THE ADVOCATE 109
VOL. 80 PART 1 JANUARY 2022
messy aspects of the chicken farming business. He acquired a lifelong aversion
to the taste of chicken during those years.
As was the quaint custom with young people during those times, Bill
believed the sooner he was free of his parents, the better. Accordingly, Bill
left home in 1950 at age 19 to work in the administrative offices of the Alco
aluminum company in the soon-to-be new town of Kitimat.
After realizing that a life in smelting administration may not provide him
with either the basic spiritual or pecuniary rewards he desired, he decided
in 1956 to enroll himself in the commerce/law option at UBC. Fraternities
and sororities were in their heyday back in the mid-1950s, and Bill promptly
joined Phi Gamma Delta (“Fijis”). His closest fraternity friends consisted of
the then-Olympic rowing stars of UBC, Philip Kueber (1956 silver) and
Archie MacKinnon (1956 gold, 1960 silver), as well as the then-unknowns
A.J. Stewart Smith (future Princeton dean of research) and Frank Iacobucci
(we all know where he went). These were very happy years for Bill, and he
would often recount wonderful stories of those times: boisterous Italian dinners
with Frank’s parents, plenty of golf and bridge games, and a now-
legendary Fiji cross-border expedition for a permanent Phi Gamma Delta
tattoo.
For reasons not entirely clear to those who have memories of those
times, Bill decided to leave his studies briefly to drive a Vancouver cab for
a year. Along with the financial benefits from that experience, he came
away with a lifetime of dinner stories and the ability to recall the quickest
routes around Vancouver streets for the rest of his life.
Bill received his LL.B. from UBC in 1961. On being informed of the standard
articling wage in Vancouver, he promptly accepted articles with the
venerable Calgary firm of Fenerty, Fenerty, McGillivray, Robertson,
Prowse, Brennan & Fraser, Barristers and Solicitors. From the Fenerty firm
he was recruited to join the in-house legal team for the Mannix family in
Alberta. After a few years with the Mannix group, he was lured away by the
opportunity to become the in-house counsel for Cominco in Trail and thus
made his way back to British Columbia in 1965. As a lifelong solicitor, he
served as joint plaintiff’s counsel with H.E. Hutcheon in only one case
(which they won): Cominco Ltd. v. International Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers Local 999 et al. Not surprisingly, Bill always kept a copy of the reasons
close at hand for the remainder of his professional life.
During this time, Bill was married to his first wife, Heather, and his two
sons, Robert (1966) and James (1968), were born. Having shown some proclivity
to pick up stakes and move family for greater opportunities, he did
something entirely different: in 1970, he and Heather sold everything they