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Robyn Wishart loved the game. As a young girl growing up in Winnipeg, she sat in the end-zone seats at Blue Bomber games with her parents, soaking up the the synergy between the city and its football team.

“Swatting the bugs, cheering on Chris Walby, Chicken Delight (a Winnipeg value lunch institution),” Wishart says. “That’s how I grew up. I’ve loved the CFL my whole life.”

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At the University of Winnipeg, where she played intercollegiate volleyball as Robyn Palmer, she studied sports psychology under Cal Botterill, a renowned consultant with Canadian Olympians and National Hockey League players.

“Sports taught me how to not let hurdles stop you from achieving your goals,” says Wishart, now a 44-year-old Vancouver lawyer with a focus on brain and spine cases. “It taught me the mental strength to take on something difficult and see it through. Commitment.”

When she graduated from law school at the University of Victoria (“I wanted to be a lawyer since I was four years old”), Wishart never imagined herself becoming the focus of a one-woman crusade that goes beyond the usual type of cases she deals with at the plaintiffs’ bar — car accidents, throws from a horse, injuries from unsafe work conditions.