Despite being a mature student with some savings, money was tight for me 20 years ago when I studied law at UVIC. I wasn’t dining out a lot but when I did, Rebar, Victoria BC’s best known vegetarian restaurant, competed with Barb’s Fish & Chips for my top choice. No surprise then that I drove back from Victoria to resettle in Toronto, I had a copy of Rebar: Modern Food CookBook, tucked into a box aside the McGill Style Guide of Legal Citation and my Admin Law text. Less surprise that the Rebar cookbook is the only book I acquired in law school that I still own!

They are lane changers and there are Lane Changers. My friend, Pam Hudak, is definitely the latter.

Pam compares navigating her four decades of adulthood to being on the multilane highway she was recently on in Buenos Aires. I gather she means it’s been a little chaotic and a lot exhilarating. Let’s take a look.

Marissa and I have walked the same path together for three years. Literally. We meet at James Gardens two Sunday mornings every month and walk the Humber Trail. And we’ve talked about our plans: as I geared up to leave law and move to Chandlerville, she left her 35 year job leading a supportive housing provider and reinvented herself as a life coach. Only through this interview though, did I realize coaching’s always been her schtick - her tenants, her staff, and her children have all benefited from her innate talent for helping people find their calling. And now she’s found hers!

When you have three pounds of asparagus to eat in just four days (I’m leaving for a conference) you can’t waste any opportunity to eat the stuff. Plus I love it.

If you’ve been in Toronto for a while, you’ll know the name Cathy Crowe. She’s the fierce advocate who pushes the City to open warming centres in winter, speaks out when people die due to inadequate shelter, calls politicians to account when police dismantle encampments, and so on. She’s also a long-time housing co-oper and because of that, I consider her a friend. I was thrilled when Cathy agreed to a lane-changer interview and wowza, does her life have some significant shifts!

When people are surprised at the big life-changes I’ve made, I tell them it’s Dad who showed me the path: Peter Chandler, the original lane-changer.  No better day than Fathers Day to reflect on it.

Sunday was my annual trip to Niagara Region to get asparagus from Redbud Farm. I returned with 20 pounds - enough for me and to fill orders from other grateful urbanites. After a wonderful day with my Redbud friends not to mention the great spread they put on for lunch, I wasn’t really up to cooking. However, I had to get some more asparagus into me.

Each army marshals its troops underground during winter, preserving energy while working out strategy for their four-way struggle for supremacy over stolen land.

The established colonizer of this land calls itself the ground elder. At the seasonal dawn, its soldiers bore exploratory tunnels in every direction, wringing life from anything in their earthy path. Warmth and moisture lure underground warriors skyward. They burst through the surface on recon missions, looking for space to settle. Their first taste of CO2 is jarring, but like defecting spies, it’s not long before none of these invaders contemplates a return behind the soil curtain. Instead, they don the green and white camouflage uniform of other aboveground armies and continue their menacing ways, choking the locals and other settlers seeking control over the same plot. Not content to dominate underground and on the surface, they erect sky-high flashy flag-flowers, a propaganda assault to remind others of their importance. The locals rename them goutweed, demonstrating disdain for their conquerer. Ground elders, though, are as oblivious to the slight as the English are to Canada’s Indigenous populations.

Law is a tool. Lawyers and judges have a responsibility to talk and write clearly so that others can effectively use the tool.