Law History Profiles

Mary Anne Bobinski, BA, JD, LLM, served as dean of the Allard School of Law from 2003 until 2015. Under her leadership, the law school experienced more than a decade of sustained renewal and growth marked by new programs, enhanced teaching and research, and expanded international reach.

“I came to UBC from the University of Auckland in 1968. This was a period when law faculties in North America were expanding dramatically,” Peter Burns recalls. Burns was one of six young academics hired by UBC Law in that year along with Peter Barton, Barry Slutsky, Chris Carr, Richard Fields and Jerome Atrens. When he arrived, the faculty “was quite small and everybody knew everybody - it was a very tight group.”

The Honourable Kenneth Martin Lysyk was born in Saskatchewan. He took a BA at McGill, an LL.B. at the University of Saskatchewan and a B.C.L. at Oxford University. He was a member of the Faculty of Law at UBC from 1960 to 1970 and of the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto from 1970 to 1972. He served as Deputy Attorney General for the Province of Saskatchewan from 1972 to 1976, and then returned to UBC as Dean, succeeding Bertie McClean, a position he held from 1976 to 1982.

Asked why she decided to study law, Madam Justice Lynn Smith answers, “Who knows?” Uncertainty of motive, however, does not seem to have inhibited either her abilities or her commitment. Her decision to study law seems to have stemmed from her interest in social change and because, in her words: “it seemed like a good fit, especially with a philosophical undergraduate background.”

At the University of British Columbia, Bertie McClean was Dean of the Faculty of Law from 1971 to 1976, and Associate Vice-President Academic from 1984 to 1995. His main legal areas of interest are trusts and estates, property law and pensions. He has written and lectured extensively in those fields, and has provided opinions on them to both the private sector and to government.

 Joost Blom was born in Pitt Meadows and received his BA from UBC in 1967. He went on to complete a LLB at UBC in 1970 before pursuing a BCL from Oxford in 1972. Universities were vigorously expanding throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s: more students were coming and more professors were needed. When UBC Law opened in 1945, there were only two full-time faculty members, Dean George Curtis and Frederick “Pappy” Read, with much of the teaching duties falling on practicing members of the local bar.

George F. Curtis (1906-2005) served as Dean from the founding of the law school at UBC in 1945 until his retirement in 1971. He remained actively involved in the law school, addressing every incoming class and continuing to meet with students, faculty and staff throughout his retirement. He was an unfailingly positive presence at UBC, and shared his joy with faculty, staff, students and alumni to the end.