Weering his Order

of British Columoia,
Walter Hardwick—a
teacher ana schoiar et
the University o; Britisis
Columbia who beceme
Deputy Minisier of
FEducation—‘vas cne

of the pivotal thitikers
arrong the groun who
collaborated in the birth
of the Justice Institute.

Ministry of Attorney General jointly funded the Justice Institute for the first
several years.

“One who was instrumental in all this,’ McGeer was the first to say,
“was my deputy minister, WALTER HaRpDwICK ...an absolutely marvel-
lous deputy:’ It took ten years for the right thinker, Hardwick, to get the
plan for post-secondary education in B.C. budgeted and prioritized. He
denied being a visionary. “Ideas are already current in any institution,” he
once said. “What you need is somebody in power to adopt them as their
own.” Hardwick had long since figured out what the future was about to
demand: highly focussed specialized institutes and technical and commu-
nity colleges. He was one of the greatest builders of schools in B.C., having
helped conceive everything from Simon Fraser University and the Univer-
sity of Northern B.C. in Prince George to the elementary school at False
Creek South.

“Some people knew the demographic of what was coming,” Hardwick
recalled in September 1977, referring to the baby boomers. Then in their
twenties, they were denied post-secondary education simply because there
were not enough places for them. By then, the British Columbia Institute
of Technology (launched in 1964), Douglas College (1970), and Camosun
College (1971), among others, were either up and running or about to open.
Later came the provincial institutes: a BCIT with an expanded purview, the
new Emily Carr College of Art, and the Justice Institute of B.C. The final
three were quietly enabled by their own 1978 Orders-in-Council.

It was expected that post-secondary educational institutions would
have a much wider community-building role than was generally under-
stood. “Wherever higher education moved in,’ Hardwick figured, “it added
an element that hadn't been there before. Communities had lacked long-
term opportunities to develop leadership: teachers and bank managers
simply moved up career ladders; the only places children could get higher
education was the universities or technical schools.”

GARDE GarpDoM had much the same idea, although he saw the educa-
tion problem from the law enforcement point of view, a natural outlook in
his role as B.C. Attorney General from 1975 to 1979. Gardom oversaw the
birth of the Justice Institute with a higher quality of policing and other
public professions in mind: “There was a need—a great need—not only in
the interests of potential trainees, but, more importantly, for the public at
large. Training was scant, standards differed, skills varied and were obtained
mostly on the job...”

The year 1974 was a watershed in the development of what became
the Institute. The arrivals and quick impacts of Hogarth and Vickers, and
Pat McGeer’s announcement of a new kind of post-secondary educational
Institute, heralded the inauguration of a new concept of occupational and
trade-oriented multi-academy college. Bos STEWART was a Vancouver

Ce a ee cc