Alison Gilmour

About Alison Gilmour

Alison Gilmour represents people whose insurers have refused their claims, most often for long-term disability benefits, and also for life insurance, critical illness, long-term care and accidental death and dismemberment coverage. As a senior associate at Burn Tucker Lachaîne, Alison takes on clients from anywhere in Canada and works out of the firm's Waterloo, Toronto and Ottawa offices. Related negligence claims against lawyers and insurance agents are part of the practice too.

Alison has been a litigator since joining the Ontario bar in 1995, and disability insurance has been nearly the whole of that work since 2001. From 2001 to 2014 the job was defending life and disability claims, partly as in-house litigation counsel for a large life insurer and partly in private practice. Alison also worked as a mediator from 2007 to 2012. In 2014 came the decision to act only for individual plaintiffs taking on their insurers, and the decade that followed was spent at a Toronto firm devoted to plaintiff disability cases.

Disability and life insurance cases have taken Alison well beyond Ontario. Thanks to Canada's inter-provincial mobility rules, Alison has appeared in courts across the country for more than 20 years, with litigated files in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, British Columbia and the Atlantic provinces. Trials and appeals have brought Alison before the Ontario Superior Court, the Court of Appeal for Ontario and courts in British Columbia. Since being called in Manitoba in 2023, Alison has been counsel of record in many cases at the Manitoba Court of King's Bench.

Alison chairs the Long-Term Disability Section of the Ontario Trial Lawyers Association and is a trustee of the Waterloo Region Law Association for its 2025 to 2027 term. The 2026 Canadian Legal Lexpert Directory recognizes Alison, as does the 2027 edition of The Best Lawyers in Canada for insurance law. Waterloo has been home since 1999, and away from work Alison skis, travels, takes the dog for walks and spends time with a big extended family.