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CCCA_V5No1_Profiles-FIN.qxd:CCCA_V1No1_Profile-FIN.qxd 2/1/11 6:19 PM Page 19 Profile By Susan Goldberg the deal organization, a role that can put them at odds with management: At least,Spurr takes some credit when it comes to his daughters’ “When you work in an organization, people are exuberant about career choices: with his wife,Valerie, he’s managed to raise two the business:they want to do the deals and grow the company,and lawyers.Kate graduates in May from the University of Calgary law they don’t like to be told they can’t do something.And although school, while her younger sister, Allison, recently graduated from we try to avoid it, when people get a little over-exuberant, some- her father’s alma mater, Dalhousie Law, walking across the same times we have to say,‘I know what you’re trying to accomplish. stage at convocation nearly 30 years to the day after her father. Let me see if I can get you there, but I may not be able to.’” Speaking of stages, it seems fitting that Spurr is on the executive If anyone’s suited to that kind of role, saysYoung, it’s Spurr.As committee and board of directors of Halifax’s Neptune Theatre corporate counsel or as a lawyer within government, he notes, Foundation: again, happy to take a behind-the-scenes role in order “you’re dealing constantly within a bureaucracy in an organiza- to allow others to shine.Recently,he has endowed two bursaries,in tion over which you do not have absolute control, and you have environmental law (2007) and health law (2010),at Dalhousie — in to deal with a wide variety of people at various levels of author- the process becoming the poster boy for the law school’s annual ity who have vested interests, who want to make representations. campaign.The bursaries, he says, are “just part of giving back and saying thank you for educating me to be able to do what I do.And MARVIN MOORE And to do that on an even keel you have to have political skill, in Susan Goldberg is a freelance writer based inThunder Bay. I’ve been doing it for 30 years.Amazing.” the small-p sense of the word, in addition to your legal qualifica- tions. Jim has that.” Or, as Stordy puts it,“He doesn’t seem to have an ego.” PRINTEMPS 2011 CCCA Canadian Corporate Counsel Association 19