ATHABASCA — The office is quiet, but that’s to be expected on a Sunday morning, and when she answered the door her calf-length knit jacket was flowing like a robe around her in a bit of foreshadowing.
There are small pieces of paper littering the carpet, remnants of a former job, or maybe it’s confetti to celebrate a new one. Either way, Athabasca lawyer Joanne Heudes welcomed the Athabasca Advocate into her office strewn with boxes of files to discuss her recent appointment as a provincial court judge for the Edmonton region effective June 1.
“This has been my first week because I started off on holidays,” she said in a July 10 interview. "When I got the phone call, I was pretty much two weeks to my holiday leave date, and I tried to slow everything down knowing I was going to be gone for two months and I'm the only lawyer here.”
But long before that day, Heudes, who grew up in Athabasca, had decided to become a lawyer at a noticeably early age.
“I have always been interested since I was about seven or eight, it's a sense of justice and helping people out too because there's a lot of people who don't get justice or have access to justice. I've always had an interest in that,” said Heudes.
It may have also been inspired partly by reading about Steven Truscott, a man wrongfully accused of murder in 1959 and didn’t get his freedom back until 2007 when it was shown the forensic evidence didn’t support the conviction, but many books had been published long before 2007 questioning the validity of the evidence and conviction.
“It goes back to that sense of justice, that sense of being heard and not having any access, even with the information the police had, the disclosure at that time wasn't available to him. So, the idea of people just having injustices done to them at such young ages. It was nice to hear how the story worked out in the end.”
Heudes was one of 12 men and women, evenly split, to fill eight vacancies and four newly created positions under Minister of Justice and Solicitor General Tyler Shandro.
“The Provincial Court of Alberta plays an essential role in the lives of Albertans by upholding the rule of law through the administration of Alberta’s justice system. I am proud to be part of a government that recognizes that invaluable contribution and honoured to be able to announce the first expansion of the provincial court since 2013,” Shandro said in the May 4 press release.
The press release also noted a 12 per cent increase in the number of active criminal cases over the past year in the criminal court system which already sees 100,000 criminal cases, 17,000 family and child protection cases and 10,000 civil cases per year.
When Heudes returned from vacation, she started packing up her files, closing as many as she could, and the rest will have to be kept until two to 10 years have passed, depending on the file, before they can be shredded.
“You can't come back to a (law) practice,” she said. “So, what I thought was a peaceful situation was not so peaceful. It was shutting things down and turning away people that had already been booked to come in but not say anything."
Once you’re a judge, you can no longer have a law firm, so she has been working steadily recommending clients to other firms and preparing to sell her office building across the street from the Athabasca District Senior’s Drop-in Centre.
“I can't carry on business as part of my position. I can't rent it out or anything.”
Heudes went into the process knowing, if chosen, all of this would happen as any lawyer with at least 10 years at the bar can apply to be considered for placement as a judge.
“First, I am interviewed by judges of the superior courts here in Alberta and if I pass that, then I go through a ministerial level of members of the legal community who then interview me and if I get through that, then I'm eligible to be on a list,” she said. “And it's the minister's discretion to pick people from the list or not pick people from the list.”
Names stay on the list for three years and then the person would start the process all over.
“You do have to have references in the legal community, outside the legal community, people who are not your friends," said Heudes. “There's a whole list of people and they do call them all and ask questions about you, about your character and it's more than just your academics. It's also the ability to bring confidence into a situation. So, it's a long process just to get through the stages and then to be on the list and never knowing if your name is even going to be pulled from it or not.”
It wasn’t difficult though because her curriculum vitae is impeccable – after receiving her Bachelor of Laws from the University of Alberta (U of A) in 1997 she was an assistant negotiator for Indian and Northern Affairs Canada from 1998 to 2000 and then from 2000 to 2004 she was counsel for Justice Canada. From 2005 to 2009, Heudes was the vice-chair for the Department of Health’s Mental Health Review Board and from 2004 to 2011, she was counsel for Justice Canada, both in Nova Scotia, and from 2012 to 2014, she was an associate lawyer for Verhaeghe Law Office before becoming the sole practitioner for Law on Main in Athabasca in 2014.
“It's different when you get the appointment, it sinks in at that point as to how your role has changed and you are the one making the decision in the end,” she said. “And seeing the courtroom from the other side is different. It's my job to keep it moving and make people feel comfortable there at the same time.”
With only a couple of weeks to go before she is on her own, she has been pondering her courtroom demeanour.
“Just even for being unbiased or objective, you have to be aware that everybody comes in with bias and so you've got to know yours,” Heudes said.
Her practice focused on family law, real estate, wills and estates, and child welfare so she admitted the criminal aspect will be a bit different.
“I also have a lot of training in mediation," she said. “I've just done my first observation of JDRs, which is judicial dispute resolution, where we try and resolve it outside of the courtroom, before it becomes a trial inside the courtroom.”
It’s not without some melancholy though as Heudes packs up her office fully aware of why fewer rural lawyers get appointed as judges.
“When you're the only lawyer, one of the few lawyers, and then you also get the pull from the people who are losing a lawyer and you feel like you're letting them down in some way,” she said. “It's hard enough to get lawyers out in the rural communities to even serve people."
But it’s time.
“It was time to do something new than what I've been doing for how many years. I said, it's time for that change,” she said. "It's just a different element of the same thing and yeah, it's scary and exciting. I've said that from the beginning. It's got an element of scary to it as well, the level of responsibility to me is definitely upped.”
She stands for a moment looking at the room she will be leaving as she enters the judge’s chambers.
“I’ve just realized I have so many plants, I’ll have to find someone to take some,” she said.
