While law school is full of memories, one could reasonably guess that 2018 in particular will be a standout year for third-year student Grace Cleveland.
On top of co-authoring the award-winning blog ReconciliAction YEG' and spearheading UAlberta Law's involvement in the nationwide #LawNeedsFeminismBecause campaign, Cleveland is the 2018 recipient of the Hon. Cecilia Johnstone Equality Award, given to a graduating student who has made an outstanding contribution to social equality in the community or at law school.
The award, presented to Cleveland on March 9 by Madam Justice Cecilia Johnstone's husband John Day and Prof. Rod Wood during a banquet for the graduating class. The award was endowed in 2009 by the 1974 UAlberta Law alumna's family, friends and colleagues who died in 2006 after spending much of her legal career fighting for equal rights for those working within the justice system.
"Justice Cecilia Johnstone was exactly the kind of woman I aspire to be - strong, committed, and compassionate. Being honoured with an award in her name is something that will continue to inspire me for the rest of my life," Cleveland said.
The first female president of the Canadian Bar Association, Johnstone fought to implement recommendations urging equal treatment for lawyers, mostly women, who took time away from their careers to raise children. One of her rulings, in 1998, established that women be treated as equal to men when awards for injury are calculated. Historically, judges had given smaller awards to women in civil lawsuits citing the argument that women usually earn less, whether due to lower salaries, or due to time out of the workforce to raise children.
"How can the court embrace pay inequity between males and females?" Justice Johnstone said in her ruling. "I cannot apply a flawed process which perpetuates a discriminatory practice," she wrote.
During her time in law school, Cleveland has embodied the leadership, compassion and commitment to equality issues that Johnstone exemplified throughout her career.
After discovering UAlberta Law was not involved in the #LawNeedsFeminismBecause campaign - a Canada-wide initiative that sought to encourage members of the legal community (and law faculties across Canada) to consider the positive impact feminism can have on the legal profession - Cleveland decided to contact Rachel Kohut, the campaign's founder and director at McGill University, and take on the project.
The response was overwhelmingly positive, and a critical mass of UAlberta Law students and faculty members, as well as non-affiliated members of the Edmonton legal community, lent their voices and faces to the campaign.
"It was important to me that it wasn't just a Faculty of Law campaign, that the broader legal community was also represented," she said.
In addition to being a law student, Cleveland is also a teaching fellow at Peter Lougheed Leadership College, where she teaches undergraduate students from faculties across the University of Alberta, while also furthering her professional development in the areas of leadership, pedagogy and beyond.
Cleveland's commitment to equality and fairness is also demonstrated through her involvement with the ReconciliAction YEG', a project Cleveland, along with her colleagues Breanna Arcand-Kootenay, Katherine Creelman and Katelynn Cave, created as part of the Law and Social Media course at UAlberta Law.
Through the blog, Cleveland and her colleagues wrote 120 posts over eight months concerning issues contained in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its 94 Calls to Action.
By covering a wide array of topics including the Indian Residential School System and present-day inequities in child welfare and the criminal justice system, the blog encouraged much-needed dialogue and even earned them a Canadian Law Blog Award for change and advocacy.