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non-bencher member of the Law Society of B.C.’s Access to Justice Committee.
He also served at various times as president and secretary of the Chilliwack
Bar Association and maintained membership in several CBA
subsections. As a master, he delivered CLE presentations, served on the
court’s Civil Law Committee for six years and shared, with this writer, some
time with the Master Shadowing Program, in which junior members of the
bar spend an evening and a full day with a sitting master, gaining familiarity
with chambers procedures. For many years, he has spoken as a guest at
meetings of the CBA Young Lawyers Subsection. Ian has been and remains
absolutely committed to the concept of mentorship, and once he has dealt
with the steep learning curve he faces with his new challenge (he is attending
new judge’s school as I write this), I expect to see him sharing his expertise
and experience once again.
Ian and I have served together as masters, in adjacent offices in New
Westminster, for the past 15 years. As residents of the Fraser Valley (Ian in
Chilliwack and I in Abbotsford), we were able to rideshare whenever we
were both sitting in New West, usually three days out of five, with the result
that we likely spent as much time with each other as with our respective
families and came to understand and appreciate each other to a degree seldom
experienced by workmates. One disadvantage of the judicial role is the
lack of opportunity to observe or learn from the experiences of others, and
our pre-dawn (in the winter, at least) conversations in the HOV lane about
work and work-related issues filled this void to a valuable extent. As a result,
I feel as qualified as anyone to confirm that, in Ian, the judges of the court
have an intelligent, experienced, compassionate, diligent and committed
colleague, and someone who knows the lyrics to every popular song written
since at least 1964.
When Ian advised me of his appointment, I reminded him of a quotation
attributed to Jacques Plante, the iconic Habs, Leafs, Bruins and Oilers goaltender,
about the downside of a demanding vocation: “Goaltending is a normal
job, sure. How would you like it in your job if every time you made a
small mistake, a red light went on over your desk and 15,000 people stood
up and yelled at you?”
I have not been able to find a Plante quotation on the subject of his overall
job satisfaction, but we all know that trying, failing and trying yet harder
lends us purpose and makes us better at what we do, and as for Ian, he is
already very good at what he does. Many more happy and fulfilling years
on the court, good friend.