THE ADVOCATE 469
VOL. 79 PART 3 MAY 2021
Peter Juk, Q.C., Richard Fyfe, Q.C., and Taryn A. Walsh were appointed as
members of the Justice and Public Safety Council.
Joseph (Joe) C. McArthur, FCIArb., C.Arb and Paisley Irregular, was
recently appointed as chair of the board of the Vancouver International
Arbitration Centre. He takes over from Leslie E. Maerov, FCIArb., who,
after a ten-year stint on the board, three as chair, has retired.
The Advocate reported in “Bench and Bar” (1974) 32 Advocate 391 at 392:
“We heard over lunch at the Lawyer’s Inn the other day a member, who
shall be nameless, describe the Department of Justice as ‘a mammoth octopus’.
Despite the zoological inexactitude of that description, the Department
does bear some resemblance to those creatures. It is large, slow and heavyfooted
and when frightened tends to squirt ink in an effort to obscure itself
from its enemies. Further, some of its members tend to trumpet in public
when enraged.”
Lorna A. Pawluk, Q.C., was appointed as a director of WorkSafeBC for a
term ending December 1, 2023.
Richard J.S. Rainey was reappointed as a director of the British Columbia
Assessment Authority for a term ending February 15, 2023.
The Court of Appeals of Georgia has described res gestae (which “has been
both a reliable and unreliable exception to the hearsay rule”) as “that grand
octopus of the law, which stretches its clinging tentacles to anything and
everything a party says during the commission of an act, or so near
thereto”: White v. State, 592 S.E.2d 905 (2004).
Though you may have missed it, April was declared Safe Digging Month.
Order-in-Council No. 140 was approved on March 11, 2021. Its effect is to
remove gendered pronouns from 70 B.C. statutes. Pronouns like “he” and
“she” have been replaced with gender-neutral alternatives such as “the person”,
“the holder of the permit”, “the supervising hunter” or “the member”,
depending on the particular statute. Familial descriptions like “sister” and
“brother” have been replaced with “sibling”.
As those of you who read “Entre Nous” in the March 2021 Advocate will
appreciate, we have been digging ourselves out from under the slings and
arrows of the strongly held positions of the proponents and the detractors
of Practice Direction No. 59 – Forms of Address for Parties and Counsel in
Proceedings. Fundamentally, our view was one suggesting that each party