Symposium on Lifelong Learning in Professionalism:
Additional Speaker Biograpies

Alison Harvison Young

The Honourable Justice Alison Harvison Young was appointed to the Superior Court of Ontario on November 19, 2004 where she sits in Toronto.   At the time of her appointment, she was Dean and Professor of the Faculty of Law, Queen's University, Kingston Ontario in August, 1998.  Prior to that, she had been a professor on the law faculty at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, since 1988 where she had also served as Associate Dean between 1993-95.  In 1997 she was the recipient of the John W. Durnford Teaching Excellence Award and also of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada research grant to support her research in the areas of family law and new reproductive technologies.

Professor Harvison Young received her B.A. from Carleton University (1975), a B.C.L./LL.B. from McGill (1983) and clerked for The Honourable Justice W.Z. Estey at the Supreme Court of Canada (1983-84).  After practicing law for two years, she pursued graduate studies in law at Brasenose College, Oxford (B.C.L. 1988) and returned to join the law faculty at McGill.  Her teaching and research areas have been in the areas of Administrative, Comparative and Family Law, and have recently included legal and regulatory aspects of new reproductive technologies.  Recent publications include: "Let's Try Again…This Time With Feeling: Bill C-6 and New Reproductive Technologies" (2005) 38 U.B.C. Law Review, 123-145; "The Changing Family, Rights Discourse and the Supreme Court of Canada", (2001) 80 Can. Bar Rev., 749-792; "This Child Does Have 2 (Or More) Fathers ... Chartier and Step-parent Support Obligations", (2000) 45 McGill L.J., 107-131;  "Reconceiving the Family:  Challenging the Paradigm of the Exclusive Family" (1998) 6 Amer. J. Gender & Law 505; "New Reproductive Technologies in Canada and the United States:  Same Problems, Different Discourses" (1998) 12 Temple Int'l & Comp. Law J. 43; and "Wrestling With the Limits of Law:  Regulating New Reproductive Technologies" (1998) 6 Health Law J. 239 (with Angela Wasunna).

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Diane Susan Lightstone

Diane Lightstone, of Ottawa, is currently Education Director and Senior Advisor for the National Judicial Institute. She is also a freelance writer/editor for newspapers and magazines and was a member of the Consent and Capacity Board. Her current community involvement includes Writers' Trust of Canada and the Jacob M. Lowry Collection of the National Library of Canada. Ms. Lightstone holds a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Western Ontario.

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Alan Treleaven

Law Society of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC

B.A. (Western), LL.B. (Toronto), LL.M. (McGill, Institute of Comparative Law)

Member of the Ontario and BC bars

Director of Education and Practice, Law Society of British Columbia

Alan's primary Law Society responsibilities include oversight of

  • Mandatory Continuing Professional Development Program
  • Bar Admission Course
  • Articling
  • Licensing, including transfer and law mobility
  • Practice and Ethical Advice service
  • Practice Standards inspection and remediation program
  • Law Society educational programs
  • Federation of Law Societies liaison.

In past professional lives Alan has been

  • Director of Education for the Law Society of Upper Canada
  • a lecturer at Osgoode Hall Law School (York University)
  • a civil litigator in Vancouver, BC.

Alan is a Past-President of the International Association for Continuing Legal Education.

Alan is currently a member of the CBA's International Development Committee, and has designed and taught in legal education programs in Cambodia, China and Kenya.

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