Canadian Lawyer

Regional wrap-up West Gail Vickery: proud to be called a judge 12 M ay 2013 www.CANADIAN Vickery liked university and after earning a BA decided to try law school. She won a spot at Dalhousie in Halifax. She did well but remembers being advised not to let on that she typed. The general feeling among women was "the more you looked like a secretary, the less you'd be treated like a lawyer." When she graduated, she got a job at Macleod Dixon in Calgary. By this time she was 33. She caught the last gasp of the maledominated, sexist, all-smoking, all-drinking law office. "You know that TV series Mad Men?" she asks, referring to the popular series about an ad agency in the 1960s. "I lived it." But Vickery thrived in that atmosphere, which brought her to one of the crossroads in her life. "I decided I'd rather practise law than have children." Her husband couldn't accept that so they split. "It was amicable. He was a lovely man, he just wanted something different. He re-married and had two sons. So, it was a happy story." What followed were years of doing deals, some multi-million dollar deals. By this time Vickery could indulge herself in the cars she loved. But in 1991, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and it remains "my constant companion." One day in 1995, her boss came into her office. "We need somebody to go to Toronto," he said. Her reply was quick and unequivocal and sprang from the heart of a true westerner. "There is nothing in this world that would entice me to go to Toronto" she told him. "Well I guess you wouldn't go to Kazakhstan, then?" Vickery surprised him by accepting after a quick call to her second husband. Kazakhstan proved to be four years of intrigue, some danger, and international deals that dwarfed anything Vickery had touched before. She operated out of a cramped office and started off alone. L a w ye r m a g . c o m Judge Gail Vickery has no plans of quitting the bench after leaving her chief post. "One lawyer," she says. "It was my baby." It was hard, she remembers, "but it was fun." After a while the Kazakhstan government decided "I was trustworthy" and she was hired to do a country-wide gas privatization, the biggest deal of her life. When she got back to Calgary after the intensity and adventure and international wheeling and dealing she'd experienced, "it all seemed Mickey Mouse to me." She decided she wasn't pulling her weight as a partner and concluded it was time to quit. So she resigned. She and her husband went looking for an RV so they could tour North America. Vickery had earlier applied for a judgeship, but with the touring plans well underway she had put it out of her mind. Then she got a phone call from the minister of Justice "asking me if I would come on to the bench." Vickery accepted and became a judge in family court. After a lifetime of dealing with the mega rich and powerful, she was about to face some of her greatest challenges when confronted by the problems of ordinary people. The choices she sometimes has to make about children are "cruel, hard stuff," she says as she folds her judicial robes in her office high in the Calgary Courts Centre. "It's the kind of thing that keeps you up at night." — Geoff Ellwand writerlaw@gmail.com Geoff Ellwand T his month, after completing her full seven-year term, Gail Vickery steps down as chief judge of the Provincial Court of Alberta. She's 70 but has no plans to quit, intending to return to family and youth court. "I'm looking forward to going back in and I'm hoping they have a little office for me somewhere," she says. Vickery is proud of the work the Provincial Court does. "Ninety-seven per cent of the criminal cases in Alberta begin and end in Provincial Court," she says. "Ninety-seven per cent!" She is also proud of the court's role in the judicial system even though it is the lowest level of court. "You know, sometimes people call me Justice Vickery when they first meet me. But I'm always quick to tell them it's Judge Vickery, and I'm proud to say it." Gail Alberta Vickery got her start in rural Manitoba and has led what can only be described as a very interesting life. Vickery never finished high school, but she learned how to type and went to work as a clerk typist. At 19, she married a soldier who was a heavy duty mechanic. He was posted to Cold War Europe and she went with him. "I wanted to travel," says Vickery, so the posting was wonderful and gave her "a good sense of Europe." Her European adventure also ignited her lifelong love of fast cars. Since then, she's had Mini Coopers, MGBs, and "to this day I have a Chrysler with a hemi in it." While she won't confess to putting the pedal down, she will say, with a sly smile, "I just love to drive." Expensive cars were in Vickery's future. When she and her husband got back to Canada, he was sent to Calgary. Vickery decided she might like to go to university and after taking a few high school classes she managed to enter as a mature student.

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