A cool experience I recently had.

Well it's been very long since I've last uploaded this blog. It is long overdue. I have had some great experiences over the Summer that I have periodically linked on Facebook, but I've decided to use this blog to talk about a recent experience I had.

One of the local defence lawyers, Ivan Ladouceur,  has a herd of buffalo and lives outside of High Prairie. Ivan is Metis, mostly Dene and Cree. The Dene nation and the Woodland Cree are two of the larger First Nations that live in our area. He is originally from the Fort Chipewan area, which is north of Fort MacMurray in northeastern Alberta, but he works out of the High Prairie area. He is planning on moving back up north, so he invited us to his home to cull some buffalo and attend a sweat ceremony.

Now I didn't and probably don't know much about going for a sweat, but it is and probably will be one of the most unique and memorable experiences I'll have while living in northern Alberta.

So as to not offend anyone, I'll skip details about the buffalo cull, but we culled two buffalo in the morning and then started preparing for the sweat ceremony in the afternoon.

Ivan built the sweat lodge itself, which you can see here:

I didn't take any photos inside, but what is inside is a smaller dome like structure that is made of willow branches and covered with sacks and skins. Inside the dome is a pit where you place hot stones. The stones we used were volcanic rock from B.C. that he keeps outside.

Before the ceremony, we had to start a fire to heat the stones. We lit a huge fire and let it burn for a couple of hours to heat the stones until they were glowing. Ivan then burnt some sweetgrass and made a prayer for the buffalo and for the sweat and then we smudged ourselves with the sweetgrass. Smudging, as far as I can understand is like breathing in the smoke and wafting it towards you. After we smudged ourselves, we entered the sweatlodge.

Men sat on the right and women sat on the left of the entrance. The men only wore shorts and the women wore what looked like nightgowns. After entering the sweatlodge, we all sat down, the leader, Ivan, said a few prayers and we passed around a tobacco pipe. After we had finished smoking the pipe, we brought in the stones. It was really interesting. The stones would be removed from the fire outside with a pitchfork, dusted off and then transferred into the lodge. Once in the lodge, Ivan would use a pair of deer antlers to grab the stones and place them into the pit inside the sweatlodge. After we gathered a sufficient amount of stones, we would close the entrance to the sweatlodge and it would be pitch black except for the glow coming off the stones. Ivan would sprinkle tobacco and some sort of root over the stones, say some prayers and the share some words. Everyone in the lodge would share some words if they wanted to. After each person shared some words, there would be singing and prayers. Throughout the whole time water would be sprinkled onto the stones. It got hot, really really hot.

We would occasionally have breaks to get some air before going back in and adding more stones. In total we used 14 stones, and it felt like we had sweated for a couple of hours. I was drenched and dehydrated by the end of it, but I also felt like I had really sweat out some toxins. My limited understanding is that the sweats are used to sweat out and discuss what's going on in your life. It is both a time for pain and healing, both physically and psychologically.

After the sweat ended, the men would leave first, followed by the women and stand in a line. Each person that left after the first would hug the other and thank them.

My knowledge of First Nations practices, customs, and culture is so limited. I am really thankful that I got to have this great experience.

An eventful May of outdoor activities and the return to Vancouver

So I haven't updated in awhile so I promise that this post will have more substance. And when I mean substance, I mean photos, because frankly, words are less colourful. Except for some words, like grandiloquent. That is a colourful word.

Anyway ...winter has finally left Alberta for the most part and we got to enjoy spring in Peace River. Everything is green: the hills, the trees, the grass. It looked amazing out here ... until the caterpillars came out and ate all the trees.

 As I have learned, the evil tent caterpillar infests and eats all the trees in the area, so all the beautiful green trees become brown and bare. I want to spare you the visual horror, so just trust me in knowing that the beautiful green hills seen below are no longer beautiful and green.

This past month I also had the opportunity to go to Jasper for the first time as part of the Crown Retreat. I have never been to Jasper before, in recent memory, and I drove down to see the beautiful wildlife and take in some hiking. I recently started training for a Triathlon in September so Jasper was the perfect playground to run on some trails, bike on some roads and burn off the 5 beers and one steak I had planned to consume every night. Sadly, most nights, it was just the one beer, and no steak. 

Some of my favourite moments include hiking down Maligne Canyon, and hiking up Whistler's Mountain, not to be confused with Whistler Mountain in BC. Whistler's Mountain is a 7km hike with an altitude change of around 1000m with a trail taking you from the base to the top and a tram to take you down (and up I suppose). The trail was good for the first half, but I didn't manage to quite escape winter yet, which was evident when the hiking trail I followed for half the ascent disappeared under metres of snow and I was forced to bushwhack and scale a ridge for 2 hours. Also fun fact: Stop hiking alone! It doesn't help you if you get hurt or lost and you tend to go crazy talking to yourself on a deserted mountain trail.

 

 

The view up top was spectacular.

Another thing about Jasper is the abundance of wildlife. I saw some caribou, elk and deer.

The elk here are extremely aggressive and they reminded me of the time when I came here, about 20 years ago with my parents. I was sleeping in the car when I woke up, saw an elk, promptly walked up to it, and pet it. I was then knocked unconscious as it kicked me in the back of my head. I guess that explains my animosity towards the elk, and their animosity towards me. They ... remember. 

After leaving Jasper I travelled down to Calgary for the Victoria Day Weekend. I passed through the Icefields Parkway stopping at Athabasca Falls and just before the Icefields before making it down to visit my girlfriend, Joyce.

 

 

Meanwhile, in Peace River, apparently a rainstorm had struck the town and washed out the highway on Judah Hill, one of the smaller highways to get out of town. That poor highway, I wonder if they'll ever fix it? What's really unfortunate is that the residents who live on the hill have their morning drive extended by 40 minutes, which is incredibly inconvenient.

By the end of the week, I travelled to Vancouver to attend a friend's wedding. It was Joyce's first time there, and as well as eating the requisite sushi that the town had to offer, we biked the Seawall, which is a paved trail along Stanley Park, and hiked the Grouse Grind, which is a 2.9km 800m hike on Grouse Mountain.

The weather cooperated as best it could, and my friends Jeff and Christine got married.

I returned to Peace River tonight to observe that the caterpillars had indeed taken over, and all was lost with the world.

END OF CIRCUIT

Ok so although this week is actually the end of my circuit rotation, I didn't have to travel anywhere this week whereas last week was major driving.

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THIS WAS MY DRIVING ADVENTURE OVER 5 DAYS

Last week's adventure started on a Sunday when I drove into Slave Lake. The next Monday I drove 1.5 h north to Wabasca for a quick day in Court. Although it was a day scheduled only for trials, of which there were 7 trials scheduled, not a single matter ran, so I spent the rest of the day driving around the hamlet of Wabasca. 

It seems like quite a beautiful place, and I would like/am going back in the Summer/Spring. Although the overall population is quite small, maybe 1600 people, there is a lot of ongoing petty crime and rise of drug and gang crime in the area which is quite sad. The majority of restricted firearm matters come out of here, with young gangs just trying to get back at each other. There is also a family aspect involved with a lot of matters, with vendettas going back and forth.

This dog really didn't like getting his picture taken.

This is the main intersection in the town.

The majority of the housing here are trailers; I personally have seen very few houses.

One of the cool things for me is that Wabasca-Desmerais is surrounded by huge swathes of forest, where there is a logging industry. Although it is sad to see so many beautiful trees be cut down and turned into paper or what not, I ventured into a couple of yard to just see how many trees they have cut down. It is a staggering amount. Imagine football fields piled with logs 2 stories high and those are the lumber yards.

I almost got stuck going down this road. Luckily the tractor driver told me where to go.

I parked my car just to try to show the scale of how high these piles are.

 On Tuesday I drove to the small hamlet of Red Earth Creek which is about a two hour drive from Slave Lake. I don't have many photos of this place; it's basically a camp town for people who work in the oil patch nearby. One interesting thing about Red Earth Creek is the courthouse is just a glorified trailer. It is the first trailer courthouse I've ever been too and it just goes to show that you're really not in the city anymore. 

 Once again no trials ran so it was just another beautiful 4 hours on the road into another part of town. 

Wednesday I stayed in Slave Lake, which was a relief because there appeared to be a snowstorm overnight that caused havoc on the road. I didn't really experience much havoc because I stayed in town but the next day...

Thursday was my last circuit day. I had to drive in and out of Wabasca from Slave Lake and then back to Peace River. The weather was awful. White-out awful. Blind while driving awful. Go into the ditch awful. It was even worse south of us, with a 100 car pile up south of Edmonton and really bad fatality in Westlock about 1 hour south of Slave Lake.

 So after the great escape I was so glad to be back at my basement apartment. It's still a work in progress, but I will send some pictures your way when it's almost done.

Friday was Call to the Bar day. It started with me speaking for my first Queen's Bench (Superior Court) matter in the morning. I put on the robes for the first time since I billed Alberta for them. They amazingly fit. The matter was just a quick speak to, and then my Call to the Bar ceremony was in the afternoon. 

In Alberta, you can have a private Call to the Bar where one judge and your principal admit you into the law society. I chose Judge Paul, the main judge I had seen for the past three months on the Southern Circuit. He said some very nice words, made me swear on a Bible, and voila, I am now a member of the Law Society of Alberta, and not a moment too soon as my LSUC fees were due and there is a different payment option for not practising in Ontario lawyers. The ceremony was attended by members of my office as well as some local lawyers and sheriffs in town. It's not very often that you have new Calls in Peace River, so it's nice that the legal community comes out to see and celebrate with you. 

There's me taking the oath.

All the lawyers in my office were in robes as well. 

Judge Paul and I after the Call

 And that was last week. I'm so happy/relieved it is over.

Photos and Video from the road

So I've been driving a lot on this constant road from Peace River to Slave Lake and in order to show people what I go through, I have been collecting pics and videos while driving through snow, sunshine and fog.


This one video was from my first drive out of Wabasca-Desmerais. I had never driven in heavy snow before and I had to drive 4 hours to get home after a day in Court. The snow was actually a lot better here than about an hour earlier.

The next set of videos consists of the one long trip where I go through McLennan, through some fog and ultimately down the valley into Peace River.

Work differences

Having worked for just a little while in Ontario as a Crown before being tossed into the North, there are a couple of adjustments I have had to make. This blog post is mostly for the benefit of the my lawyer friends, especially those in Criminal law, so I apologize if you have no idea what I am talking about. Think about it, if you never get into trouble with the law, you never have to go to Court, and so you'll never have to understand what I'm talking about. It's a good thing.

One of the major differences that I have experienced since working in Peace River is the combination of Set Date Court, Plea Court and Trial Court all into one Court. At all the courthouses up here, and this could be a small jurisdiction thing (I really have no idea), there is usually only courtroom. If you're lucky there might be two. Peace River, however has also Queen's Bench (Superior Court) so we are graced with a mighty 4 courtrooms.

A typical court day involves Set Date (Docket Court) in the morning, with trials set for the afternoon or after Docket Court finishes. During Docket Court, they call Youth matters first, then Adult matters, then Youth trials then Adult trials. Docket court is always before a judge, so if a matter comes up and the Accused wants to enter a guilty plea, the plea and sentencing happen at that moment. We also deal with basic provincial offences, but actual traffic court trials go before a commissioner and a special traffic Crown. There is also a Fed Crown for all the drug matters, who often leave instructions or come in every couple of weeks.

For those of us former criminal law students who used to get into court early to sign up on the list and get your matters called first, that doesn't happen here. Matters are called all alphabetically and there's no  jumping the line except for rare occasions. A typical docket date of pure docket can last a full day, which really puts us into trouble if we have trials set to run when docket ends.

For our friends who wonder about s.11(b), we call it Askov out here, referring to the good old case, and it's not really an issue. We once had an office meeting where we were complaining about 5 month delay between Docket and trial. Sometimes simple matters can get a trial within 3 weeks. It's quite the change.

Trial dates are similar to those in Ontario, but there's a bigger issue of trial collapsing out here. Some days in court I've had 7 trials scheduled, all that don't run or resolve. It is very typical.

It's also quite interesting that major cases can also be scheduled after docket. You can have a preliminary inquiry scheduled for a docket day, with the expectation that docket will end by 11:30 and you'll have to rest of the day to run the prelim. For more major matters, some courts have created special trial only days, where you would schedule 2-3 more serious cases with respect to charges or time requirements.

The judges here also have a directive that if they start a trial, they will finish and deliver judgement that day. The first trial I ran in Peace River started at 10:30 am and judgment and sentencing came out at 6 pm. Lunch break is around the same time as well, from noon to about 1:30, and like almost all courthouses, there is never any good food nearby.

New files for the day are often picked up the morning of at the local RCMP detachment, so a quiet docket day going in could be an illusion when you pick up huge stacks at the police station. The docket Crown is the screening Crown, so often elections and early resolution is decided on the spot, especially when it comes to in custody Accused.

That's about it for how things work, or so I've come to figure out here.

On my first day, I had to set a trial date. I didn't know how and asked the judge. He told me to grab the calendar in front of me, and pick a date that was open. It sure was different than the last time I set a trial date in Toronto.

Fun Facts about Slave Lake

Now I could tell you wikipedia facts about Slave Lake, like that it had a huge fire in 2011, and most of the town is rebuilt, but rather I'd like to share with you the fun facts of Slave Lake that I have experienced over my past 2.5 months.

So here's a list of Josh's things he's learned since coming down here:

1. Where to stay:

There are four to five hotels in Slave Lake of various notoriety. Don't think that you can just waltz in after driving up from Edmonton and find a place to stay. With the development of oil in the area, hotels are booked weeks in advance. I know what you're thinking, small town, booked hotels?!! It's true.

2. What to eat:

One unexpected surprise for me is that there is actually a large Filipino population in town, which has led to the creation of a Filipino restaurant. Having never really eaten Filipino cuisine before, it's the place to go in town. Don't worry about finding it. Town's so small all you got to do is ask or drive down the main drive and make a left turn at the Royal Bank. I have yet to learn a street name in town and yet I still manage to find my way around town.

3. What to see and do:

Slave Lake has apparently an amazing beach. It being winter, I don't really know. This place apparently rocks in the summer, and I personally have gone for a couple of snowshoes and hikes whenever I've had a chance though. Slave Lake is actually on the edge of Lesser Slave Lake Provincial Park, which is a huge swathe of forestland that is filled with wolves and cougars. One thing you should do: when you see fresh tracks and fresh scat, it may be a good time to turn around and not hike solo by yourself, which I may or may not have done.

That's about all I can say about town. I'll end with a funny anecdote:

Last month I ran a trial with a complainant who last week became an Accused for another trial I ran. It's a small world after all.

Slave Lake: Where I actually have been spending most of time

So although I moved to Peace River as the new Crown Prosecutor, I actually haven't been spending much time in Peace River. The Peace River Office is the regional Crown office for northern Alberta. Our office is in charge of criminal prosecutions for most of Northern Alberta, as we service most of the North aside from Fort McMurray. To give you a sense of the terrain we cover, here's a map of all the district points for Peace River. Peace River will be marked as an A on the map.


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A: Peace River
B: Falher
C: High Prairie
D: Slave Lake
E: Wabasca-Desmerais
F: Red Earth Creek
G: Fairview
H: High Level
I: Fort Vermillion
J: Assumption

And here's a map to show how much area we cover in Alberta. Also you can see that it's 5 hours north of Edmonton, and 8 hours north of Calgary by car.


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As you can see, that's a lot of driving. What we do is we break up the regions into three circuits: the North, the Central and the South. Each Crown goes on a three month rotation through the different circuits.

I have been assigned the South Circuit as my first circuit. The courts I go to are Slave Lake, which is a town of about 6000, and Wabasca-Desmerais, which is a hamlet located within a reserve. The map below illustrates my weekly commute. It takes about 2.5 h to drive from Peace River to Slave Lake, A to B, and then about 1.5 h to drive from Slave Lake to Wabasca-Desmerais, B to C.
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I usually leave on a Monday or Tuesday and get back on Wednesday or Thursday. Basically I spend 3-4 nights a week at the Holiday Inn Express at Slave Lake. Alberta Justice covers my mileage and hotels so gas meals and hotels are covered. Podcasts that I listen to for those long roadtrips, however come at my expense.

So this has been my life for the past 2.5 months, and my rotation ends at the end of March.

Long Overdue

Hi Folks,

So I believe I told many of you that I would start a blog when I moved up here. Well it has been two months and 12 days since I got off a bus at the hotel in Peace River, and it has been quite a ride so far. I'm not quite sure how much I can write in a first blog post that won't just be piles of text, so I'll try to supplement and break it up into sections. If you follow me on Facebook, you might already know parts of what I've been up to, what with the random wall posts and picture uploads. The purpose of this blog is to fill in the gaps for the people who don't have facebook, and to write more than just wallposts. 

Enjoy!