MATAS, DAVID

MATAS, DAVID (1943– ), Canadian lawyer, writer, human rights activist, teacher. Matas was born in Winnipeg and had a conventional Jewish childhood in the city's South End. His was the first bar mitzvah in the Herzlia Synagogue in 1956. Following a B.A. in mathematics and economics at the University of Manitoba (1964) and an M.A. in economics at Princeton (1965), he traveled to Oxford for his legal education, receiving the B.A. (Juris) (1967) and B.C.L. (1968). Returning to Canada, he served as clerk to Chief Justice John Cartwright in 1968–69, as a member of the Canadian government's Foreign Ownership Working Group in 1969, and as special assistant to the federal solicitor general in 1971–72. After six years with a Winnipeg law firm, in 1979 Matas established a private practice in Winnipeg specializing in refugee, immigration, and human rights law. These areas, and his outspoken opposition to Nazi war criminals who found safe harbor in Canada, drove his professional, scholarly, and community activities. He argued several cases dealing with war crimes and hate propaganda before the Supreme Court of Canada, notably those of John Ross Taylor (1990), Imre Finta (1994), Canadian Liberty Net (1998), and Malcolm Ross (2001). He wrote numerous scholarly and journalistic articles and seven books on these topics, including Justice Delayed: Nazi War Criminals in Canada (1987), Bloody Words: Hate and Free Speech (2000), and Aftershock: Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism (2005), and taught courses in these areas at McGill University and the University of Manitoba. He was senior legal counsel to both Amnesty International Canada (from 1980) and B'nai B'rith Canada (from 1989), and was a member of the Canadian delegation to the UN General Assembly (1980), Task Force on Immigration Practices and Procedures (1980–81), Legal Committee on War Crimes of the Canadian Jewish Congress (1981–84), Manitoba Association for Rights and Liberties (1983–87), B'nai   B'rith's League for Human Rights (from 1983), Helsinki Watch Group (from 1985), International Defense and Aid Fund for South Africa (1990–91), Canada-South Africa Cooperation (1991–93), Canadian Council for Refugees (1991–95), International Center for Human Rights and Democratic Development (1997–2003), and the Canadian delegation to the UN Conference on an International Criminal Court (1998). His outstanding contributions were honored by the Manitoba Association for Rights and Liberties, National Council of Jewish Women, Lord Reading Law Society of Montreal, Shaare Zedek Hospital Foundation, League for Human Rights of B'nai B'rith, and Legal Education Association. (James Walker (2nd ed.)