THE ADVOCATE 197
VOL. 79 PART 2 MARCH 2021
SERIOUS BUSINESS: ROWING AND
LAWYERS IN BRITISH COLUMBIA
By Brian McDaniel
T he Advocate recently published articles about mountaineer-
ing, running and B.C. lawyers.1 The cover of the September
2020 edition featured the late Mark Andrews, Q.C., an exceptional
rower and lawyer. There is a remarkable connection
sport between the sport of rowing and the practice of law in
between the sport of rowing and the practice of law in British Columbia.
There are three lawyers still practising law in British Columbia who are
Olympic gold medallists. The current president of the Canadian Olympic
Committee, a four-time Olympian, is a lawyer from this province. Another
B.C. lawyer was an Olympic silver medallist who enjoyed a distinguished
career in public service at both federal and provincial levels. One of his
Olympic crewmates was a leading corporate solicitor in Alberta. The B.C.
Minister of Justice who served from 2013 to 2017 was a rower. The executive
director of the Law Society of British Columbia who served from 2005 to
2017 enjoyed success as a student and rower at Harvard University. A leading
authority on B.C. legal history still rows competitively. The first Chief
Justice of British Columbia rowed for Peterhouse, his Cambridge college, in
1840. Most remarkably, and probably something that most members of the
legal community do not know, is that a recently deceased Chief Justice of
British Columbia featured on the Advocate’s January 2021 cover was a rower.
As Paul Newman and Robert Redford asked each other about their relentless
pursuers in the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, “Who are
those guys?”
On July 13, 1967, the front page of the Vancouver Province featured a photograph
by the late Bill Cunningham of the UBC rowing eight that went on
to represent Canada and win a silver medal at the
Pan American Games. The photograph was entitled
“Serious Business, This Rowing”. At those
same games, a four-oared crew from UBC also
won a silver medal. Five of the twelve UBC rowers
became lawyers. The three determined
young men in the stern of the boat in Cunningham’s
photograph all became lawyers.