And now I find myself in Fort St. John, BC - the farthest north I've ever been! I drove in last night and started working today, and surprisingly enough I'm already starting to feel the edge of new-place-anxiety wear off. Maybe I'm getting better at adapting to change - it helps that two weeks into living in Victoria I made some amazing friends (these Law Kids!). Reading Meg's post below also gave me a feeling of great calm and comfort - I'm not up here alone.
Fort St. John is the largest city in BC north of Prince George, and like Fort McMurray (which is about the same latitude) it's an oil and gas town. It makes for a very interesting dynamic - it's a very young city with new wealth and a very large income disparity. Fresh out of high school, someone might earn anywhere from $25,000 working a minimum wage service job to $120,000 in the oil field. Along with this comes a predominantly conservative view of family roles - as I found out today - which really colours the kind of work I'll be doing.
I'm working at the women's resource centre, which provides a shelter for women and their children, an outreach centre with donated food, clothing and household items, and a poverty law and housing program. My role will be primarily dealing with poverty law - mostly cases involving landlord/ tenancy issues, employment, social welfare, disability benefits, and child custody. Since I'm funded as a law student outside of the poverty law program, though, I have a bit more flexibility to take on civil case work, so it'll be interesting to see what comes through the door. And I mean literally come through the door! Women come in all throughout the day to ask about what they can do about a situation. Sometimes they come in seeking legal action, sometimes they're in to use the outreach centre and just mention a challenge they're having in casual conversation on their way out. And from there, it seems that my role is to listen actively, to tease out the legislation involved, and to use my legal knowledge to get clients where they need to be. WILD!
Overall I really enjoyed my first day. I felt a level of candidness that I didn't expect from someone doing legal work and it felt great - I guess feminists are feminists wherever they go! Here are two take home messages from the day:
1) Law school teaches you things after all! When asked "what do you know about family law" all I could think about was my property law prof advising us to bring lawyers and accountants on dates. As the day went by though, I nodded at words like "partition", "survivorship" and "security of the person", comforted by the fact that I half knew what was going on and could probably look it up later
2) In poverty law, part of a lawyer's work is a lot like counselling. I think there's a lot of active listening, empathy, non-judgment, and resilience in the face of really devastating cases needed in this kind of work
Overall, a great first day. Let's see what tomorrow brings!
Sharon
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| On the drive up from Vancouver - the land becomes a lot flatter and more prairie like by Fort St. John |
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