/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...
/BarTalk/Articles/2022/April/Columns/We-Demand-to-Speak-to-the-Manager-of-Canada
One of the best memes that was circulating during the Truckers’ “Freedom” Convoy went like this: “I’m gonna go block the McDonalds drive-thru until they bring back Pizza! That’s how we do things in Canada now, right?” To be clear, peaceful protest is a constitutionally pro...
/BarTalk/Articles/2022/February/Columns/Occams-Toothbrush
The California Coastal Records Project photographed the Malibu coastline from a helicopter to alert California policymakers to the dangers of soil erosion of the cliffs above the beach. Out of 12,000 photographs, one was of Barbara Streisand’s house, and Babs didn’t like peop...
/BarTalk/Articles/2021/December/Columns/Im-Not-a-Miracle-Worker-Im-a-Janitor
When my son was doing his economics degree a decade ago at UVic, he regularly badgered me to watch the latest “lawyer movie” he’d just seen. It was Ridley Scott’s “The Counsellor.” The film chronicles a lawyer mixed up with Mexican drug lords, and involves deceit, money, murd...
/BarTalk/Articles/2021/October/Features/Pandemic-Practice-Points
The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced significant unprecedented challenges to all aspects of our lives. Due to stressors such as individuals losing their jobs, complete disruption of our conventional routines, and restrictions on socializing outside of one’s household, the pan...
/BarTalk/Articles/2021/October/Columns/COVID-19-Horse-Dewormers-and-Other-Nonsense
Pete McMartin’s recent column in the Vancouver Sun summed up the zeitgeist of the day. “Enough is enough,” he said. “I’m done with all of the COVID-19 skeptics. I’m done with those whose ignorance of science is so profound and intractable… they put their trust in celebrities,...
/BarTalk/Articles/2021/August/Columns/The-Keystone-XL-Cancellation-—-Indigenous-Nations
The Indigenous Nations of Canada have mixed views on the impact of the cancellation of Keystone XL by the Biden administration. US President Joe Biden cancelled the project earlier this year through an executive order, fulfilling one of his many campaign climate protection pl...
/BarTalk/Articles/2021/August/Columns/Bring-Out-Your-Dead
I'm aware that consumer genealogy tests like Ancestry and 23AndMe have been used by the police in the US and Europe to solve cold cases by identifying the murderer through the DNA of relatives who used the test. Never having committed a heinous crime, (and not planning to), I...