Kate Gower

The Gower Modern Law Story

Kate came to law after a successful career as a journalist and project organizer. She is pleased and proud to find these skills help her give intelligent and effective legal advice that improves and modernizes the law and litigation.  

She had a great run in journalism.  Kate was an award-winning journalist for CBC, CTV, the BBC in United Kingdom. She met people, listened carefully to their stories and then told those stories in ways stuck with all who heard them. She produced China’s first-ever reality TV show guiding a disparate team of Chinese and English people as they drove a London Black Cab from Beijing, China overland – through Russia, Finland, Germany and the rest of Europe – to London, England, meeting and surpassing the expectations of sponsors by turning in top quality stories on schedule. She knows what it means to use teamwork and hard work to lift a project to success.

Kate wanted to use her skills to build her community and help those around her, so she turned to law.  She added a law degree from University of Victoria to her other academic achievements, winning a number of awards including a President’s Scholarship for ranking in the top 3 percent of students. She articled with Fasken Martineau in Vancouver, BC, specializing in litigation, and then set up Gower Modern Law to contract her legal skills to other law firms.

Her legal successes speak for themselves. In the last few years, Kate and her legal teams have changed the law in Canada on how the Métis are identified and consulted by the Crown, and have given one of Canada’s numbered treaties a new Western Boundary. One judge even called and left a message to say Kate has a wonderful way with people, and is exceedingly well organized and diplomatic.

Like her grandfather before her, Kate is driven to improve the institutions and processes around her. She wants to provide top quality legal services and that includes improving access to the law. Kate is the lawyer who successfully built and ran Victoria B.C.’s first Electronic Trial (E-Trial). Her goal is to use the story of this successful e-trial to introduce legal professionals to e-trials in a way that they can understand, so that everyone will be litigating on e-trial platforms by 2025.

Representative Experience:

Litigation

Successfully secured the first judicial decision in Canada to apply the duty to consult to a Métis community. Enge v. Mandeville, 2013 NWTSC 33

Successfully challenging the Government of Canada’s inadequate consultation when it failed to grapple with how a Métis community holds its Aboriginal rights. Enge v. Canada, 2017 FC 932

Part of the team that represented West Moberly First Nation and other Treaty No. 8 First Nations in their successful court challenge that gave the province of British Columbia a new Western Boundary for Treaty No. 8. West Moberly v. British Columbia, 2017 BCSC 1700

Represented First Nations, Métis and Indigenous groups in Aboriginal and Treaty rights litigation, consultation, governance and employment matters

Negotiation

Researched and negotiated impact benefit agreements between Indigenous clients and industrial representatives

Negotiated settlements in small and large scale civilian matters, as well as in criminal matters

Investigated discrimination, harassment and human rights disputes in confidential settings, connecting with the persons involved and using measured judgement and fairness to secure lasting resolutions.

Economic Development

Advised on the implementation and effect of First Nation Land Codes

Corporate work for First Nations and First Nation owned entities

Strategic Planning

Provided strategic advice to Indigenous clients on leveraging Aboriginal and Treaty rights to preserve their lands and practices, and to benefit from the development of those lands for future generations

Professional and Community Activities

Member of the Law Society of British Columbia and the Law Society of the Northwest Territories

Member of the Canadian Bar Association

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