Canadian Lawyer

w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m M A Y 2 0 1 7 11 O n the morning of Tuesday, May 3, 2016, Anna Gillespie, a Fort McMurray, Alta. family lawyer, noted that there was not as much smoke as usual from the wildfire raging on the edge of her community. So, as she did every weekday morning, she drove her 16-month-old daughter to the daycare she used in the northern part of the city. Then Gillespie headed to the courthouse down- town for family court hearings. Back at the office after lunch, she happened to look out of her window and noticed the sky was very dark. She didn't realize it right away but the fire that came to be known as "The Beast" had hit town. She jumped into her car and went to pick up her daughter. A drive that nor- mally takes 20 minutes took more than an hour because of the traffic. Gillespie noticed the long lineups at gas stations. She says she wasn't panicking but admits she was starting to grow tense. After picking up her baby, she met her husband back at their house. They piled their two dogs and a few sentimental and essential things into their car and headed out of town. "The traffic was crawling, it looked like we were driving into a black cloud," she says. So they decided to go to her husband's office building just outside the city. After an uncomfortable night, they drove back through Fort Mac heading for Edmon- ton. "I'll never forget it," says Gillespie. "It looked like something from a movie. It was smoky and there were cars abandoned everywhere, a city bus in the ditch, every- thing was smouldering. You could see little fires everywhere." After a sometimes har- rowing five-hour drive, the family arrived in Edmonton. Within a few days, Gillespie and her co-workers began to work remotely. She \ AT L A N T I C \ C E N T R A L \ P R A I R I E S \ W E S T REGIONAL WRAP-UP Lawyers rebuild a year after Fort Mac fires W E S T Continued on page 12 A view of the Fort McMurray forest fires on May 3, 2016 from the backyard of local lawyer Don Scott. Written by experts More content, better value Smart, powerful tools Superior work product TOOLS OF THE TRADE Get there faster and more reliably with Lexis Practice Advisor ® Canada. With thousands of practice notes, forms, precedents, and time-saving features, we're your go-to for getting work started better, faster. Lexis Practice Advisor ® Canada is the industry's leading practice resource with content created and maintained by our internal team of specialized lawyers and hundreds of leading practitioners from the top law firms in Canada. Go ahead, take the next step. Lexis Practice Advisor ® Canada helps you apply the law LEXISNEXIS.CA/TOOLOFTHETRADE ntitled-3 1 2017-04-13 2:56 PM

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