Criminal

Justice

Policing

hen Bob Stewart took his training as a
a Vancouver police recruit in 1951, he spent
W two weeks learning from senior officers
in an abandoned gymnasium at the department’s old
headquarters on East Cordova. On the first day, he was
measured there for a uniform. He jokes now that the
classes lasted only a fortnight—just the amount of time
the tailor needed to finish all the uniforms before the
rookies could get out on their walking beats.

In the mid-1950s, Police Chief George Archer found better space ina
Civil Defence HQ downtown for what was officially named the Vancouver
Police Training Academy—which developed a proper curriculum and
offered instruction to recruits from other police departments such as Victo-
rias and New Westminster’s (at a cost of $10 a day). It later moved to the
Pacific National Exhibition grounds and then to HMCS Discovery, the
naval base on Deadman's Island off Stanley Park in Coal Harbour.

As the 1970s dawned, Stewart was a sergeant in the morality squad
and active in the Police Association. His chief, John Fisk, wanted him to
transfer to the Academy and ultimately become officer in charge. “But
you're secretary of the union,” he said. Stewart promptly resigned from that
position and was promoted to the inspector level to accept the new training
responsibility.

After eighteen months, he was approached by Attorney General Alex
Macdonald: “Weidd like to take this police training provincially because that’s
what you people are doing anyway.” Stewart accepted a secondment to the
A-G’s department, researching training standards in 1973 in New York,
Los Angeles and at several police schools in England. With the assistance
of Dave Athans, an instructor with the Vancouver Academy, he wrote a

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