/BarTalk/Articles/2023/April/Columns/Why-I-Changed-My-Mind
In January this year, 51 Alberta lawyers signed a petition that called for a Special Meeting of the Law Society of Alberta to rescind a Rule that required all Alberta lawyers to take an Indigenous cultural competency course called “The Path” or face penalties, including suspe...
/BarTalk/Articles/2023/April/Features/A-Look-at-Current-Forestry-Trends-in-British-Colum
On February 15, 2023, Premier David Eby announced new measures to protect old-growth forests in British Columbia, while encouraging innovation in the forestry sector to “deliver good, family-supporting jobs for generations to come.” These measures include increasing the loggi...
/BarTalk/Articles/2023/February/Features/Are-Law-Firms-the-Dispute-Resolution-Shoemaker’s-C
Lawyers and law firms frequently help clients create structures to address and resolve conflict, whether between the client and other persons or internally within the client itself. In doing so, we are conscious to encourage the client to go beyond simply addressing their leg...
/BarTalk/Articles/2023/February/Columns/The-Trap-of-Perfection
The findings of Phase One of the National Study on the Health and Wellness Determinants of Legal Professionals in Canada titled “Towards a Healthy and Sustainable Practice of Law in Canada” was released in late 2022, and reported that significantly higher levels of psychologi...
/BarTalk/Articles/2022/December/Columns/Her-Majesty-Was-a-Pretty-Nice-Girl
I knew something was amiss on the morning of September 9 because the BBC logo on my Facebook feed showed a black background with white letters rather than the usual red background in its logo. The formal announcement of Queen Elizabeth’s death came only a few hours later. Si...
/BarTalk/Articles/2022/October/Features/Land-Back-Movement
If you walk the streets of any large Canadian city today, chances are you’ve seen the words “land back” spray painted on the sides of buildings. I was recently in Prince George to meet a client and saw a few such statements appearing on buildings there. One could say, I quite...
/BarTalk/Articles/2022/October/Columns/They-Live-Among-Us
Crackpot conspiracy theories and their proponents are a great source of interest for me. Whether it’s Rudy Giuliani claiming that Dominion voting machines caused Donald Trump to lose the last US election, Alex Jones claiming the Sandy Hook mass murders were a hoax, Bill Gates...
/BarTalk/Articles/2022/August/Columns/Praise-Be-Yall
The column that you would normally see in August is usually written by me on July 1. But this Canada Day, I’m on a cruise ship in Alaska, so my attention is focused on the United States and its Supreme Court, which in comparison with virtually every other Supreme Court in the...
/BarTalk/Articles/2022/June/Columns/The-Beverley
I saw a Gary Larson “Far Side” cartoon the other day. For those who love Larson’s sardonic sense of humour, like I do, his cartoons usually involve cavemen, cows, or other animals. This particular one was called “Early Business Failures” and one of the cavemen was selling a n...
/BarTalk/Articles/2022/April/Columns/Solicitors,-Don’t-Go-Breaking-My-Heart
I hear it all the time: “CBABC is more geared toward litigators.” Nothing could be further from the truth. As Elton and Kiki put it, “Nobody told us. ‘Cause nobody showed us,” so here we go. Solicitors are integral within CBABC. No less than 22 of our Sections provide oppor...