[3] In 1971 Sparks matriculated at Mount Saint Vincent University, where she majored in economics with the intention of being a history teacher.
[2] While Sparks was a student, she volunteered as a probation officer at the Department of Justice, and took a summer job with the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission.
[1] Sparks acquitted the defendant, and in her decision she explicitly appealed to the "prevalent attitude of the day" as social context relevant to the ruling.
[1] The legal scholars Allan C. Hutchinson and Kathleen Strachan later summarized Sparks's specific finding in the case as follows: the police officer in question was acting in a context in which police officers have been known to overreact while dealing with non-white people, and certain claims by the defendant were believable in context, with the consequence that the Crown had not discharged its evidentiary burden to prove that all of the alleged offenses had occurred beyond a reasonable doubt.
[9] Hutchinson and Strachan wrote that the case functions "as a springboard" for understanding the connection between a judge's interpretation and their identity in their legal decision-making.
[6] During her career as a lawyer and as a judge, Sparks has worked on the question of ensuring equity in Canadian law.