Todd Anderson admits he sometimes wonders what his late, great, best friend Albertos Polizogopoulos would make of him becoming general manager of The Acacia Group law firm.

“Sometimes I feel like he’s on high laughing, and also pretending to be upset, that a poet and a literature person got involved in his law firm, and is managing it. I can almost hear him saying with that biting humour of his: “What are you doing? You don’t know anything about law,” Anderson laughs.

Technically, he agrees, Albertos would be right. But ever since Anderson accepted Acacia’s managerial role last year, his training in English and classics, his doctoral work in Renaissance literature, and teaching Latin while leading Ottawa’s Augustine College, have proved a remarkably snug fit for understanding, albeit not practicing, Canadian law.

“My (academic) work is grammar-based evaluation of clauses. Thinking about the relationship between words is very much related to the translation of meaning. What does such-and-such mean? What is the context? How do these words function?”

“If you study Latin as a secondary reader of it, you have to go through the grammar and the logic of how the pieces work together. There’s a great deal of continuity between that and the law. (Both are) the sort of persuasive argumentation that I find so compelling,” Anderson says.

He points out that parallel extends to the nature of Acacia itself, and the founding vision for a law firm that would integrally include a strategic communications department to give clients advice on how to manage the language of media, the vernacular of human resources, the vocabulary of community.

“Albertos had this desire to hear what other people thought, and to have the collaborative work that makes life really worth pursuing. The uniqueness of Acacia is that we do this with strength. It’s not just that we have a comms department. It’s that it’s a powerful tool we bring to bear for clients.”

Anderson stepped into the breach as a manager following Alberto’s death from cancer in May 2024. Faye Sonier, Acacia’s co-founder, was determined to continue her late husband’s work but the burdens of grief and the demands of a thriving legal practice made it clear help was needed to manage the load.

Anderson himself deepened his friendship with Albertos by walking with him through the almost four years of remission and recurrence. When the idea of him joining as general manager arose, he heard it as a call.

“I felt it as a vocation. I never had the ambition to go into law, but I felt a sense of calling to serve Albertos and Faye in the way I could, to be that long-term support, to think in terms of vision for the firm, and help take the burden of management off Faye’s shoulders,” he says.

Doing so also helped Anderson work through the “suffering” of the loss of his friend, even though he could routinely feel Albertos “chirping” over his shoulder at certain decisions. The challenge was to keep the vision alive while adapting to radically changed circumstance.

“I think it would be somehow dropping the ball to not come alongside and say ‘This excellence needs to thrive.’ Faye has amazing ideas; she’s filled with energy, and despite grief and all the challenges life presents, she pushes forward. It would be a disservice to just say to her, ‘We’ll support you as a friend in the background but professionally, you’re on your own.”

His words also express, he says, Acacia’s commitment to the church and charity work that is its core mission, and to advancing cases of human rights and religious freedom through the legal system. Such a commitment, Anderson stresses, is the key to the law firm’s future.

“Where I see growth is us taking leadership and drawing together groups across Canada. We can furnish charities and churches with solid (legal) foundations. On the human rights and religious freedom side, we can make a significant impact on case law in Canada.

“We can build partnerships and collaborate with other Christian organizations to highlight the great work they are doing. Together, we can help make sure Christians have a place in the public square.”

Anderson stresses the approach demands legal skills are deployed to make sure Christian values are acknowledged within the judicial, political and cultural spheres. It doesn’t mean force fitting Christian faith onto a society that still regards it with distrust, he added.

Reaching back to his classics roots, he finds a parallel with what a certain immortal Greek philosopher has represented for centuries.

“I see us being poised to get the right kind of language on the table for discussion, maybe in a Socratic way, to show people the implications of their thinking; what it really means. We can bring light, not slap anyone down, but say: ‘We can do better than this.’”

Somewhere, no doubt, a proud Canadian of Greek heritage named Albertos Polizogopoulos is smiling.

Peter Stockland leads the Strategic Communications division at The Acacia Group and is the author of The Acacia Arc newsletter. He has decades of experience as a Canadian journalist, including as editor-in-chief of the Montreal Gazette, editorial page editor of the Calgary Herald, vice-president of English language magazines for Reader’s Digest Canada, and Publisher of the Catholic Register. Peter also enjoys writing short-stories and other fiction, which have been featured in numerous publications across Canada.