A new book about a larger-than-life Windsor lawyer is available in local bookstores.
The biography, "Getting Off: A Criminal Lawyer's Road to Redemption", chronicles the life of former defence lawyer Don Tait.
The author, Veronique Perrier Mandal, says the book, which is for sale at Windsor-Essex bookstores and on Amazon, has received a higher-than-expected response from readers, and book retailers have been contacting her for copies.
Mandal, a former print and broadcast reporter who now heads the journalism, public relations and media convergence programs at St. Clair College, says Tait was a flamboyant and hard-driving personality.
"Probably one of the best-known criminal lawyers, if not in Ontario, across Canada, had a lot of demons," says Mandal. "The demons were quelled by addictions."
Tait rose in the ranks of criminal law practice in Windsor and developed a reputation for successfully defending difficult cases. As his career ascended, so too did his appetites, and Tait fell victim to his addictions; alcohol, cocaine and later, sex.
Mandal says Tait has been clean and sober for 16 years, though he now has throat cancer. But in the late 1990s things went from bad to worse for Tait. After a couple of failed attempts at rehab, he fled the country.
"Before his last rehab, he absconded because of an altercation with his girlfriend where her nose got broken, and he ended up in jail, and there was a warrant for his arrest," says Mandal. "The only thing that he could see to do was to fly."
Mandal earned an Ontario Newspaper Award for enterprise reporting after she located Tait in Costa Rica.
After serving time in jail, Tait again fled, this time to South Africa.
Mandal says she thought he lost touch with Tait but reaffirmed her professional relationship with him a few years later when she received an out-of-the-blue phone call from him. The book came together soon after.
"Don Tait said to me, 'If you're going to do this, tell the truth,'" says Mandal. "He said 'I did a lot of bad stuff in my life, and people need to know that because if they don't understand how bad the bad was, they won't understand why I am where I am today.'"