Board Members

Catherine D.A. Watson Coles, KC

Ms. Watson was appointed to the Commission by Order in Council in February 2015. She is a Partner in McInnes Cooper’s Halifax office and leader of the firm’s regional estates and trusts service group. She is a regular speaker on the subjects of estate trust and tax planning to various professional organizations and the public, and a frequent author of articles on these subjects in various newspapers and newsletters. She has been an instructor at the Ontario Bar Admissions course in the area of estate planning. Ms. Watson has been recognized by Best Lawyers in Canada and is listed in the Canadian Legal Lexpert Directory. She is the Past President and a current member of the Halifax Estate Planning Council and is a member of the Society of Trust and Estates Practitioners, the Canadian Bar Association, the Nova Scotia Barristers Society and the International Bar Association. She is Past Chair of the Wills & Estates Section of the Canadian Bar Association of Nova Scotia and is the Co-Founder and Past Chair of the Pride Business Network in Toronto, Ontario.

 Richard J. Melanson  

Mr. Melanson was appointed to the Commission by the Council of the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society in September of 2012.  He is a member of the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board and was a partner with the Halifax law firm of Blois, Nickerson & Bryson LLP. His areas of practice included administrative law, bankruptcy and insolvency, civil litigation, corporate & commercial, intellectual property and real estate. Mr. Melanson graduated from the Universite Sainte-Anne with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in 1981, and a Bachelor of Education (Honours) in 1983. In 1988 he graduated from Dalhousie Law School as Gold Medalist. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the provincial association of French speaking lawyers and has served as a volunteer with various organizations over the years. He has been a member of the Board of Examiners of Nova Scotia Social Workers’ Association and chair of the Discipline Committee, a member of the Agreement on Internal Trade Working Group and Director and Treasurer of Canadian Parents for French – Nova Scotia.

George Ash

Mr. Ash is a Partner and a member of the Real Estate and Estate teams. He practices in the areas of wills and trusts, estate administration and litigation, with a focus on guardianship applications and estate advice as well as disputes with probate. Mr. Ash is also an experienced residential real estate lawyer who works with mortgage brokers, bank and real estate agents, assisting clients with the purchase or sale of their home.

Mr. Ash is the President of the Board of the Nova Scotia Legal Aid Commission. He is a member of the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society, Canadian Bar Association, and Halifax Estate Planning Council. He is the former Chair of the Advisory Council for the Indigenous Black & Mi’kmaq Initiative, Schulich School of Law, and former Chair of the Share the Dream Organizing Committee.

Scott Campbell

Scott Campbell is a litigation partner with Stewart McKelvey in Halifax. He has a bachelor of laws from Dalhousie University and a bachelor of civil law from the University of Oxford. From 2011 – 2015, he taught Conflict of Laws at the Schulich School of Law. In his practice, Scott routinely advises and represents clients on matters of procedural and appellate strategy, class actions, jurisdiction, private international law, administrative law, and constitutional law. He has argued cases before all levels of court in Nova Scotia and Ontario, in addition to the Federal Court, the Federal Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada.

Dr. Liesl Gambold

Dr. Liesl Gambold is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology. She is an anthropologist whose earlier work in Russia focused on economic and social responses to political and market restructuring, gender relations in rural communities, and the struggle between individual and group ideologies. Dr. Gambold’s current anthropological research is on aging, migration and housing. As baby boomers enter retirement age, shifts in their demographics and lifestyle choices are increasingly salient in policy-making and academic discussions.

Dr. Gambold has conducted research in Mexico among Canadians and Americans who have permanently migrated south, in southern France and Spain, which have been popular European retirement destinations for decades, in Sweden and Germany, where she interviewed residents at LGBT aging and housing facilities, and in Brussels where she interviewed European Union officials about EU pensioner, migration and health policies. Dr. Gambold specializes in qualitative research methods including participant observation, interviewing and focus groups. She has been the lead qualitative researcher on projects examining the evolution of the cancer formulary review in Canada, as well as uncertainty tolerance among experts involved in drug reimbursement recommendations in Canada and the European Union. Dr. Gambold is the Gender and Women’s Studies Coordinator at Dalhousie University and a research associate at Dalhousie’s European Union Centre of Excellence. 

Nikki Robar

The founding partner of Valor Advisory, Ms. Robar graduated from St. Francis Xavier University with a BBA (Hons) in accounting in 1994, obtained her Chartered Accountant (CPA, CA) designation with Doane Raymond (now Grant Thornton) in 1996 and worked in a number of different roles, industries and countries before completing her Chartered Business Valuator (CBV) designation in 2006.  

Nikki has prepared expert reports for legal matters across Canada and has provided expert witness testimony in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador and Alberta with respect to business valuation, income quantification in family law disputes, damages quantification, critique reports and other related matters.  

She is an author and speaker on topics including promoting and encouraging women in business, financial acumen in the context of litigation, business valuations, issues around income determination in family law matters and working with financial experts, for organizations including the National Judicial Institute, Federation of Law Societies of Canada, divisions of provincial Canadian Bar Associations, and the Schulich School of Law.

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Tammy Wohler (she/her) joined the Nova Scotia Legal Aid Commission in 2007 and is currently the Managing Lawyer of the Commission’s first and only Social Justice Office. The Social Justice Office, created in 2018, serves the local community and supports social justice issues across the Province. The Office also provides ongoing outreach, operates an online chat, and is expanding in 2025 to include a new Tenants’ Summary Advice Counsel and a Tenants’ Rights Educator. In 2022, Tammy received the NS Legal Aid Commission award for “Innovation in Service Delivery”.

Tammy provides legal services for low-income families on social justice issues that fall under the purview of administrative law, including appeals related to Provincial and Federal benefits, and tenants’ rights. As a tenants’ rights lawyer, Tammy often speaks on housing issues and advocates for legal and policy reform.  Tammy is a member of the Canada Bar Association and, since 2019, a board member for the Legal Information Society of Nova Scotia. In her spare time, she enjoys jigsaw puzzles and trying to meet her annual “Goodreads” book challenge goal.