J. Patrick Boyer

Such a trajectory led Patrick into journalism, law, politics, advocacy, and work with diverse organizations. He founded The Northern Institute for Public Policy, Breakout Educational Network, and the Corinne Boyer Fund for Ovarian Cancer Research and Treatment (today’s Ovarian Cancer Canada). He chaired the Couchiching Institute for Public Affairs, and the Pugwash Park Commission in Nova Scotia. His memberships in civil rights, environmental, and writers’ organizations (including PEN and The Writers’ Union of Canada) enable support for and engagement with their causes. He is on the National Advisory Council of Fair Vote Canada, seeking an electoral system that proportionately reflects voter support in parliamentary representation. He has worked, without result, for abolition of the Senate of Canada – an unelected and unaccountable law-making body. As a lawyer and partner in a major Toronto firm, J. Patrick Boyer, Q.C. specialized in electoral law, communications law, and public law issues. As member of the Northwest Territories bar, he simultaneously engaged in a wide variety of legal affairs in the Canadian Arctic. He was designated a “Queen’s Council” for contributions to Canadian legal scholarship with his comprehensive six-volume treatise on election law. He received an honorary doctorate from University of Ottawa for “continuous contributions to democracy in Canada and abroad.” Holding degrees from Carleton University (in economics and political science) and University of Toronto (in law and history), Patrick also studied French-Canadian literature at Université de Montréal, and public law at the Academy of the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Dr. Boyer taught political ethics as a faculty member at University of Guelph, history at York University, Canadian constitutional law at Wilfrid Laurier University, and the law of Canadian democracy at University of Toronto.