EDUCATE! ADVOCATE! AGITATE!
Meet Our Conference Facilitators
Announcing Our 2025 Conference Facilitators
After nearly a year of conference planning work led by trans advocates, justice workers, community organizers, and allies, and thanks to the generous support of the Law Foundation of British Columbia, we are thrilled to announce our facilitators of the inaugural Lawyers Against Transphobia National Conference: Educate! Advocate! Agitate.
The conference kicks off on Friday, September 26, 2026, at 4:30 pm with a talk by Celeste Trianon, followed by networking time.
Schedule:
Friday, September 26, 2025 – 4:30 pm -7:30 pm (PT)
Saturday, September 27, 2025 – 8 am – 5 pm (PT)
Sunday, September 28, 2025 – 8 am – 5 pm (PT)
Meet Myrna!
Myrna McCallum is an award winner, change-maker and a leading voice in trauma-informed lawyering. As the host of The Trauma-Informed Lawyer podcast, she brings critical insights into how trauma shapes legal practice, serving as a trusted subject matter expert on trauma-informed policies, procedures, and processes.Renowned for her impactful public speaking, Myrna educates legal professionals on the profound effects of trauma in individuals and within the justice system.
Myrna has co-edited two influential publications:
- Canadian Law, Indigenous Laws and Critical Perspectives, an open-access eBook published by CanLII, and
- Trauma-Informed Law: A Primer for Lawyer Resilience and Healing, published by the American Bar Association.
Her groundbreaking work has earned her numerous accolades, including:
- The 2020 Federal Department of Justice Excellence in Legal Practice and Victim Support Award
- The 2022 Canadian Bar Association BC Aboriginal Lawyers Forum Special Contributor Award
- The 2022 Saskatchewan Ombudsman’s Game Changer Award
- The 2023 Canadian Bar Association BC Women Lawyers Forum Award of Excellence
- The 2023 Canadian Bar Association Cecilia I. Johnstone Award
Meet Syrus!
Syrus Marcus Ware is an Assistant Professor at the School of the Arts, McMaster University. His research creation practice spans drawing, installation, and performance and considers social justice frameworks and Black activist culture. His work has been shown widely, including solo shows at Tangled Art + Disability in 2022 (Random Access Memory), Grunt Gallery in 2018 (2068:Touch Change) and Wil Aballe Art Projects in 2021 (Irresistible Revolutions). His work has been featured as part of the inaugural Toronto Biennial of Art in both 2019 and 2022 in conjunction with the Ryerson Image Centre (Antarctica; Ancestors, Do You Read Us?: Dispatches from the Future and MBL:Freedom), as well as for the Bentway’s Safety in Public Spaces initiative in 2020 (Radical Love).
Syrus’ recent curatorial projects include And the Spaces Between Us Smiled for Nuit Blanche, Central zone (City of Toronto, 2024), That’s So Gay (Gladstone Hotel, 2016-2019), Re:Purpose (Robert McLaughlin Gallery, 2014) and The Church Street Mural Project (Church-Wellesley Village, 2013). Syrus was co-curator of The Cycle, a two-year disability arts performance initiative of the National Arts Centre (NAC) with Dr. Sarah Garton Stanley. He is part of the inaugural curatorial team for the NAC’s National Creation Fund.
Syrus is a co-founder of Black Lives Matter- Canada and the Wildseed Centre for Art & Activism. He is the innovator of the Wildseed Black Arts Fellowship, the Put Your Roots Down Residency and the Black August Residency. Syrus is a past co-curator of Blackness Yes!/Blockorama, the largest and longest running programming at the Pride Toronto Festival. !
Meet Celeste!
Celeste Trianon is a passionate trans advocate, holder of a bachelor of laws, and founder of her own legal clinic, Juritrans.
Currently actively working on court interventions all the way up to the Supreme Court of Canada, she equally works on access-to-justice work for trans community, having facilitated over 1,000 legal name and sex changes from coast to coast over the last three years, as well as public legal information work, managing resources such as her Anti-Trans Risk Map for the benefit of trans people across the country and beyond.
Her dream? That justice becomes something that trans people can experience, instead of a mere theoretical ideal they’re told about.
