When I began my super-sized presidential term in March last year, I said that my hope was that by August 2024, every member who needs support when life shows up, will turn to the OBA and find exactly what they need to endure, adapt and thrive.

And, now, as I reach that finish line, I feel confident that’s the case.

The PeerLink Resources we’ve built – the video archive, the article repositories, the tips, ideas and local avenues for information and advice, all available from our easy-to-access Peer Support Network portal – will continue to grow.

The PeerLink Community Connection we’ve enhanced and expanded between lawyers – with bookclub and speakers events featuring authors, advocates and experts speaking to issues we all share and often struggle with in our work and lives, not to mention the ongoing, engaging, and ever-vital Peer Support Meetings for Lawyers Living with Disabilities – have brought us together to lean on, listen to, learn from, and give backto each other. There is momentum here that will only grow more powerful.

And the PeerLink education that we’ve led – Inclusive Leader Series programs on topics like going beyond accommodation in the workplace, and working toward neurodviersity inclusion, and dedciated Diversity Dialogues between lawyers from difference practice areas – has planted seeds that will continue to produce culture shifts in legal workplaces across the province, creating more empathetic, inclusive and empowering spaces from which we can perform at our very best.

The launch of the Peer Support Network for Lawyers Living with Disabilities has been especially heartening for me. To see the initiatives and opportunties under that umbrella generate such interest – from within our legal community and beyond – and enjoy such a positive reception, and, most importantly, make a meaningful difference to lawyers, like myself, who are finding in peer support an incredible lifeline and vital source of advice, inspiration and understanding to carry them through challenges they face in their careers and lives as lawyers, has been incredibly rewarding.

I have said that the power of Peer Support lies in its proliferation. OBA members from all across the province, in conjunction with members of the broader justice sector, includng lawyers in othe parts of the country, have fueled that widespread embrace of this mandate and ensured it will continue to survive, develop and thrive, long after I leave the helm of this great association.

For that, I remain eternally grateful and entirely optimistic about the future of this profession.