The Charley Roach Lane will run east-west between Rushton Rd. and Arlington Ave., just north of St. Clair Ave., parallel to Howard Lowry Lane.

Roach, who was born in Trinidad and Tobago, arrived in Canada in 1955 and had planned to become a priest.

He is best known for participating and organizing marches in the 1960s in Toronto’s Black community for equal rights and equitable  police treatment.

He opened his law practice in 1968, eventually becoming the firm of Roach and Schwartz Associates. Among his clients were the U.S. Black Panthers, asylum seekers and many hard-working immigrants being deported in the 1970s.

Roach became a vocal critic of the Toronto police and often ac cused them of racism. He became a leading figure in Toronto’s Black community and was a co-founder of the Caribana festival, Black Action Defense Committee, Movement of Minority Electors and was among the many who sought the formation of the Special Investigations Unit in 1970.

In 2012, he filed a class action suit to argue the oath of allegiance to the sovereign is unconstitutional. On June 18, the Ontario Superior Court permitted the case’s continuance. The action was dismissed in September, 2013.

The popular lawyer died from a malignant brain tumour on October 2, 2012. Thousands loved him and attended his funeral services.