Nancy Wiggs

nancy wiggs$1 million estate gift will support incoming students for years to come.

by Chris Cannon

When Nancy Wiggs started working at the law school in 1976, she never imagined how much she would get out of the experience, nor the gift she would one day give back. “I always had a great passion for the law school, and always thought I’d like to do this at some point,” she says. “I spent 36 years working with the faculty. I basically grew up there.”

A few years after Nancy retired in 2012, her husband passed away, leaving her to re-evaluate her will and the legacy she would leave behind. Long aware of the lack of admission scholarships at the school, she decided to endow a $1 million estate gift to support financial aid for incoming law students.

More than that, the Nancy E. R. Wiggs Scholarship in Law will be designed to attract the top JD students, who have their pick of schools in Canada, to the Allard School ofLaw.

“I knew exactly the kind of gift I wanted to make,” said Nancy. “One of my best friends is Elaine Borthwick, who is the director of JD admissions at the law school. We’ve known each other from the day I arrived, and we’ve become very, very close over the years. I have spent years listening to Elaine talk about the need for more admissions scholarships. And I thought, that’s where my money can go.”

Nancy began her career at the university in 1973 working in the Department of Economics and then the Faculty of Education. In 1976, she applied for a somewhat vague posting for the UBC Legal Clinic, interviewing with Jim Taylor, QC (LLB ‘68), who was a professor at the law school at that time. “I remember the day I got hired,” she recalls. “I said, ‘What’s the job? What does it entail?’ And he said, ‘I have no idea. But I know we desperately need someone to come in here and figure out what we need, and then just do it.’ And I thought, there’s my job!” Nancy was a valuable resource for law students at the clinic, which provided legal advice for members of the public who could not afford lawyers or otherwise access legal aid. From screening clients to setting trial dates to arranging police reports, Nancy ushered students through 300 to 400 cases a year, including up to 100 criminal trials involving legal representation ofclients. Starting out as a self-described “secretary, factotum and gopher”, Nancy functioned as both a clinic administrator and a paralegal, ultimately spending 18 years in a role in which she relished every moment. “I was being paid to spend the day talking to a bunch of people I really liked about something I found fascinating.”

In 1993, Nancy was named Administrator for the law school, a position she held until her retirement. As the law school continued to grow in size and scope, so did Nancy’s role, and she was soon supervising 15 staff and overseeing the needs of more than 120 fulltime and adjunct facultymembers. “When I became the administrator, everything to do with the staff and everything Nancy feels fortunate to have kept the memories of her time at the law school fresh by staying in close contact with former students and colleagues she knew over the years – some still at the school, some working in private practice or as prosecutors, and others who have left the profession altogether. Many of her closest friends are students she once supervised at the clinic, and she still drops by campus every month or so for “visits and chinwags”, as she calls them, “with faculty and staff I enjoy”.

“There were some people I lost track of over the years,” she says, “but when we get together, it is like no time has passed. We just pick right up wherever we left off.”

The law school may not be the same school she left eight years ago, and is nothing like it was in the 1970s, but not everything is different. “The physical space has changed, and a lot of the faces have changed,” she says, “but the passion about the place hasn’t changed. I still feel that when I come here.”

“I hope that my gift will encourage other gifts. There are quite a few faculty members and

alumni who make gifts, but it’s unusual for a

staff member. I’m really proud of it, and I’m

really thankful I was able to do it.”

— Nancy Wiggs

to do with the building became my domain,” she says. “On the surface, it had to do with job descriptions and taking care of the building. But at the end of the day, it was taking care of the people. So they become your greatest joy and your greatest challenge.”

No wonder, then, that her favourite memory is a social event – the annual trike race, which goes as far back as 1972. Nancy laughs about the early years of the event, when souped-up trikes were the norm, the beer was plentiful, and onlookers could throw whatever they wanted at the competitors (and usually did). “I hope that my gift will encourage other gifts,” says Nancy. “There are quite a few faculty members and alumni who make gifts, but it’s unusual for a staff member. I’m really proud of it, and I’m really thankful I was able to do it.”

“But it’s a gift in my will,” she laughs, “so I hope it’s a long time before the law school collects!”