Canadian Lawyer 4Students

4Students 2018

Life skills and career tips for Canada's lawyers in training

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64 AUGUST 2018 C A N A D I A N L a w y e r 4STUDENTS Grief-stricken, Daphne Comegan's water broke. Having just buried her grandmother, overwhelmed with the loss of the woman who had helped raise her, it had slipped her mind that she was in fact pregnant and it suddenly occurred to her it was time. "I was like holy crap, this is happening," she says. From Eagle Lake, Ont., her grandmother's reserve, she was driv- en to Dryden, Ont. only to find there was no doctor available. "I remember somebody saying, 'Your first labour is your longest labour.' So, I was like, well Winnipeg is four hours away. We can make it! I made it to Kenora, Ont. and that's where I had him." Caiden was born. Eight years later, his mom now 33, he wants to be a YouTuber and has his own channel on which he narrates video games. e pain of her grandmother's death was replaced with happiness. Comegan says the presence she thought she lost was regained. "I knew that they had met and they made it happen this way," she says. "I think my grandmother knew that if it didn't happen this way, I would have had a really hard time because we were so close . . . eir spirits, before they le in different directions, I think they met and they planned it the way they did." Sometimes, Caiden zones out, staring, with his head tilted just so and he scratches his arm. Co- megan notices this because her grandmother used to do the exact same thing, one of her mannerisms that she says is now reflected in her son. "It kind of freaks me out. But it kind of makes me happy at the same time," she says. is fall, Comegan will begin her first year at the University of Manitoba's Robson Hall Law School. Her introduction to the legal profession came when, at 26, her mother's friend got her a job working as a legal assistant for her husband, Ron Nadeau. e gig did not last long, as Nadeau was disbarred for stealing from his clients two weeks aer Comegan started. Nadeau's super- vising lawyer, Kenneth Young, liked Comegan's work and asked her to come work for him. en her work became intertwined with her family's history. It is a history that her family shares with thousands across Canada. Young did criminal and family law, but he was working on the independent assessment process for victims of abuse in the resi- dential schools system. Established under the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, the IAP process has so far dealt with 38,000 claims by those who say they experienced serious physical, emotional or sexual abuse. Both of Comegan's parents, all her grandparents and her aunts and uncles had survived the residential schools system. "It was interesting. Like, I learned a lot, but there came a time "The reason why I want to go to law school is because I don't want our future generations to keep being locked up." Intergenerational change When Daphne Comegan made it into law school, she had overcome the cycles that residential schools had wrought on her family By Aidan Macnab

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