Michael Bryant’s very bad year: his life on bail, how he got off, and his surprise comeback
A 28-second fight resulted in the death of a cyclist and almost ended the career of the cocky, ruthlessly ambitious Michael Bryant. Instead, his name has been cleared, and he’s set to return to politics. He swears he’s a changed man
On the last night of August 2009, Michael Bryant and his wife, Susan Abramovitch, celebrated their 12th wedding anniversary. As date nights go, it was cheap—a dinner of shawarma and iced tea on College Street and a dessert of baklava on the Danforth before heading home to midtown in their black Saab convertible with the top and windows down.
Driving west on Bloor, approaching Yonge, they noticed a cyclist tossing garbage and holding up traffic by doing figure eights on his bike. The cyclist, Darcy Allan Sheppard, was drunk and ranting. Bryant and Abramovitch passed Sheppard and kept driving. As they neared the pedestrian crossing between Bay and Avenue, where the street narrowed for construction, Sheppard pulled up in front of the Saab. Bryant hit the brakes, causing his car to stall. When he started it again, the car lurched forward and Sheppard shouted, possibly because the bumper nudged his back wheel. As Bryant later told police, it was at this point he had his first twinge of fear—a sense the situation could escalate beyond his control. In his rush to start the car and get out of there, he panicked, causing the vehicle to stall and surge forward again, this time hitting Sheppard hard enough that he toppled onto the hood. He wasn’t seriously injured, but he became enraged, throwing his bulky courier’s backpack at the car. When Bryant tried to drive away, Sheppard clung to the driver’s side door.
For Bryant, time seemed to speed up and slow down at once. Suddenly there was no car, no road, no traffic, pedestrians or buildings—only three people fighting for their lives, and one of them was about to lose. Sheppard reached inside the car and grabbed the wheel, and the car veered into the eastbound lanes. By a stroke of luck, the street was empty. According to forensic reports, Bryant never shifted out of first gear, his car staying around 34 kilometres an hour. But when the left side of Sheppard’s torso snagged on a fire hydrant in front of the Colonnade building, it was enough to send him flying to the ground. His head hit the pavement hard.
Bryant parked his car around the corner, at the Park Hyatt, and called 911 to say he’d been attacked. He was later arrested and taken to the lock-up at Toronto’s traffic services on Hanna Avenue. He offered to take a breathalyzer and was refused. For several hours, he had no contact with the outside world, nor any idea of the extent of Sheppard’s injuries. Early that morning, the police informed Bryant that Sheppard had died in hospital. Bryant would now face two charges: operation of a motor vehicle causing death and criminal negligence causing death. The latter, more serious, charge carries a sentence of up to 14 years in prison. Bryant knew this without having to ask. He’d helped write the case law on which the charge was based a decade and a half earlier while clerking at the Supreme Court.
Unable to sleep, he planned out his next moves. First, he knew he would have to quit his job as the head of Invest Toronto, the new city-run economic growth venture, a job given to him by Mayor David Miller. Second, he needed a suit. That way, if his kids, seven-year-old Sadie and five-year-old Louis, saw him on TV addressing the scrum that would be gathered outside the police station, they would think it was just Daddy doing his job at a press conference. If they saw him in a T-shirt, he figured they’d know something was wrong.
Bryant was released from custody at 2:30 the following afternoon. On the steps of the police station, dressed in a crisp grey suit and striped tie delivered to him by a law school buddy, he gave a brief statement expressing his condolences to the family of Darcy Allan Sheppard.
When he arrived at his and Abramovitch’s house near St. Clair and Avenue Road, the curtains were drawn, and there were camera crews camped out on his front lawn. He half expected to find Abramovitch in bed on Demerol—she’d been in the car, too, after all—but discovered her surrounded by friends, including Nikki Holland, Bryant’s long-time aide, who had arrived at the scene just minutes after the incident and had stayed with Abramovitch ever since.
Abramovitch is a partner at the Bay Street firm Gowlings and one of the most influential entertainment lawyers in the country. She’d spent the day working the phones, attacking the situation like the high-functioning, crisis-managing type-A personality she is. She’d already spoken to the city’s best criminal lawyers, reassured friends, consulted with associates, fended off the press, and talked to Jaime Watt, head of the PR firm Navigator—who, being a friend, offered up his services for free.
The media, short on facts, began to speculate in newsrooms across the city. Who was the unidentified woman in the convertible, and how long had Bryant been screwing her? Was she a brunette like Bryant’s wife or a brassy blonde stranger? What fancy Yorkville restaurant had they dined at and how much booze had they consumed? Reporters called the scandal Toronto’s Bonfire of the Vanities and Bryant’s Chappaquiddick; another example of the battle between cyclists and motorists; a class war and political drama of epic proportions. It was the story of the year! Journalists who had once eaten out of Bryant’s hand turned on him like a pack of pit bulls.
Navigator responded with a Twitter feed intended to counter the speculation, but the strategy backfired. Bryant was pilloried for being image conscious in the face of tragedy. What kind of person, reporters asked, is pragmatic enough to put on a suit when his world is imploding? A guilty person, that’s who!
For once, Bryant and Abramovitch didn’t pay much attention to the news. Concerned friends and neighbours brought food to the house—the owner of the ice cream store Dutch Dreams stopped by with four litres for the kids. But Bryant and Abramovitch couldn’t eat. Abramovitch went back to work the next day, knowing it was the only thing that would keep her sane. Bryant, on the other hand, tendered his resignation with Invest Toronto. When the mayor refused, pointing out he was innocent until proven guilty, Bryant laughed. “David,” he said, “your political antenna is stuck in your heart.” Miller had to concede he was right.
Michael Bryant has always known a public life. His paternal grandfather, James, served as an alderman for 15 years. His father, Ray, was mayor of Esquimalt, B.C., when Michael, the second of three children, was born on April 13, 1966. The year Michael ran for his first seat as an MPP, he hung two large formal portraits of both men for inspiration in his campaign office. Bryant likes to point out that he grew up in a family in which politicians were respected public servants. “Government was not something to be sneered at,” he once said, “but an agent for good.” It’s the kind of statement he’s known for: idealistic and slightly superior.
The former Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci, a law school friend of Ray Bryant, has known Michael his entire life. He remembers visiting the family when the children were young. “In the backyard, there was a pool with a slide,” Iacobucci recalls. “Michael was this blur of energy, up and down the slide and in and out of the pool all day.” He describes Bryant’s family as “salt-of-the-earth people, not particularly well connected, but with an interest in politics that is somewhat genetic.”
Bryant, determined to join the family business, took political science at UBC and law at Osgoode Hall, where he won the silver medal for earning the second highest marks in a class of 354. He then clerked at the Supreme Court of Canada under Beverley McLachlin, a few years before she became the court’s chief justice. The clerkship was a plum gig: only 27 students are selected each year from the best law schools in the country, and they actively participate in the processes of the court.
Julia Hanigsberg, who clerked alongside Bryant, remembers him as incredibly confident. “Everyone was smart, but Michael was different,” she says. “There was always a kind of lustre to him. At social events, people always congregated around him.”
Bryant’s crisis was called Toronto’s Bonfire of the Vanities, another example of the battle between cyclists and motorists, and a class war of epic proportions. It was the story of the year
As a clerk, Bryant developed a direct, point-first style of legal argument. He also met his future wife. He had already developed a crush on Abramovitch after seeing her picture in the law school magazine. Abramovitch, a sophisticated Montrealer, was initially wary of the chatty guy from Esquimalt who mangled her name in his small-town accent. Soon, among the stacks of legal texts and court documents, with the Ottawa blizzards swirling outside, they fell in love. “They were an intense couple,” says Hanigsberg, who also met her husband, the Osgoode Hall dean Lorne Sossin, during her clerkship. A long-standing joke between Hanigsberg and Bryant: “Ottawa isn’t romantic—it’s just cold.”
Bryant and Abramovitch remained together while he completed his masters in law at Harvard and spent a year lecturing at King’s College, University of London, and she practised law in Montreal, New York and Paris. According to friends, these separations only strengthened their bond. In 1995, they returned to Toronto and, two years later, married in a Jewish ceremony at Montreal’s Montefiore Club. Though Bryant didn’t convert, he did pledge to raise their children according to her faith.
Bryant laid the groundwork for a career in politics the old-fashioned way: by cultivating relationships with people in power. In Bryant’s case, these early connections paid off. When he was still a law student, Bryant sent David Peterson, then premier of Ontario, a letter complimenting him on his support of the Meech Lake Accord. Peterson did something he’d never done before: he invited the letter writer to come in and see him at his office. “He agreed with me,” says Peterson now, “which made him seem awfully smart—and I got a kick out of the kid.”
Bryant’s first job in law was in the commercial litigation department at McCarthy Tétrault. While he distinguished himself quickly as a commercial litigator, taking on a series of high-profile injunctions, he was willing to try anything. A fellow McCarthys lawyer, Will McDowell, remembers Bryant’s healthy ego. He’d trudge off to Old City Hall to try his hand in criminal court and often get trounced, says McDowell. But unlike many litigators, he was able to laugh at himself.
A few years later, after Peterson had left politics and returned to law, Bryant called him up a second time. By then he was on track for partnership at McCarthys, but Bay Street wasn’t his ultimate goal—it was a means to an end. He told Peterson he intended to run for office and he wanted his advice. Once again, Peterson was impressed. Bryant not only had credentials; he had game.
Peterson decided to do him a favour. “Dalton McGuinty was in opposition at the time, and he was putting together a team, so I phoned him up and said, ‘Here’s this bright young guy, and you should meet him,’ and then he did.” McGuinty was so wowed by Bryant he soon asked him to quit his job and run for the nomination in the Toronto riding of St. Paul’s. Bryant submitted his resignation, and a political star was born.
Bryant is a master of managing his public image. He had started courting the press while at McCarthys, forging relationships that might prove helpful down the road. One high-profile journalist once called up Bryant in the ’90s for a story he was working on about the Confederation Bridge in P.E.I. Bryant was representing a group of islanders, and the journalist needed a quick quote.
“I was interviewing lots of people and just wanted a little bit of him, but Bryant suggested lunch,” he recalls. “At the time I thought, Why is he bothering? But looking back, I now see that he was consciously building up his Rolodex of reporters, preparing for a career in the limelight.”
Bryant ran an inspired campaign in St. Paul’s—his energy attracted dozens of eager, optimistic volunteers—and managed to beat the seasoned incumbent, Isabel Bassett, by almost 5,000 votes. He had an insatiable appetite for fundraising and team building, his enthusiasm occasionally verging on manic. Former staffers talk about the addictive buzz of excitement that Bryant provided in an otherwise miserable election.
His youthful arrogance was an asset in opposition. This was Mike Harris’s second term, and the Liberals had their work cut out for them. Opposition operates best when a leader doesn’t have to do much of the dirty work himself, and in this case, McGuinty had three pedigreed attack dogs: Sandra Pupatello, George Smitherman and Bryant. “I remember watching Bryant just levitating off the bench he was so excited,” says one Queen’s Park reporter. Doing time in opposition is hardly glamorous. But those first four years of diligently paying his dues earned him credibility among party insiders. He excelled in his post as justice critic, using his pugilistic rhetorical style to pave the way to his dream job: the attorney general’s office.
In October 2003, the Liberals took power for the first time in 13 years, and Bryant, at age 37, became the youngest AG in the history of the province (and, as he liked to joke to his staff, the only one with an outstanding student loan). As an extra vote of confidence, McGuinty gave him control of two other portfolios: aboriginal affairs and democratic renewal.
Instead of toning down his showiness now that he was no longer in opposition, he kicked it up a notch. While most politicians stick to bland navy suits, Bryant added his own sartorial flourishes—a French cuff here, a Windsor knot there, a pair of flashy socks for budget day. “He was a snappy dresser,” says John Tory, then leader of the opposition Conservatives. “There’d be days when he’d come in vests and brightly coloured ties that would almost distract you from putting questions to him in the legislature.” Bryant didn’t just champion issues and seek to change public policy; he courted controversy. After teen drag racers imperiled lives on the city streets, he held a news conference in which he crushed two tricked-out Hondas with a front-end loader. Gerard Kennedy, who served alongside Bryant in the provincial legislature, says, “Part of politics is, can you get attention? Michael was good at that.”
His grandstanding only made Bryant more popular in the legal milieu. Ontario had been without a high-profile AG since Ian Scott. Hanigsberg, whom Bryant made his first chief of staff, describes an air of “incredible pent-up enthusiasm” surrounding his appointment. Compared to many of his predecessors, who often distanced themselves from the decisions of Crown prosecutors, hiding behind the skirts of government, Bryant was a law insider in government—a lawyer’s lawyer. “The Crown attorneys absolutely loved him,” recalls Will McDowell. “He’d walk up and down the halls of the provincial courts shaking hands with everyone he met.”
He was hands-on in a way that most AGs aren’t. He liked to appear tough on crime, and he was a staunch proponent of increased gun control. In 2007, Bryant’s staff quietly launched a Web site with no obvious link to the government under the slogan “No gun, no funeral.” When he was criticized by the media for not making the AG office’s connection to the initiative clear, he came clean with a trademark Bryant quip: “It’s bizarre that people who don’t want to register their guns think I should register my Web site as a dangerous weapon.”
After several people were mauled by pit bulls, Bryant launched a ban on the breed and relied on even more dramatic rhetoric to stir up public fear and support. “How many limbs are going to have to be severed before we do something about these dogs?” he asked, going on to describe an attack victim who was “practically eaten alive from the ankles up.” His conclusion was definitive: “We cannot have these animals walking the streets, the fields, or the family rooms of Ontario.” The ban was controversial, garnering criticism from animal rights groups and dog owners. Malcolm Gladwell wrote a piece in the New Yorker that likened the persecution of pit bulls to racial profiling. Clayton Ruby challenged Bryant all the way to the Supreme Court (the court declined to consider the case). The ban may be both vague and unenforceable, but it did what it needed to for Michael Bryant’s career, solidifying his reputation as a crusader for public safety.
As his profile rose, so did tensions between the AG’s office and the premier’s. “His staff was not deferential. There was a lot of bashing of heads,” remembers one party insider. Bryant’s public role was fast becoming a threat to McGuinty—a leader who has turned folksy blandness into a political art form. While Bryant liked to freestyle, McGuinty stuck to the script. While Bryant sprang into action, McGuinty was circumspect.
He had hoped for a much cozier relationship with McGuinty, something like Ian Scott’s influential friendship with David Peterson. One of Bryant’s great talents was the ability to curry favour with kingmakers, but with McGuinty the chemistry wasn’t there. Bryant didn’t just want the leadership—he wanted to be groomed for it. McGuinty doesn’t work that way. Not with Bryant or, apparently, with anyone.
So Bryant sought out another political mentor: Frank McKenna. He showed up at Ramsden Park on a weekend morning to crash McKenna’s regular game of shinny on the community rink. Soon enough, they became friends, and Bryant would send McKenna the odd e-mail or drop into his office. “We talked about the need to sublimate some of that desire for the spotlight,” McKenna says, “but Michael is a hard dog to keep on the porch.” According to McKenna, Bryant was increasingly frustrated by his leader’s remoteness. “Michael is an emotional guy. He’s open, and he felt he couldn’t have intimate career conversations with Dalton. For example, he couldn’t sit down with him and say, ‘Premier, tell me, when are you going to leave?’ That’s a hard conversation for many leaders to have, and many refuse to have it because once you show the slightest weakness, the knives come out.”
“McGuinty once practised law in a strip mall. Bryant is this hyper-articulate kid from McCarthys, Harvard and the Supreme Court. It doesn’t take a genius to see where the acrimony came from”
Another former political colleague explains the rift this way: “On the one hand, there’s Dalton, who’s a pretty good guy but who’d practised law in a strip mall with his brother before going into politics. And then he’s got this hyper-articulate kid from McCarthys, Harvard and the Supreme Court yapping away at him in full paragraphs. It doesn’t take a genius to understand where much of the acrimony came from.”
After the 2007 election, McGuinty had had enough and, in a cabinet shuffle, stripped Bryant of his power, leaving him with the aboriginal affairs file and making Christopher Bentley AG. Overnight, his office’s budget went from $1.2 billion to $28 million. The feeling around Queen’s Park was that he was no longer a politician on the rise. But Bryant had one more move in his bag of political tricks.
John Tory was desperately looking for a safe Toronto seat. The Liberals were eager to exacerbate the internal fractures in the opposition, and preventing Tory from re-entering caucus in a by-election was one way to do it. It was around this time that members of Tory’s staff got wind that Bryant was fed up with the aboriginal file and considering an offer from the law firm Ogilvy Renault. Tory’s staff salivated at the thought—St. Paul’s was just the sort of riding they needed. Like Isabel Bassett (the last Conservative to hold the seat), Tory was a red tory with a high profile in downtown Toronto.
What happened next was a carefully considered series of political chess moves. According to a Liberal insider, “Bryant approached McGuinty and basically said, ‘Look, I can make 500K in the private sector. What am I doing running this piddly file? I’m out.’ He went to McGuinty with a loaded gun. So McGuinty blinked.” McGuinty pleaded with Bryant not to leave. He needed him now, and he needed him in St. Paul’s. Within a few days, McGuinty announced a cabinet shuffle and appointed Bryant minister of economic development, replacing Sandra Pupatello. On one level, it was a canny move on Bryant’s part, but it also made his already fraught relationship with the premier unsustainable.
In the eight months he held the economic development post, which coincided with the beginning of the last recession, his focus was on the province’s imploding auto industry. He tried to convince both McGuinty’s office and the federal government to move more quickly toward a bailout, and even flew to Washington with federal Industry Minister Tony Clement on a fact-finding mission to look into the possibility of a joint Canada-U.S. effort. In government circles, the mission was viewed as something of an embarrassment. Clement and Bryant were fobbed off on minor Capitol Hill staff and accused by the media back home of using the trip as a public relations stunt.
Bryant’s desire for the limelight was backfiring on him once again. One former Queen’s Park press corps member recalls Bryant’s staff walking up and down the corridors telling reporters that they had the real plan to fix the auto industry and the premier’s office didn’t. He was behaving recklessly, disregarding what his leader might think.
After the bailout, Bryant delivered a controversial speech at the Canadian Club. He spoke to the assembled Bay Street nabobs of “supra-ideological reverse Reaganomics” and “post-boomerism,” in which the provincial government swoops in to save the economy and emerges as a kind of “über-entrepreneur.” He went on to speak with self-aggrandizing fervour about “the great economic reset” the government had undertaken, quoting Emperor Augustus’s boast that he “found Rome made of brick and left it made of marble.” Bay Street was amused. The speech was intelligent and entertaining and a little over-the-top, like Bryant himself. The problem was, he didn’t bother to vet it with McGuinty’s office first.
Not that Bryant cared. With the implosion of John Tory’s leadership, McGuinty had made it clear he intended to seek a third term. Bryant gave up hopes for a leadership bid and had already hatched his escape plan. David Miller had discussed with Bryant a job as the head of Invest Toronto. In the end, it may have been Bryant’s own jockeying for position that ensured both Tory’s ultimate downfall and, by extension, McGuinty’s decision to stay on.
After leaving government in the spring of 2009, Bryant set about glad-handing the city’s business community on behalf of Invest Toronto. It was a baffling move to his friends, who thought he’d have been better off returning to Bay Street in search of big money or waiting it out in cabinet.
If his tenure hadn’t been cut short, he might have made something of the job.
During the first months after Darcy Sheppard’s death, Bryant was in a daze. One of the conditions of bail was that he couldn’t drive. And so, a few days after his arrest, he took public transit down to Duke’s Cycle on Richmond West to buy a bike. As he walked around the store checking out different models, the room fell silent. When he handed over his ID to take a test ride, the clerk read the name with disbelief. “Yup,” he said to his gobsmacked co-worker, “it’s actually Michael Bryant.” Bryant bought the bike.
While Abramovitch was putting in long hours at work, Bryant found himself at loose ends. He filled his days like a 1950s housewife: writing thank-you notes, picking up the kids from school and meeting friends for lunch. According to acquaintances, he was functional, but barely. The trauma of that night left its mark. Suddenly the city seemed much louder than it had before. Traffic made him jumpy; he flinched at the sound of honking horns. Riding in the passenger seat, he was a mess: the car seemed to be speeding out of control; collisions lurked around every corner. The 401 made him fear for his life.
Eventually he decided to seek spiritual guidance. He met with John Moscowitz, the senior rabbi at Holy Blossom Temple, as well as the MP Rob Oliphant, a United Church minister. He also contacted Phil Fontaine, former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, who referred him to an aboriginal elder. He travelled to Ottawa a couple of times to participate in private traditional aboriginal ceremonies designed to help him come to terms with Sheppard’s death.
At home, he and his wife sat a secular kind of shiva. Once a social power couple, they now avoided public parties and work events. Turning up for a good time at the Writers’ Trust gala or a film festival party suddenly seemed tasteless. The prospect of dressing up was downright gauche. And so they stayed in.
A condition of Bryant’s bail was that he couldn’t drive, so a few days after his arrest, he went down to Duke’s Cycle to buy a bike. “Yup,” the stunned store clerk said to a co‑worker, “it’s actually Michael Bryant”
According to friends, the couple began to feel the strain. While Bryant refused to contemplate anything but exoneration, Abramovitch thought through every worst-case scenario to its logical conclusion. The children, meanwhile, lived in ignorant bliss. After much debate, Bryant and Abramovitch told them that there had been a very bad car accident and a man had died as a result. The stuff about the charges, they left out. Hard as they tried, the facts seemed impossible to describe without leaving Sadie and Louis terrified their father might go to jail. They kept in touch with the kids’ teachers, who monitored the schoolyard chatter to see how much other children knew.
When Bryant went out, people stopped him on the subway or slowed down to offer him rides in their cars. A perennial optimist, he chose to listen to his supporters, rather than the angry bloggers and bike couriers who protested in the streets, heralding the end of his political career, saying he had killed a man with unreasonable force and would pay for his crime. For the first time in years, Bryant stopped updating his Wikipedia page. Interview requests poured in and were ignored. If there was a story about the case in the paper, he’d read the first couple of paragraphs and then trail off. He was slowly losing interest in what other people thought of him.
He even began to doubt his own reasons for going into politics in the first place. How much of it, he wondered, was for public service and how much was for the glory—the smug self-satisfaction of basking in the limelight? Was it fifty-fifty? he wondered. Or was he mostly in it for himself?
Eventually, he was offered a job. Richard King, the friend at Ogilvy Renault who’d tried to hire Bryant away from politics a year and a half before, convinced him to come work in the firm’s energy department. He was hired to be a fixer—to open up his big, fat Rolodex and help facilitate deals. And so, last December, Bryant quietly put on a suit and went back to work. It was a good thing, too, because the legal bills were piling up.
Marie Henein is a diminutive woman with dark eyes, bobbed hair and full lips that she paints a formidable shade of purple. Cool under pressure and bloodthirsty in court, she is the sort of lawyer who inspires nervous awe even in her own clients—a list that, by early September 2009, included Michael Bryant.
Like most good defence lawyers, Henein is known for getting people off. Last year, she successfully defended the hockey coach David Frost against charges of sexual exploitation. Her client, Dan Weiz, was the only defendant acquitted in the Matti Baranovski murder case.
Bryant settled on Henein, whom he had met before, in part because of her reputation for discretion. He knew Edward Greenspan, as well, but that wasn’t the kind of defence he needed. He wanted a lawyer who would ignore the media, defuse controversy and stamp out fires.
The defence was rigorous. Henein and her team of three associates consulted with experts, sent evidence to private labs for testing, reviewed eyewitness testimony and watched and rewatched security video footage of the event taken from Bloor Street cameras, checking her client’s story against those of the witnesses and comparing them to the forensic details as they emerged. It was all very CSI, with a budget to match. Bryant watched as his legal bills rose to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
As Henein prepared her case, an amazing thing happened. People began to come forward, both to the police and, later, to Henein’s defence team, to say they had seen photos of Sheppard on the news and believed they’d been harassed by him in the past. In six separate incidents, detailed in Henein’s defence and later in the court summary, motorists recounted similar stories of Sheppard violently intimidating them, spitting on them, hitting the windshield with his fists. In some cases, he threw things at their cars or reached inside the open window to grab the steering wheel.
A man in an Adelaide West office building took cellphone pictures of Sheppard hassling the driver of a BMW. (He intended to send them to his landlord, to whom he’d been complaining about the ruffians who hung around outside, intimidating passersby.) The photographs depict a shirtless man with a mohawk reaching menacingly into the car as he clings to the vehicle’s running board.
When Henein saw them, she was stunned: the assailant in the photos was positively identified as Sheppard. Bryant and Henein knew this could clinch the case. “It was an incredible piece of evidence because it corroborated Michael’s version of events,” says Henein. “It made it clear this was not the normal type of interaction between a driver and cyclist.” Essentially, the pictures persuaded the court that Bryant was not the aggressor, but the victim of an assault. “To try to capture the feeling of what it’s like to be confronted with that kind of anger,” says Henein, “well, I could describe it to you using words, but there’s no way I could ever convey it the way it’s conveyed in those photographs.”
After stockpiling her arsenal of evidence, Henein settled on a defence strategy that is practically unheard of. Instead of saving her best material for trial, she chose to submit her case to the Crown in the hope they would drop the charges. It was a risky strategy; if the Crown didn’t find her evidence compelling, the case would still go to trial and the defence would be completely exposed.
“I felt like it would have been wrong to simply wait,” says Henein. “I mean, it would have been a great trial for me. But two years later, people would be asking, ‘If you had all this critical information, why didn’t you share it?’ ”
Special prosecutor Richard Peck, shipped in from B.C., studied Henein’s case file for six months. The Crown and the defence went back and forth, asking questions, investigating further evidence, until Peck was able to reach his decision.
In late May, Henein requested an early-morning meeting with her client. Under the industrial beams of her office at King and Spadina, she gave Bryant the news: all the charges were being dropped. Bryant put his face in his hands, unable to speak. “It was one of those moments when you can actually see the weight of something physically lifted off a person,” says Henein. “It was one of the most gratifying moments of my career.”
Two days later, in a courtroom packed with media, lawyers, and friends and family of Sheppard and Bryant, Peck announced his decision. In a detailed, 11-page court summary, he concluded that the evidence brought forward by the defence established Sheppard was the aggressor and, as such, the Crown had no reasonable prospect for a conviction. The reaction was a mixture of approval and shocked outrage.
Later that day, Bryant stepped up to the microphone in a hotel conference room near the provincial courthouse. Despite his clear relief, his mood was far from ebullient. He looked thinner, his trademark buzz cut slightly receded, his compact boxer’s frame erect in a conservative navy suit. From out of his breast pocket peeped a purple silk square—the only discernible sign of the flamboyant man he used to be.
Bryant thanked Henein, his family, friends and employer, Ogilvy Renault, and commended the police and justice system for acting in a fair and independent manner. He once again spoke of his profound regret over the death of Sheppard, pointing out that “We are all diminished by this loss of life.” But more than anything, Bryant seemed determined to show the world a new side of himself. He displayed his famous oratory skills, which for almost nine months had been concealed behind hearings and lawyers’ statements. “This has turned out to be a tale about addiction, mental health, an independent justice system and a couple out on their wedding anniversary driving home with the top down. It is not a morality play about bikes versus cars, couriers versus drivers, or one about class, privilege or politics. It’s just about how in 28 seconds, everything can change.”
The story of Bryant’s fall from grace was as stunningly dramatic as his ultimate vindication in court. The obvious question now is, what’s next? Those close to him say he is a changed man, full of contrition, humility and lingering contempt for his cavalier former self.
As for work, he has received several job offers, both in the private and public sector, but Bryant is taking his time. He is staying mum, laying low and considering his options. Most who know him believe a political comeback is in the cards—not one person I spoke to would rule it out. Then again, no one could confirm it, either. In political circles, there has even been wild speculation Bryant might make a federal bid, go for the leadership—that the PMO is not beyond his sights. If he does get back in the game, this time Bryant will be determined to learn from past mistakes. To slow down, shut up, play nice and, most of all, to do it for the right reasons.
His resurrection is already underway. When Bryant appeared at a business luncheon at the Royal York the week after the charges were dropped, the room gave him a spontaneous standing ovation.
A very flattering article. A completely one-sided account, but then again he is the one who lived to tell the tale.
I wondered what happened to this case, and, saddened now to learn that money gets one off again. There is clearly no doubt the cyclist Sheppard was harassing and intimidating. Still, that is no defence for the actions of driver Bryant in killing him.
Shameful insider’s game of justice.
“Money doesn’t talk it swears.”
He accidentally hit the bike with the car twice?! C’mon!!!
What a wonderful story…and it ended with a “spontaneous standing ovation” at a business luncheon. How glorious!
A man who has risen in large part because of his ‘magic rolodex’ kills another man under shady circumstances…enter another lawyer with equally ruthless personal ambition (Henein) to counter witness testimony with some photos of a completely different incident….and then in comes the puff piece journalist to say that the pre-trial acquittal proves innocence of a man just months removed from the highest lawyer post in the land, and renowned for making powerful friends.
Makes one wonder if this author’s name might just be found within that Rolodex too. Or are they just a crime drama romantic with no hint of a power analysis?
An absolutely disgraceful piece of ‘journalism’. I don’t think Navigator or Bryant himself would have done it any differently.
Leah McLaren and her TL editor Sarah Fulford should be hanging their heads in shame. I certainly will never bother to read anything else associated with either of them.
The tragedy is Mr. Bryant loosing so much when an effort to help the cyclist with his illness could have saved both.
To many dangerous distressed people on our streets make us all potential victims and of corse the press making sensational and unfounded observations…script writting for a B Movie didn’t help anyone.
I can’t read this article without the bile in my throat rising to the surface. This man should have been condemned, and should have suffered as he made this poor innocent cyclist suffer. Much like a rape victim, the media and his defence blamed the victim, not the criminal. This whole city is run on who you know and friends in high places. Trust me if Bryant had been cycling along Bloor and struck by a passing car and killed, could you imagine the outrage and sympathy that would have stirred? Shame on these authors not presenting a balanced representation of that night’s events. BTW, was his wife in the car or another woman?
Wow lots of angry people. I wonder what you would have done in the same situation?
Oh, please!! I would have called 911 if I felt at all threatened. Look at the videos on YouTube!!!
Darcy Allan Sheppard was clearly ill. All the people commenting on the evil Michael Bryant should be grateful that one night they are not attacked by a mentally ill man. Just because Michael Bryant was wealthy and powerful doesn’t mean he intentionally killed a man.
“It was the story of the year! Journalists who had once eaten out of Bryant’s hand turned on him like a pack of pit bulls.”
I hope it wasn`t Michael Bryant who made the Breed* ID.
Where is that old tape?
Thank goodness for the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Innocent until proven guilty.
It`s great that ***most*** Ontarians are accorded that Right.
To those who must prove their innocence….thank Mr Bryant.
Would he have been able to prove his innocence?
Fortunately for him he didn`t have to undertake that exercise although he would have had the financial resources to at least make an attempt.
Many in Ontario aren`t so fortunate.
It`s unfortunate that there seems to be a 2 tier Justice System in Ontario now.
Innocent until Proven Guilty.
A lawyer will be provided if you can`t afford one.
or
Guilty until proven innocent.
Dig deep…you`ll provide your own lawyer.
Is Michael Bryant really a changed man?
Does he see anything wrong with that?
Disgusting piece of “journalism.” Indeed, blame the victim, since he is not around to defend himself. Byrant “fighting for his life” – are you serious? Does anyone truly believe Shepherd was going to kill Bryant? What a crock?
And as for Bryant, is this not the man who condemned thousands of dogs to die because of their “nature?”
So nice to hear that we all have to accept that Byrant is free and alive and given the opportunity change his nature.
Funny, thing is all the hundreds of thousands of pit bulls and pit bull mixes in Canada – with their “vicious and violent nature” are responsible for the same amount of human deaths as Michael Bryant.
100’s of thousands of Canadian pit bulls = 1 human fatality.
Michael Bryant = 1 human fatality.
Glad to hear Bryant is going to change is nature –
Are you sure the Journalists “turned on him like a pack of pit bulls.”
Maybe they turned on him like a pack of German Shepherds,Rottweilers,Cocker Spaniels or Golden Retrievers.
“An argument is sometimes made that, while all dogs bite, only a few breeds cause serious injury when they attack. Again, this hypothesis does not withstand scrutiny. A study by the Canadian hospitals injury reporting and prevention program examined the dog breeds involved in attacks that were serious enough that the victim sought medical attention at one of eight reporting hospitals. The study revealed that 50 different types of purebreds and 33 types of crossbreeds had been involved in the attacks,
***the most common breeds being German shepherds, cocker spaniels, Rottweilers and golden retrievers.***”
Of course they don`t bring in the visitors like a “pack of pit bulls” so I`d say GOOD CHOICE at least in terms of hits and we all know that hits are far more important than truths especially in Ontario.
How come no one is pointing out that this cyclist was acting in a ridiculous manner. Politics/Payoff aside… if you act like an asshole, bad things usually happen.
“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”
-Plato
I’m glad to hear that Michael Bryant was vindicated! When I heard the story- I immediately put myself in his shoes… Its really a terrifying situation!
As for the people calling him a murderer- shame on you. This guy’s could have been destroyed by a tiny encounter with someone who shouldn’t have been on the streets to begin with… Maybe cyclists should have to be licensed too…
His wife was with him? I thought Bryant was pulling a Giambrone that night, hence leaving the scene of an accident. And please: this guy has MMA training. he could have taken on a skinny courier.
I hope Bryant is reading these comments and gets the message. Most of us, certainly the ones who have watched the youtube videos and read Peck’s ridiculous brief, are not buying his ludicrous explanation for his actions. And we sure as heck wouldn’t want him in public office again.
He had already stopped at the crosswalk and was just slowly moving forward when Darcy came along, there was no sudden slamming on the brakes. Why on earth would the car stall? And then lurch forward. And then lurch forward again. The car was inspected and no mechanical problems were found. And then supposedly he drove 30 feet with Darcy on his car because he was scared and looking down and didn’t know Darcy was there. What a joke. The he starts to drive off – hit and run. Who wouldn’t have grabbed onto the car?
Get it, Bryant? WE KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER.
This piece of fluff is more proof of the plutocratic society we are allowing ourselves to be subject to.
Mr. Sheppard was demonized by Bryant, Navigator, and the press. They achieved what they wanted, the general public bought into it, and the result was Mr. Sheppard’s life meant nothing compared to he successful ex. Atty. General of Ontario. The whole case smelt of corruption, politics, and a smear campaign at its finest. Want the truth people, read the blogs, there appears to be no creditability in the main stream press anymore. This article belongs in the bottom of a bird cage.
I am one disgusted citizen of Ontario.
Wow what a wonderful piece of fiction it will probably become a movie in years to come. Leah McLaren is every bit as bad as Bryant for writing such garbage she is typical of the current crop of reporters who don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story. The only truth in this article is Michael bryant was driving the the black saab that killed Darcy Allan Sheppard.
The intitial picture of the woman in Bryant’s car was a blonde and I have yet to see a picture of Bryants wife as a blonde?
What happened before the accident has never been proven has it? However the video’s at the scene and the initial witness testimonies on youtube were indeed documented.
The “story” of how the event went down with Bryant’s SAAB stalling and lurching is suspect at the very least. Would Bryant really be driving a car that was in such poor condition and why wasn’t the car taken in before the night of, if it was doing so?
What I found incredulous was the fact that the dead man was tested for drugs and yet Bryant was not. Is it not usual that the DRIVER be tested and not the victim? Where there might not have been a smell of alcohol, who was to say that drugs or medications were not involved in the deadly altercation or does anyone think that what occured that night was normal? There is a big difference between a bike weighing twenty pounds or so and a vehicle weighing thousands more.
This whole thing should have gone through the system properly… and if Bryant had a bad year, at least HE has had THAT year! The same cannot be said for the man on a bike who died that night.
I truly pray we never see this man in politics again.
“like a pack of pit bulls” OMG!!! Dont these people have an editor or something that approve of publishing what they write? Damn right he is going to get away with it!!! ladies and gentleman this man knows the system inside out to get away with anything. Hook ups help too!!
Here’s a guy who has connections and thrives on his ability to grease the media’s & political’s social palms. I don’t think Bryant is worthy of anything but a cold cell, a half-empty water bowl, some Ol’ Roy kibble, separation from his loved ones and a death sentence – like the one’s he imposed on Ontario’s “pit-bulls” for the sake of his political advancement(pg. 2). Ew, who does that?
Creating monsters out of pit-bull type dogs with media-hype (which is equal to racial-profiling and witch-hunting) and then rushing in to “save” the public from said monsters with a province-wide ban – is disgusting (however the staged “new man”/humility photo of Bryant on the 1st page of this article comes close). What a self-serving manipulative jerk – hardly worth the six pages of print, let alone the opportunity to repair his image. I’d like to see six pages in this magazine devoted to animal experts so that true nature of pit-bulls can be shown to the public and Bill 132 can be replaced with Bill 60 (see stopk9profiling.com), and I’d like to see another six pages to re-do this article in a way that doesn’t make a “victimized” angel out of an ASS. TL, do YOU believe the hype? I certainly don’t. Tsk tsk.
Several questions still remain unanswered. Why did he call Navigator first before calling the police while Darcy was bleeding to death? Why did his wife take off? Why did he run over Darcy’s head with the back wheels of his car after he was already smashed to the ground? Why no breathalizer given to Bryant? Why no bail hearing?
This whole story makes me sick. How can people get away with things like this? Crazy world when who you know and money can get you into and out off anything you want.
Luckily for Mr. Bryant he was able to spin things to his advantage. Not only can he speak for himself, but he also had a myriad of naive supporters to speak for him. Too bad Mr. Bryant did not give pit bulls and their owners the same opportunity when writing his BS BSL laws for Ontario!
To Leah McLaren who wrote this article: how DARE you perpetuate the myth that pit bulls are viscious. Your statement in the above article; “Journalists who had once eaten out of Bryant’s hand turned on him like a pack of pit bulls.” was uncalled for and erroneous. But then again anyone who writes an article supportive of this scum probably thinks like him.
I cannot believe what I just read. Really, I cannot believe this one side piece of what is passing as journalism.
But, one thing I did believe was “he chose to listen to his supporters”.
When Michael Bryant decided to ban all dogs that had a certain look he did not listen to the experts, even though he had promised to. He listen to only those that agreed with him. There were 4 days of hearings, on the morning of the fourth day, without even waiting to hear what these people had to say, Mr. Bryant said that he had heard enough and he now knew he was right!!
43 experts said NO to the ban, as an example: OVMA, CVMA, AVMA, Canadian Kennel Club, Humane Society of Canada etc. The Safety Council of Canada had come out earlier and spoken out against it.
Who was for it, well one man wanted “pit bulls” banned because a bull mastiff had killed his cat, another person wanted them banned because they saw a “pit bull” attack a tree. A woman that managed an apartment building in Toronto wanted them banned because she said the residents in her building were afraid of them.
People came from around the province to speak in the hopes that they would be listen to. Were they? NO. Mr. Bryant would not listen to anyone who did not agree with him then, he will not listen to them now, he admitted it, he only listened to those that supported him.
My greatest fear is for Mr. Bryant to get back into politics. He is not a good politican, for him it is a power job. He does not do it for the greater good, but for the good of Michael Bryant.
He may swear that he is a changed man but I don’t believe it. It sounds like he is still as full of himself as ever. He is responsible for the death of a human being and 10,000 dogs and it shows. I see a picture of a man that is full of guilt. Nothing can be done to bring back Darcy but Mr. Bryant does have the ability to admit that the pitbull ban was a mistake ( 10,000 dogs killed but dog bite stats remain the same ) and work on getting the ban scrapped. When the killing of dogs is stopped people will then be able to begin to forgive Mr. Bryant but untill that time he will be living under a dark cloud.
A COMEBACK? ROFL. WHO is calling for Bryant’s comeback; the media? Sure isn’t the people in his old riding, the Liberal party or the public in general.
While the press might miss quoting this man’s outlandish statement’s others don’t. When the car company’s were in trouble, he wanted a bail out of public funds. Bryant used terms like “Nuclear Freeze” and “Armageddon” to get the funding he wanted. When Bryant talked about banning dogs of a certain type ALL were “Inherently Dangerous” and “Ticking Time Bombs”. However this man couldn’t pick a “pit bull” out on City TV after saying he could “spot one from 50 feet away. He was caught seriously misleading the people on Winnipeg’s bite stats and then “someone” copywrote the video so it could not be shown on air again. Bryant ignored Calgary’s by-laws, the MOST successful City in all of North American where dog bites average 5 out of a hundred thousand, when the North American average is 68 per 100,000 and whose animal by-laws pays for ITSELF through licensing that other cities would LOVE to have.
FACT: Since records have been taken, in 1961, there has not been a single documented death of a child being killed from ANY of the banned breeds in Ontario or “pit bull type” dogs, although there has been 41 child fatalities in 49 years. MOST deaths occurring in Northern regions by unsocialized long haired working dogs and unattended children approaching them.
And if anyone believe that Bryant left politics to “try something different” they really can’t read between the Lies”.
I am amazed that this man has a ounce of “real” creditablity left.
Hm, so much negativity and hate for one person. I have seen, first hand, the results of pit bull attacks. It’s not pretty. I have also seen, first hand, the terror created by a verbal and physical attack by a stranger. I don’t necessarily agree with the ban of a breed, but banning the owners might have been a better idea. As for his reactions the night of the accident? And folks, it has been deemed an accident, can any of you say your reaction to this cyclist’s outburst and attack would have resulted any differently? I can honestly say that my first thought would have been to get away from him as quickly as possible and if that meant him hanging from my driver side door and eventually falling to the ground, I think my only reaction would have been relief that he was off of my car and I was away from the area. I might have looked back, but only to make sure he wasn’t following me. Certainly not to check for HIS safety! Did this “victim” ever consider the safety of those he harrassed? Nope, probably not. We’ll never know, oddly, I’m okay with that. Stop looking for someone to blame. It happened, he died, this man’s life was dramatically changed, not to mention his family. If you were a good friend of the “victim”, perhaps you should have protested his lack of care before his death and not our lack of caring after. I have been a driver in this city and a pedestrian, I have seen poor behavior from drivers, cyclists and pedestrians. Face it, none of us is perfect, ever. So, feel self righteous if you must but why do you feel YOU get to judge anyone?
To DAK
We feel the need to judge since the man was never brought to trial and most facts regarding this case are not known.
What we do know is that
he is a powerful, public figure who has proven himself to constantly choose the most aggressive manner in which to proceed regardless of the situation. He has proven himself to Lie when it served him. He has proven himself to choose his own needs politically over public safety. He has proven himself to be reckless in his political life as well as having a “tough guy, macho image” with his boxing hobbies. Now we are not allowed to “judge” him??? Give me a break!
This article is about his return to politics…we are still trying to live under the pretense of a democracy here in Ontario. I think we have every right to “judge” him, in fact, we have a duty to question this whole tragic situation and we must do it without the luxury of having highly paid professionals to staff these comment sections, face book pages, newspapers, etc.
“OUR lack of caring after” so you are stating that you don’t care, I judge you to be lacking in empathy, just like Bryant.
To all those questioning the car stalling… He was driving a standard engine. Very easy to stall them. Put it in first gear and just release the clutch. Instant stall. And that is why the police reported he never left first gear. He never shifted up.
That being said, one of the tragedies is that the police let Darcy leave his gf’s house and gave him his bike, even though he was drunk. Good old T.O. cops.
The police deemed Mr. Shepard competent to drive his bike home. Again where is the drug tests on Bryant?
Rumour is Bryant never spent the night in jail but was given a pillow and a blanket and slept in the officers lounge.
Justice was not served and neither was it even “seen” to have been served. Where was the dangerous driving charge for speeding down Bloor Street? The real truth of what that night will never be known but one thing is REAL. The video of the car lurching and hitting the cyclist and the fact that Bryant drove recklessly down a busy street trying to wipe the cyclist off on every object he could bang him up against.
Who in their “right” mind does something like THAT?
Both were men of similar size and stature and apparently have “rage” issues. Bryant has boasted about being a trained boxer. The situation could and should have been handled differently and that much ALL of us know.
Leah McLaren, were you paid by Michael Bryant to write this?
Maybe she is on salary with Navigator. Certainly, couldn’t have been hired for journalistic integrity, how can anyone write an account of an event that ONLY three people actually knew, one is dead, and the third may not have even been there, the story read like a cheap novel. It’s sad that this is what “journalists” have reduced themselves to. And she has the nerve to go after the media who did not side with Bryant!
I guess her loyalties run to a small but powerful few.
Darcy Allan Sheppard was a Class A scumbag. He was often seen drunk in public, blocking traffic, vandalizing private and public property, swearing at people, and throwing garbage. Good Bye!
@ David.
Darcy Sheppard was troubled yes, had problems yes, most young people today will have at least one embarrassing moment, one moment of rage, one moment they are not proud of. While certainly he did not have the privileged life of Bryant, he should have had the opportunity to overcome some of his personal circumstances, and could have seen victory in this life. Sadly, we will never know.
Darcy Sheppard none the less had a life he was was living, he was cared for by friends,and I am sure cared. Deary Sheppard did know how to work, joke, laugh and love, and did so, was loved & was loved in return.
No one deserved to die as he did, no one! Bryant’s only immediate concern was his public image, had there been any basic concern in the beginning, just a small act of concern & compassion, like getting out of the car, saying I am sorry, can I help you, could have put that flame of rage out for both of them.
Sadly, this so called “leader”, lead in a very different way, the action he choice to take, resulted in Darcy’s very violent death. Michael Bryant’s kind of “ticking time bomb” leadership would not get my vote, ever.
Michael Bryant is a bully and a coward. He talked big, he bullied people in his position as AG, he intimiadated people using his position as AG, he had thousands of dogs killed with his mean and vicious lies, and when someone actually intimidated him back, he almost craps his pants and he can’t run fast enough.
Sheppard gave Bryant a little taste of his own medicine and Bryant got so scared he ran like a mutt with his tail between his legs, and kills a man in the process.
When he had power he was a bully – without power we all got to see what the “man” really was – a coward.
The article is obviously one sided and there is no question that someone else in MB’s shoes would now be in prison. The whole process after MB’s arrest was improper and there are too many question marks, pointing to preferred treatment.
However, while DAS certainly didn’t deserve to die, that is no reason to pretend that the victim was a saint. Last year a similar reckless cyclist hit a friend of mine, crossing a sidewalk, who finished in hospital with a broken rib.
I tried putting myself in MB’s shoes and while I would like to think that I would not do the things he did, I am genuinely concerned how I would have handled that situation.
So we really have two problems here – special treatment for the privileged and control of deranged people whom we see on a daily basis. We should seriously deal with both.
In the meantime MB’s career (at least in politics) is permanently over, whatever this article says. If (as I suspect) this article wanted to gauge whether MB can return, the results are pretty unanimous.
I cancelled my subsciption to Toronto Life after reading this article. Disgusting.
Give me a break about the rich man winning. If I was in my car with my family and some drunken violent dude came at me guess what? I am peeling out of there. I am sorry the guy died but he brought it on himself. He had a history of such altercations.
Marc, you would end up in jail if you did something like that.
Obvoius paid article. Disgusting.
Why are the comments so one-sided? Automatically assuming the rich man is guilty.
Please show me the evidence that Bryant was the aggressor, and the cyclist was the passive victim.
The cyclist’s aggressive behaviour and terrorism resulted in a terrified driver’s appropriate reaction. He was the one who reached into the driver’s window. Bryant did not goad him on.
It’s unfortunate the cyclist had to pay with his life, but all evidence points to the obvious fact that this was not the first occurence of his wild behaviour. He was an intoxicated terrorist, and Bryant is the victim. Again, it’s very unfortunate he had to die but look at the other side of the coin, Bryant did not deserve to go through everything he has already gone through.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aaf_QImUH_s
watch the video
he hits cyclist throwing him on to hood of his car
after that cyclist became aggressive(you wouldn’t be?)
it’s almost criminal miscarriage of justice
It is sad but Toronto has become an unsafe place where innocent people are being threatened on the city streets. All this political correctness is getting you no where Toronto. Expect more of the same for years to come. Stabbings, shootings, and violence of every sort is going to spread over the city.
This is the kind of violence that goes on all the time in Toronto’s streets. Have you ever heard of something called social graces and good manners in Toronto. A car is worth nothing compared to a human life. Are you that worried someone is going to touch your precious cars in Toronto? You are giving yourselves a bad reputation with all the shootings and violence. Not only that, you are often apologists for this, blaming the victims. Is it any wonder why the rest of Canada really loathes Toronto as a city. Not only this, you had the murder of Christopher Skinner, most likely another idiot worried that somebody had touched his precious automobile. This is Canada, and Toronto is ruining this country with all the violence. When are you going to grow up as a city?
Normally I don’t leave comments on internet sites, but this shameful ‘article’ just forces a reaction.
First I find myself looking for a ‘full disclosure’ paragraph where the author admits to knowing Bryant, or one of his friends, personally. It would be the only reason I could see that may explain this one-sided, fantasy laden, op-ed.
Obviously no reporting was done here, as the writer frequently wanders off into a fantasy mode, where she takes on the role of what she believes was going on in Bryant’s mind. Simply unbelievable. though perhaps not too unbelievable given the quality and subject of this author’s past pieces.
This praise of a man who only attended one court date, the one where it had been arranged for all charges to be dropped, who was treated with ‘kid gloves’, who was not even charged with a failure to remain, who who unbelievable this man sickens me and this piece is pure rubbish.
Digusting.
Bryant would need a suit in case his children saw him, and thought maybe something was wrong? Well maybe just maybe, daddy deserved to be seen in trouble! He did after all just kill somebody and killing somebody to those with a conscienc is nothing to be lightly. Lucky for Bryant, he doesn’t appear to be burdened with such a thing. And even if Bryant did get his just deserts – like a prison sentence – unlike Darcy Sheppard’s children, Bryant’s would at least get to see him again.
I had a run in with this cyclist years ago…as a witness to his craziness…He ran into a car, on his bike, then after raging at the driver, an older asian gentleman, for about 10 minutes, he picked up a concrete block and hurled it at the car. He missed me by inches…he doesn’t deserve our sympathy. Our sorrow perhaps…but from reports, this was a common occurrence with him.
ROAD RAGE
A TICKING TIME BOMB I THINK
What a **** head. This man KILLED, people. KILLED another human being. There is no justification for that. 2 tonnes of steel vs a person.
Michael Bryant I hope you go down in flames.
And from the cyclist community: If you think this is just you must be the most closed minded, classless idiots out there. I hope your car gets keyed!
POOR INNOCENT CYCLIST?. To the moron who posted that you are a fool. Simple as that.
Hilarious. The courts and police bend over backwards to ensure Byrant is treated like any other citizen would, and even all the overwhelming evidence and witness testimony to support his defence isn’t enough for some people. Some just want to see a rich guy behind bars regardless of whether he did anything wrong or not.
“parked his car around the corner”? Isn’t that usually referred to as “fleeing the scene” when ordinary people are involved? Has Bryant considered naming his Saab “CHRISTINE”? Oh, and on being “terrified” didn’t I read somewhere that Bryant is a martial arts master?
Hummm, who was THE blonde who was originally in the car with Bryant then? The orginial picture of her in the car with Bryant did not LIE and is a FACT. The press it seems will print anything for the guy who gave them SO many outrageous “sound bites” at the expense of rationally. So Bryants black haired wife finally left him after things “cooled down”? Wonder if it was really becauseh of the blonde in the car with him at the time of the accident? Love the line on how Bryant OFFERED to take a breathalizer test but was refused? WHAT reasonable cop would do THAT? OH wait, maybe it was the one who put Bryant up on the couch in the officers lounge with a comfy pillow and blankie instead of in a cold harsh cell? OKay so no breathizer but WHY then was a drug test given to the victim and NOT the driver of the car? Our media is pathetic in it’s pandering to politicans. Mr Bryant while YOUR story may be acceptable to the press it is NOT acceptable to a thinking public. Now for the sake of sanity and rationally, PLEASE GO AWAY.
It seems there were TWO “Ticking Time Bombs” on the streets that night. One riding a bike and the other behind the wheel of a car. One from a privileged background and the other a product of 17 foster homes. Both rageful men met and went “nuclear” together. The guy riding the bike never had a decent chance.
weird that the article makes no light of the fact he went to a convicted fraudster for his advice once he got in jail. i guess he wanted someone who had been in jail too.
In 1984, Watt was convicted of fraud for forging bank releases and promissory notes to obtain $16,000 in private loans to save the failing Oakville clothing business he had begun as a teenager. He was sentenced to twenty nights in jail. His conviction came to light following his appointment to the position of Director of Communications in the office of Premier Mike Harris and he was forced to resign in 1995 for not disclosing his criminal record and had to resign from a second position he was subsequently appointed to after that appointment became known.[2]
you would be in jail if you did what MB did
Not when he was a child, certainly. But as an adult he made poor choices and his life ended abruptly because of it.
Seriously? There was a blonde? Why doesn’t that surprise me (completely). The marriage was obviously on shaky grounds anyway. The death finished it for them.
I had a change of heart after reading this article and watching interviews he gave to TVO in 2012….well….mostly a change of heart. No one will ever know the full real story.
To which man do you refer?
Good for you to be so candid. Thank God other people came forward on Bryant’s behalf. It would appear many people have had the same awful experience.
TORONTO POLICE SERVICE – COLLISION RECONSTRUCTION REPORT
For those interested in reality, as opposed elite/boutique revisionism.
https://darcyallansheppard.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/das-tps-collision-reconstruction-report.pdf
Wow. The story here is completely at odds with the eyewitness accounts. Go to Canadaland for the transcripts and the audio. This is simply a beautiful love letter to a murderer.