About
Rampersad worked for about three years as a clerk after he graduated, but wasn’t satisfied with his job. Veteran defence counsel Greg Brodsky called Rampersad “a fierce competitor.” Rampersad is also the last Crown attorney honoured with the Queen’s Counsel designation, QC for short. The honour, discontinued by the province in 2001, allows a lawyer to wear silk robes in the Court of Queen’s Bench and the Court of Appeal, instead of regular material, and to speak first in court.
Education
His family would never have been able to afford to send him to high school, he said, but he was lucky enough to win a scholarship to Naparima College, at the time run by Canada’s United Church.
Rampersad came to Manitoba in August 1961, with his wife and baby daughter, to enrol in a bachelor of arts program at United College.
“When I found out I graduated (from university), I made one last trip as a porter and said, ‘That’s it for me shining shoes.’”
“So she worked, and after I graduated she then went to university and got her bachelor of social work and then her master’s of social work.”