Well, after almost 22 years, this is my last column for BarTalk. It’s time to retire.
Twenty-two years is a pretty good run for Nothing Official. Since 2003, I’ve written at least 129 columns in BarTalk. At approximately 650 words per column, that’s around 84,000 words. That doesn’t include the regular business and legal columns that I’ve written for the Globe and Mail and Canadian Lawyer over the past 15 years. Not bad for a Carleton University Journalism School dropout. It’s interesting that I had to become a lawyer before I could be a journalist!
Anyway, you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here? I’ll tell you. Back in 2003, I was contacted by BarTalk’s then editor (the wonderful Sandra Webb), who happened to read an article that I published that very day in the Globe and Mail called “Confessions of a Former Keg Waiter.” It was a fun piece about my experiences slinging steaks at the Keg while I was putting myself through law school in Victoria. She liked it so much she persuaded CBABC’s Executive Director at the time (the equally wonderful Caroline Nevin) that BarTalk needed a regular humour/opinion column to increase readership, and voilà: Nothing Official was born. (Well, that’s how I remember it.)
We called it “Nothing Official” to give me some leeway in the topics I could write about, and to give CBABC some credible deniability in case readers didn’t like what I wrote. The column was meant to be entertaining and somewhat humorous — although, I do recall one of my colleagues emailing me some years later and asking me if my columns would ever become entertaining and somewhat humorous. Over time, Nothing Official gave me a much higher profile in the legal community than I otherwise would have had, which arguably led to me winning four Bencher elections between 2011 and 2017.
As a Bencher, I was very much involved in credentials, legal education and lawyer discipline matters, and it was a big jump from drafting franchise agreements as a solicitor to being a panelist on credentials and discipline tribunals and drafting legal decisions that could be (and in many cases were) the subject of review by the Court of Appeal.
Like Rumpole of the Bailey reminiscing about the Penge Bungalow murder trial of the 1950s being the high point of his professional career, perhaps one of the high points of mine was moving the motion that the Law Society conduct its own profession-wide referendum on Trinity Western University’s proposed law school to break the impasse after a Special General Meeting resoundingly told the Benchers to pound sand. Although I knew what the outcome of the referendum would be, I wanted everyone in the profession to have the right to vote on it, and lucky for me, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the Law Society’s right to conduct its own referendum. But I would be remiss if I didn’t say that another high point was when one of my decisions was written up in Maclean’s magazine as a “gem of legal jurisprudence.” It was all about the use of the word “F**k” in a courthouse.
As well, my status as a Bencher directly led to an invitation to teach legal ethics at Thompson Rivers University Law School where I taught approximately 850 second year law students over the course of eight years and where I’m still an Adjunct Professor. I loved everything about teaching ethics to law students... except the marking.
All this “street cred” as a Bencher probably helped me to be in the right room at the right time with the right people and not so subtly suggest that B.C. wasn’t doing enough to help small business and needed franchise legislation to protect British Columbia franchisees (many of whom were new Canadians) from being routinely and savagely taken advantage of by US and Ontario-based franchisors. I ended up serving on a special committee advising government on the legislation that inevitably became law in 2017. Certainly, the legislation would have happened at some point in time, but I believe it happened when it did because my status as a Bencher “put me in a room” that I otherwise wouldn’t have been in.
I suppose if you drill down the rabbit hole of my career, you could say that being a Law Society Bencher, teaching legal ethics at TRU Law, advising the provincial government on franchise legislation and getting a QC in 2016, were a consequence of the profile that I had developed by writing columns for BarTalk. And to think, all that started with an article I wrote in the Globe and Mail about being a waiter at the Keg before I was a lawyer!
It’s not the writing that takes time. It’s the rewriting. Most of the time, the writing process could be agonizingly slow for me to “get it right.” I was always busy re-writing the pieces up to the deadline (including this one). “I love deadlines,” said Douglas Adams. “I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” So I have to thank BarTalk’s Editor, Deb Carfrae, for putting up with me over the last 20 years. Deb understood my need to “get it right” and is one of the most thoughtful, understanding and patient persons I’ve ever dealt with. Thanks also go to CBABC’s Executive Director, Kerry Simmons, KC who ran interference with the Editorial Committee on a couple of occasions, supporting my rather strident opinion columns. Finally, thanks go to my wife, Mary-Jane Wilson, for letting me read my articles to her aloud before they were submitted, providing me with constructive criticism (which I occasionally accepted).
If there is one thing that I’ve always enjoyed, it’s when colleagues at the Bar (and even perfect strangers), emailed me about how they liked a particular article. Even at social events, lawyers and judges alike would recognize me and tell me that they really enjoyed some piece I had written. I’ll miss that. Although some columns were very popular and went viral on social media, I can’t say I have a particular favourite. I enjoyed writing them all. Some people run marathons or engage in competitive birdwatching. I like writing opinion columns like this one. Although I hope to keep writing in the future, I’ll be taking up astrophotography, learning the theremin and the alpenhorn, and grandparenting during my retirement. Oh, and more shark diving!
Other readers were less complimentary, particularly when I voiced my opinion about anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, and the so-called “freedom convoy” (which, with apologies to all the Karens out there, I called the “Karen Convoy,” the “Flu Klux Klan” and “Freedumb Fighters” in at least two of my articles.) Admittedly, I became more strident and opinionated over the past few years and much of my barbs were directed to those who propagated conspiracy theories — particularly, conspiracy theories about COVID-19. These are the people who still call the pandemic a “plandemic” and claim that the high death count was really a function of old age and comorbidities (i.e., “It wasn’t COVID that killed Granny... it was the hangnail.”). So my final words to the anti-vaxxers and their ilk are this: prove Anthony Fauci, Bonnie Henry, Theresa Tam and the rest of the scientific community were wrong without resorting to quackadoodle nonsense and go collect your Nobel Prize. Otherwise STFU.
Whether it’s the flat earth movement (“Flerfers”), or those who believe the horse dewormer Ivermectin, zinc or bleach were treatments for COVID, or that the World Economic Forum is comprised of Evil Bond villains who will force us to eat bugs, or that vaccines inject microchips into your blood, or that Donald Trump is not a convicted felon and a rapist, but a godly man who really won the 2020 US election, rampant disinformation that promotes conspiracy theories is the curse of the modern age. If I had to blame anyone, it would be the Russians and their “web brigades” for using social media to turn America against itself. Proof in point? Trump is back in office. Mr. Putin should be very happy.
Whether he’s called Vladamir Gluten, the Orange Cheeto or Napoleon Bone Spurs, the rest of the world (including Canada) will have to deal with Trump and his ideocracy. Maybe we should start actively promoting immigration to Canada for those Americans who are on Trump’s enemies list and who are “longing to be free.” You know, women who believe they own their bodies, teachers, scientists, librarians, journalists, and other proponents of freedom, civil society, the rule of law and science-based public policy. If the American experiment is over, Americans should be encouraged to come to Canada and make it their home.
Anyway, as a final point, I’ve been gently hinting for years that CLEBC underwrite the publication of “The Best of Nothing Official” for a book that could be given out to guest instructors and other volunteers instead of blankets and laptop bags (but not instead of umbrellas). Or maybe CBABC or the Law Society wants to underwrite a book and give it to newly called lawyers in addition to the Code of Professional Conduct. So, there’s my pitch. Operators are not standing by and I’m not holding my breath.
For those of you who read my columns over the past two decades — thanks.