Shannon Aldinger

Shannon Aldinger graduated from McGill University in 1992, and Dalhousie Law School in 1995. She worked for 15 years at a downtown Vancouver litigation firm which specialized in family law and civil sexual abuse claims. When Shannon and her family moved to the Comox Valley in 2012, she opened her own practice – Aldinger Family Law. Since then, Shannon has acted on her longstanding interest in alternative dispute resolution, gaining certification as a family law mediator in 2017.

Throughout her career, Shannon has been actively involved in public legal education and advocacy for law reform, particularly in relation to gender-based violence.

She is an active member and co-chair of the Trial Lawyers Association of BC (TLABC)’s Family Law Committee. She co-curated an 11-part series of family violence education programming for legal professionals (2022-2023), including co-presenting the session on litigation. She co-chaired the TLABC seminar following the introduction of the new Family Law Act in 2013: Get Your Act Together: The New Family Law Act and other Recent Developments in Family Law, and has since spoken on panels at a number of TLABC seminars.

Shannon was asked to participate on advisory panels about family violence for the province’s Independent Systemic Review: The British Columbia Legal System’s Treatment of Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Violence (2024-2025) as well as the province’s Family Law Act Modernization Project (2022-2023 and 2026).

Shannon co-wrote and co-presented a paper entitled “‘Patterns of Coercive and Controlling Behaviour’ in Canadian Parenting Cases Since 2021: Strengthening the Family Violence Toolkit” at the Federation of Law Societies of Canada’s National Family Law Program in 2024 in Halifax, followed by an article in the TLABC’s Verdict Magazine entitled “Making the Invisible Visible – the Challenges of Identifying & Proving Coercive Control in Family Law” (Winter 2025, Issue 187). She was recently a guest lecturer for a family law course on family violence at the University of Victoria’s Law School (2026).

Since moving to the Comox Valley, Shannon has provided free consultation services to the Comox Valley Transition Society and has made presentations about family law through the Comox Valley Transition Society, the Comox Valley Community Justice Centre, the Comox Valley Military Family Resource Centre, Legal Services Society of BC and the Trial Lawyers Association of BC.

She also volunteers in collaboration with the UBC/Allard School of Law and Pro Bono Students Canada’s “Consent Project” (2018 to present) as the supervising lawyer for law student presentations to high school students about the law of consent.

Shannon has been a vocal advocate for mandatory consent education for all K-12 students in BC and other measures to prevent sexual violence among students. She has presented motions for reform to the BC Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils and the BC School Trustee Association, which passed with overwhelming majorities, as well as submissions to the province’s Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. When the Ministry of Education updated and significantly expanded its elementary and secondary teaching guides for Supporting Student Health in 2022, Shannon provided feedback as a subject matter expert about the consent materials being developed.

In 2022 Shannon was elected as a School Trustee for the City of Courtenay, serving on the Board of Education of Comox Valley Schools. In that role, she co-chaired the Board of Education’s Ad Hoc Gender-Based Violence Committee which was tasked with reviewing district policies, administrative procedures and other practices that relate to gender-based violence (GBV), identifying gaps in district approach and response to GBV, identifying and developing resources and best practices, and making recommendations to the Superintendent and Board.