As we begin our burnout stage of re-entry into the atmosphere following the heady explorations and novelties of youth, love and profligacy it soon becomes apparent that the number of our professsional advisors outweighs that of our friends and acquaintances. The overwhelming statistic of human relationships has descended from the mere buoyancy of commonalty to the executive relevancy of accountancy, financial advice, legal status, medical and dental burgeoning necessities perhaps on occasion to encompass a travel agency or car dealership. The professionals are the third parties to whom we entrust the management of life’s recast critical ingredients.
Today’s early morning venture was with solicitor Holly Agnew and her legal asssistant Janice Blackburn at their office in trendy Thoburn Mill on Little Bridge Street, Almonte. Agnew’s office has overtaken the practice of our former solicitor Evelyn Wheeler, now retired and who originally took over my own practice when I retired in 2014.
Not surprisingly there is a clinical feature of these meetings with professionals which excites an uncommon standard of purity and precision. It is all horribly deductive. Today with Ms. Agnew I did however remind her that, directly or indirectly, she is the successor to almost every law practice in recent history in the Town of Almonte.
By way of short summary, Agnew took over the dossiers of Evelyn Wheeler who had taken over my own. I had the lion’s share of the practice of the late Raymond Algernon Jamieson, QC whose hardware and lease I purchased following Jamieson’s retirement in 1976 (having practiced in Almonte since about 1921 when I believe he was called to the bar at Osgoode Hall in Toronto). Whatever files of R. A. Jamieson’s I had not consumed by merely sitting in his old wooden swivel office chair at 74 Mill Street were absorbed by Messrs. Galligan & Sheffield, Barrs &c. Sheffield was called the bench. Wheeler (along with Mke Mavis who I believe was disbarred by the Law Society of Upper Canada for conduct unbecoming a solicitor) used to work at Galligan & Sheffield. Wheeler left Galligan & Sheffield and opened her own office.
When Evelyn began in Almonte she was the first female solicitor not only in the Town of Almonte but also in the entire County of Lanark, including the County seat of Perth and the other larger urban centres such as Carleton Place and Smiths Falls. It is safe to assume that Galligan and & Sheffield absorbed the practices of Mr. Justice Charles James Newton QC who in turn no doubt consumed the practice of the late W. H. Stafford (who was known to conspire with some very important mineral resource clients in Toronto). Many of the ancient solicitors in Almonte had their offices on the upper storeys of buildings on Mill Street. Reputedly the solicitors communicated with one another (say for lunch) by tapping on the walls adoinging their offices.