Alumnus appointed UNB’s Law Dean

Photo courtesy of the University of New Brunswick

Ian Peach, Law '89, LLM '09, Dean of Law, UNB

Ian Peach, Law ’89, LLM ’09, began his term as Dean of Law at the University of New Brunswick on August 1, 2010. He brings to the post expertise in constitutional and Aboriginal law, along with valued experience in federalism and intergovernmental relations going back to the period of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords.

Peach’s academic interests were originally sparked while completing his LLB at Queen’s. In his second and third years he worked as a research assistant for then-Dean John Whyte, Law ‘68. That relationship gave Peach insight into the challenges and rewards of a deanship and the positive role a dean can have in the lives of his or her students. “John and I have worked together and been friends ever since,” he says.

After completing his Law degree, Peach worked in both public policy and academia. As staff to the two Parliamentary committees on constitutional reform that led to the Charlottetown Accord, he began to develop his experience in constitutional law and policy. As a representative for the Yukon during the Charlottetown Accord negotiations, he helped negotiate the First Ministers’ Agreement and its supporting legal text. He later went to work for the government of Saskatchewan, helping to draft the province’s factum for the Supreme Court of Canada’s Quebec Secession Reference and working on Aboriginal self-government negotiations.

That policy experience prepared him well for full-time academia. “One of the things about constitutional law and constitutional policy is that it’s relatively fluid between the profession and the academic community,” he says. “I’ve never thought of there being a hard line at any point in my career.”

Prior to returning to Queen’s in 2009, Peach helped create the Aboriginal Policy Research Network at the Office of the Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-Status Indians, which helps in the development of scholarship on issues of significance to Métis and non-status Indians in Canada. This opportunity afforded him the chance to see just how important academia is to governance.

“I concluded that academics who are engaged in serious public policy can be every bit as influential in public policy as those inside government,” he says.
That conclusion pointed him back towards academia and Queen’s in 2008. There he reconnected with classmate Professor Mark Walters, Law ’89, who supervised his graduate thesis.

“Mark holds a special place for me,” Peach says. “His capacity to connect our friendship with effective supervision of his friend, now a student, was an important lesson.”

It is that capacity to form meaningful relationships with others in the Faculty, like Walters and Whyte were able to with Peach, that guides him as he embarks on this new stage of his career.  
“I have a general appreciation of those who mentored me at Queen’s,” he says. “They became my friends and they set the example for me now that I’m at the other end of things and in position to be a leader and mentor myself.”