Article content continued

During a rare quiet moment, Eby remarks on the impact of fatherhood on his life.

“It was transformative, really, because I have always loved my work a lot,” he said.

“All the way through since becoming a lawyer, and I don’t mind working a lot of my jobs, and I get satisfaction from that. But now there’s this counter draw, to be at home, and to be hanging out with my son and now Iva.

“It’s not hard to leave the work behind. And that’s what surprised me about it. It’s almost the opposite — it’s hard to go back to work. It’s been a big shift. But a healthy shift.”

Photo by Arlen Redekop / PNG

Eby admits his obsession with work led him to crash a decade ago while working at the Pivot Legal Society, helping low-income and homeless residents fight illegal housing evictions. It didn’t get any better as executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, where he clashed with government and police.

“I totally burnt out,” he said. “I worked crazy hours for almost no money and tragic stories.

“And I didn’t recognize the need to have any kind of balance because I saw that if I didn’t help person X that nobody else would. But it wasn’t that they didn’t want to; everybody was working at capacity. And so I just burnt myself out, got divorced, didn’t have a particularly healthy lifestyle, and really hit bottom. And so it took a while to build it back.”

What has emerged in the last five years or so is a newer, mellower David Eby. He’s now a baby-swaddling, diaper-changing, toddler-chasing fish-etarian who spends weekends at the municipal pool tossing his son around, who is an expert at building pillow forts, who cracks dad jokes and watches standup comedy on Netflix, and who is as well versed in Paw Patrol as he is in transnational organized crime.