Charles Conliff Mende Roach (September 18, 1933 – October 2, 2012) was a Canadian civil rights lawyer and an activist in the Black community in Toronto.
Born in Belmont, Trinidad and Tobago, the son of a trade union organizer, Roach arrived in Canada in 1955 as an aspiring priest to study at the University of Saskatchewan.
[2] Roach worked as a staff lawyer for the city of Toronto in the 1960s, while also participating and organizing marches and demonstrations for equal rights.
[3] Among his clients were Black Panthers attempting to seek refuge in Canada from prosecution in the United States and other asylum seekers.
[7] On May 17, 2007, Justice Edward Belobaba of the Ontario Superior Court ruled that Roach could proceed with the lawsuit, dismissing a Crown motion to have the action quashed as frivolous and vexatious.
[11] Roach again went to the courts in 2012 with another class action suit to argue the oath of allegiance to the sovereign is unconstitutional.