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the same time provide a forum for a closer understanding and acceptance
of the various roles delegated to the components of the justice system...
police training, corrections training, sheriffs training, court training and
legal services.”

In retrospect, it is amazing how closely this memo, derived from
planning within the Ministry of Attorney General, conforms to the basic
principles and concepts of today’s JIBC, not only in the coordination of
professional training resources but also in cooperation with other educa-
tional institutions and provision of educational opportunities to the general
public. Right down to the need for simulation facilities, and the balance
between main campus and distribution of specialized activities to satellite
sites, it lays out a visionary blueprint for what has come to pass.

This handful of individuals comprised the key people whose influ-
ence was formative in conceiving and creating the JIBC in 1978. Bob
Burrows tells the story of a weekend brainstorm session four years earlier at
the picturesque, half-timbered Oak Bay Beach Hotel in Victoria. Hogarth,
Vickers, Kilcup and a number of others were there. Burrows says his capacity
for late nights was less than any of the others, so he went to bed early—by
11:30 p.m. He awoke to find the others celebrating, having created the
format and name of the new institution. “I've never forgotten the exuber-
ance in the coffee shop,” he says wistfully. “I missed the big moment?’

In April 1978, Pat McGeer and Bill Bennett signed a wonderfully
embracing Order-in-Council that designated the Justice Institute of British
Columbia as a Provincial Institution to “perform the following functions”:

“(a) provide courses of instruction which are consistent with identi-
fied needs specifically for, but not limited to, Police, Corrections, Courts
and Sheriffs;

“(b) identify the educational and specific training needs for all compo-
nents of the British Columbia Justice System, including fire services;

“(c) develop a co-operative system of co-ordination between its own
programmes and those of the other Institutes, colleges, universities, public
schools and community-based organizations; and

“(d) provide a provincial forum for discussion and examination of
justice and socially-related issues.”

Bob Stewart became Chair of the JIBC Board of Governors for the
next seventeen years—until the formal opening of the New Westminster
campus—and Gerry Kilcup was the original Principal, who served in that
key post until 1986.

“Phase One was accomplished,” Stewart remembers. “But what
became problematic was that each of the separate academies was getting
its operating funds from its respective ministry. And nothing from the
Ministry of Education—which then didn’t want to accept this as a place
of higher education. They looked at it as a training school. By this time,