Eddie and Brian with Eddie Dobkin at his home in Wheeling, West Virginia, ca. 1950
Ontario Jewish Archives, accession 2008-8/21, #3
Highly regarded, internationally-known criminal lawyers Eddie and Brian Greenspan were born into one of the founding families of the Niagara Falls Jewish community. Their grandfather, Morris Greenspan, arrived from Poland in 1927 and became a dealer in scrap metals. The next year he brought his wife, Faige Bracha, and their four children, among them Eddie and Brian’s father Joseph, who was then 13 years old and who would become an inspiration to his sons in their choice of career. Speaking no English upon arrival, Joseph learned the language so quickly and so well that by the end of his first year in Canada he spoke without an accent and went on to win several oratorical contests. Joseph Greenspan graduated from the University of Toronto with a B.A. in law in 1939 and then went on to law school. At the same time, he was articling in the offices of J. J. Glass, one of Toronto’s first Jewish lawyers, where his future wife Emma was working as a legal secretary. Joseph’s dream of a legal career was cut short when his own father, Morris, had a heart attack and Joseph had to return to Niagara Falls to take over the family business.
Emma and Joseph Greenspan married and had three children in Niagara Falls: Eddie, born in 1944, Brian, born 1947 and Rosann, born 1950. Tragedy struck the family when Joseph died of a heart attack in 1957, just a month after Eddie’s bar mitzvah. Emma was left to provide for the family. The community rallied around the family and showed their support in different ways, including offering Eddie and Brian a summer at Camp Shalom in Gravenhurst. Eddie was moved by the Zionist ideals the camp promoted to start a Young Judaea chapter in Niagara Falls, while Brian went on to serve as regional president of Ontario and Quebec Young Judaea. The close-knit nature of the Niagara Falls community and the Greenspans’ large extended family continued to be important as the children grew. Eddie and Brian fondly remembered family seders at which some 40 people would be present.
Their father’s legal ambitions inspired his children. While Rosann studied criminology at Yale and the University of Toronto and received her doctorate in jurisprudence and social policy at Berkeley, both boys pursued law as a career. As Brian put it, “When he died, we assumed his dream.” Half in jest, Eddie added that Niagara Falls was a rough and tough border town, and the brothers felt sure that as criminal lawyers, they would find plenty of business there. Both boys studied at the University of Toronto and later Osgoode Hall. Both also articled at the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General before setting out on their own.
Not long after leaving law school, Eddie Greenspan began to garner media attention thanks to his style and his successes in the courtroom. Known for his meticulous preparation, requiring long working days and nights, and for being quick on his feet, he also developed a reputation for being a lawyer to the rich and famous, as well as the notorious. Among those he has defended include Helmuth Buxbaum and Peter Demeter, who were accused of murdering their wives; the scandal-ridden former premier of Nova Scotia, Gerald Regan; press baron Conrad Black; media mogul Garth Drabinsky; and Robert Latimer, the Saskatchewan father who was convicted of euthanizing his severely disabled daughter. Further raising his public profile, Eddie Greenspan developed a TV show with a docudrama format together with writer George Jonas. The show, Scales of Justice, ran on CBC from 1991-95. Starting in 2007, he was involved with another television show shown on CourtTV Canada. Reel Justice featured Eddie Greenspan introducing classic courtroom movies and then discussing them with studio guests. He wrote his own casebook memoir, Greenspan: the Case for the Defence (1987). Finally, a documentary entitled A Criminal Mind: The Life and Times of Eddie Greenspan was made about him by Barry Avrich in 2005.
Edward Greenspan, 2002
Photo Credit: Al Gilbert
Ontario Jewish Archives, accession 2007-12/18, #32