OPINION | Five Trailblazers More Deserving of our School’s Name than Eric Hamber
Photo Credit: Yearbook Archives
A lot has changed since Eric Hamber Secondary opened its doors in 1962. Indigenous people now have the right to vote. Same-sex marriage has been legalized. Canada has seen its first female prime minister, and America its first Black president.
The population of Metro Vancouver has nearly tripled, blossoming into a wonderfully diverse metropolis where 54 per cent of residents are non-white, including the majority of Hamber students.
Yet, even with such progress, Vancouver high schools have stubbornly remained named after dead white men. Lord Byng, Sir Winston Churchill, King George, William Gladstone, Sir Charles Tupper, and… Eric Hamber.
On paper, Eric Hamber has a lot of achievements: Lieutenant Governor of BC, Chancellor of UBC, the only Canadian private guest to attend Queen Elizabeth II’s wedding. But what did he actually do?
Born 1879 in Winnipeg, Hamber graduated with honours from the University of Manitoba, and became the five-year captain of the hockey, football, and rowing teams of Toronto’s Argonauts sports franchise. In 1907, he moved to Vancouver to open a new Dominion Bank of Canada location, then worked his way up to Manager at the main office in London, England.
Hamber became General Manager and Vice-President of the family business, the BC Mills Timber and Trading Company in 1912, and owner in 1916. After selling the company in 1925, he joined the Boards of other companies and charities, including the Boy Scouts, Canadian Red Cross, and BC Cancer Foundation. He served as Lieutenant Governor of BC from 1936–1941 and Chancellor of UBC from 1944–51, helping to establish the Faculty of Medicine.
What isn’t mentioned as often, however, is that he owned the self-proclaimed largest lumber company in Western Canada or on the Pacific Coast.
In its heyday, BC Mills had four plants which, every day, produced 500,000 board feet of lumber, 200,000 shingles, 600 doors, and 100,000 lineal feet of mouldings. This may have contributed to largely destroying old-growth forests — which contain trees up to 1,000 years old.
Logging has destroyed our province’s wilderness and contributed to climate change. A report from the Wilderness Committee estimates BC’s old-growth forests serve as critical habitat for over 1,000 plant and animal species, including many that are endangered. Meanwhile, a study from the Rainforest Conservation Foundation found one hectare of old-growth forest stores nearly 1,000 tonnes of carbon.
Celebrating this runs counter to the VSB’s own stated values, as outlined in the District’s Environmental Sustainability Plan, approved by trustees in 2018.
“Our vision: To be the greenest, most sustainable School District in North America,” it states. If the VSB aims to do better for the environment, why should it ask students to commend someone who destroyed it?
Another undesirable quality of Hamber’s life is his involvement in the ethically questionable practice of horse racing.
Hamber bought a 1,000-acre property in Coquitlam and transformed it into a breeding and training ground for two racehorse companies he purchased. With the pressure to perform, the horses’ well-being is often ignored. A fast-paced, dangerous sport, studies have shown the rate of death for the horses is one out of 1,000. With less safety equipment in the early 20th century, fatalities would likely have been higher.
But luckily, Aldyen Hamber, unlike her husband, showed compassion for animals. She tried to draw Hamber’s focus away from horse racing and transform the property into a true farm complete with multiple types of crops and livestock. She also pushed for improved drainage systems and shelters for animals.
Eric Hamber didn’t break any barriers or challenge discriminatory societal norms. He didn’t do anything significant, but these five trailblazers did — and they deserve recognition too.
Rosemary Brown: First Black Woman Elected in Canada
Born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1930, Rosemary Brown was the first black woman elected to public office in Canada, and the first black woman and second woman to run for the leadership of a federal party.
Earning a Master’s degree in social work at UBC, Brown faced significant racism and sexism at university and during her career. During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, Brown began to speak out, demanding equal rights for women and Black people. To bolster her advocacy, she founded the Vancouver Status of Women Council, and successfully ran for a Vancouver seat in the provincial legislature, joining the NDP caucus.
In Victoria, Brown formed a committee to help eradicate sexism from BC’s school curriculum and created the Berger Commission on the Family, which pushed the government to improve health care access in remote, rural, and Indigenous communities.
Brown ran for the leadership of the federal NDP in 1975, campaigning on the slogan “brown is beautiful.” She lost to Ed Broadbent on the fourth and final ballot, capturing a remarkable 40.3 per cent of the vote.
When she retired from politics in 1988, Brown did not stop advocating for women. For three years, she was CEO of the MATCH International Women’s Fund, and in 1991 she co-founded the Canadian Women’s Foundation.
Rosemary Brown died in April 2003 in Vancouver.
Brown was a victim of dual discrimination, but she did not let that stop her. She turned a disadvantage into an opportunity, paving the way for others to follow in her footsteps.
Jim Egan: Canada’s First Gay Journalist
At a time when two men holding hands could be thrown in jail, Jim Egan stood up to a discriminatory world and succeeded in enshrining LGBTQ rights in Canada’s Constitution.
Over 20 years before homosexuality was decriminalized in 1969, Toronto’s newspapers — particularly tabloids — were flooded with homophobia. But Jim Egan couldn’t bear to accept such bigotry and discrimination.
Beginning in 1949, Egan wrote letters to The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Daily Star, The Toronto Telegram, True News Times, and other publications, calling out their homophobic reporting on queer issues. At first, he used pseudonyms, but eventually shared his real name.
Solely by writing letters, Egan succeeded in changing views and values. Just a year later, True News Times published a seven-part series written by Egan calling for acceptance of queer people. In 1953–1954. Justice Weekly published 27 similar stories.
Egan’s writing marked the beginning of gay journalism in Canada.
After decades of living away from the public spotlight, Jim Egan was elected a Regional Director in the Regional District of Comox-Strathcona, becoming the second gay man elected to public office in Canada.
But Egan had yet to achieve his greatest accomplishment.
Section 15 of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, enacted in 1982, prohibited discrimination on the grounds of “race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.” But no provision was included to prevent discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation.”
On behalf of Jack Nesbit, his common-law partner of 47 years, Egan applied for a spousal allowance benefit in 1988, but was declined due to the same-sex relationship. He launched a legal challenge, arguing the government’s refusal to allow access to the funds was discriminatory.
In 1995, after years of legal back-and-forth, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the Charter prohibited discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation.
Egan v. Canada established precedent which eventually led to the legalization of same-sex marriage.
Jim Egan died in 2000 in Courtenay, BC.
While the significance of his legal reforms is remarkable, Egan’s pride in himself serves as an inspiration to us all.
Joe Fortes: Vancouver’s “Citizen of the Century”
Ever enjoyed a sunny afternoon at English Bay Beach? Thank Joe Fortes.
A black man born in 1865 in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, Fortes was born a swimmer. As a young man he worked as a deckhand, traveling the world by ship. In 1885, he arrived at the small outpost that was Vancouver, working odd jobs in hotels and bars.
Hired to row materials from Gastown to current-day Jericho Beach, Fortes went exploring on his return journey and found a pristine, sandy beach (there were none in Vancouver at the time), surrounded by forest and a handful of cabins.
With some friends, Fortes cleared a path through the woods to access the novelty, which became an instant hit with residents. The trail became a rough road named Denman Street.
And since Joe Fortes discovered it, he felt the need to take care of it. Known as “Joe’s beach,” Fortes spent his summers in the 1890s teaching a generation of Vancouverites how to swim, without making a cent.
In 1900, a petition, which garnered thousands of signatures, urged the City to pay Fortes for his work. City Council approved, granting him a monthly salary of over $2,100 in present day currency.
Joe Fortes died in 1922.
He was honoured by a rare civic funeral, which saw a funeral procession through downtown, attended by 10,000 Vancouverites.
In 1986, the Vancouver Historical Society dubbed Joe Fortes the Citizen of the Century for teaching swimming to hundreds of Vancouverites and saving more than 100 lives.
But activists caution to not use Joe Fortes as proof of a racism-free Vancouver, since Fortes did face discrimination.
“He is definitely a figure that is celebrated. But if you look through the newspaper archives and actually read about the way that he was written about [...] after his death [...] in many cases, it was racist,” Vancouver-based artist Ruby Smith Diaz, who is writing a book on Fortes, told The Tyee.
Despite facing racism, Fortes kept practicing a virtue that seems to have been forgotten recently: helping others without incurring any self-gain. To the three generations of Vancouverites he taught to swim, Fortes bellowing his classic, “Kick yo feet” will always ring dearly in their ears.
Helena Gutteridge: First Woman Elected to City Council
In a democracy where every person has the right to elect the government, it’s implied that women aren't persons if they can’t vote. That didn’t sit well with Helena Gutteridge.
In 1911, Gutteridge founded the BC Women’s Suffrage League, which secured the right to vote for white women in the province in 1917. But Gutteridge was also active on the issue of women’s workers’ rights, believing that progress on both issues was necessary to secure independent prosperity for women.
As the first woman to join the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council, she urged the body to support equal pay for female workers, and helped produce a column in its newspaper, the BC Federationist, which focused on women’s issues.
She also worked to unionize women, leading a strike of laundry workers in 1918.
In the 1930s, Gutteridge sought to have a seat at the table herself. She helped create the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), a precursor to today’s NDP that supported the worker’s rights government, universal healthcare, and other social programs. As a CCF candidate, she was elected to city council in 1937, and served a two-year term.
As a counselor, Guteridge continued to advocate for women’s issues and affordable housing.
“Helena’s work as a tireless advocate for women’s issues laid important groundwork for issues still very relevant to Vancouver today: gender equality, equal pay, homelessness and the need for safe, affordable housing for all,” former mayor Gregor Robertson told CBC News.
Helena Gutteridge died in 1960 in Vancouver.
She was a tireless advocate for women’s rights who had a resounding vision for a more gentle and compassionate world — a poignant reminder for us all.
George Manual: Secured Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in the Constitution
George Manual wasn’t a career politician with a bottomless hunger for power. Born in 1921 on Secwépemc First Nation lands in BC’s southern Interior, Manual remembers a thriving farming economy vanish as a result of government policy.
Following a 1951 amendment to the Indian Act, the government directed Indian Agents to end the allocation of funding for medical services on the reserve. Cutting medical services outraged Manual, who had spent three years battling tuberculosis at an “Indian” hospital.
Manual refused to pay any medical bills and encouraged others to do the same, marking the start of a remarkable activism career.
Manual was president of the National Indian Brotherhood — currently the Assembly of First Nations — from 1970 to 1976 and transformed the newly-created organization into a robust political powerhouse.
He became president of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) from 1979 to 1981. In 1980, the organization learned of a government plan to strip Indigenous Peoples of their rights in the upcoming Canadian Constitution.
Manual led the organization’s effort against the proposed legislation, organizing the Constitution Express just two months later. The cross-country journey took some 1,000 Indigenous activists to voice their concerns in Ottawa.
Some of the activists continued travelling, speaking at the United Nations in New York, and touring Europe. The efforts — led by Manual — were ultimately successful. Section 35 of the Constitution guarantees the rights of Canada’s Indigenous Peoples.
George Manual died in 1989 in Kamloops, BC, leaving behind an incredible legacy. He remained committed to changing the unjust status quo, no matter how ingrained it was — and he serves as a role model for us all.
The good news? The VSB doesn’t have its head completely buried in sand. The Board has created Administrative Policy 541, which allows school communities — or trustees —to request a new school name.
The need for such a process could not be more glaring.
“[Eric Hamber’s] outstanding leadership and achievement in scholarship, sports, and service to his community serve as a worthy model for each student,” the Eric Hamber school website states.
Should students also model Hamber’s disrespect to his animals, the environment, and his wife?
It’s up to the trustees to weigh in on that one.