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Canwest News Service
On Dec. 9, the City of Vancouver will celebrate its first official May Brown Day. Unofficially, however, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that every day is May Brown Day in Vancouver.
A tireless campaigner and fundraiser, the former park board member and city councillor, who turns 90 on Dec. 9, still goes door-knocking come election time.
The unassuming, tiny, white-haired Brown has quietly influenced the shape of the city, just as community service has shaped her own life.
In the process, she has mentored dozens of B.C.'s most influential politicians, including Gordon Campbell, with her action-oriented, pragmatic approach to getting things done.
So many people are scrapping for invites to the birthday party being thrown for her by Art Phillips and Carole Taylor next Saturday that her pals have to throw her a second one a week later.
She has to leave the computer, where she is busy e-mailing, to sit down for an interview. The phone is ringing in the background, and it clearly is a busy day.
Brown and I drink tea in her modest Dunbar bungalow.
"There is a dearth of leadership right now," she says. "We're behind Rwanda in the number of women in government."
She's just been up to Whistler for the federal Liberal party's biennial convention. "Every position on the executive was being contested. There were so many outstanding young people," she said. If they're smart, they'll ask for Brown's help on something.
"When I first ran for leadership," said MP Bob Rae, "I hadn't been with the party for very long and I was very self-conscious about it. Someone said, if you can get May Brown onside it'll do more for how people see you in B.C. than anything else."
Rae describes her as unassuming, thoughtful, candid, classy and tough as nails.
Longtime friend Sarah McAlpine, who has worked on dozens of campaigns and community projects with Brown over the years said, "She has a civic conscience. She really believes that individuals can make a difference.
"She is a soldier, she gets things done, and she mobilizes people in the nicest way," McAlpine said.
Whether she's serving in public office, working to save the Orpheum, lobbying for funding, running a political campaign, working to bring the Olympics to Vancouver, or just stuffing envelopes, McAlpine said, "People are just happy to be around her. She's a happy person."
STILL BUYS A WHISTLER PASS
Brown doesn't really want to talk about herself — today, and the future is what counts — but when I ask how, at 90, she has so much to do, and friends who span every age range and sphere of influence and need, she replies thoughtfully.
"A friend of mine told me once, 'Listen, May, if you want to make friends, ask them to do something for you.'
"A lot of my work has been recruiting women into politics and action, and we often find they simply haven't been asked.
"When you ask someone to do something, that gives them confidence and it builds from there."
When Brown turns 90 next week, she probably won't be thinking of her age: "I've really never thought about it," she said.
"I am trying to be a little more sensible. I may not ski when I go up to Whistler this winter, but I've bought my pass," she said. "I haven't decided yet."
Others may take May Brown Day to look back on her accomplishments as one of Vancouver's "paradise makers," but Brown has her crystal-blue eyes fixed firmly on the future.
There's still so much to be done.
"I get all steamed up," she said. "I heard they're thinking of getting rid of the elected parks board!"
Parks and green space are dear to Brown's heart — she was park board vice-chair from 1972 to '74, and chairwoman from 1974 to '76 — but she has also worked tirelessly for the arts, and those marginalized by disability, by gender or addiction.
Brown joined TEAM, a new action-oriented party whose members later became known as the "paradise makers."
"What motivated me was that I had felt Vancouver was falling behind in facilities and parks. We needed playing fields and swimming pools and ice rinks."
At a time when urban expressways built on monolithic concrete structures were carving up cities across North America, TEAM wanted to turn Vancouver in a very different direction.
After sweeping all boards — school, parks and city hall — they put a plan into action, one that included citizen participation, and started building.
From 1972 to 1974, the city snapped up land all over the place to increase parks, to unpave paradise.
"We were buying acres and acres," said Brown. "We built pools and recreation centres."
Brown bowed out of public politics after losing the race for mayor in 1978. She'd run reluctantly, at the urging of TEAM. The party had begun to splinter; Mike Harcourt had gone independent and member Jack Volrich had decided to run for mayor under the Non-Partisan Association (NPA) banner.
TEAM needed a candidate.
"I was the lone voice that said, 'May, you'd be a great mayor, but you won't win,'" Premier Campbell said. "She was ahead of her time."
Campbell counts Brown as one of his most important mentors. They met when Campbell was 24 years old, and served as executive assistant to then-mayor Art Phillips.
"She never treated me like a kid," Campbell said. "She listened to what I said. You always need people that have confidence where you might have trepidation, the person that if you fall, they dust you off and say, 'We can do this.'"
MEDIA CALLED HER 'WEAK'
Brown's mayoral campaign was a tough go, and the loss — to Volrich — exposed her to the darker side of politics.
"People would say awful things to you, like we don't want a woman, or you should fix your teeth," she recalled.
The media engaged in veiled sexism, dubbing her "mother Brown;" in an article that quoted a colleague saying she was brilliant, the reporter painted a picture of Brown as "weak" and "nervous," fussing over a sink of dishes in her kitchen wearing magenta rubber gloves.
The hostile attitude, whether it was because she was a woman, or just on the wrong side of things, was something she said she had never encountered.
"The hardest thing I've ever had to do was go back to council to finish out my term [after the election]," Brown said. Friends came and sat in council chambers to support her and "stare down" her opponents.
"That was tough politics. That's when I missed my husband most," Brown said.
Her husband, Lorne, had died suddenly of a heart attack in 1976. It was a tremendous shock.
"Lorne said he wasn't feeling well, and he was just going into the study to rest," said Brown.
She can still see the moment, and reaches her hand forward. "I said here, I've brought you some tea. He reached for it and then fell back."
She pauses. "It was just one of those awful things," she said quietly.
When the two met, May was on faculty at UBC's school of physical education and coach of the university's winning field hockey team, and Lorne was a phys-ed teacher.
They were to become partners in adventure.
"He supported me in everything I did," Brown said, even when the culture did not.
When Brown became pregnant with her first child, Greg, they planned for her to return to work.
"When I went back I found out I was no longer on the tenure track, and I had lost my status and benefits," Brown said.
She said she made a case for reinstatement. "I had hired a housekeeper, my husband was fully supportive," she said.
Brown didn't take it personally. She was beginning to understand the importance of policy to underpin decisions, something she would later apply in municipal government.
"I was ahead of my time. The head of my department supported me, but the university had no process in place for dealing with this."
She stayed on at UBC as an untenured instructor, but when she had her second child, Barbara, she turned her attention to other things.
From 1961 until the summer after Lorne's death, the Browns threw their energies into building and running a wilderness camp for boys in the Cariboo.
With a list of boys that reads like a who's who of the west coast, summers with the Browns at Camp Deka have become something of a legend.
"She still remembers every single boy that ever went there," said Rob Ruttan, a former Deka camper.
With a firm belief in how camping and engaging with the wilderness could build ethics in kids, they set about to find a piece of land.
They found an affordable 100 acres in the Cariboo, cleared the brush themselves and Camp Deka was born.
Former attorney-general Geoff Plant was a "Deka boy," attending camp every summer, even honeymooning in the camp's cottage when he got married.
"It was an amazing place, 48 boys camping in a wilderness setting, canoeing, hiking, horseback riding, singing ridiculous songs, putting on skits, creating badly made crafts," Plant laughs.
"What Lorne and May brought to the camp was a philosophy about the importance of camping in building character, and also having fun."
Plant stakes his heart on his summers at Camp Deka, where he said he grew in confidence over the years, and independence.
PROMOTED MANY CAUSES
Brown and Plant's paths would cross later in life, as she pushed forward with her many different causes.
"She is not a dreamy visionary. she is very practical. It's about helping an organization do something, within a framework that we want to build a better community. You don't sit around blue-skying about dreamy visions of the community when there's 500 envelopes that need stuffing," Plant said.
He laughs as he recalls a trip up to Whistler a couple of years ago with his wife. "We stopped in Squamish to gas up, and there was May at the next pump.
"She said she was going up skiing too. I thought, 'Oh, come on May,' but this is a woman who celebrated her 80th birthday with a rafting trip."
Friend Liz Watson, whose children Brown has grandmothered since they were born, said, "She lives in the present, always thinking about the future."
Watson said that a few years ago Brown was driving home and heard a man on the radio talking about desperately needed services for addicted youths in B.C. His own son was struggling from addiction.
She recognized the name of the man on the radio. It was Rob Ruttan, now a retired prosecutor.
Brown looked him up and drove directly to his house.
Ruttan and his wife Susie had co-founded a group called From Grief to Action after their son's struggle with addiction. At the time there were no adequate treatment facilities for youth in the province.
Ruttan recalls her showing up at their door.
"May to the rescue. Not just being caring and empathetic, but wanting to do something. 'This is wrong. This needs to be fixed.'
"It was a 10-year journey," Ruttan said, "but May was with us every step of the way."
They were able to get government funding, and with Brown heading the capital campaign, they raised $6 million privately.
The result: The Crossing at Keremeos opened earlier this year and is the first long-term residential treatment centre for youth, in B.C.
"She's been an incredible supporter of women and the city," said Carole Taylor.
"I remember when everyone had opinions about the Nisga'a treaty. She actually read it."
Brown's insight nudged Taylor along her own path, she said. "She encouraged me to run for council and said, 'Make sure you get on the finance committee.' That turned out to be fortuitous." Among many other things, Taylor eventually served as B.C. finance minister, under Campbell.
Brown's resume is studded with awards and distinctions, including the Order of Canada and the Order of B.C. She's even in UBC's sports hall of fame.
But Brown is much more interested in talking about the future of the community, than about her past achievements.
"I was shocked to read that in northeast False Creek's new development, they're diminishing the ratio of parkland to people," she said as she poured a second cup of tea and waved off the constantly ringing phone.
FIGHTING FOR GREEN SPACE
Brown is concerned that urban densification plans are steaming ahead in downtown Vancouver without adequate plans to increase green space and services.
"In northeast False Creek they are giving the developer a great bonus by allowing them to cut back on commitments to parks.
"I may have to write someone about that."
If she does, chances are they'll listen.
"She is someone whose advice I would seek," Campbell said. "To be honest about it, you have to be careful to whom you give the burden of decisions.
"I would want to hear what she thinks. She has real integrity. She doesn't talk about it, she lives it."
The YWCA is throwing a bash for May Brown at the Vancouver Museum on Dec. 9 from 5-7 p.m. Everyone is welcome. Tickets are $20 to help defray the cost.
dryan@vancouversun.com
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