250 THE ADVOCATE
VOL. 80 PART 2 MARCH 2022
Brandon consistently displayed great character and personal conviction.
In one instance in grade 5, his teacher required him to write a story that violated
his conscience. Brandon would not budge, despite the teacher’s sustained
pressure to see things her way. This strength of character never left
Brandon.
Brandon suffered in the school system throughout his elementary years.
He later testified before the B.C. Safe Schools Taskforce in 2003 regarding
his experiences. In Brandon’s words:
It was anarchy, in this sense, that characterized my experience in elementary
school. There was a common authority above me and my fellow
students, namely teachers and administrators. This authority, however,
was unwilling to step in and enforce fairness, or justice, between us. Relations
between students were simply determined by who was stronger
than who, who was more popular than who, who could marshal more students
to gang up on and inflict torment upon who.
Brandon’s sense of justice was shaped by these and other similar
experiences.
In grade 12, Brandon became a finalist in the province-wide Barry Sullivan
Law Cup speech contest, where he gave an impassioned speech before
a panel of judges at the Law Courts in Vancouver, decrying the violation of
Charter freedoms during the 1997 APEC Summit at UBC.
In 2006, while studying at the University of the Fraser Valley (“UFV”),
Brandon’s aorta ruptured and he underwent emergency, life-saving surgery.
Despite missing a considerable amount of class and study time, Brandon
went on to ace his semester and later graduated with the highest grade
point average for his UFV B.A. degree in history. At that time, he also won
the Excellence in Achievement award for a paper he wrote on Canadian
Senate reform.
He was accepted into law school at UBC, after which he landed an articling
position with the federal Department of Justice in Vancouver. There,
he worked in a number of areas including extradition, Aboriginal law and
prosecution services.
Brandon’s interest and aptitude for constitutional law led him to the Justice
Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, a legal charity that defends Charter
rights and freedoms pro bono. In 2018, he assisted in the Justice Centre’s
intervention in the Oger v. Whatcott (No. 7), 2019 BCHRT 58 matter at the
B.C. Human Rights Tribunal. The summer of 2019 saw him again at the
Human Rights Tribunal, where he provided key insight and legal research
in the defence of numerous estheticians facing jeopardy for refusing to perform
intimate waxing services for religious and cultural reasons (Yaniv v.
Various Waxing Salons (No. 2), 2019 BCHRT 222).