Lane Changer - Karly Wilson, waiting aside life’s highway for the next lane
gazebo dinner and an interview!
Seven years ago, when I interviewed Karly Wilson to article with me at Iler Campbell, I had a feeling we were going to hit it off. Not just a fellow UVIC law grad, but someone smart, with a sense of humour and an ease with the world. Now at age 34, with many lives behind her, and five years into her legal career, she’s looking for a new place for her talents. Changing lanes often includes some frantic shoulder-checking and doesn’t typically allow for reflection, but Karly’s taking time to contemplate the best next lane for her. Read on to find out why.
Karly Wilson was born in Port Elgin, Ontario and grew up outside Calgary, Alberta in the town of Cochrane. She first aspired to study dinosaurs. Then she set her sights on the music program at the University of Victoria, dreaming of playing piano professionally. By the end of high school, she’d concluded the music world was competitive and that the thing that gave her such joy could well become drudgery. She decided to study something else. But what??
Karly was academically inclined across the board so at her father’s suggestion, she wrote all the subjects on a flipchart and blind-tossed a marker. It landed on English. If this lane changer series has taught us nothing else, we know that whatever people choose at 18 is unlikely to stick. And that’s the case for Karly’s father too. You see, Wilson Junior is inspired by Wilson Senior, who has made big changes in his life from Engineering at Bruce Power, to Nortel, to his own successful telecom company. It’s a lane changing dynasty and so when the Sharpie hit English, neither Papa Wilson nor Karly missed a beat.
UVIC was still on Karly’s mind - and what’s not to love about it! - so she got herself accepted there to study English. As she neared the end of undergrad, a prof suggested she apply for her Masters, also at UVIC. But - lane change alert - this was not meant to last. She soon realized that comparing two versions of King Lear was not contributing much to society. Feeling out of her intellectual depth for the first time and being in a bad romantic relationship didn’t help either. She withdrew after one term and worked at a whack of jobs in Victoria. Inspired by the refugee lawyer in Infidel, the 2006 autobiography of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali Dutch activist, Karly figured being a lawyer could contribute more to the world than deep dives into Shakespeare. She entered law at UVIC in 2015.
Three years later, her then-boyfriend brought her to Ontario (an upgrade from that guy in Victoria, but still not her forever-choice). That’s when I selected her from the 100 applicants who competed each year to article at Iler Campbell. She had “the time of [her] life” articling and assures me she didn’t just say that because I was her boss. She loved the range of work but got hooked on the stuff I was doing - the messy human drama that results when people live together. In January 2020, I knew we had a keeper in Karly and offered her a job as an associate to start after her June Call to the Bar.
COVID forced lane changes on everyone and Karly was no exception. Among the many difficult things I had to do at the beginning of COVID was swap out Karly’s full-time job offer with an offer of enough work to equal the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit, or CERB as we knew it. Like so many employers, we just didn’t know what our financial fortunes would hold. She accepted because unsurprisingly no-one else was hiring young lawyers either.
This new lane was foreign for us both: the first six months of our articling time together had involved much in-person togetherness. Now, instead of being on stage at Roy Thomson Hall in a sea of hundreds of others in their brand new robes being called to the bar, I listened while Karly recited her oaths to me over WebEx and then deemed her a lawyer. Karly cycled to Weston periodically to help me witness will-signings in my gazebo, 6 feet away from me, and from clients. But otherwise we were remote in every way.
Karly sent out 48 job applications that summer and I was thrilled for her when she secured a full-time education position with the Canadian Centre for Human Rights (then known as CERA). She wanted to use her legal qualifications though and so by August 2021, she was doing housing law at the Don Valley Community Legal Service (DVCLS).
At DVCLS, Karly threw everything she had into unlimited housing cases a housing crisis provides. The work ticked all the boxes for her - making differences both to individuals and systemically. In three and a half years, she represented tenants at the Landlord and Tenant Board 155 times; handled twice the average caseload of any other person on the DVCLS housing team; rose to team leader; attended Divisional Court and the Court of Appeal; was featured in Toronto Life magazine; and lobbied for and achieved a renoviction by-law at the City of Toronto. In fact, not only did she achieve that by-law, but she spotted a loophole in the draft that unscrupulous landlords would surely have squeezed through and managed to get a councillor to move an amendment on the fly at committee before Council’s approval. I watched Karly speak that day and couldn’t help feel proud of this confident, capable, plain-spoken, and whip-smart former protege. But it wasn’t me.
This was all Karly, moving at an unsustainable pace clocking 70 hours of work weekly, and by the way, also completing actual marathons at the same time. By this time, Karly had reconnected with a man she’d known a decade earlier in Victoria (they now plan to marry). Following the intervention he and her parents staged last Christmas, she finally recognized the burnout she’d been denying. She gave the clinic two months’ notice in early January.
Karly’s lucky. Her partner will begin his medical practice next year in Victoria and they have enough family resources to get through until then without her bringing any income into the relationship. Instead, she’s using the time to reclaim a feeling of worth outside of paid work. She’s left space in her life for novelty, resuming piano, writing, dancing, and other hobbies abandoned because of the frantic clinic law pace. She does a little contract work but only stuff that interests her and feels right.
Karly Wilson isn’t sure what her next lane in Victoria might bring. New plans emerge regularly - housing policy work? a social work degree? parenthood? Longer term, does she envisage yet further lane changes? You bet! She’s thinking about running for office and I wouldn’t count her out. With her smarts and her people skills, Karly Wilson’s one to watch.
Missed previous Lane Changer profiles?
Peter Chandler, how it all began for me
Cathy Crowe, her lane is the street
Marissa Bastidas, same lane, new direction
Pam Hudak, living on a multi-lane highway
Jennifer, crossing lanes from Phuket to pup-minder
Emma Simpson, from taxiway to writing terminal
Jessica Waraich, changing lanes on the career on-ramp
Michelle Simmons, straddling two lanes in her mid-40s
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