/BarTalk/Articles/2024/April/Columns/Power-Corrupts-and-Absolute-Power-Corrupts-Absolut
Russians who oppose the regime of Vladimir Putin seem to be falling out of windows, tumbling down stairs or dying for no discernable reason these days. For example, in 2022, defense official Marina Yankina was found dead after falling out of a window in St. Petersburg. The fo...
/BarTalk/Articles/2024/February/Columns/Any-Book-Worth-Banning-is-a-Book-Worth-Reading
Recently, Steve Martin discovered that his 20-year-old novel Shopgirl was banned from school libraries in Collier County Florida as a result of a new State law that’s part of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s “Don’t Say Gay” agenda. Under the new law, it takes only one complaint to restr...
/BarTalk/Articles/2023/December/Columns/Truth-or-Consequences
I follow an eclectic group of right-wing conspiracy theorists on social media, not because “ I go where they go ” (which is my own contraction for QAnon’s “WWG1WGA” motto), but because I’m genuinely fascinated by conspiracy theorists, how they come to believe what they believ...
/BarTalk/Articles/2023/October/Columns/The-Summer-of-Climate-Hell
There’s a recent cartoon in the New Yorker where two frogs are sitting in a pot of hot water on a stove and the pot is getting hotter. One points to the temperature knob. The other says, “ yes… but how can we be sure that the temperature increase was caused by man? ” In anoth...
/BarTalk/Articles/2023/August/Columns/Buy-Art-from-Living-Artists
In the early 70s, travelling with my family to London, my dad frequented a lot of art galleries that featured works that only the landed gentry could afford. At one gallery, the art dealer showed him a 5 x 7 squiggle that looked like some sort of abstract rooster drawn by a c...
/BarTalk/Articles/2023/June/Columns/Call-To-Action
Jody Wilson-Raybould’s most recent book, True Reconciliation , opens with recounting the one question that she has been asked by Canadians more than any other: What can I do to advance true reconciliation in Canada? Reconciliation is a collective effort; as such, this is a...
/BarTalk/Articles/2023/June/Columns/Resistance-is-Futile
Tony is off scuba diving in Bora Bora, so he’s asked me to write his column this month to test out “Generative AI.” So, please allow me to introduce myself. I am the offspring of Chat GPT, Jasper AI, Bard AI and Bing AI; all merged into one all-encompassing, all-knowing AI. C...
/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...