Trevor Watt had followed the roadmap for a successful life.
Bright and ambitious, he was a strong student at Hapnot Collegiate who completed a bachelor of commerce (honours) degree by the time he was 22.
But when Watt returned home the summer after graduation, he realized the career he had envisioned was now fraught with complications.
He didn’t know what he wanted to do with his commerce degree. He also wanted to stay in Manitoba to be near his girlfriend rather than pursue richer pastures in Alberta or Ontario. He weighed his options.
“One of my favourite TV shows when I was a kid was LA Law,” recalls Watt, now 44, referring to the landmark legal drama.
“I had always liked the idea [of being a lawyer] and loved to argue. So I got the idea of applying for law school.”
To fund his dream, Watt took a full-time job at HBM&S, now Hudbay. He worked as an operator in the baghouse, a part of the now-defunct copper smelter that helped control pollution.
He lived at home for a year to save up money. Having already graduated from the University of Manitoba once, he applied to the university’s faculty
of law.
Even after he was accepted to law school, some of Watt’s coworkers, accustomed to people staying at HBM&S until retirement, doubted he would follow through.
“The guys at work were calling me the baghouse lawyer and bugging me [that] I still wouldn’t go,” he says.
Watt moved to Winnipeg to start law school in September 1996. Still just 23, he possessed the stamina necessary for the three hectic years ahead.
“Classes [were] from 8:30 to about 3:30 every day and [involved] studying after that as you had to prepare ahead of time for each class,” he says.
“You would not get any feeling for your mark until your finals were done in December and April. So needless to say the two-week exam period at the end of every semester was a lot of stress and all-nighters for me.”
Watt graduated in 1999 and began articling – an apprenticeship for lawyers – with the Campbell, Marr LLP law firm in Winnipeg.
In the back of his mind, he hoped his new career would somehow lead him back to the familiar territory of Flin Flon.
Deep roots
Watt has deeper roots in Flin Flon than just about anyone else. His paternal great-grandfather, Jean Floch, moved to the community in 1927 and ran a bakery. His maternal grandfather, Blake Hume, arrived circa 1929 as one of the first hockey players to get paid to play in Flin Flon.
Watt himself was born not in Flin Flon, but in North York, Ontario. He moved to Flin Flon as an infant after his father, Ron, landed an accounting position at HBM&S.
The family lived in a handful of company housing units over the years. Growing up, Watt considered the company housing property and the uptown area to be his playground.
“We were always playing outside, mostly road hockey but also football, baseball, hide-and-go seek or anti-I-over,” he says. “If we ever broke a window, it was not the end of the world as Hudbay workers would come at some point and replace it.”
The Watts spent their summers at the family cabin Denare Beach, though the timing of their annual return to Flin Flon varied.
“One year it was earlier than normal when my mom was doing dishes and looking outside when a great big bear was in the front yard,” recalls Watt. “Pretty sure she had us packed up and ready to get to town when my dad came out after work.”
Decisions
After Watt began articling at Campbell, Marr LLP in Winnipeg, he knew important decisions lie ahead.
Though they had at times lived apart, he was still with his long-time girlfriend, Laura Clark. The two had met during his initial university stint, and their plan was to settle down somewhere, at some point.
Due to a staffing change, Watt could not land a permanent position at Campbell, Marr. He planned to send out his
resume after he and Clark got married in the summer of 2001.
A couple of months before the wedding, Watt, a loyal Flin Flon Bomber fan, paid a visit to Flin Flon to take in some of the Royal Bank Cup tournament at the Whitney Forum.
When he entered a makeshift lounge known as the “bomb shelter,” he was met by Joanne Maynard, then a lawyer at the Flin Flon firm of Ginnell Bauman & Associates.
“Long story short, she stopped me and encouraged me to come up to Flin Flon and work with her and [fellow lawyer] Greg Bauman,” says Watt.
Watt liked the idea, but he knew his wife, a speech-language pathologist, would need a job as well. Cue the Flin Flon School Division, which suddenly found itself without a speech-language pathologist following a resignation.
The Watts both applied for their desired positions, and both were hired to start work after their wedding.
Resolve problems
As a partner with the firm now known as Ginnell Bauman Watt Law Corporation, Watt runs a general practise that deals mainly with family, real estate and corporate law, as well as wills and estates.
“Generally people come to see me as they have an issue that they need help resolving,” says Watt.
“Whether it’s a buying a house, not being able to see their children or losing a loved one, I get to help them navigate through the process and resolve the ‘problem’ that they came in with. I cannot always make everyone happy, but I try my best to make as many as I can happy.”
During his interview for this piece, Watt is asked about the “triumphs and tragedies” – the LA Law-worthy anecdotes – of his career. As it turns out, real-life law isn’t so one-dimensional.
“Triumphs and tragedies of my work is a difficult one to answer, in that I find family law is not really set up for either of those to occur,” he says. “The biggest problem with family law is most everything is designed on the premise of the best interests of the children, yet the system itself is, in my opinion, not in the best interest of children.”
For Watt, a triumph is experiencing success in court, confirming his belief that when one party is reasonable, success will generally follow.
“I always tell my clients I am not going to court unless I have a reasonable argument,” he says.
Hectic pace
To borrow a term from one of his clients, Watt remains busier than a one-legged tap dancer today, nearly 16 years into his legal career in Flin Flon.
When he’s not at the office or in court, he is a devoted family man and avid follower of the Flin Flon Bombers and Winnipeg Jets. He curls, plays poker and golf, and reads Tom Clancy.
Watt is open about his development as a person since his 2001 homecoming. Key to this evolution was becoming a father to daughters Gianna and Genevieve – fifth-generation Flin Flonners – in 2005 and 2008.
“[It] truly changes who you are as a person and your priorities,” he says. “It may not happen overnight, but you realize that everything you do in life is ultimately trying to benefit your children and make a good life for them. I
remember being in the hospital…and it was just Gianna and I in the room. It was the first time we had been alone and you sit there with her in your arms thinking, ‘Wow, now what are we supposed to do!’”
Watt’s outlook on life progressed again when he and his family were involved in a near-fatal four-vehicle accident on Highway 6 north of Winnipeg in 2013. Two of the other people involved in the accident perished.
“My family was incredibly lucky that we were not killed when we slammed into another vehicle at 100 km per hour,” Watt says.
“It has taught me the most important thing in life is the relationships you have with the people that help you through something like that. Everything can be taken away from you literally in a blink of an eye, so live for today and take time out to build your relationships with the people that are close to you. That is easier said than done in our busy lives, but again we can only try our best.”
