Biographies – Evaluators

Evaluators

Manon Bourbonnais Legal Evaluator

Manon Bourbonnais holds a bachelor’s degree in law from Université Laval. She was admitted to the Barreau du Québec in 1980. She then practiced civil, family and municipal law in private practice. She served on the Cour municipale régionale of the MRC Vaudreuil-Soulanges from 1992 to 2005. In 2005, she was appointed judge of the Montréal’s Municipal Court where she sat until her retirement in 2018. For several years, she was a member of the Comité de formation permanente des juges municipaux du Québec.

Marie-Claude Fournier Jurilinguist Evaluator

Marie-Claude Fournier, a lawyer and certified translator, is a member of the Barreau du Québec and the Ordre des traducteurs, terminologues et interprètes agréées du Québec. She holds a bachelor’s degree in law, a master’s degree in international law and a master’s degree in translation and terminology. Ms. Fournier worked for many years as a legal translator and reviser for Canadian, American and European academic institutions, judges’ and jurists’ associations, international organizations, and law and translation firms. She currently works as a jurilinguist for the Québec Court of Appeal. She also teaches legal translation to B.A. and M.A. students at Université Laval, and sat several years on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Association of Legal Translators.

Marie-Hélène Girard Jurilinguist Evaluator

Dr. Marie-Hélène Girard is an assistant professor of legal translation and jurilinguistics and the academic coordinator of the Graduate Diploma in Legal Translation at McGill University. She worked as a lecturer at University of Montreal and as a research assistant at the University of Geneva’s Faculty of Translation and Interpreting (Switzerland). She has worked as an in-house translator and run her own freelance business for the past 15 years, serving a wide range of corporate, institutional and public-sector clients. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Geneva in 2019.

Maria Ortiz Takacs Linguist Evaluator

Maria Ortiz Takacs is an experienced translator with over 25 years of experience. She holds a bachelor’s degree in legal translation, a master’s degree in institutional translation, and a graduate diploma in communications. Driven by a keen interest in legal discourse, she is currently completing her bachelor’s degree in law. Her passion for the intricacies on legal language has led her to undertake extensive research on the use of plain language in court decisions.

Ellen Paré Legal Evaluator

With a law degree from Laval University in Quebec City, Ellen Paré was admitted to the Bar of Quebec in January 1977. She mainly practiced criminal and family law from 1977 to 1985 in Quebec City. She became Deputy Attorney General of Quebec from 1985 to 1989 in Montérégie. From 1989 to 1994 she was Deputy Attorney General of Canada in Montreal. From January 1995 to May 2016 she was a judge of the Court of Quebec in the criminal division. She has since been retired and acts as a substitute on occasion.

Michel Parent Legal Evaluator

Admitted to the Barreau du Québec in 1978, Michel Parent became deputy Attorney General of Quebec at the Crown Office of Sept-Îles. He held this position until 2000, the year of his appointment as judge of the Cour du Québec with residence in Sept-Îles. The need for versatility means that he sits in the Civil Chamber and the Youth Chamber. However, he works mainly in the Criminal Chamber in the vast region of Eastern Quebec and very regularly in itinerant court in the Mingan District. As an instructor, he participates in the development program offered to judges of the Cour du Québec in criminal law and in terms of justice in an indigenous environment. He has retired from the Cour du Québec since 2018.

Odette Perron Legal Evaluator

Odette Perron obtained her law degree from the University of Montreal in 1974. Admitted to the Bar of Quebec in 1975, she opened her law firm and practiced in Civil, Family and Criminal Divisions. She was appointed judge of the Court of Quebec, Criminal and Penal Division, in 1994 and will sit until 2016. She taught business law at Cégep de Valleyfield, then civil law and criminal law at the École du Barreau of Montreal. She was a trainer and then responsible for the professional development program for judges of the Court of Quebec. She then worked as a trainer for Canadian judges at the National Judicial Institute (Ottawa). She was a trainer of judicial auditors from the Ecole de la magistrature de France. A member of the Canadian Association of Provincial Court Judges, she was co-editor of the Association’s journal for eight years. Since 2010, she has been teaching legal French to provincially appointed Anglophone judges in the rest of Canada. She is president of the Cégep de Valleyfield Foundation.

Orson Redding Linguist Evaluator

Orson Redding holds a bachelor’s degree in translation from the Université de Saint-Boniface. A freelance interpreter since 2013, he is a member of the International Association of Conference Interpreters, an official languages interpreter approved by the federal government and a member of two provincial associations. He worked briefly as a translator and then interpreter for the Manitoba government and occasionally taught French in the Continuing Education Division of the University of Saint-Boniface.

Florence Saint-Claire Linguist Evaluator

Florence Saint-Claire holds a Law degree from the University Panthéon-Sorbonne in France. She was a lecturer at universities in England and a writer and editor for the federal government. She teaches legal French to federal judges and develops educational resources. She is a certified DELF-DALF examiner and evaluator for KortoJura.

Lorna A. Turnbull Linguist Evaluator

Lorna A. Turnbull holds a law degree from the University of Ottawa as well as a master’s and a doctorate in law science from Colombia University of New York. She is a professor and former dean of law school at the University of Manitoba. Being that she truly believes in the access of law, she, with the help of an esteemed francophone colleague, has established a bilingual program for francophone and bilingual students in an English-speaking university. Professor Turnbull is active in the field of equality for women and children, she also teaches these laws as well as fiscal law and the foundation of law in Canada.

Our Team

Contact information