Gordon Christie

Where did you attend university for your undergraduate degree? Law School? Any other degrees/ schooling?

Princeton University (BA); University of Victoria (LLB); University of California, Santa Barbara (PhD)

When did you come to UBC as a professor?

2004

What courses will you be teaching at Allard in 2019-2020?

Torts (fall semester); Jurisprudence; Aboriginal and Treaty Rights (Constitutional Law)

What are your research interests?

Aboriginal law (Canadian law as it applies to Aboriginal peoples); Indigenous law (the legal orders of Indigenous peoples); Legal theory/legal philosophy

What is or was your non-law dream job?

Track and field coach

What is your favourite judicial decision and why?

I can’t think of a decision I am even minimally happy with. The jurisprudence on Aboriginal and treaty rights under section 35 went off on the wrong path at its inception and has only travelled further down this dead-end route in the years since. Many torts cases elicit a chuckle or two, but then almost always someone is hurt along the way and so it is hard to say one is a ‘favourite’.

What is your favourite book or movie?

I have watched many hundreds of movies and read many thousands of books – I can’t really play the ‘pick a single favourite’ game when so many of these movies and books were thoroughly enjoyed. If forced to do so I would choose ‘The Journals of Knud Rasmussen’ as my favourite movie.

What’s a UBC Campus hidden gem that more people should know about?

Along the Salish Sea edge of campus is a strip of non-logged woods. Many of BC’s largest and oldest trees can be found along that strip – most of them are visible from Marine Drive, but only their tops.

Anything else you would like to share with the class of 2022?

Make sure to find some way to carve out time for you and your family/friends each week throughout the year – the way to mental health and well-being through first-year is to do your best to maintain some degree of balance.