Bench strength

for her work as a labour lawyer and an expert on constitutional law. She argued landmark Supreme Court cases involving gay rights, the privacy rights of sexual assault victims and the rights of obese airline passengers to be accommodated on planes. She worked with the Edmonton Institution for Women as an independent adjudicator at prison disciplinary hearings. She served on the Federal Boundaries Commission and taught as a sessional lecturer at the University of Alberta law school.

Khullar is the first South Asian judge in Alberta history, and the first South Asian woman to be named to any Canadian appeal court.

Avnish Nanda, 29, is a public law litigator in Edmonton. Just seeing someone South Asian on the bench makes the court system feel more open for lawyers like him.

“This is very cool,” Nanda says. “She’s one of the top lawyers. She’s extremely bright. But this shows the system is open. It’s a testament of how far we’ve come. To have someone who is Albertan, but also South Asian, on the bench is huge.”

Yet that’s the kind of narrative, a kind of identity label, that makes Khullar rather uncomfortable.

“I’ve never seen myself as a role model. I think that’s weird,” she says with a laugh.

“I’m proud of my heritage. My parents came from India. But that’s not what defines me. I never refer to myself as South Asian. I describe myself as Canadian. My parents raised us as Canadians. Full stop.”

Then she chuckles at the irony.

Indians say “full stop” to describe the punctuation mark that ends a sentence. Canadians call that little dot a “period.”

Nothing could be more Canadian, in truth, than the story of Khullar’s family. Her parents, both teachers, came from Jalandhar, in Punjab. Her mother’s family was Sikh. Her father was Hindu. Their marriage across religious and class lines wasn’t supported by their families. So they started a new life in Alberta.

They arrived in 1961, before immigration laws were liberalized, before the first waves of Indian immigration. But Alberta was booming and in dire need of trained professionals. Khullar’s parents ended up in La Crête, 700 kilometres north of Edmonton, teaching in a Mennonite colony.

Fort Vermilion had the nearest hospital. Which is how Khullar, the youngest of three, ended up being born there in 1964. She was in Grade 4 when the family moved to Morinville, then a largely francophone community, where the “public” school was Catholic, and run out of a former convent.

“On my first day, they asked me whether I was Protestant or Catholic. I gave them a blank look, not knowing what either meant. So they put me down as Protestant, which basically meant I didn’t have to pay attention in religion class.”

They were the only IndoCanadian family around. But Khullar says that was never an issue.

“We were something of a novelty, I think. People were very welcoming.”

She took an honours degree in political science at the University of Alberta, planning on a career as a diplomat. But she became fascinated with constitutional law, and ended up at the University of Toronto law school instead.

She secured a prestigious spot articling with the Alberta Court of Appeal before working as a civil and constitutional litigator, juggling being a partner at her law firm with a busy life as mother to two active sons. (Her husband, by the by, is Rob Reynolds, a constitutional lawyer and clerk of the Alberta legislature.)

Now Khullar’s back at the Court of Appeal in a new role. She says she’ll bring all her life experiences — as a kid from small-town Alberta, as a working mother, as a labour lawyer, as a prison adjudicator — with her.

“I think it is important that we have a diverse bench. We have a diverse country and our judiciary should reflect that society,” Khullar says.

“On the Court of Appeal, we serve in three-person panels. You have three judges, each bringing a unique perspective. And the more diversity you have amongst those three judges, the better the law for all Albertans. Part of what I bring to bear is being a child of immigrants from India. But I’m more than that. I bring other things to the table, as well.”