THE ADVOCATE 595
VOL. 79 PART 4 JULY 2021
married, raising Margaret’s two children Kim and Lea from a previous marriage
along with mini Lindsay on an expanse of ranchland, including many
acres leased from the Spallumcheen First Nation. There they raised Hereford
cattle and pigs and grew hay.
Unlike many children today, Lindsay enjoyed a childhood relatively free
from constraint. She attended Armstrong Elementary, where she naturally
excelled. When not at school, she could be found riding off on horseback or
bike to visit her paternal grandparents, who lived just on the other side of
Hullcar Valley. Occasional supervision on her journeys was offered by her
Nana Hopkins’ dog, Bing.
By high school, Lindsay was skipping grades (not classes), developing a
passion for the French horn (thank goodness the neighbours did not live
close by) and working regularly with her father breeding and showing Herefords.
From this latter work flowed one of Lindsay’s most prized possessions,
which no doubt occupies her chambers today: a hand-painted
wooden sign used at cattle shows: “Hullcar Herefords – Ron and Lindsay
Lyster”.
But as much as Lindsay enjoyed ranching with her father, post-secondary
education beckoned. Lindsay dabbled in a few things at the local community
college before realizing that something more would be required in
order to stimulate all the right parts of her brain. She left for the University
of Victoria the following year.
At UVic, Lindsay studied in the ever-fashionable fields of ancient Greek
and medieval philosophy, graduating with a B.A. (honours) and a major in
history. As her undergraduate studies drew to a close, Lindsay toyed with
the idea of joining the seminary but decided against it. Perhaps thinking the
costumes were similar, she headed instead to UBC law school. And so a legal
social justice advocate was born—Lindsay chose law school over the seminary
and focused her attention on the world’s injustices.
We do not know just how severely she would have out-studied others in the
seminary. We do, however, know that she took home UBC law school’s gold
medal for her graduating class along with other prizes sufficiently numerous
that I am unable to list them given the restrictive word count permitted for
this article. Suffice it to say that law school suited Ms. Lyster just fine.
Unsurprisingly, Lindsay procured articles at a reputable firm, then
known as Heenan Blaikie, where she worked alongside former Supreme
Court of Canada justices and somehow managed to ski with the likes of
Pierre Trudeau.
While you might not have foreseen Lindsay’s work life starting as a
rancher, by this point surely you will have anticipated Lindsay’s next move: