Gary Peter Rodrigues (1946-2025)

Editor’s Note: I learned of Gary Rodrigues’ passing this morning. As one of our longstanding Slaw writers, Gary will be remembered for his incredible knowledge and stories behind Canadian legal publishing. Our ‘Legal Publishing’ group here at Slaw have always been well connected to each other. As such, I asked Robert McKay if he might be willing to compose some thoughts. Thankfully he agreed and crafted the kind tribute below. RIP Gary. :( .. Steve M.

Slaw readers and many others, among them lawyers, law librarians, legal information publishers and legal academics, in many parts of the world, will mourn the untimely death, on September 24, 2025, of Gary Peter Rodrigues.

Gary was a qualified Canadian lawyer, who spent much of his working life holding senior directorial posts, initially at Carswell (Thomson Reuters Canada) and, subsequently, at Butterworths Canada (Lexis Nexis Canada). He will be fondly remembered and greatly missed by his countless friends and former colleagues in those organisations, as well as by their authors, editors, suppliers and customers, in Canada and globally.

Between October 2008 and November 2021, Gary wrote nearly 100 insightful and enormously informed columns for Slaw, each of which demonstrated his great knowledge, expertise and authority on matters related to law publishing. These writings strongly reflected his interest and deep involvement in, and love of, the law itself, but also of the business and related aspects of the legal information publishing world. His understanding and interpretation of activities and events were second to none.

For many years, I regarded Gary Rodrigues, as I hope he did me, as a dear friend and valued law publishing colleague. Although separated by the Atlantic Ocean, we were quite regularly in touch, exchanging information and opinions related to our trade, and we would meet, both socially and professionally in London (England), Toronto and around the world, when we attended conferences and the like. During a period of a few weeks while I worked in Toronto, by then for Gary’s key competitor, it was still he on whom I relied, to help me navigate the unusual and puzzling aspects of the issues which I was encountering in a strange professional and social environment. Later, after we were both no longer working full-time, I had the privilege of being invited by Gary to join him and another expert colleague, Jason Wilson, now of Bloomberg Law in the USA and also a former Slaw law publishing columnist, jointly to give presentations at an annual conference of the Canadian Association of Law Librarians / Association Canadienne Des Bibliothèques de Droit in Monkton, New Brunswick. Somewhat recoiling with personal embarrassment, I watched and listened to the unquestionable mastery of their subject matter, as my two learned colleagues addressed our distinguished audience, and I squirmed at the comparative generalities contained in my own. It was clear that Gary, as our trio’s lead, had a considerable existing fanbase among the law librarian conference delegates at the event. After our work was completed, he also took the time to show us around the wild and beautiful New Brunswick coastal scenery, which was one of the high points of the visit.

It was he also who recommended me to become a regular law publishing columnist at Slaw, for which I still write regularly, after some fifteen years. Once or twice over the years, he contacted me, suggesting a topic on which I might choose to write, and I was extremely grateful for his advice and guidance. Gary and I were of like mind on the dynamics, history and possible future of law publishing, as well as on other related matters, which I valued enormously.

Away from work, particularly during Gary’s frequent visits to London, we would get together for dinner or, as I recall once, at Matthew Bourne’s radical and innovative performance of Swan Lake, but primarily just to catch up and exchange news about each other’s exploits, not the least of which were Gary’s work on election monitoring. I enjoyed the fact that he was a modern, forward-looking man and proud Canadian, who was politically progressive and tolerant, yet at the same time an upholder of strong values and commitment in relation to his family members and friends. I shall miss his holiday greetings cards, emails about legal information publishing and even occasional notifications about prospective travels to or through London. He was, most certainly, one of the good guys of our trade.