THE ADVOCATE 739
VOL. 80 PART 5 SEPTEMBER 2022
James Watson Millar
By lineage, James Watson Millar should have been
the product of his Scottish Presbyterian ancestry. He
should have been anchored by a Calvinist work ethic,
his grandfather’s Masonic membership and his
beginnings on the west side of Vancouver, the son of
a saintly mother of Lawson descent (yes, Lawson
Lundell, those Lawsons) and a revered medical doctor
Artwork by Bob Krieger,
longtime friend
who delivered over 4,000 babies.
But where’s the fun in that old story?
“Jim was an outsider in an insider’s game … but oh how well he played
the game, inside and out,” says long-time friend and professional colleague
Mark Cacchioni. That one sentence sums up Jim perfectly. It explains in a
few well-chosen words all the spark that underlay Jim’s fierce creativity, his
formidable intellect and his unrivalled humour.
Was Jim a barrister and solicitor? Oh yes. He graduated from UBC Law in
the class of 1979 and went on to practise for 32 years as a criminal and environmental
defence lawyer. In that time, he defended about 40 murder/
manslaughter cases, virtually all of them on legal aid. His work took him to
all regions of British Columbia, regions he knew so well from his earliest
career endeavour. Before Jim began navigating the rushing waters of the
law, he climbed aboard a raft and plied the waters of British Columbia’s
rivers, chief among them being the mighty Fraser.
Rather than simply graduating from high school and finding his academic
way into a profession, Jim broke ground as one of Canada’s original rafting
guides. His company, Canadian Wilderness Experiences, introduced guests
to a world few had even seen, let alone experienced. In many a long and
sometimes late conversation, Jim would talk of his days on the rivers as any
veteran entrepreneur does: with the gleam of adventure still in his eye. Jim
was one of the first “white” water river rafters to navigate Hells Gate and
live to tell the story. He went on to become the chair of the BC Advisory
Committee on Commercial River Rafting and later appeared as an expert
witness in U.S. Federal Court when Robert Goldstein, vice president of Procter
& Gamble, died while rafting (with another company) on the Chilko
River. When Jim received notice that plaintiff’s counsel in the Goldstein
wrongful death lawsuit was a heavy-hitting litigator from Chicago named
Will Swindle, he knew he was paddling in deep waters!