Sisters, Charlene C'82 & Christine C'83, their mother, and Carolyn.
Memory Lane
I clearly remember and will always have
Growing up in St. Lambert in those days presented
a lasting impression of principal John Prince,
who always wanted to catch me doing something wrong.
That opportunity came up early in my joining CCHS,
when another girl asked me to hold her cigarette for her,
while she used the ladies room.
Thinking I was being helpful, I agreed, only to have Mr. Prince
burst in at the wrong moment, looking for cigarette-smoking,
delinquent girl students.
I got 'Busted'! and despite my protests of innocence
(I also remember Mrs. Singer vigorously supporting me),
I was given a 2-day suspension.
My parents were called to take me home,
but being the strict disciplinarians that they were,
my mother refused the Mr. Prince's request,
and I wound up walking home to Préville that day.
plenty of opportunity to have fun, but to my parents' way of thinking,
a lot of opportunity for a nice young lady to get into trouble.
They banned me from hanging around the Arena at any time,
and was required to identify on a calendar
at the beginning of every school year
the mandatory maximum 3 dances per year I would be allowed to attend.
Despite this strict upbringing,
I can still clearly remember many good times
spent hanging out with friends,
with Hartley's Ice Cream Parlour being one of our favourite spots.
Carolyn with her very tolerant love of her life, Randy.
Midway through Carolyn Stamegna' s early academic career, her parents decided to leave behind the hustle and bustle of “urban” Montreal and relocate their young family to the quiet, leafy streets of suburban St. Lambert. The year was 1973 and young Carolyn was about to enter grade 8 at a new school: Chambly County High School. The house chosen was located on Queen's Blvd. in what was then referred to as the Préville section of the city. Along with mother Joyce and father Robert, Carolyn emigrated with older brother Brian (CCHS76) and younger sisters Christine (CCHS82) and Charlene (CCHS83).
Carolyn quickly connected with other students at the new school, and recalls her friendships with Sandra Lamoureux, Joan Macfarlane, Louise Matheson, Heli Peets, Craig DeSouza and Bruce Mackie, among many others. Never one to shrink from involvement in any kind of productive activities, Carolyn got tangled up in as many clubs and committees she could handle and she particularly remembers drama club and the school play and the impression that those experiences left on her. Sports were not foreign to her either, with tennis and volleyball being among her favourites. She vividly remembers being “very bad” at the mandatory girl's field hockey, but sticking it out anyway, and readily admitting that she never really understood the 'point' of the game.
Carolyn was a good student and was no stranger to the honour roll. She remembers with fondness subjects such as math and English and teachers such as Mr. West, Mr. Supino and Mr. Howe.
One would assume that someone who has enjoyed as much success as Carolyn would have enjoyed a highly focused and relatively straight career path after high school, but such was not the case for Carolyn. After leaving CCHS, she wanted to beat a path directly to law school, but her father was very much against the idea. The result was an enrolment at Champlain CEGEP in the commerce program and then on to McGill where a B.Comm. was successfully completed in 1983.
Of course, Carolyn still wanted to go to law school and that thought stuck in her mind as she took some time off in the summer of '83 to travel through around Europe. As a result of her travels, she missed pretty well every early acceptance deadline at certain of the important law schools around North America and precious few schools would consider her tardy reply when she did return to Canada in the fall. Also at this time, Carolyn became quite serious with a male friend whose career had taken him to Phoenix, Arizona. No problem! She accepted an offer from The University of Windsor to enter its law school and for the next several years commuted by airplane regularly between Phoenix and Windsor! By her own admission, she never went to class, but instead read all of the materials provided (not just the study notes!) and showed up to write the exams (except for the one or two she missed while stuck in airports during snowstorms…). Although university officials were tempted to throw her out, her passion for the subject won out in the end and she graduated with her L.L.B. in 1986. The highlight of her career at University of Windsor was perhaps her participation in the National Mooting Competition, held that year in Calgary, where Carolyn upheld the honours of her home school with great success.
At this point in her career Carolyn was convinced that she was going to be a professor, and one of the professors she respected the most in law school had put the idea in her mind that she should go on to grad school and a career in academia. But she put those thoughts temporarily on hold and headed to Toronto to begin articling in 1986. It was here, while working for a firm that is no longer in business, that Carolyn found her true passion: tax. She loved working in tax and she loved practising tax! It was also here that, purely by accident, she was first exposed to the broadcast and cable industry. At that point in time, there was no such thing as “entertainment law”. Some lawyers specialized in the music industry, but there were certainly no courses offered in this area. One had to learn by “doing it”. Also at this time in Canadian broadcast history specialty licenses were being granted to channels such as YTV and TSN, so there was lots of opportunity to learn by doing. Carolyn describes it a purely a “fluke” that she ended up in the entertainment field and that she ended up with ample opportunity to practice her newfound passion for tax law with such success.
But Carolyn was not finished with her educational career. She wanted to keep on learning and the only way to do that was to attend night school. Osgood Hall beckoned and Carolyn successfully completed a Master's of Law designation (L.L.M.) in Intellectual Property in 1999. Lest we forget, somewhere along the line she also found time to complete a tax designation from the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (1992). Carolyn admits that the type of people she prefers to hang out with, at film festival parties, are “tax nerds”.
By this time Carolyn had joined the prestigious Toronto law firm Gowlings with an eye to building their entertainment group from the ground up. They were very supportive of her and her goal of building a specialty practice, and she particularly remembers being given the freedom to explore new types of ideals. Carolyn is a self-described workaholic, who is not allergic to putting in “huge hours” in order to get the job done. Not content to be a “number 2” in anything, she has spent the last five years at Goodmans in Toronto, where she has been busy growing the #1 entertainment law practice in Canada and one of the tops in North America. Carolyn is a partner whose business law practice focuses on domestic and international transactions within the film and television, broadcasting and performing arts industries. She represents a wide variety of domestic and foreign financial institutions and private financiers in addition to various Canadian production and distribution companies on various aspects of film and television financing, corporate finance, cross jurisdictional tax advantaged transactions and international co-production arrangements. Her practice also includes advising clients on matters involving the acquisition, exploitation and securitization of intellectual property.
Carolyn has served as Vice-Chair, Women in Film & Television (Toronto) and on the Canadian Bar Association-Ontario Executive, Entertainment, Media & Communications and the Feminist Legal Analysis Sections. She is a frequent speaker at national and international entertainment law conferences. She also teaches entertainment finance at University of Toronto (in her spare time!).
She is recognized as one of the country's leading entertainment lawyers in The Lexpert®/American Lawyer Guide to the Leading 500 Lawyers in Canada and in the 2008 edition of Best Lawyers in Canada.
What is perhaps most interesting about Carolyn's success is the fact that she is not only one of the top entertainment lawyers in North America, but that she is also one the few successful women lawyers working in this field in private practice. Carolyn is very outspoken about women-in-law and the particular challenges they face, whether are trying to raise a family or not. She is concerned about the dysfunctional environment that law firms can be for women, who often don't see themselves as connected to their firm for the long-term. She considers herself to be “battling the lads” in her chosen field and has gone out of her way to build a team around her of successful, female associates. She cannot remember taking more than one full week off in any year over the last twenty years and spends what free time she has working diligently for several charitable causes with a particular emphasis on women in film and television and education/career paths for women.
Carolyn lives in the Chaplin Estates area of Toronto with her partner Randy. Together they enjoy cycling and are “huge” golfers. She hopes to make it back to St. Lambert for the 2010 reunion (as long as she doesn't have to spend more than a week away from the office!)
