Dominique Hussey

2Hello, good morning.

4I'm honored to have been asked. Thank you.

6So the vice chair of the— there are various vice chairs, I should say that. I am a vice chair, not the vice chair. There are several vice chairs and the managing partner of the Toronto office and the managing partner of the Calgary office are ex officio vice chairs of Bennett Jones. And all that really means is that there is a national role. We don't just have responsibility for our home offices, but we assist the CEO in the strategy and in the management of the firm as a whole. And when there are big decisions to be made, our CEO generally consults the vice chairs.

8It is, and I sit on it ex officio because I'm the Toronto managing partner. I sit on that board, although I did so before I had this role as well.

10then had step down from that position because the Toronto managing partner cannot be chair of the board of directors of the firm.

12We're closing in on 500.

14I don't think you're trying to. I think you're doing a very different thing.

16We have an office in the United States, but we are not practicing US law at all. It is Canadian law practiced out of that US office.

18We do elect a board of directors, yes. And it is a partnership. So governance is quite different and every law firm does it a little bit differently. And there's a lot of choice obviously in how it's run, but it is is fundamentally a partnership. It is not a corporation, so governance is not the same as it would be in a corporation.

20There are

22So the managers do a lot of that, but I have to tell you, a lot of the governance is covered by the partnership agreement, which is subject to confidentiality provisions.

24They don't, no, they don't participate in governance. But I will say that there are lots of opportunities for associates to have their say. And I can give you an example. It's not the only example. There is an associate advisory committee that I meet with on a quarterly basis to have, to hear from them, basically hear about what's working, what isn't working, initiatives they'd like to see. If there are any issues, they can raise it then or at other times. And quite apart from that, I hold twice a year a town hall for associates who can submit their questions to our PD department completely anonymously. So I get all kinds of questions and I have promised to them that I will give honest answers and straightforward answers.

25And if I can't answer for any reason, I'll be straightforward about that as well. So I, I hope, because it certainly has been my goal, that everybody believes that they have a voice and a stake, that that's certainly how we want the firm to operate.

27We have some partners who are not equity partners at the firm for various reasons. And they do not have a vote. I would say they still have a say, but they don't have a vote. The very, very vast majority of partners have a vote, and yes, everybody has the same vote, one vote per person.

30Sure, I can. And I don't know that people would consider themselves to be in those groups per se. They're in categories for sure. But everybody is an individual and everybody has their own aspirations. I would say that's the case within the partnership. That's the case among associates. Everybody has individual aspirations, so it would be difficult to categorize per se. Counsel means a different thing at all kinds of firms, right? In the United States, when you see the counsel role, that might be a person who is excellent at her job or his job or their job, but that person does not want to have the burden of having to develop business for the firm and will execute, will train, will do a great job with the care and feeding of clients, but doesn't have the aspiration of bringing in a book of business to give out work to other people who are working at the firm.

31So that often describes counsel. A person who is a partner but not an equity partner, which is variously called an income partner or a non-equity partner at various firms, some distinguish publicly, some do not. Those people are either partners in training or partners in retirement or people like counsel who are excellent lawyers but do not want the, don't want to be the business developers. At the firm. That's what it tends to be. And it, it is often very difficult to distinguish between how a senior excellent associate operates and how a counsel or a non-equity partner or an equity partner operates. It's usually just a matter of time before they become equity partners. And as I say, everybody has different aspirations, different goals, different ways in which they would like to work.

32I think that we have a very flat organization in that partners work very closely with associates, you know, often one-to-one, sometimes in bigger groups. But I don't think there's a great stratification. It doesn't feel that way at all. And I think if you speak to some of our people who have recently become equity partners, yes, they've achieved something in their career for sure. But I bet they don't feel fundamentally different as individuals. I, I don't think that there's a switch that goes on and all of a sudden everything is different. We're still, all just working very hard to hone our crafts and to give clients the best possible service that they can have.

34you never know.

36Oh, absolutely, yes. And, and our firm. That, that is true of the vast, vast majority of partners.

38I think it's becoming an equity partner anywhere else, showing excellence, showing the capacity to serve clients showing a capacity to represent the firm showing a long-term commitment to the particular firm and the ability to develop business in the future. But the first thing is really just to make sure that you're honing your craft, becoming excellent, you know, being nice to the people around you, supporting the people around you, and making sure that you deliver excellent, excellent client service. And so there really isn't any great magic to it. There isn't. But it's a— there are obviously objective criteria that a person has to meet at our firm and at all other firms. But there is no magic.

39And for most people, the best advice is do your best, be open to constructive criticism. If you are being told that there is something that you're doing that is not correct or could use improvement, really take heed of that because a person who takes the time to impart constructive criticism is a person who truly cares about career development. And so it is humbling. I mean, one has to be able to accept that as hard as you are trying, it may not be enough. Right now. You might need to take a different path, but I've always seen that as a great gift. It certainly was to me. I'm very grateful to the people who gave me constructive criticism.

40So I'd say do your best, accept the criticism, try to improve continuously, and, you know, work for the benefit of the firm, work for your own benefit, work for the benefit of your clients most importantly. And I think most people can get there.

42The gift of criticism.

44You own a percentage of the partnership.

46it. And basically the partners share the profits after all of the expenses, and expenses include buildings and computers and, you know, salaries for all employees, etc. After that, any part profit that is left over is shared among the partners.

48No, you cannot. No.

50People put just capital into the firm, right?

52sorry, go ahead, Ben.

54So there's a retirement age at Bennett Jones, but I think everybody's an individual. And we— one thing that I really love about Bennett Jones is that we really do treat people as individuals. So people are assessed on a case-by-case basis.

56Well, you get your capital for the most part, in partnerships in general. And I— we, we do encourage people to start saving because there isn't a pension, right? And, and some law firms set up differently, I realize, but it is the rare firm that provides a pension to its retiring partners. So it's not like working at a corporation forever and you get paid out in a pension that you paid into at the end of the day. That doesn't generally happen. So we, like doctors, like other professionals, are responsible for saving toward our retirement. And it's interesting you mentioned the retirement age and the life cycle, and I think the life cycle may be changing, and it's very— it's generational in nature.

57So maybe a generation above mine loved work and really self-identified with work and almost exclusively with work. And sure, they have other interests, but a lot of the self-confidence that a person has comes from success in work. And those people are healthy, they're smart, they remain sharp and want to do this for as long as possible. And so that, that's true at a lot of firms. I'm part of Gen X and the next generation.

59I have said you did not, but thank you very much. You absolutely did not. Some people might even think I'm a boomer. So there you go. The Generation X is a little bit different and every— I keep bringing up this individuality and I really do think that law careers are so very individual. But if you were to generalize, absolutely. And Crossroads, I'm not talking about Bennett Jones specifically. Generation X is the generation that certainly worked hard. They graduated from law school during a recession. They've been through ups and downs. They've seen the market crash. They've seen periods when jobs were very hard to come by. And at the same time, there was a layer of more senior lawyers who may in earlier years have retired, but now they're healthy.

60Now they're young, young comparatively speaking. And so they stick around. So that Gen X has been in many cases sandwiched between an older, very capable generation and a younger, very capable generation. And some feel that they haven't ever had the opportunity to hit their stride completely, although they have become excellent lawyers in the interim and have been very important to the management of clients over time. And when I talk to my peers in this generation, A lot of them aren't saying we want to stick this out till 60 or 65 or even 70. All right, so I should have said the other one, the reverse, 70, 65, or even 60. A lot think that they're going to go quickly, so there might be a little bit of a hollowing out early because many of them want to go and pursue other interests, and when they hit their magic number, they may just disappear.

61So it'll be a really interesting thing to watch the legal market in general. Certainly wasn't true of the generation above us. Most of them have not left early. A lot of them have stayed around for as long as possible. And so there might be a bit of a vacuum if Gen X retires earlier than is anticipated. And I don't know if this is going to be true across the board, but this is a theme that I'm hearing more and more often from my generation in particular.

64Well, I certainly think the Bay Street law firm environment is different and is becoming increasingly different. Generally speaking, you do not see, I will say over 60 rather than over 50, 'cause I do think things are changing dramatically. Over 60, you don't necessarily see a whole lot of women around in Bay Street. There are some and they are for the most part exceptional standout lawyers. Other people have not stuck around for a variety of reasons. Some haven't had the opportunities over time, or they didn't at the time when they were working. But among some of my women colleagues, another theory, it's not the only theory, is that women have retired earlier either because they haven't had the opportunities or because they have identified their lives well beyond the legal profession and there are other things that they want to pursue.

65Or a bit of both, or one because of the other. And so it's— I don't know. I think there is earlier retirement. I do think women go on to pursue other things. I think for a very long time it was very difficult for women to find their way on Bay Street. It wasn't built for them. It was built for some of them. It wasn't built for all of them. And there weren't as many women in leadership and there weren't as many men who cared about tending to the growth and the progress of women. So that I do think is true of women in their 60s plus. I think it will be less true of women in their 50s plus and even less true as we get on, as we go down, I suppose, in the generations.

66There weren't— I mean, for a very long time, law schools have been 50% women. So it's not simply a pipeline issue. Why that's a question. The fact that it is women or I guess the female sex that tends to reproduce, and for a long time women have really borne the responsibilities of the home and have had a hard time getting back into practice afterwards, or haven't wanted to get back into practice after. I think that has, that has had a big, big effect on the hollowing out of the ranks. I think that now most parents want to be involved in the raising of their children, and so that will not be the sole reason anymore why you see women, women leaving the practice in droves.

67I think you will see men and women both doing that if they're going to leave for their families, and maybe they will just no longer have to leave for that reason. And I remain hopeful that the opportunities for women in law, in business continue to expand and their value is being seen and they're really getting a seat at the table and not just a seat at the table, but stepping into leadership roles. So I am, I don't think we're there yet, but I think that this is going to be a thing of the past in terms of the system working against women. And that to the extent you see women disappearing at these, once they hit 50, 60, 70, it's because they want to and not because they feel like they have had to.

69Yes.

71Well, I mean, you fight for the right to choose, right? It's not necessarily— you don't necessarily fight for the right to stick around. You fight for the right to stick around if that's what you want to do, and you fight for the right to leave the profession if that's what you want to do. And we all hope that our profession remains vibrant and diverse So we get all kinds of people sticking around, training the next generation, and the next generation is equally, if not more so, vibrant and diverse. But I don't think if women want to leave, if they're leaving because they want to and not because they have to, that's their right. They get to do that.

72And I don't think that just because people have fought for a space at the table, that it means that all people are then obligated to stay at the table. That wouldn't be true of anybody else, right? That wouldn't be true about men. With a seat at the table, they're not obligated to stick around.

75So what I don't think is that women are going to leave the profession if they have a seat at the table in higher numbers than men will ultimately. So I don't think that we are going to see that happening as long as there are— there's an environment in place whereby women can stick around and it is hospitable. What we don't want to see is women leaving because it is an inhospitable environment, and it is not going to be because it is a stressful profession. It is not going to be because it's a hard-working profession. A lot of women are extraordinarily good at withstanding stress. And there's no question women are extraordinarily hard workers or can be.

76Again, individuals, some will be, some will not be. So I think the key is if it is a hospitable environment, despite the fact that it is a stressful, higher responsibility, high stakes career, women who want to do that will stick around just as men and others who want to stick around will, will do that. And the other thing is— I'm sorry, go ahead.

78Oh, no, no, no, not necessarily. But I was going to say, I imagine that you mostly think about litigation in particular when you're talking about things. I do.

80Yeah, no, and that's just fine. I was just going to say that Chief Justice Strathy has obviously been writing about the gladiator litigator. And I—

82And he was on the show. Exactly. And how that cannot be a model for the future. And I think that that is not a statement for women. That is a statement for people who are in litigation. And to the extent that that is a reason why people leave, that is not going to be uniquely about women. I think that people's— the way people approach the profession has changed somewhat, and the importance of teams and the importance of teams supporting each other in these circumstances where the gladiator litigator could otherwise be the prevalent culture is changing. And so I have a lot of hope for the future. I think there's never going to be a time when people do not have to be fully committed to their clients, fully committed to the case, and working as hard as possible in order to win, in order to do the best by their client.

83But I do think there will be a time that it is not necessarily a badge of honor to work oneself to death and to work oneself to the point where mental health is affected, never to take a vacation, never to be disconnected. I don't think that that will be a badge of honor in the future. And I think that will be a critical change in the composition of the profession and the overall health of the profession.

86Well, and they will. There's no question that people who do that will bill more. So that, that remains a choice. And I think the problem is a lack of choice in how one is going to run one's career. There will always be the gladiator litigators. There are people who are wired that way, right? They love it. They genuinely love it. Not everybody does. And it's not healthy for everybody. Arguably, it's not healthy for anybody. But this will never not be a hardworking career. And I think the best we can do is try to avoid sources of unnecessary stress. It should also not be a career that inevitably leads to poor mental health. And it doesn't have to be.

87So I don't think that working very hard goes hand in hand with poor mental health. Lots of people work very hard inside law, outside of law, right, in jobs that lawyers will never have experienced. And don't necessarily have poor mental health. And it's not stress because stress is what propels a lot of us. It is unnecessary sources of stress and not having an ear to listen and not having people who will be reasonable within an organization, not having adequate teams to take on the burden and having people work beyond their stress capacities. Those are the problems. And so I don't see the new model as limiting hours of work, for example. The new model doesn't mean people aren't going to be working just as hard for their clients.

88But the new model, I think, requires being mindful about how people assign work, how they take on work, mentorship, et cetera. And I mean, I will talk about something that Bennett Jones has done that I know some other firms have done as well, which is the mindful business charter, which in our case really requires being mindful in a number of different ways. Ways, but one is providing people the right to disconnect, the right to go on vacations and actually be disconnected and not bothered the entire time. That is not anathema to being hardworking and to having normal legal stress, but it means people have the space to unplug from that stress. The right not to be contacted after hours unless it is, you know, a client emergency or a client request.

89As opposed to a more senior lawyer being disorganized and just simply not asking for the work to be done until after hours or not planning ahead, being a poor project manager and not seeing how things were inevitably going to unfold and assigning at the last minute. That is a source of unnecessary stress. Not giving feedback, not giving clear direction, right? Not mentoring along the way. These are all things that cause stress and will not lead to what will lead to harder work, but work that is not as good and will ultimately be more stressful. And I, again, I fail to see how it can be a badge of honor just to give up things that make people whole in life.

90You can still work very hard. I mean, I still work crazy hours. If you saw my hours on paper, I don't think you'd think that I was not still working gladiator lawyer hours, taking management and litigation into account. But I am, I can do it because I am a more senior person, but I really try to make sure that my juniors are in much the same position. I can do it because I have a real sense of what my limits are and because I try to plan ahead so that things are not last minute and/or to allow last minute legal emergencies enough space to breathe. You just have to understand that there will be emergencies inevitably, and so you need enough slack to allow those.

91Yes, I got through there the old way, I guess. I do consider myself to be a very hardworking person. I don't resent it. The hard work doesn't cause me stress. Unnecessary stress causes me stress. A lack of civility outside my firm doesn't cause me stress because I just feel like those are people having tantrums and they will work it out. If it were within my firm, that would cause stress. But I'm now in a position that I can do something about that directly and I rarely have to.

93Yes.

95Correct.

97I do like Shakespeare.

99Yeah.

101Sure. I mean, I can tell you as much of my parents' story as I know. And I have never, never been a great biographer or autobiographer, actually. So I will— I hope I don't get too many details wrong. Yes. So I do. I mean, my parents will say about their girls that they did it all themselves, that they had nothing to do with it when asked or when congratulated, which is quite lovely. Of course, they had everything to do with it. And when people ever say, do you have role models? And they're talking about people, you know, in life outside of family, my sister and I inevitably point to our parents. We just do.

102We were blessed with incredible parents. There is no question. So where are they from? They're from Jamaica, which is also where I was born. And they both trained professionally in Jamaica. My mother trained as a lawyer. My father trained as a doctor.

104who

106Well, the Jamaicans know why, but we can't say it out loud.

108You will have more in your future, I have no doubt.

110Okay, and so I'm starting in their professional lives, which is where I assume you want to start. So my, my mother, as I said, trained as a lawyer, and she— I know I was an accident, I must have been, because I was born very inconveniently in the middle of her bar exams, and no one would do that on purpose. Yes, exactly. So she passed That wasn't a problem. She was going to work in-house at the Jamaica Bauxite Company. And my father trained as a doctor and then was given two opportunities for a fellowship. One would have been in Scotland as an orthopedic surgeon, and that would have sent our lives on a totally different trajectory had we moved there.

111And the other was to train as a urologist in Ottawa, and he chose to go to Ottawa to train in urology. And so before I was a year old, we moved to Ottawa. We spent a little time in New York where my mother's cousins were, and we moved as, you know, a family of 3 to Ottawa. My parents were quite young at the time, and we landed on New Year's Eve, actually, in Ottawa. And you can imagine going from Jamaica, very hot, beautiful, warm, to New York, not quite as beautiful, to Ottawa December 31st. And my father was wearing these leather bottom shoes, and his introduction to Canada was stepping onto the tarmac and slipping and landing flat on his back, slipping on ice.

112So that was his welcome to Canada. So we lived in Ottawa for a few years, and my mother actually worked at Soloway Wright while she was there, and my father trained in his fellowship. And I have— I do have memories. I was very young at the time, but I have memories of Ottawa at the time. But I even associated it being very cold, cold, steely sun. And so they worked for, I guess it was 3 years in Ottawa. And the original plan was my father to go back and to be a professor at the University of the West Indies. But it was at a time, not that this time has really stopped, when the political climate in Jamaica was, well, I can just say violent.

113I guess it was that. It was unstable and violent. And my grandmother, my mother's mother, said, said, don't come back here, stay there, make a life there, stay in Canada. So I was supposed to have grown up in Jamaica. I just didn't end up doing that. So my father was— both my parents were excellent students, very hard workers. My father wrote the boards, and I can't remember whether he became— he came second or first in the boards too, but it was one or the other, to and, and applied for jobs here, and it in the early '70s. So you can imagine it was a time where people would not say, we don't need a doctor here.

114It was more like, we don't need a Black urologist here. We don't, we don't need that. And I don't— so my father looked around at a number of different places and he ended up going to Stratford, which did not have a urological practice. And there was this lawyer from the UK who had been exposed to other doctors who had trained at the University of West Indies and knew about my dad's success in Ottawa and said, look, we don't have a practice here, but you can build it. You can build the practice here if you're interested in coming. And welcomed him with open arms. And my mother found a real estate agent who ended up being her lifelong friend, who, well, introduced my mother to Stratford by saying, we'll find you a house near the churches in the parks.

115And my mom said, I'm a lawyer, I don't need a house near the churches and the parks. What am I going to do while I'm here? But she found this other real estate agent who she developed a very strong friendship with, and we were located in a house that my father renovated himself by hand after working all day at the hospital and trying to build a practice. And my— I should have said my sister was born while we were in Ottawa, so we moved from Ottawa to Stratford. As a family of 4. And so my father renovated by night. I remember him staying up till the wee hours in the morning eating these nut— this very 1970s-looking candy, Nachos nut clusters, while he had a single light bulb, you know, pinned up to a wall and was refinishing the floor and sanding this and sanding that.

116And eventually, you know, turned— made a very, very beautiful house in Stratford while working exceptionally hard. And when my sister was a little bit older, my mom started working at a law firm, Mountain Mitchell at the time, which is a law firm where I ended up summering for a couple of summers, as it happened, many years later. And then decided that that was not what she wanted to do for work. She was doing a little bit of everything. She was doing real estate, she was doing some civil litigation, and she said, I'm going to go do something else. And ended up opening up a travel agency with that sold wholesale travel with some other people who met, one of whom was a, a person who was a trained chef from Switzerland and a very artistic person, and another who was married to a theater director, because Stratford is a wonderful place that has all kinds of people from all walks of life.

117So she opened up that business, and that was what she did while my children, my, my sister and I, were, were school-aged. And in Stratford, they— there's no question my parents instilled a work ethic in us. They— we were not the kids who were helped with our homework ever, and I I think that was probably true of a lot of people in my generation. We just had to do what we had to do well, and we were just— there was no option but to do well. That was just the expectation. And to the extent we weren't, they helped us by tutoring. My mother, my mother tutored me through math. There's absolutely no question she did.

118But there was always a really big focus on excelling in school, and they ensured that we both did. And of course, we got the same talk that everybody who looks like me in Canada gets, which is you're going to have to do work twice as hard to be seen to do half as well. And so they instilled that in us. My sister and I took that to heart. I think it, it very much drives us. It, it definitely had a real effect on our work ethic. And if you talk to other Jamaicans and lots of other people like us, they've all been told it's a very, very common immigrant story, as I'm sure you know.

119It's just the, just the way it is. And true or not, it is how we conducted our lives. And because we were in Stratford, we were exposed to all kinds of things. You know, my father is a— I've said my father's a very talented musician. My mother has a great interest in music and the arts and Shakespeare. And we were so privileged to be exposed to all of that. We— my— I went to my first Shakespearean play at the age of 5 and never stopped going. Musical theater played in our house at all times growing up. As did jazz, as did classical. My sister and I were lucky enough— well, I think I was lucky enough, she didn't love the piano so much— but to be, to start piano lessons at the age of 3.

120And we had, we had exposure to all things artistic living in Stratford. My parents had us in all activities, thinking that we couldn't get into trouble if we were busy 100% of the time. And we were busy 100% of the time. We did theater school, we did piano, we did singing, we did We did musical theater in the summer. We did pottery, you know, horseback riding, and then sports at school. We were busy 100% of the time at all times, and then had to get our homework done on top of that on our own. And they just said, this is what you're going to need to have a good life. This is what you're going to need to excel.

121And they have been— oh, I went away to boarding school when I was 10 years old. My parents sent me away, my sister after that. We saw them on weekends. We remained very close, and there really has never been a time time when we haven't remained very close. They are still confidants. My sister and I still talk to them very regularly. They're still very much a part of our lives. And they went on to do— my mother in particular went on to do other things in her career. She started working on the Civilian Police Commission. She was a police commissioner and she worked on the Ontario Civilian Commission on Police Services and then served on tribunals and then went from there to the OMB.

122And so she she became involved in— she was involved in law again after she got out of the travel agency business. And now I've just rambled on forever about my parents and I may not have gotten to what you wanted to hear about them.

124She's a lawyer as well. She's at Bell Media. Oh, she's in Toronto? Yes, she's in Toronto. She's at Bell Media.

126Initially, Astral Media, and when they were purchased by Bell, she went to Bell.

128I do, yes.

130correct?

132And the Jamaicans all know each other, there's that too.

134If so, I don't really know about— I mean, Frank Walwyn always has a party right through his firm, but I, I, you know, work. I take care of children. You don't party anymore? Yeah, I think for the next few years I probably won't have that much time to party. I have to focus on clients' children and the Advocates' Society and the other board requirements I have in Bennett Jones. And so not much time to party over the next little while except in an official capacity, but it'll come. My time will come.

136definitely not all.

138I think, well, it's funny, in Jamaica I think probably less than before, but there's this, there's this type of racism that exists that suggested that the lighter-skinned you were the, the better you were, right? The higher— that you were in a higher echelon of society. As a result. So I do think people— which is ridiculous, right? But I do think people thought about Blackness in that way, but it wasn't as pervasive a thought as it is here because there wasn't the same degree of otherness that exists in North America and elsewhere in the world. So it is— I think that there's a very different history of people who come from the West Indies as compared to people who grew up in the United States and had to deal with the incredible obstacles, social and otherwise, that existed there.

139So I'll tell you what my parents didn't grow up with. They didn't grow up thinking that the cards were stacked against them. They didn't grow up thinking that they couldn't achieve everything they wanted to achieve. They didn't grow up thinking that their skin color set them apart and was going to be a disadvantage because that is not something that, that exists in that way to Jamaica. What is incredibly important is, and it is here as well, but the socioeconomic strata that exist. And my parents grew up not poor, not rich, squarely middle class. And so that wasn't an impediment. They knew where they were smart. They were privileged in that they knew where their next meals were coming from.

140Absolutely. They had strong parents with strong values. But there's no question And that makes a difference. There's much less to overcome in a, in a, in an environment like that than there is in one where you are thought to come from behind,

142I, I don't— I never thought about school that way, honestly. I, I got into U of T, I got into McGill for undergrad and law school, and I decided to go to McGill in both cases because I really enjoyed Montreal. So I, I didn't ever choose the school on that basis, nor do I think about it in that way. Well, I mean, I love McGill. I thought it was a great school. I think U of T is a great school too.

144So probably it was different at different stages of my life. Certainly othering when I was very young had, had an impact, there's no question. I went to— when I went to kindergarten the school I did, there were people who did not speak to me and I didn't understand it. And I had a conversation with a girl once who told me, my parents told me I'm not allowed to speak to you because I'm Black. Because you're, because you're Black, she said. And that was the first time I understood othering in that sense. And I know that there were times I was bullied. I was stalked by kids who were a little bit older. Again because I was Black and I knew that because of the names I was called, which I'm no longer allowed to be called, meaning no one says the words anymore.

145No one decent says the words anymore. So I was aware, I certainly was aware of that and it became more and more aware as time wore on. The slur of the day other than the N-word, which was prevalent, was Paki, right? Which is, which is a derogatory Pakistani and very, very And so I could, I would sit outside, I'd be in my front yard and people would ride by on their bikes and yell that. So there was an othering in that I was called names. I was exposed to things that other people were not. And I certainly felt that in my classes. If we were learning anything about Africa, if there were a Black kid mentioned, if there was anything different, I was looked at.

146And when I was in grade 2, a little girl came from Vietnam. And I remember my teacher at the time said, see, Dominique, now you're not the only one. And that was certainly othering because we had nothing in common other than the fact that the two of us looked different from everybody else in the school. So it was a sense of being generally different. Absolutely. But I think even from a young age, I had some understanding of the fact that that wasn't entirely bad because in this class, when I was the only minority of any kind in kindergarten, I still thought it would be really cool if it were— if I were a lefty, if I were left-handed.

147So when our kindergarten teacher said, you can— do you need right-handed scissors or left-handed scissors? I thought, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be left-handed. And so I already horrific, always with arts and crafts, struggled with left-handed scissors when I'm definitely a right-handed person because I thought it would be really interesting to be different. I didn't think to be different at the time. I already, somehow my parents had already instilled in me that it was not a bad thing. It was a good thing to be different. But I also did not recognize until I started being ostracized in some circles that I was already different enough and I probably didn't need to layer on something that I'm actually not to set myself apart.

148So othering in, in grade school, I would say, was not not a universally positive experience, but I had parents who really went to bat for me, and my, my mom marched down to the school not to complain about other children that we, we took on, on our own, but to complain about teachers when, for example, I was accused of plagiarism because I was exceeding expectations. So that, that was a different kind of othering. I definitely— there were low expectations of me often, which I ultimately exceeded and skipped a grade and had a wonderful person who worked with me after I did that. So I mean, in some ways, and I'm not, I'm not pro-othering, don't get me wrong, but in some ways I think it was actually helpful.

149It gave me resilience at an early stage and really helped demonstrate very clearly how very much my parents were in my corner and how lucky I was in that way. And for the rest of my— I think that probably set me up so that I didn't really mind the othering for the rest of my life. It didn't necessarily— it didn't have a negative effect. And part of that is an open society in which we live. And I mean, very, very grateful to Canada for all of the opportunities that I have had. And I don't think I personally have suffered as a result of being different. I realize that I am privileged in that way.

150I recognize that other people have suffered things that I haven't. Moment. But I also think that looking different means that you are more memorable. I might not be memorable if I don't— I could be just like everybody else if I didn't look a little bit different.

152Well, but, but because I'm the only, you know, I'm the only person in the room very often, or have been for a long time, who looks like me. So I'll be remembered not necessarily as Dominique Hussey but as— and see if I can remember her name,

154thank you for saying that. But, but, you know, at various stages, as you know, as a first year, as a second year, you know, when I was first living in New York, maybe not so much. But I, I don't think that it is a bad thing necessarily to be an other, as long as it doesn't prevent you from being heard and as long as it doesn't prevent you from being achieved. So othering can be hurtful, there's no question, but it can also be empowering in certain circumstances.

156Oh, thank you very much. This has been my pleasure.