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And, at those moments, you think, "Yes," you know, "change is possible. . . ." ON PREPARING FOR HURDLES like, "Oh, my God." So, that was . . . it was scary, of course, but really, really incred- ible because I was the first woman. KIRBY CHOWN: I think for me . . . when I got this management position at Mc- Carthy Tétrault in 2002. I had in the back of my mind, I thought, "Gee, it seems to me we could be doing more for women," just thinking of my own firm. And so, fi- nally being in a position where I had some power, I was sitting at the table, I had re- sources. Having that wonderful experi- ence where you have an idea in your head, but that it is actually then embraced by a broader group of people who take it and get excited and say, "Yes, we can do things." CHOWN: I don't think there is any way of preparing. You come up and there is the hurdle and you think, "Am I going to fall down, or am I going to leap over, or am I going to climb over?" So I started my hurdle-running early. I had twins in my first year of practice. And in the litigation group of McCarthys, at that time, there were two other women and neither of them had children. So a woman having children at that stage in their career was a novelty in the law firm. So I didn't have a lot of role models to see how women managed that, but it was instructive. Talk about engaging and stimulating to have twins . . . well, I had to figure these things out right away. How was I going to man- age learning to be a litigator, and manage having these children? So it was a bit of trial and error but it was like, "Here you are, open your mouth, start requesting, because, if not, you know, you are going to be overwhelmed." CARLA SWANSBURG: Well, even when I interviewed at the firm that I ended up first working at, it was almost like that is when I saw the hurdle, because the whole first round of interviews I didn't meet any women. And because I had come through law school at a time when there were almost half as many women, you really notice that, "Wow, where are all the girls?" But it was almost sort of coming out a bit too naively because I didn't realize until I actually got here and got into the profession that it was such a male-dominated world. And I found, and it perhaps was something that I and other women had brought on themselves, but the determination was, "Well, I will just have to do better than the male. I will just have to work harder than the men. I will just have to sort of prove myself." ON STAYING IN THE PROFESSION CRONK: I think, in the '70s and in the '80s . . . there simply weren't enough women in mainstream litigation. So the result was . . . you just simply worked very hard. May- be at the back of your mind, you were say- ing, "Well, I will just prove that I can work harder and be, not as good as, but better than." The standard was never "as good as." The issue was better than the men, staying later and getting up early. That was very much a product of the times. SWANSBURG: I would echo some of the comments about why you stick with it. I figured, "Well, what else can I do that would be a rewarding career, that would be intellectually challenging, that I am ca- pable and qualified to do, and that gives me some responsibility and some auton- omy?" And, you know, I thought about it many times over my career, and there was no other answer. This was the profession that would give me all of that. 24 JUNE 2008 www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com ntitled-2 1 5/14/08 10:47:21 AM