Meet Bronagh

I’m the child of working-class immigrants. My parents left a country with a lot of terrorism and came here for something safer. They raised me on a simple idea: work hard, keep your nose clean, build a good life.

So I did. I worked through school in the service industry. I paid my own way, took out student loans, paid them back, won some academic awards along the way. I won’t pretend it was all uphill. I know that being a white person who speaks English in Canada is a relatively easy starting line, and I’m not going to dress this up as a bootstraps story. But I worked, and I’ve never stopped.

I went to law school because I wanted to use that education for something. I’ve always believed the law should be something people can actually understand. I even have a stubborn goal of shrinking the Income Tax Act, which just grows and grows in ways that help lawyers and wealthy people, and stops being a working document for the people it’s supposed to serve.

I became a corporate lawyer. Then I was pushed out of it by sexual harassment. I tried again at other firms. It happened every time.

So I pivoted. I’ve had to do that a lot in my life, and it’s made me less afraid of change than most people. Change is going to come whether you like it or not. The thing to do is meet it calmly and find another way through.

The way I pivoted was to become a legal writer and editor. A legal translator. For about two decades I did the legal research, writing, and editing that turns complicated law into something people can read. There’s an actual person behind those legal summaries and head-notes. That person is me.

The most important thing in my life is my family. I’m a bereaved parent. I lost my daughter.

I don’t say that for sympathy. I say it because it taught me something I see missing at the top.

People who really understand pain rarely make it into power. That’s part of why our institutions can feel so cold. I’m running, in part, to be one of the people who does make it there, and brings that understanding with her.

I’ve sat at a lot of tables in this city over the years. I’ve seen how powerful people behave when they think no one who matters is watching. Some of what I know, I can’t say, and not because I did anything wrong. I have my family’s safety to think about. But I’ll always stand up for people who never see themselves in the decisions that get made about their lives.

My personal life is my own. Whether I’m straight or anything else is nobody’s business and it’s irrelevant to whether I’d make a good mayor. I’m an open person and I’m not ashamed of anything. I’d just like us to keep the conversation on London.