Meet Our Volunteer of the Year!

It is a great pleasure to shine our spotlight on Alexander T. Brown, who is one of CLG’s most reliable and dedicated volunteers. Alex was awarded the Alan D. Hunter Volunteer of the Year award in 2018, which was presented by Mr. James Peacock Q.C. Rather fittingly, Mr. Peacock also shares a history with those Alex works alongside at Gowling WLG.

Alex is the first non-lawyer to be named “Volunteer of the Year” at CLG in over 20 years, and it is well-deserved! He is passionate about CLG’s ID Clinic program, which seeks to enfranchise people who would otherwise be denied many things that we often take for granted. Encouraging greater participation with our governing system has been engrained in Alex, even prior to his time as a Political Science and Anthropology undergraduate at the University of Calgary, or his time training to become a Law Clerk at SAIT. When Alex discovered the ID Clinic initiative at CLG during his Legal Assistant Diploma practicum through SAIT, it simply made sense: to help overcome a critical societal threshold by supporting the ID program with his time and efforts was, he says, “the least I could do.” This was over four years ago now, and Alex has remained a key part of the heart and soul of this clinic since.

As a “Navy brat,” Alex has lived in Ottawa, Boston, Halifax, and now Calgary. He has seen many people from all walks of life, and has also travelled North America to BC, the Yukon, Ontario, Quebec, the Maritimes, Alaska, the North Eastern US, Washington state, and Las Vegas. More globally, he has seen Iberia, Italy, Greece, the Philippines, and also Portugal (Lisbon has been his favourite place so far). Alex and his future wife, Bernise, are both passionate about experiencing the world. They plan to see Japan, Iceland, the UK, France, and beyond.

Alex is one of those people one rarely has the good fortune to meet, as he loves quiet activities such as board games, comic books, pie-baking, and movies; he rarely positions himself in the spotlight. Mostly, Alex enjoys sharing these activities with Bernise and his friends, and his peers at CLG from time to time. Most notably, he is giving and modest to no end. Alex sincerely believes in making peoples’ worlds a little better, a little easier, and a little more equitable – and he does this one picture ID at a time.