The Law Society of Ontario has elected Windsor Law alumna Jacqueline Horvat (LLB 2001) its treasurer for the 2022-23 term.
The post is the top elected official of the body that regulates lawyers and paralegals practising in the province.
“I am honoured to be elected by my peers to this leadership role and am dedicated to working with the board to help the Law Society make decisions that are in the public interest,” Horvat said.
“I look forward to working with benchers, stakeholders, and fellow licensees to ensure that diverse points of view are taken into account in order to serve the public well.”
Horvat is a civil and commercial litigation lawyer and a founding partner of Spark Law, a firm with offices in Toronto and Windsor. Splitting her time between the two cities, Horvat is an occasional instructor and frequent guest lecturer at the UWindsor Faculty of Law. She is also involved in collaborative projects at the University, including the Reclaim Pro Bono Project which provides free legal advice and representation to victims of online harassment, impersonation, and other technology-facilitated violations.
Horvat is also the Ontario representative on the Council of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada and a member of the Independent Advisory Board for Supreme Court of Canada Judicial Appointments.
“Jacqueline will be an excellent asset to the Law Society as treasurer,” said UWindsor dean of law Reem Bahdi. “She has a wide breadth of professional experience and long record of service to the public interest. We offer our sincere congratulations to her and to the Law Society on her election.”
Horvat was first elected to the Law Society in 2011 as a bencher, and re-elected in 2015 and 2019. She has served on numerous Law Society committees, including as chair of the technology task force and vice-chair of the strategic planning and advisory committee. She will officially take office as treasurer June 28.
—Sarah Sacheli
Jacqueline HorvatReem BahdiAlumniAcademic Area: LawThe Faculty of Science invites all science alumni to come and celebrate the 2022 graduates on Saturday, June 25, from 1 to 4 p.m.
The open house-style event is an opportunity to welcome the recent graduates into the alumni family as well as to reconnect with other alumni and tour the newest research facilities.
The festivities will take place in the Essex Centre of Research (CORe) building on the main campus of the University of Windsor. There will be appetizers, swag, and free parking in the Assumption Hall Parking Lot - 408 Huron Church Rd.
The event is open to all new graduates and alumni of the Faculty of Science. To register, visit bit.ly/scireunite and sign up by Friday, June 17.
For more information, email sciencealumni@uwindsor.ca. The event is sponsored by the University of Windsor Alumni Association.
ConvocationAlumniAcademic Area: ScienceThe University of Windsor is well represented among recipients of the 2022 Arts Leadership Awards from the Windsor Endowment for the Arts:
They will receive their awards at a ceremony at 7 p.m. Friday, May 20, on the Vision Corridor outside the Chimczuk Museum. The event will also see the presentation of the Mayor’s Arts Awards by Windsor mayor Drew Dilkens (BComm 1996, MBA 1997, JD 2011) and grants totalling $29,000 from WEA to 11 artists and organizations.
Find more information and register to attend on the event website.
Clara HowittSarah JarvisCarl LavoyMichael PotterDrew DilkensAlumniIn a Mother’s Day video tribute by the Pennsylvania State University football team, Theo Johnson recalls the day his mother learned she had won admission to the University of Windsor law school.
A single mother raising six sons, Amy Johnson (JD 2015) had been turned down elsewhere. Now Theo had collected an official-looking letter from the family’s mailbox.
“We kind of all huddled up in the living room, opened the letter up, my mom read it,” he says. “We all celebrated and cried together and laughed together. And we kind of knew at that point that our life had changed forever.”
Theo Johnson is a sophomore tight end for the Nittany Lions. The team calls its video a “must-watch story of strength and perseverance.”
The family had struggled and at times found itself unhoused. Amy Johnson decided she needed to further her education to improve the situation for her kids.
“I wanted to be able to have a job where I was going to be making better than minimum wage and was going to be able to provide for them properly,” she says.
After completing undergraduate studies in social work, she was determined to pursue a legal career. She is now a family law litigator.
“I found a law school who said: ‘come on, you’re going to be great’ and they welcomed me with my six kids,” she says.
Dean of law Reem Bahdi says the faculty was impressed from the day the family first walked into its building.
“I have vivid images of the kids sitting in the back row of the Moot Court, colouring while classes or events went on around them,” she says. “She and her children continue to inspire us to strive to do our best regardless of the challenges before us.”
Amy JohnsonReem BahdiAlumniAcademic Area: LawGraduating from the University of Windsor with a major in acting and a minor in French was an excellent base for her career, says theatre artist Katherine Turnbull (BFA 2011).
She has combined both disciplines in her latest project, a translation from the French of Rachel Graton’s La nuit du 4 au 5, which Talisman Theatre will stream online May 12 to 29. The play won the 2017 Prix Gratien-Gelinas from the Centre des auteurs dramatiques du Quebec, and was shortlisted shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for French-language drama.
Night from the 4th to 5th tells of a sexual assault and the young woman who fought back. She tries to remember what happened and the face of her attacker, but she’s plagued with memory lapses and fleeting images.
“Translation … is interpretation, just like acting,” Turnbull told University Players marketing co-ordinator Kristen Siapas. “A lot of the same preparation, research, and analysis applies.”
Turnbull said her drama training enabled her to view the text from many perspectives.
“I would even perform my translation up on my feet to get a sense of how it sounded out loud,” she said. “The sheer amount of writing I did during my time at UWindsor — in English and French — helped hone my writing skills and my process.”
To make sure she reflected the playwright’s intentions, Turnbull was in regular contact with Graton.
“It takes a certain amount of flexibility to get the same meaning, thought, or ambience across in English,” said Turnbull. “The two languages are just so different.”
Read more of her interview with Siapas on the website of the School of Dramatic Art.
Click here for the streaming digital performance of Night from the 4th to 5th.
Katherine TurnbullKristen SiapasAlumniAcademic Area: Arts, Humanities and Social SciencesDramaLanguagesUWindsor alumni and friends can save 25 per cent on admission to select performances at the Stratford Festival, North America’s largest classical repertory theatre.
To claim the discount, use the promotion code 104349 to log in to the festival’s special offer website.
The company produces classics, contemporary dramas, and musicals, with special emphasis on the plays of Shakespeare.
University of Windsor Alumni AssociationAlumniIf she hadn’t come to Windsor to study law, her new novel “wouldn’t exist,” says Reema Patel (JD 2011).
Such Big Dreams, which will be released May 10 by McClelland & Stewart, draws on experiences she had during internships in Mumbai, one funded by the Canadian International Development Agency before she started law school, and a second during her legal studies.
“Fellowship money I received from the University of Windsor sent me on my human rights internship,” she recalls. “I wouldn’t have that perspective on the right to housing, on the work being done in human rights law, if it weren’t for that.”
Such Big Dreams tells the story of Rakhi, a former Mumbai street child working a soul-sucking administrative job at Justice for All, a struggling human rights law office where she is constantly underestimated and undervalued. Everything changes for her when she befriends new foreign intern Alex, the family friend of a fading Bollywood star looking to regain relevance by aligning herself with a social cause.
“I think the story is one a lot of us can relate to,” says Patel. “It tells of a very human experience.”
She started writing what became her debut novel when she enrolled in a creative writing program while articling in government in her hometown of Toronto.
“I felt there had to be more to life than this,” she says. “I needed a creative outlet.”
At first, she did not intend to pursue publication, but eventually came to think “maybe someone else would like to read this.”
And while like any author, she hopes her work finds readers, she has no immediate plans to give up her legal career. She works for the City of Toronto after stints in ombuds work and policy development for the provincial and municipal governments.
“I hope that my example shows pursuing education in one discipline doesn’t necessarily mean you should feel bound to a traditional career path,” says Patel. “Windsor Law especially supports students who want more out of their careers than making more money for corporations.”
She will join a panel discussion in advance of the Festival of Literary Diversity with fellow authors Tsering Yangzom Lama and Sonya Singh in conversation with Ann Y.K. Choi on Thursday, April 28. The online event is free and begins at 8 p.m. Register to attend.
Reema PatelAlumniAcademic Area: Law