in hand, to his office begging for food and shelter for the thousands of students who had trekked out of Burma seeking refuge in Thailand in the wake of the unsuccessful Uprising that took place in August 1988.
To his credit, what Paul did was he readily gave me a connection to Oxfam who soon thereafter were the first to arrive on the spot to provide the sustenance I was frantically seeking for the homeless hungry students.
That was the beginning of our interaction. Later, it was a pleasant surprise and a rare gratification for me to discover I was keeping company with an eminent Canadian who, out of curiosity, had made a commitment to fixing much that was wrong in Burma.
I say that advisedly because few, very few, in Canada, and that includes some of our honorable members of parliament, even knew there is a country called Burma.
Temperamentally, Paul is a socialist, and I am a conservative, but we never had any problem working amicably for a cause that we both perceived as just.


Whether it was a question of
1. Raising the Burma issue in parliament;
2. Lobbying Ottawa to pressure Burma’s military regime to hold elections;
3. Rousing the Canadian media from its blissful innocence;
4. Holding awareness seminars and/or receptions;
5. Receiving and escorting ministers of the Washington-based Burmese government in exile;
6. Pitching Ottawa for a subsidy to that government;
7. Imploring the Canadian government to open Canada’s doors to Burmese refugees languishing on the Thai-Burma border;
8. Organizing campaigns and street demonstrations to get Canadian companies like Petro Canada and Ivanhoe out of Burma;
9. Persuading Canadian universities to grant an honorary doctorate to Aung San Suu Kyi;
10. Holding meetings, scheduled and unscheduled;

The list can go on, but what is memorable and noteworthy is that Paul would respond selflessly, regardless of whatever other matters he might have had in his portfolio. He was literally a phone call or a fax away.
My father, a successful entrepreneur and a community leader in Mandalay, had only one mantra for everyone: “If you want to be happy, learn to stay away from doctors and lawyers.”
He would surely have modified his mantra had he known the likes of Paul do exist.
After Paul had labored so passionately with me on the Burma matter for some five years, I asked him with trepidation what he would consider a fair return for all the good work he was doing for us.
His disarmingly spontaneous response was, “Nothing.”
Again I asked, “What?” And again he said, this time loudly, and with an air of finality, “Nothing.”
After dinner at my place one evening, when he and another member of the Ontario bar had quaffed a few cognacs, our lawyer friend loosened up to Paul, “The kind of work (criminal law) you are doing you will never make more than a hundred a year. You want to make more than a million a year, you do the kind of work I do.”
Though slow, Paul’s response was, “I do not like the double billing big firms do.”
“I’ll find you a firm that does single billing,” said our mutual friend.
Moments of audible silence had passed before Paul said, “I don’t think I can shake off my concern for the wrongfully convicted.”
“You do have a problem there,” our friend huffed.
Ladies & Gentlemen, the 1300 political prisoners in custody notwithstanding, the problem, as far as we are concerned, is an entire nation of 45 million people has been held captive in their own homeland by a lawless regime for 45 years now.
Their leader, a Nobel Peace Laureate, has been locked up in her own home by the same lawless regime for some 18 years now.
Both the people and their leader can be freed if you, who are so well blessed, would be generous enough to use for their sake some of your own freedom and the tools of language and logic you possess in profound abundance.
We heartily congratulate Paul and rejoice with him on receiving the Law Society’s tribute for his achievements and contributions in promoting equality and human rights and his exceptional commitment to the pursuit of law and social justice.
However, we feel your greater tribute to Paul would be some contribution on your part to Paul’s unfinished business in his Burma file.