Mathies should tweet this from the rooftops: a BMath can serve as the foundation for just about any career. That includes the practice of law. Arguing for nationally famous landmarks and defending our judicial rights and freedoms, two highly successful BMath graduates have articulated their methodical reasoning before municipal councils and criminal courts.
“I loved mathematics and in ’78, Waterloo was the place to go.” Mark Noskiewicz’s Toronto high school guidance counsellor suggested other universities but he knew better. He attended UWaterloo for applied math with a focus on systems design. His co-op placements were computer programming jobs at the Ministry of Transportation, Stelco and Bell Northern Research (BNR).
In February of ’82, Mark received a job offer from BNR and an acceptance letter to the University of Toronto Law School. He decided to study law, joking, “I wasn't quite ready to work full time.” He graduated from law school in ’85, articled with Goodman and Goodman (now Goodmans LLP) and has been with the firm for more than 30 years.
Mark is a municipal lawyer and assists land developers obtain the approvals they need to build buildings or even whole communities. He advocates for his clients’ projects in front of municipal councils and committees and before the Ontario Municipal Board, addressing a wide array of federal, provincial and municipal legislation, policies and guidelines.
He believes that the rigour of his math training was perfect preparation to become a lawyer. “The skills that make you a good mathematician are the skills that make you a good lawyer — having a logical mind and being able to tackle, process and synthesize complex information. In a typical case, there could be 50 or more issues that have to be distilled into one coherent argument.”
One project that Mark is particularly proud to be associated with is Toronto’s Distillery District — a National Historic Site. The Gooderham and Worts Distillery was founded in 1832 and by the late 1860s, it was the largest distillery in the world. Mark has represented the owners ever since it closed operations in 1990. Previously fenced off to the public and zoned only for industrial uses, the Distillery District is now one of Toronto’s premier tourist attractions. The walkable streets showcase the largest collection of Victorian-era industrial architecture in North America — preserved and transformed into shops, restaurants, art studios and galleries, theatres, homes and offices.
Mark has also been involved with another Toronto landmark. He secured the zoning approvals for the CN Tower base expansion, and subsequently, for Ripley’s Aquarium, where UWaterloo Math kicked-off its 50th anniversary celebrations in January.
Providing for the Defense
“A Waterloo math degree is not like any other math degree. It is an elite institution.” Marilyn Sandford had taken math electives at another university, but when she came to Waterloo to study math she found “it was really like starting from scratch. It was a much more challenging program.”
Marilyn’s ’87 BMath was taken out of interest: her vocational calling was to the legal profession. A star graduate from Dalhousie Law School in ’89, she took the road less traveled and articled at a boutique firm in Vancouver specializing in criminal defense and tort litigation — “all courtroom work.” Marilyn has served the defense in high profile murder and conspiracy trials, where her incredible reasoning skills were called into action to defend the rights we have as Canadians, including the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.
In one case, “the science involved was on a scale rarely seen in any courts anywhere in the world. There were some 200,000 DNA results obtained from testing of exhibits, and the case also involved experts in chemistry, ballistics, anthropology, odontology, forensic pathology…”
Marilyn credits her training in math for her powers of analytical reasoning in the face of such monumental complexity. “I was never interested in CS but rather pure math, logic, and abstract reasoning. It carries forward to the forensic science end of the practice the law.”
She may not have enjoyed computer science but in another case, it was her clients’ good fortune that Ms. Sandford was paying attention in class. Marilyn put her critical acumen to work and asked: “what does the computer show in terms of their online activity?” The judge accepted that a careful look at the computer data did not support the serious charge they were facing. Rather, the Supreme Court Justice found the case to be unsubstantiated.
Marilyn sees tremendous opportunity for graduates of Waterloo Math as forensic computer scientists, accountants and actuaries, or sole practitioners like her, easily able to calculate financial loss due to wrongful death or injury, or to manage the business side of the house.
Underlying it all is the ability to solve problems, which is the core skillset developed in a Bachelor of Mathematics at UWaterloo.
