/BarTalk/Articles/2017/October/Columns/♫Goose-Step-s-the-New-Step-Today♫
W hat can you say when the President of the United States panders to Tiki-Torch bearing Neo Nazis, the KKK and white supremacists who marched in Virginia in August, other than America has gone mad. Or Trump has. Even the Washington Post and the New York Times are now calling...
/BarTalk/Articles/2017/August/Columns/Communist-Propaganda-of-the-Shoddiest-Kind
O ne rewarding thing I do as a Bencher is the “Bencher Interview” with articled students. I meet between 30 and 35 students a year, and discuss how their articles are going, how the Law Society works, our ethical obligations as lawyers, a few relevant discipline cases and a ...
/BarTalk/Articles/2017/June/Columns/Dare-to-Be-Great
O ne of the more interesting museums in the world is in Washington D.C., right next door to the Canadian Embassy. It’s the Newseum , and it’s dedicated to journalism and freedom of the press. In addition to an exhibit of Pulitzer Prize winning photographs and rooms filled w...
/BarTalk/Articles/2017/April/Columns/BC-Family-Day-is-Not-So-Family-Friendly
I t's interesting that in the US, Americans like to name their holidays after noted individuals, political leaders, revolutions or explorers. I've always thought we Canadians could do a way better job of naming our statutory holidays than we do now. At the top of my list, ...
/BarTalk/Articles/2017/April/Features/Metro-Vancouver’s-Foreign-Buyer-Tax
O n July 25, 2016, the government of British Columbia introduced Bill 28, Miscellaneous Statutes (Housing Priority Initiatives) Amendment Act, 2016 (the “Act”), seemingly in answer to the growing public outcry for government intervention into the real estate industry and f...
/BarTalk/Articles/2017/February/Columns/Canada-at-150
I 'm old enough to remember Canada’s Centennial of 1967. It was celebrated a year after the 1966 Centennial of the Union of Vancouver Island and Mainland BC, and four years prior to the 1971 Centennial of BC joining Confederation. If you were in elementary school or high s...
/BarTalk/Articles/2016/December/Columns/BC-Franchises-Act-is-in-Force-on-February-1
I don’t usually write about specific legal matters in this column, which I reserve mostly for entertainment purposes, but I think it’s important for BC lawyers to be aware of some new legislation coming into effect on February 1, 2017. It’s the Franchises Act, and it radica...
/BarTalk/Articles/2016/October/Columns/Boldly-Going
I t’s easy to turn on the news or read the papers these days and, based on the journalistic axiom “if it bleeds, it leads,” get profoundly depressed about the state of the world and the future of the human race. Whether it’s the Civil War in Syria, the disintegration of Ira...
/BarTalk/Articles/2016/August/Columns/The-March-of-Folly
T here’s something about the books by the late great Barbara Tuchman that have stayed with me, years after I’ve read them. The start of the First World War was a page turner in The Guns of August. A Distant Mirror-the Calamitous 14th Century described a medieval world that s...
/BarTalk/Articles/2016/June/Columns/Soliciting-Your-Opinions-on-CPD
F or those of you who read my June 2015 column entitled "I'm Conducting an Opinion Poll," I have some results to share. To jog your memories, as Chair of the Lawyer Education Advisory Committee of the Benchers, I was soliciting opinions from the membership about PLTC and the...