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NWT by VW bus and finally reached Reid Lake, heavy rains erupted and
forced a southward retreat and finally canoeing at Wells Grey). Her Canadian
travel experiences have inspired her to always have a supply of
Canada-themed party favours on hand, and she is a good choice of teammate
on Canada trivia nights.
Her undergrad studies in ethnographic anthropology and history at the
University of Toronto were punctuated with summer student and part-time
work at the offices of Toronto lawyer Gloria J. Epstein (later a justice of the
Superior Court of Ontario and then the Ontario Court of Appeal). While
there, Sandra—a Jill of all trades—was instrumental in promoting the introduction
of something called “Quicklaw” to the office and soon gained the
reputation of “Queen of the Boolean Searches”.2 Having caught the law bug,
Sandra abandoned her graphic designer (and physician) career aspirations
and returned to Vancouver in 1989 to pursue her law degree at the University
of British Columbia, where her studies followed her keen interest in
social justice issues.
Following law school, she split her articles between the Sierra Legal
Defence Fund and Vancouver’s first law firm serving the LGBTQ2+ communities,
Smith & Hughes. Even as a new lawyer, Sandra supplemented her
workday with volunteer work. She was a long-time board member of the
Vancouver Business Association (as it then, initially, was) and was instrumental
in rebranding and raising the profile of the organization by successfully
promoting a new, more accurate moniker: The Gay & Lesbian
Business Association of Greater Vancouver. This move prompted a massive
increase in membership within a year after the change.
After practising in B.C. for seven years, Sandra was spirited away to Los
Angeles by her partner, Gayle. There, Sandra promptly passed the California
bar and worked in a Beverly Hills law practice, where she gained expert
knowledge of all things financial. They relocated to Vancouver in 2004
when Sandra came to the Legal Services Branch of the Ministry of the Attorney
General (“LSB-MAG”).
Sandra had arrived in the land of the acronym. As names of governmental
bodies are long and/or complex and change from time to time, it is
essential that government counsel learn “acronym speak”. The alternative
is for government counsel to spend much of their day saying the full names
of their clients. Sandra mastered acronym speak.
Her principal client was the Financial Institutions Commission
(“FICOM”), now the BC Financial Services Authority (“BCFSA”). BCFSA is in
turn responsible for a long list of acronyms which may be Googled at
leisure.