provincial department, the B.C. Sheriff Services. Under the Ministry of
Attorney General, they were given expanded responsibilities and the brown
uniforms that led to their nickname, Barrett's Brownies (later redesigned to
incorporate blue pants and ties with a beige shirt, short-sleeved in summer).
They took over many of the duties once handled by police officers, from
escorting prisoners to providing courtroom security.

Until then, the deputies had learned on the job. In 1974, they began
training at the former Willingdon Youth Detention Centre in Burnaby, with
instructors from the Vancouver City Police Department and the County of
Vancouver Sheriffs’ Office as well as a justice of the peace and an ex-military
policeman. The Courts Service Training Division, with its launch on the
Jericho site in 1978, became a more sophisticated successor to those early
classes. As David G. Smith, a former sheriff’s officer in Vancouver, has
written in a history of B.C. sheriffs, the JIBC’s Deputy Sheriff Employ-
ment Readiness Program is “recognized internationally as one of the finest
programs of its kind in North America.”

More recently, the tools of the sheriffs’ trade have changed. Now
the deputies are armed while in the courtroom as well as when moving

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