Conrad Black’s freedom can now be measured in days -31 to be precise- as a result of U.S. federal court judge Amy St. Eve’s decision to deny the request of Mr. Black and his co-defendants to remain free while their appeals are considered. The judge found that no substantial questions existed which were likely to result in an acquittal or a new trial. Her ruling also noted that the defendants “knowingly and intentionally misused International for their very significant private gain,” and ordered them to report to prison on March 3rd.
Mr. Black’s trial was long and complex, and has culminated in a Shakespearean fall from the heights of privilege, reputation and wealth that is almost too dramatic to comprehend. As we have written before, there are indications from his own statements that Mr. Black still has not grasped the depth of the descent himself.
There are times, however, when certain symbols capture the essence of a story better than complex details and lengthy prose. For Mr. Black, one of these symbols may have come in the form of a posting on the website of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, where the British baron has been assigned an official inmate number. Conrad M. Black, Lord of Crossharbour; Officer of the Order of Canada; member of Canada’s Queen’s Privy Council; holder of honors and doctorates from distinguished institutions. Now with a prison number attached to his name.
On the occasional spring days when chums and I would cycle over to his family’s Don Mills area mansion and see him strolling about those fabled grounds, or if, in the decades since and dozens of times that I have seen him at a function or read about his Napoleonic business maneuvers, someone had suggested that a day would come when Conrad Black’s Park Lane Circle address would be exchanged for a number at a U.S. federal prison, I would have dismissed the thought as the product of a substance-inspired delirium.
Reality is sometimes a stranger that even poets have difficulty giving a name.