Law graduate Debra Parkes’ academic career has taken her from the ivy-covered
colleges of Oxford University to a maximum security penitentiary in Saskatchewan.
As an undergraduate at Trinity Western University, Parkes spent a term at
Oxford’s Keble College on a scholarship studying medieval and renaissance history.
But since entering law school, she has been concerned with issues such as the
advocacy of women’s equality and prisoners’ rights.
As one of the founding members of the new Vancouver Caucus of the National
Association of Women and the Law, Parkes helped translate into plain language
the platform for action of the fourth United Nations women’s world conference,
held two years ago in Beijing.
“It is a tool women’s rights activists can use to hold the Canadian government
accountable for what they promised in Beijing. It was exciting for us to focus
on a project so closely associated with grassroots activists,” she says.
Parkes has already published one article in a law journal, written with Law
Prof. Isabel Grant, and is working on another. It is based on research gathered
during interviews with two women held in the men’s maximum security prison in
Prince Albert, Sask. Corrections Canada says no other facility exists for such
women, but Parkes believes it is unjust to detain them there.
A Wesbrook Scholar and winner of the Amy E. Sauder and Jean Craig Smith Scholarships,
Parkes will serve as a law clerk with the B.C. Supreme Court after graduation
and later will take an articling position with the law firm McCarthy Tetrault.
Although she plans to pursue her academic interests in law, Parkes would like
to be involved in test case litigation and other advocacy work such as that
done by the Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) for the advancement of women’s
equality in Canada.
“The courts are not always the best way to tackle social change, but it is
one avenue because the law does have an effect on people, especially on the
disadvantaged in society,” she says.
