Thursday, May 28, 2009



When I read the Vancouver Sun today about maternity shop owner Susan Hayes winning her lawsuit ($600,000 plus court expenses) against Trans Link, Canada Line Rapid Transist Inc. and InTransitBC I thought of a tall and pleasant man whose office is very small. I wrote about Susan Hayes' lawyer Cameron Ward here in December 2007. I took his portrait in his claustrophobic office in the Dominion Building. He looked less like a lawyer and more like an authentic Sam Spade waiting for a dame with a problem to suddenly walk in. I wasn't far from wrong in my guess.

That this man was able to win the lawsuit says a lot, not only of his lawyerly skills but a lot about our province's legal system where the small guy (small gal?) can sometimes beat the system and the big corporations. It is my hope that Mr. Ward does get some monetary recognition so he can splurge soon on a bigger office in his beloved Dominion Bulding.

I smiled when I read about the presiding Supreme Court Justice, Ian Pitfield. No matter what decision he would have come down with, I know it would have been carefully thought out and then read with his soothing voice and perhaps with a hint of a smile. Judge Pitfield is a happy man. He was a happy man when I photographed him as a laywer at Thorsteinsson's and he was a happy man when I photographed him in the Law Courts in March 1997 when he first became a judge.



Through the years I have run into the judge a few times at Southlands Nursery. Every time he has asked me to suggest a rose he should buy. The last time I took him to a single yellow tea rose, Mrs. Oakley Fisher and told him, "This is a good rose for you. It has class and personality." I didn't add what I was thinking, "And you have class and personality in spades."

Mrs. Oakley Fisher