Mediator Profile: S.Glenn Sigurdson

As a novice tractor driver, his job during his first-ever night shift was to haul a giant “big sheepfoot” mud compactor behind his tiny HD5 Caterpillar to the so-called Monarch site, near the southern entrance of this giant floodway being scratched into the soil surrounding the city.

For hours he herded his machine through the black night towards his destination. His real job, however, seemed to be the task of mere survival. His route was an obstacle course, on which he had to dodge huge earth-moving equipment criss-crossing the site. Their headlights would lurch menacingly into his path. Their brobdignagian forms bobbed and bounced around him, steel heavyweights threatening to deliver crushing blows.

Finally he had arrived — somewhere. It was 5 in the morning. Dawn’s early light was just bleaching the night sky to a dark blue. Surrounded by what he describes as “the rumble of machinery and whine of engines,” he saw a truck approaching. He shifted into neutral, scrambled over his Cat’s steel treads, and jumped to the ground

Immediately in Sigurdson’s face, the truck drive bellowed at him, “You’re on the Simkin job. You’re a mile and a half from the Monarch site. Get on that damn tractor, put it in gear, and follow me.”

Problem-solving over litigation
Sigurdson tells this story with heart-felt sentiment as the introduction to a tale that pays tribute to the men and women who built that Red River floodway.

Inadvertently, the incident also hints at another truth. His arrival in the wrong location notwithstanding, Glenn Sigurdson is a hands-on character, known for getting down in the trenches, where he can help people bulldoze through their fears and misconceptions, so they can build bridgeworks toward consensus.

“He’s got a varied background,” says his colleague Gerald Cormick. “From the time he was a child working on the family fishing company on Lake Winnipeg, then studying economics, then law, he was oriented towards problem-solving rather than litigation.”

Sigurdson is principal of the dispute-resolution organization bearing his name, in Vancouver, British Columbia, hugging the border with Washington State. A lawyer-practitioner, he is also one of three principals in The CSE Group, a “virtual organization” that pools the talents of its three members in a collaborative relationship that does not join them in a formal partnership.

His cohorts are Cormick, who is based in Mill Creek, Washington, and Felicity Edwards, of Canmore, Alberta. The three practice independently, but join forces when teamwork is called for.

All three have mediated and facilitated public disputes, especially conflicts involving environmental and natural-resource issues. In addition, much of Edwards’ experience is in community-based decision-making. She has also developed and promoted training in dispute resolution. Cormick is a designated mediator on state panels in Washington and Oregon.

Sigurdson has worked within a number of private and public organizations to help them create structures and systems to anticipate and manage conflict. As a mediator and facilitator, he has helped parties grapple with issues involving fisheries, environmental assessments, site contaminations, forest management, rights-of-way, and health care.

Among the public and professional posts in which he has served are the Manitoba Labour Board, of which he was vice chairman (part-time) from 1980 to 1989; and the Society of Professionals in Dispute Resolution (SPIDR), of which he was president in 1995-1996.

“Most of my work is in large, multi-party settings,” Sigurdson says. “Usually there is some kind of policy element connected. The bigger the issue or the number of parties, the more likely it is that government will be involved. In fact, many cases I work on have government as a player at the table.”

Sigurdson insists he is not even sure how to label these conflicts, which many practitioners would be content to categorize as matters of public policy. What they are is less clear in the mind of Sigurdson, who sees philosophical issues in the question about what to call them. After all, if “public policy” is what happens when the government establishes rules to resolve uncertainty and conflict among constituents, what should we call disputes where the government itself is a party?

Sigurdson interprets it as an issue of governance, in which the highest authority becomes the players and their process, rather than some magisterial body to which the players have delegated power. It is a return to a more direct democracy.

“A lot of my career has revolved around environmental land disputes, with multiple parties,” says Sigurdson. “The immediate challenge is to manage the uncertainties or threat to the resource or land base. I don’t have a good label for it. Public policy, really, is a curiosity to me. Government has a kind of omniscient presence around us, but on many issues government and others are players at the table. So these disputes are not simply matters of government setting public policy.”

Looking beyond the courtroom
Sigurdson was born in a fishing community on the shores of Lake Winnipeg, Manitoba, roughly equidistant from Canada’s Pacific and Atlantic coasts. His great grandfather and great uncle were the first commercial fishermen on the lake, running a production house. His grandfather was a construction contractor.

When pollution by mercury, a by-product of the region’s pulp and paper manufacturing, forced closure of the area’s fishing industry for two and a half years, Sigurdson had already completed graduate studies in economics and was starting law school at York University.

Sigurdson began to practice law in 1972, joining the firm Richardson & Company in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Early on, thanks to a broad web of professional and social contacts, Sigurdson was retained to represent 12,000 Cree Indians whose six communities would be affected by large hydro-electric construction projects in northern Manitoba. A core problem was that the Cree were being threatened with eviction from land along the shore of the Nelson River and its tributaries.

Cree regarded the land as crucial to their way of life, not some mere summer camp that could be replaced.

“The Cree asked me, If we can’t stop that hydro project, what options might there be, and what outcomes might occur in court? We explained that the only option in that case would be an award of damages.

“But the Cree said they did not want that. Their interest was the land. If they couldn’t have their land, they wanted other land.

“I had to recognize that the courts did not have the capacity to fashion a remedy that fit the interests of my client. So at an early stage I had to think about alternative vehicles to work towards a resolution of the problem for my client.”

Sigurdson began to explore the use of arbitration, which could have broader remedial powers than a court. Development proponents said they could accept arbitration, but to Sigurdson’s initial surprise his own clients balked. Asserting what they regarded as their standing as a party with sovereign-nation status, Sigurdson’s Cree clients said they were reluctant to work with a mere functionary in a business suit.

“The First Nations’ people said somehow that doesn’t ring consistent with their expectations. They would prefer someone wearing a [judicial] robe, a symbol of commitment by the Crown.”

In short, they preferred to deal nation-to-nation.

Locked up for a week
Sigurdson and his colleagues returned to the drawing board. The idea of mediation arose. As mediator, both sides accepted Leon Mitchell, vice chair of the Canadian federal agency refereeing public-employee labor-management relations. A process of non-binding mediation commenced.

After a year and a half of work, Mitchell found the parties ripe for agreement. Nothing final had been accepted, however. Mitchell convened the parties at a hotel in Winnipeg.

“Mitchell said it was time for all the parties to sit at a table, and we would sit there for as long as it takes to negotiate an agreement,” recalls D’arcy McCaffrey, an attorney-negotiator who had joined Sigurdson’s negotiation team. “Day after day there was venting, letting out steam, but finally people settled down and by Friday night at about 11 p.m. we had the makings of an agreement in principle. We had been in that hotel for a week.”

The solution, Sigurdson says, was not so much that the parties finally had agreed about how much compensation the First Nation peoples deserved for the loss of their fish, game, and land. It was that a mechanism for treating them like a people with the right to land was agreed upon.

“Land for land was real important,” says Sigurdson. “The government of Manitoba was far more important for their role in making land available than for providing money... One thing we negotiated was a long-term management protocol for dealing with the inevitable future problems. It didn’t cost the government a lot, but it had enormous value. It conveyed a sense of respect that one side wanted.”

Like any lasting solution, this one worked not because it involved persuading one side to accept the other’s point of view. Just the opposite. It allowed both sides to maintain their interests, while responding equitably to each other.

“We’re in the bridge-building business, not the conversion business,” Sigurdson says.

That case proved pivotal for Sigurdson’s career. It introduced him to Leon Mitchell, who in turn introduced him to SPIDR and to Jerry Cormick, who became Sigurdson’s “virtual” partner. Sigurdson also soon became a partner in McCaffrey’s law firm, to which he remains of counsel.

Perhaps most of all, it illustrated the usefulness of alternative approaches to dispute resolution.

“It didn’t take me long, once I had left law school, to come face-to-face with the reality that whatever I had learned in law school would not necessarily enable me to service the interests of my clients...,” says Sigurdson. “My orientation became, Get the problem solved. That case showed me alternative ways of increasing the likelihood of reaching resolution.”

Icelandic roots
Sigurdson’s family emigrated to Canada from Iceland in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

“He’s very much an Icelander. He has a strong sense of family,” says his wife, Maureen, a nurse, who is involved with research on infants’ respiratory ailments. The Sigurdsons have a 19-year-old son, Paul, and a 14-year-old daughter, Sonja.

“Glenn is away from home a lot due to his work, but he’s never away in a mental sense,” Maureen adds. “No matter where he is, he telephones. He was in Germany last year when Paul had to focus on exams. Glenn phoned every night and Paul knew he was being thought about.”

Every summer the Sigurdsons vacation in Manitoba, near where Glenn grew up and where many families of Icelandic ancestry live. Sigurdson has helped spearhead the annual Icelandic festival, held each August in Gimli. Then his family drives 80 miles north to their cottage in Leaside Beach.

“The last 60 miles are on a gravel road,” says Maureen.

The cottage has water pumped from a lake, and an outdoor shower. Sigurdson’s mother, father and sister stay there too. His brother has a cottage nearby, as do many friends.

“We water ski, party, eat out on the gazebo, where we’re screened from the mosquitoes,” says Maureen. “Glenn stays outside the gazebo to barbecue. But he’s a true Icelander; he’s not bothered by mosquitoes.”

Lenore Goode has known Sigurdson since their youth. “Growing up in a diverse community shaped him. So did his family,” she says.

“From a young age in his family business Glenn was involved in negotiating with a variety of groups. He was exposed to business people, to aboriginal people who worked for the family fishing company and worked for Glenn’s family in boats and at the fish station... All of this gave him tremendous exposure to a wide variety of people and interests. He had to learn how to satisfy those to make the family business successful.”

The lessons took hold.

“Glenn was a wonderful diplomat in dealing with specific interests within SPIDR,” says Christina Merchant, Sigurdson’s successor at the Society’s helm. “He also interfaced well with key stakeholders in SPIDR, like legislators, funders, and other organizations committed to the field of dispute resolution.”

A festering problem in northern Ontario demanded those diplomatic and analytical skills. Pollution from a paper mill had polluted nearby lakes and rivers, forcing a shutdown of fisheries. A decade after the first lawsuits still had not solved the problem, Sigurdson became involved.

“People knew the lawsuits were settling nothing,” says D’arcy McCaffrey. “But nothing changed until Glenn’s entry. Glenn energized it by saying, Leave the lawsuits over there. Let’s start with a new medium.”

So pleased were the Cree by the outcome that they awarded Sigurdson, McCaffrey and their colleagues Colin Gillespie and Emmett Hall (a former judge of Canada’s supreme court) with eagle feathers, a very high accolade.

“Consensus to me is agreement on a total package,” Sigurdson says. “It allows one to craft a complex outcome. A party may not be happy about one piece, but when a party looks at the whole, it is better than any alternative he can see...

“People must feel comfortable to enter a process. They can’t be ganged up on. People must feel comfortable in disclosing their real interests and concerns, without harming their interests in the process. People need to feel safe. They need ’ramps’ for getting on and off. People will only use a highway if they feel safe getting on and off. Well, negotiated agreements are the same.”

Spoken like an old tractor-driving veteran of construction work. Or like someone who is still in the bridge-building business.

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