Law History Profiles

Cory Kent is a Partner at McMillan LLP (“McMillan”) and currently serves as the Co-Chair for the British Columbia Mining Group at McMillan. He is a legal expert in mining law and its intersection with corporate and securities law. At McMillan he represents a wide range of clients from private and publicly held companies to shareholders and boards of directors. His legal work primarily deals with issues related to the natural resources, cannabis, and technology sectors.

Darwin Hanna is one of the named partners of Aboriginal law firm Callison & Hanna, a firm specializing in Aboriginal law that was founded in 1996 by Hanna and his wife, Cynthia Callison. For Hanna, the journey to starting his own law firm began with his undergraduate studies in criminology. Hanna was attracted to criminology in part because he saw the potential for a fulfilling career, and enrolled in a joint-degree criminology program with Douglas College and Simon Fraser University (SFU) upon graduating from high school in Maple Ridge.

Cynthia Callison is a member of the Crow Clan in the Tahltan Nation whose traditional territory is the Stikine River Watershed in northwestern British Columbia. Callison travels often with her family to Tahltan territory, an approximately 22-hour drive from Vancouver. “In my community, we are able to continue the practice of food fishing, hunting, and gathering. My father has ensured that we can survive on the land."

Karen Lam, Class of 1995, began her career as an entertainment lawyer, but in 2000 turned her attention to working full-time as a writer, producer and director in the film and television industry, with a particular talent for horror films. She has produced four feature films, eight short films and three television series, and has had her work recognized with numerous awards and honours.

Ardith Wal'petko We'dalx Walkem earned an LLB in 1995 and an LLM in 2005, both from UBC. She has built her legal career in areas of Indigenous law including land and resource use and children's rights, as well as access to justice. In 2020, she was appointed as a judge to the BC Supreme Court. She is the first Indigenous woman in BC to hold this position.

Siobhan Sams is a graduate of the LLB class of 1995 and currently practices as an Associate at Harper Grey LLP (“Harper Grey”) in Vancouver. Her legal career has involved a fascinating array of concentrations and has taken her around the globe. Sams currently works in the Commercial Litigation Group at Harper Grey with a focus on product liability, particularly in the context of aviation.

I am a member of the Haida Nation and a member of the Raven Clan. In our oral traditions, Raven was Originally white. There are days and days of stories of Raven as he ... haphazardly brings the world into existence as we know it. Through that process he steals the sun and the moon from their caretakers, flies through the smoke hole in the longhouse and brings light to the world. And when he flew through the smoke hole, he became black.

Nikos Harris is an experienced appellate counsel and award-winning Lecturer at the Allard School of Law. He describes his recent experience as co-counsel, with Eric Gottardi, for the Canadian Bar Association which intervened in the Supreme Court of Canada case of R. v. Nur. This decision addresses the use of mandatory minimum sentences for firearms offences in Canada.

How would you summarize the R. v. Nur decision?

Gaynor Yeung is a Director at Whitelaw Twining Law Corporation (“Whitelaw Twining”) in Vancouver. Her legal practice largely focuses on personal injury and professional liability claims. Yeung’s ample litigation experience has brought her before all levels of court in British Columbia as well as administrative tribunals. She is also a recipient of the Peter S. Hyndman Mentorship Award which is awarded annually by the Vancouver Bar Association for outstanding mentorship.

Judge Catherine Anne Ryan was born in 1947 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Shortly afterwards her family returned to Vancouver where she has resided ever since. She received her education at Little Flower Academy and the University of British Columbia; she articled with Boughton and Company.

Google “Tim Howard SLDF” and watch your screen light up. No stranger to controversy, Howard is lead counsel for the Sierra Legal Defence Fund in BC, and his name makes the news. A lot. In 2004, Howard intervened in the federal hearing for BC Hydro’s proposed Georgia Straight Crossing (GSX) pipeline, pushing for a mandatory greenhouse gas mitigation plan, and won his case.

Michelle Pockey was born in Toronto and raised in Oshawa, Ontario. She obtained a B.A. from the University of Western Ontario in 1990, and then her LL.B. from the University of British Columbia in 1994. She joined Fasken Martineau and went on to become a partner in their Global Energy, Global Mining, Aboriginal, and Corporate Social Responsibility practice groups.

Diana Valiela didn’t expect to become a lawyer. Since she was a child, following her father around the world on business trips—living in places like Brazil, Mexico, the United States, Spain, England, and her native Argentina—she maintained a curiosity about the natural world. After completing her undergraduate work in biological sciences at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and her Master and Ph.D. degrees in Zoology at Duke University, she assumed her course was set ...

Rachel Hutton is a partner at Stikeman Elliott LLP, working directly with both the firm’s Commercial Real Estate Group and Project Development Group. Her practice includes a wide range of subsets with significant experience in corporate transactions and development. Hutton frequently advises clients on commercial, impact benefit, and benefit sharing agreements with First Nations on capital projects. Development projects are also a core aspect of Hutton’s practice.

"Your moral values are important, because it gives you a frame for how you look at the world...we are legislators and that is a different responsibility. I don't feel it is my responsibility to impose my moral values on everybody else." - Arnold Chan: father, political staffer, member of parliament, cancer survivor, Class of 1993.

“I’ve never done first-year law school!” laughs Victoria Donaldson, a Counsellor with the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Appellate Body Secretariat in Geneva. Her Stanford BA in International Relations, which included a year at the Sorbonne, let her skip the first year of her Bachelor of Laws at Oxford, which in turn put her directly into second-year law at UBC. From there, it was straight into a clerkship at the Supreme Court of Canada and then a Master of Laws at Harvard ...

For most of us, a tough day at work might be trying to meet an impossible deadline, or having to sit through countless meetings in one day.  How about trying to seek justice for a Zimbabwean torture victim who had been submerged in a tub of cold water, electrocuted, and beaten repeatedly on his soles? All because he criticized his government. Or how about trying to help a Congolese war victim who’d been shot numerous times (but miraculously survived) and whose wife and eight children were massacred in their village by government rebels?

Janine Benedet joined UBC as an Associate Professor in 2005. This appointment represented a return not only to her alma mater but also to the city that she has always considered home. Her first stop after her L.L.B. graduation was a clerkship with fellow UBC alumnus Justice Frank Iacobucci at the Supreme Court of Canada. That was followed by graduate studies – leading to both an LL.M. and an S.J.D. – at the University of Michigan, where she also did some teaching as a Visiting Faculty Fellow.

Given Chris Harland's many international experiences in his youth, including living in the South Pacific as a child, participating in a number of exchange opportunities, and teaching English abroad, it might have seemed that he was destined for a career in international law. "I wouldn't say that beyond international law I 'knew' what area I wanted to pursue, but human rights law often came up as an area in which I could help out others, learn a lot, and have interesting work." Harland now works in the field of international humanitarian law.

Margaret Mereigh was born in Trinidad, but soon after was transported at a young age to Vancouver with her family. She enrolled at the University of British Columbia and pursued an undergraduate degree in History and Politics. After graduating she continued at UBC in the LL.B. program, the inspiration to study law having occurred at a young age.