Nunavut Legal Services Board fires CamBay lawyer

“I am more grateful than words can ever express to the people of Nunavut for the privilege to have served them,” says Karen Wilford, the executive director and senior family counsel at the Kitikmeot Law Centre until Feb. 20. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

The executive director and president of the Legal Services Board terminated the employment of Karen Wilford, the executive director and senior family counsel at the Kitikmeot Law Centre, on Feb. 20. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

Updated, Feb. 22, 9:30 p.m.

CAMBRIDGE BAY — During the afternoon of Feb. 21, a worker was changing the locks on the outside doors of the Kitikmeot Law Centre building in Cambridge Bay.

That move followed the Feb. 20 dismissal of Karen Wilford, the executive director and senior family counsel at the Kitikmeot Law Centre.

Teena Hartman, executive director of Nunavut’s legal services board, the body that operates the territory’s legal aid system, confirmed that “Karen isn’t with the legal services board” any longer.

Hartman, a lawyer who lives in Rankin Inlet, and the LSB president Madeleine Redfern, also a graduate of the Atiksiraq law program and the mayor of Iqaluit, delivered the news to Wilford.

An interim plan is now in place, Hartman said, and “no disruption of service” is expected to take place.

Wilford, a homeowner who lives in Cambridge Bay with her husband and two children, had worked for the centre since November, 2004.

Her husband, Peter Harte, also a lawyer, saw his employment with the LSB terminated last May after he spoke out against Nunavut’s shortage of judges in a February television interview.

On Feb. 22, Wilford went to collect her possessions from the law centre building in Cambridge.

“When I began work as a staff family lawyer and clinic director for Nunavut LSB, in November 2004, the Kitikmeot Law Centre was a three- room corner of the Enokhok Centre with orange carpet and shocking pink walls.”

“The law centre had one lawyer and a single court worker. The books hadn’t been audited in over a year, and there were no court workers in the outlying Kitikmeot communities,” Wilford said.

Over the course of the seven years, the office grew to a stand-alone building, with four lawyers, a court worker and an administrative assistant, she said.

Inuit court workers were hired in three of the four other Kitikmeot communities and housed in offices with full electronic equipment. Annual training was instituted.

“One of my proudest moments was hearing the Kitikmeot Law Centre described as the ‘flagship’ of the court worker program at Nunavut LSB,” Wilford said.

“I wore many hats over the years: staff lawyer, clinic director, court worker co-ordinator and senior family counsel. In the last year I wore them all at the same time.”

As the senior family counsel, Wilford was responsible for the management of the family law practice for the LSB, supervising family lawyers in Nunavut.

In 2004, there were three family lawyers. Today, there are seven family lawyers, a file assignment protocol, a draft policy manual, “a clear eligibility process and a responsiveness to emergency family law matters that rivals any legal aid plan in Canada,” Wilford said.

For her, it was “wrenching, lugging out that last box” from the law centre.

“I am more grateful than words can ever express to the people of Nunavut for the privilege to have served them. Koana for sharing your stories. My heart is heavy. But my head is high,” Wilford said.