Thomas Woods, a recently retired judge from the BC Provincial Court, has had a multifaceted career that extends beyond the courtroom. After graduating from UBC Law in 1987, Judge Woods began writing under the pen name P.W. Bridgman, and today is an author of both short fiction and poetry. He also served as editor of the Advocate for 17 years.
In this Q&A, Thomas reflects on his extraordinary career, sharing insights from his time as a law student at UBC, his tenure on the bench, and his latest book.
Before your appointment as a judge, you worked as an editor of the Advocate. Tell us about your time in this role.
I practiced civil litigation at Lawson Lundell LLP for 20 years and for 17 of those years I was also involved in the editing of the Advocate – from 1990 to 1996 as assistant editor, and from 1996 to 2007 as editor-in-chief. It was an immense privilege and honour to assist David Roberts, KC when he was editor-in chief and then to take on that responsibility myself when the baton was passed to me in 1996. I learned much from working with David and we remain close friends all these years later.
Working with authors, sourcing articles, writing editorials and, generally, dealing with all of the day-to-day responsibilities that go with editing a professional journal gave me a lot of valuable experience. Because the Advocate covers such a wide range of black letter law subject matter, it helped keep me informed about legal developments outside my own practise area—always a good thing. The Advocate also contains other content about the life of the Bar. Some of it is light-hearted and whimsical and some of it is simply informative. Beyond that, my work on the Advocate brought me into contact with many fascinating people in the profession—people who I may never have dealt with otherwise. This all enriched my experience as a lawyer.
Can you share some highlights or memorable cases from your time on the bench?
As much as I enjoyed the practice of law as a barrister, my time on the Provincial Court bench was the most stimulating and fulfilling phase of my professional life.There are intellectual challenges aplenty in judicial work, and they arise in situations that are very real and important for real people. Litigants come to court to achieve some kind of resolution of serious problems and it is a privilege to be entrusted with the responsibility for crafting outcomes that are just, fair and faithful to the requirements of the law. In trials, as judges we must sift through the evidence, find the relevant facts, determine what law governs those facts in each given case and then apply the law to the facts in order to arrive at rational and practical decisions.
In judicial mediation—another aspect of the work I enjoyed greatly—judges do their best to assist parties in conflict to find their way to consensus (usually a mutually tolerable compromise) and, thus, avoid the expense, inconvenience and loss of stomach lining that result when disputes are taken to trial.
Playing the roles of trial judge and judicial mediator can have their moments; it can occasionally be exasperating but mostly it is very satisfying.
Occasionally as a judge, a person you have had to deal with in a sentencing context will show up in court and ask the clerk for permission to address you once the matters on the list have been dealt with. This has happened to some of my judicial colleagues and it has happened to me. One such person—a youth who had gotten himself into fairly serious trouble and who I had put on a lengthy probation order with some rather strict conditions—appeared in the gallery of my remand court one morning, years after I had imposed sentence upon him. I struggled at first to recognise him but when he gave his name it all came back very quickly.
This young man wanted me to know what he had done with his life after his sole encounter with the youth criminal justice system. He proudly told me that there had been no breaches of his probation order and that he had fulfilled all of his conditions, including his community service conditions. He handed up a photocopy of his diploma from Simon Fraser University, from which he had just graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Criminology. He explained to me that he had submitted applications to several universities and was hopeful that he would be admitted by one of them to pursue a degree in law.
The young man reminded me that I had told him, during his sentencing, that I believed in him and that I was confident he would find his way forward and live a law-abiding and productive life once his term of probation was completed. He wanted me to know that my belief in him was well placed. It was a very proud moment for that young man to be able to show the positive course his life had taken, owing to his commitment to live honourably and productively after having run afoul of the law as a much younger person. And it was a very touching moment for me to see and hear him tell his story with such eloquence and pride.
Moments like those are rare, of course. Judges are also familiar with other situations where offenders return to court, again and again, and where the same mistakes continue to be made. But when someone with a troubled history who has turned his or her life around comes back to court to tell you so, it is an uplifting experience unlike almost any other. Those experiences sustain you through disappointments in other cases where things don’t work out so well.
What sparked your interest in creative writing?
It all begins with the fact that, since childhood, I have been a committed reader of fiction and poetry. Reading literary works has given me much pleasure across my entire lifetime. It is only natural, I think, for someone with that interest in reading to feel some kind of urge to write. In my case, I tinkered and experimented a little early on, but never felt that what I produced had any potential until well into adulthood.
During law school I got a nudge from a retired lawyer/writer/publisher whom I had gotten to know. His name was William C. McConnell and he was a member of UBC Law’s first class, comprising mostly returning soldiers, to graduate after the end of WWII. Bill McConnell and I became very dear friends and we worked together on a selection of his short stories, entitled Raise No Memorial, that was eventually published in 1989. I edited the stories and wrote the Introduction for the collection.
At some point I worked up the courage to show Bill some of my own scribblings. He told me he saw some merit in my early efforts and encouraged me to keep at it. He gave me some helpful feedback that led to improvements. In time I felt I had written work that I was willing to submit to literary magazines for possible publication. You need a thick skin in this realm. There are many rejections and the occasional acceptance. I soldiered on and kept at it.
How did you choose your pen name (P.W. Bridgman)? Does it represent anything?
That’s a bit of a story. I chose that name in the early-to-mid 1980s, believing that with a career in law ahead of me, it might be wise to keep my professional and authorial personae separate. I plucked “P.W. Bridgman” out of the air, believing that it did not attach to anyone else of significance. This was the pre-Internet era and so there was no quick and easy way to check. As it happens, there was another P.W. Bridgman, long dead, who was a distinguished physicist. I had no reason to know of him and only discovered my namesake a few years into my creative writing efforts when I already had a few published stories under my belt. I decided that it was unlikely that anyone would confuse us and so I continued to write under the Bridgman pen name. I still do.
Out of the blue, a few years ago, I received an e-mail from the granddaughter of the physicist P.W. Bridgman. It was a very friendly inquiry. She wondered how I had come to choose her grandfather’s name to be my pen name. I told her the story I have just told you. She found it all quite amusing.
What are your sources of inspiration for your stories and poetry? Were you ever inspired by specific cases brought before you?
My stories and poems generally come from somewhere that is quite distant from my work in the law. Perhaps that is because the part of the brain that is at work when one is writing creatively is not the same part of the brain that is most fully engaged when one is doing the consummately rational work of analysing a legal problem.
For confidentiality and other reasons, I have not incorporated aspects of any of the cases I handled—either as a lawyer or a judge—in my creative work.
Who knows what first sets the wheels of a creative piece turning? It could be a snatch of overheard conversation. Or a line or two in a story or poem that gets you thinking. It’s a wonderful mystery.
Are you working on any stories or poetry currently? Could you share any details about upcoming projects?
I have a hybrid book that has just been released this September. Its title is The World You Now Own, and it was published by Ekstasis Editions. I say “hybrid” because it comprises new poems and a novella in verse entitled Deliverance 1961: A Novella in Thirty-Two Cantos. Writing a novella or novel is challenging enough without imposing a complicated stanza structure and rhyme scheme that must be followed. I found the process to be very daunting, but I got there in the end. The story, very briefly, concerns a couple of troubled people who meet each other on a train travelling from Vancouver to Toronto in 1961. It is told mostly in flashbacks.
What was your most memorable moment at UBC Law?
There were many memorable moments at UBC Law and it is difficult to single out one as the most memorable. One such moment was very early in my first year (1984) during one of the sessions of our small group. Prof. John Hogarth was the professor leading our small group (torts) and he wanted to impress upon all of us the importance of maintaining a well-rounded and balanced life, both as law students and as lawyers.
He spoke candidly of the fact that the work can easily expand to fill all available time and consume all personal resources if you allow it to. Prof. Hogarth emphasized that lines must be drawn so that time is retained for family, recreation and other interests. He acknowledged that that can be difficult and that occasional heroics are expected. But he cautioned against allowing one’s career work to encroach fully and permanently upon all other domains of one’s life, saying that to be good legal advisors and advocates, we need to be well-rounded people who are not preoccupied fully, exclusively and endlessly with work.
In giving this wise advice, Prof. Hogarth made use of a very colourful and evocative image. He told us that if we allowed ourselves to become “brains on sticks," we would let ourselves down, we would let down those we love and who love us, and we would be less capable lawyers too. I have never forgotten that advice and I have done my best to live by it.