The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
At an age when most people can see retirement at the end of the tunnel, Judy Eagle is just getting started on her life's calling. This past fall, the 53-year-old lifelong Flin Flonner opened her own law firm, fulfilling her long-held ambition to become an attorney. "I've had people say to me, 'It's too bad that you didn't go into law when you were younger,'" says Eagle. "Well, not really, because I would have gone into law as a different person. Who would I be today? I wouldn't be who I am." The launch of Eagle Law Office, based in a cozy, renovated Boam Street home, marked the culmination of years of hard work and sacrifice. Eagle left for law school at Winnipeg's University of Manitoba on her 49th birthday, making her the oldest student accepted in 2003. She was easily old enough to be a mom to her fellow university students, and in one case, she was. She and daughter Lacey, a music voice performance major, entered the U of M at the same time. While Eagle was the elder stateswoman in a class populated mainly by pupils in their early 20s, she never felt awkward. "I was very accustomed to being around 20-something-year-old people," she says. "My daughter had friends over all the time. Our house was always a gathering place. I was quite comfortable." Classmates who were away from home for the first time were just as comfortable with Eagle, often turning to her for guidance. "Sometimes I was a bit of a mother figure," she says. "Sometimes I was a resource for counseling or help that different people need, or just to have an ear." But not all of Eagle's fellow students accepted her at face value. "Some, quite honestly, just thought it was probably ridiculous that I was there," she says. "What the hell was I really doing there? You just get all kinds of personalities." While Eagle's age made her stand out in class, she never drew a second glance while walking around campus. Of course that could be because no one imagined she was a student. "I remember buying my laptop (at a campus store) the beginning of second term in first year," she recalls. "So I go in, and there I am buying this computer and they ask me what my faculty number was so that it would be credited to a professor." That laptop would get plenty of use. For the next four years, Eagle's life would be all about learning and memorizing a seemingly infinite amount of legalese. It's a workload that seems better suited to someone still in their youth, but Eagle never saw her age as a drawback. "My approach to things, I know, is broader than when I was 23," she says. Eagle's latter-life foray into university often surprises those who don't know her, but she always knew it was a journey she would take. See 'Lawyer' on pg. Continued from pg. She began her post-secondary education at age 40. Primarily through distance learning, and with a 4.2 GPA, she earned an honours degree in psychology from the University of Waterloo. Eagle went on to counsel clients at the Women's Resource Centre, where she was executive director. She envisioned herself going back to school full-time to earn a Masters or Ph.D. in psychology. Yet somewhere in the back of her mind lurked the sense that law would be a more befitting path. "I've been lucky enough to know that my role in life is to be a facilitator," she says. "In whatever field and whatever way, my basic role in life, this life, is to be a facilitator, a helper. So knowing that, I really felt strongly that I could be an effective advocate for people in law." Eagle took the Law School Admission Test in 2002 and passed with flying colours. It was a predictor of things to come, for when she graduated in 2006, her name was on the honour roll her final year. To fulfill her mandatory year of articling, she came closer to home in The Pas, where she polished her skills on files from throughout Northern Manitoba. After being called to the bar last June, Eagle began making preparations for her own law office. She quickly found that her dream job made tremendous business sense. "I'm getting phone calls from people everywhere because we are short of lawyers everywhere, and people really need help," she says. "They have family matters; they have other legal problems; they're facing criminal matters at some point. There aren't enough people to help them." As she helps many of those people, Eagle has not had much time to appreciate how her story may dare others to shoot for the stars. She gives immense credit to her supportive daughter and husband, Harley, but says in the end, achieving a goal is all about the individual. "There's always a way to do it," she says. "If it's something that you know in your soul that you should be doing, do it because you'll find all kinds of reasons not to or why you shouldn't. But there's nothing to really stop you except yourself." And that's something Judy Eagle knows better than most.
