Call Me Maître While I Insult You

A lawyer insists on being called “Maître.” In the very same file, under her professional signature, she brands a neurodivergent father with four clinical labels — “narcissistic obstinacy,” “troubling disconnection from reality,” “paranoid thinking,” “a propensity to invent criminal scenarios” — while already holding the neuropsychological report that contradicts every one of them. The same document defends five interests at once. The Bar closed the file in four days.

His name is Julien — the pseudonym under which we protect his identity and that of his two young children. Julien is the father of twins. He is also autistic, lives with Tourette syndrome and attention-deficit disorder, and has a documented high intellectual potential. He has been kept away from his children for months. And for months, every institution that could have examined his file has chosen instead to close the door.

At the heart of his story lies a three-page document: a formal demand letter signed on May 14, 2026, by a lawyer at a Montreal firm. That document, on its own, condenses everything that is wrong with this case — a structural conflict of interest, a series of clinical labels handed down by a non-clinician, and one recurring demand: to be addressed as “Maître.”

I — The setting

“It’s Me Ward, not Madame Ward”

Before the insults comes the title. As early as January 2025, in the family-file correspondence, the lawyer corrects Julien on how to address her. The tone is set from the very first email.

Two weeks later, a second lawyer from the same firm takes over. She is not an assistant: she is a fellow attorney, also a member of the Bar, who insists on the same point.

Two lawyers, one firm, the same demand for deference. Nothing wrong with that in itself: the title “Maître” is indeed customary in Quebec. But it gives this story its sharp contrast. Because fifteen months later, under that very signature demanding respect for the title, come the words below.

II — The document

One demand letter, four clinical insults

The May 14, 2026 demand letter is signed by Me Cynthia K. Ward, of the firm Spunt & Carin, acting as counsel for the children’s mother. Officially, it seeks to stop certain publications. But its core lies elsewhere: in a series of labels drawn from clinical vocabulary, directed at a litigant whose brain the lawyer has never examined, and whose medical file she has never reviewed.

Under her lawyer’s signature, Me Ward writes that Julien suffers from “narcissistic obstinacy,” a “troubling disconnection from reality,” “paranoid thinking in which your beliefs are disproportionate to the established facts,” and “a propensity to invent criminal scenarios.” She adds that he is “incapable of grasping the consequences of his actions” and afflicted with an “excessive tendency to systematically contest every unfavourable decision.”

Me Ward is neither a physician, nor a psychologist, nor a neuropsychologist. She is a lawyer. Notably, the firm publicly states that, in addition to her law degree, she holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology — a background it presents as bringing “an added dimension of empathy” to her practice. It is precisely that background that makes the matter heavier still: she knew the weight of the words she was using.

This was not, in fact, the first demand letter. As early as October 12, 2025, Me Ward had demanded the removal of an article, alleging harm to her reputation. The sequence speaks for itself: first “take down the article,” then the clinical labels.

III — The report

What the expert report she was holding actually says

Here is the decisive point: at the time of signing, Me Ward already held Julien’s neuropsychological assessment report, dated January 14, 2026, and signed by a neuropsychologist who is a member of the Ordre des psychologues du Québec. That report had been filed with the Superior Court, with the Court of Appeal, and transmitted to the Bar’s Office of the Syndic, to the professional-liability insurance fund, to the firm Spunt & Carin and to Me Ward personally — all before May 14, 2026.

And that report contradicts, point by point, each of the labels set out in the demand letter. The table below places the two texts side by side.

The report also documents a fact that gives the demand letter a particular resonance: Julien has, in the past, endured episodes of discrimination in which his tics were interpreted — by police officers — as signs of drug use. The demand letter reproduces exactly that mechanism: reading the manifestations of a documented disability as moral and psychological failings. With one difference — this time, the author was holding the report.

IV — The conflict of interest

One signature, five interests

There is another striking feature in this demand letter: signed by a single hand, it defends five distinct interests at once. The document repeatedly uses the phrases “our firm” and “our client.” Yet what Me Ward defends in this text is far more than her client.

She defends, first, her client — the children’s mother. But she also defends Me David Chun, a former lawyer at the firm who left the Bar in the middle of a disciplinary investigation — the demand letter asserts that he “never fled to China.” She defends her own firm, Spunt & Carin, which is a defendant in a civil suit brought by Julien. She defends herself, as the alleged target of Julien’s efforts. And she defends, explicitly, “the justice system and its actors” as a whole.

Five interests, four of which are not those of her official client — all within a document presented as protecting the children.

V — The contradictory versions

Is David Chun in China, or at the Kirkland Walmart?

The question of where Me David Chun is located may seem trivial. It is not: it reveals that the same institutional camp produced — under oath or under a lawyer’s signature — assertions that cannot be reconciled with one another.

First version. On June 17, 2025, the lawyer mandated by the Bar’s professional-liability insurance fund to defend the firm writes, in black and white, regarding the format of an examination, that “Mr. Chun now resides in China.”

Second version. On October 14, 2025, a paralegal from the firm Spunt & Carin signs a sworn statement asserting the exact opposite: Chun “currently resides in Quebec and not in China.” She swears she ran into him at the Kirkland Walmart on October 11, 2025, with photographs to prove it.

Third version. On May 14, 2026, Me Ward’s demand letter maintains that Chun “never ‘fled’ to China.” Three assertions from the same camp — the Bar’s insurer, the firm, the lawyer on the file — two of which are logically irreconcilable, and one of which is made under oath. Whichever is true, at least one is not.

The emails on file also shed light on how Me Chun left this case. After seeking to freeze, in the notary’s hands, funds that belonged to Julien — a freeze Julien would later have lifted in his favour — Chun found himself cornered as a hearing approached. At the very last minute, the day before the hearing of January 9, 2025, his firm announced that he had just been “hospitalized this morning” and requested a postponement. The court refused the postponement and ordered that submissions be made before the tribunal. Shortly afterward, Me Chun lost his position at the firm and resigned from the Quebec Bar — in the middle of the syndic’s investigation.

VI — The price paid

“I would rather go to prison than cover up this story”

While these documents pile up, Julien is the one who pays. The judicial timeline is heavy: a closure order on October 16, 2025 (Justice Christian J. Brossard); a judgment on November 17, 2025 barring him from mentioning the litigation (Justice Shaun E. Finn); a guilty plea for contempt on November 18, 2025, carrying 75 hours of community work (Justice Stéphane Lacoste); then, on December 23, 2025, a declaration as a quarrelsome litigant and a fine of more than $30,000.

On May 6, 2026, a second finding of guilt is handed down. The Bar’s professional-liability insurance fund — represented by the same lawyer who had written that Chun was “in China” — seeks an additional penalty to put an end to the publications. The judge grants only 5 more hours of community work, bringing the total to 80 hours. His case has never been heard on the merits — neither before the Superior Court nor before the Court of Appeal.

VII — The ignored disclosure

When a seasoned lawyer warns the Bar — to no avail

Julien is not the only one to have seen a problem. In late 2025, a seasoned member of the Bar, Me Anne-France Goldwater, learns of the matter through a third party and reports it herself to the Quebec Bar. In correspondence, the disclosure is stated plainly: according to this lawyer, David Chun engaged in acts amounting to serious criminal fraud, the matter was buried, the firm where he worked carried out a “cover-up,” and the Bar failed to do its job.

A disclosure from a respected lawyer, alleging criminal fraud and a cover-up in a case involving children. One might expect such a warning to trigger, at the very least, a serious review. It did not.

VIII — The syndic’s loop

Closed in four days, without reviewing the content

On May 23, 2026, Julien forwards the demand letter to the Bar’s Office of the Syndic. Four days later, on May 27, the assistant syndic issues a decision closing the file — without examining the content of the May 14 demand letter. The decision rests solely on earlier court rulings.

Yet it is the same assistant syndic who, in this very file, had already: decided not to bring charges against David Chun despite his resignation from the Bar in the middle of an investigation; concluded there was no conflict of interest concerning Me Ward; produced a report focused on the complainant’s profile rather than on the conflict of interest — a conflict situated within the last four months, whereas her report covered the last three years; and herself acknowledged, in writing, a fundamental factual error in her own findings. Despite all of this, and despite Me Goldwater’s disclosure, no complaint was upheld — not for the conflict of interest, not for the resignation mid-investigation, not for the contradictory sworn statements.

Conclusion

Respect that flows only one way

This story rests on a contrast. On one side, a lawyer who demands, email after email, to be called “Maître” — the respect owed to her status. On the other, under that very signature, four clinical labels pinned on a disabled father whose contrary expert report she already held, in a document that defends five interests at once and rests on facts that other exhibits contradict under oath.

The question this file raises is not whether the title “Maître” is deserved. It is what remains of respect when it flows only in one direction — and what remains of professional institutions when, presented with so problematic a document, supported by the disclosure of a seasoned lawyer, they choose, every single time, to close the file without examining its content.