THE ADVOCATE 445
VOL. 78 PART 3 MAY 2020
ical challenges with an indomitable fighting spirit, and he approached life
with a deep sense of happiness and perhaps his most defining characteristic:
his unmatched sense of humour.
In 2002, Sanjeev graduated with honours from the bachelor of commerce
program at UBC, where he found his first professional calling: accounting.
To this day, we are unsure with which profession his allegiances lay, but we
all agree that we have never known someone to be so proud of being an
accountant. And he excelled in that field. He went on to obtain his Chartered
Accountant designation after UBC before working in Vancouver at
Davidson and Company and later at Vancouver Coastal Health. There, he
performed audit and occasionally tax work and otherwise developed the
astute business sense and precise thinking that would help him later advising
legal clients.
In 2004, he chose to attend law school at UVic. There, his many academic
accomplishments were overshadowed by his campus escapades. No awkward
silence in class could pass without a well-timed one-liner, and no
library study session felt appropriate without at least one prank. A cat-andmouse
game eventually ensued between him and the library staff trying to
catch the white whale that was Sanjeev’s coffee cup. He was popular among
his classmates and was never one to avoid expressing an unpopular opinion,
taking a joke in good fun or engaging in a school-sanctioned armwrestling
competition. With respect to the arm wrestling, he would always
last much longer than I expected, and it was through these experiences that
I learned never to underestimate his will.
Despite the fun, however, law school was where I really came to understand
Sanjeev as a man of generosity and principle. He was warm, the first
person to offer friendship to me, a second-year transfer student from the
University of Alberta. He spoke highly of his loving family. He shared stories
about his girlfriend (later wife), Caroline, and the family they would have
together in the future. And one warm summer evening on a beach in Victoria,
he confided to me his aspirations of practising business law in downtown
Vancouver and Calgary. Before he had finished law school, he had already
worked two successive summers at Fraser Milner Casgrain LLP (now Dentons
LLP). After graduating from law school in 2007, Sanjeev began his
career in Vancouver, working hard to develop his skills as a solicitor focusing
on securities and corporate law. Although the 2008 financial crisis loomed
over the beginning of Sanjeev’s legal career, he was never daunted.
In 2010, Sanjeev married his longtime girlfriend, Caroline, and together
they moved to Calgary. He achieved professional success there, working for
various companies and firms, including as an associate at Heenan Blaike
LLP and most recently as senior legal counsel at Avenue Living, a billion-