Twenty-seven years into his involuntary detention on a psychiatric ward, Paul Conway has gone overnight from being a litigious pest to a legal revolutionary.
Mr. Conway won a Supreme Court of Canada ruling last week that allows most tribunals and boards to apply the Charter of Rights. It opened a Pandora's box of litigation between patients and institutions - not to mention, litigants at almost any tribunal in the country.
Prisoners will assert Charter rights in demanding to be removed from segregation cells. Parents will challenge school policies and workers will seek Charter remedies to combat job conditions or discipline.
The Supreme Court ruling thrust Mr. Conway, a 55-year-old man with a debilitating stammer and a stubborn refusal to take medication, into a startling new role. Secluded on a far-flung ward of Toronto's CAMH institution, he used an exclusive interview to voice his frustration at winning a historic legal battle, yet being left to languish amid the deranged and the dangerous.
After an excruciating search for words - during which Mr. Conway rocked his head in his agitated hands, wrote in the air and repeatedly corrected himself - he said: "The decision is bittersweet for me.
"Systemically, one can speculate as to the infinite potential of far-reaching implications for the masses. This decision may protect their rights, but my own situation remains status quo. I am locked in the system. I would like to live productively and pro-actively in the community. But, for me, the beat goes on."
Mr. Conway had asked the Ontario Review Board to order his release and affirm his rights under the Charter. The board rejected his request, and said it did not have jurisdiction to make a ruling under the Charter. But the Supreme Court, in a 9-0 ruling last week, said that administrative tribunals - quasi-judicial bodies that hear cases involving everything from labour relations and school boards to human rights - are perfectly capable of applying the Charter in their fields of expertise.
David Baker, a Toronto disability-rights litigator, agreed that the ruling will be very useful at tribunals that are responsible for meting out state benefits - such as reimbursement for medical treatment outside Canada, or special education programs in public schools.
He said that most tribunals can adapt to the ruling since they already have legal counsel and panel members with legal training.
The delays that result may be quite another matter. Kristin Taylor, a CAMH lawyer, conceded that Charter litigation "will bring new complexities to the process."
Richard O'Reilly, a psychiatrist at London's St. Joseph's Health Centre, predicted that Charter issues will swamp hearings that are routinely held to consider patient consent, capacity and treatment plans. "The issues could be the right to smoke, to have sex with a patient in the next room, or to pray in the synagogue - who knows?" he said.
June Conway-Beeby, executive director of Ontario Friends of Schizophrenics, said that the mentally ill and their families will be the victims. "It is a only a victory for lawyers, who - from what I have observed recently in many court cases - do not understand the reality of severe mental illnesses," she said.
But one of Mr. Conway's lawyers, Suzan Fraser, said that institutions need to adapt: "What you hope will happen is that decisions-makers start to act in a way that complies with the Charter."
In the early 1970s, Mr. Conway was found guilty of a sexual assault and of assaulting a police officer.
He was hospitalized after being found not guilty by reason of insanity of a sexual assault with a weapon. Since then, he has fired off a steady barrage of litigation dealing with everything from a demand for music therapy, to his allegation that white patients are allowed to wear muscle shirts in dining areas at CAMH while he cannot.
Marlys Edwardh, another of his lawyers, said that Mr. Conway is a symbol for psychiatric patients who feel powerless. "After spending his detention barking up their tree - with quite a bit of success - he has ushered in a new era of rights for his confreres," she said.
Mr. Conway believes the system is now exacting its revenge for his activism in the form of dramatic changes that followed his Supreme Court hearing last fall. "I was put in an area of high supervision and confinement," he said. "They stopped taking me into the community. I haven't had fresh air and sunshine for almost a year now. I feel ostracized and separated and alienated. The system hates me. The system is vindictive."
Judith Tompkins, executive vice-president of clinical programs at CAMH, said the facility does not discriminate against litigious patients. "To the contrary, our internal culture encourages our clients to speak their minds and stand up for themselves as part of the recovery process," she said.
The largest problem Mr. Conway faces at CAMH may be the impasse he has reached with psychiatrists.
"He is willing to engage in other forms of treatment - counselling, music therapy, art therapy, pet therapy," Ms. Fraser said. "Unfortunately, discussions about medication - and in particular, the thought that perhaps one day someone might physically restrain him to inject him with psychotropic medication against his will - are torturous to him."
According to Dr. O'Reilly, Mr. Conway typifies a category of patients who sabotage their chances of freedom. "In my view it is inhumane that Mr. Conway has been held in hospital for 27 years and not given the treatment needed to get him well enough to be discharged," he said.
Mr. Conway, however, said that he will carry on refusing medication and crafting legal affidavits.
"I was born a poet and I will die a poet," Mr. Conway said, as he was led back to his ward. "Barring intervention, I will remain a poet in chains."