John McBride

IN MEMORIAM
John McBride, 1943-2010

The SFU Centre for Sustainable Community Development has lost a good friend.  John McBride, a CSCD Associate for many years, passed away in October 2010 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. 

I was privileged to know John for nearly three decades.  Gregarious and seemingly always cheerful, John was a natural and remarkable community organizer. He produced guides for community organizing, and started-up and managed community-owned co-ops, including Isadora’s Co-op Restaurant on Granville Island and Community Alternatives Housing Co-op in Vancouver. 

John lived for many years in the False Creek Housing Cooperative on the south shore of False Creek in Vancouver.  I lived there as well with my family in the mid-1990s and for a decade or so we were neighbours as well as friends.  John was a true pillar both of the cooperative and of the broader community.  He had a fierce commitment to local democracy and played a longstanding role as a delegate to the False Creek South Neighbourhood Association.  As Vancouver City Council member Geoff Meggs wrote in a blog tribute to John, these Neighbourhood Association meetings “were distinguished by John’s distinctive leadership style… based on absolute confidence in the ability of a community to prosper if it focuses on co-operation and inclusion. It was coupled with a steely determination to ensure that city leaders, from elected officials down to the front-line staff, responded to community needs.”

John taught community economic development for ten years to Aboriginal students at the post-secondary level. He conducted courses and workshops with a number of nations including: Stl’atl’imx, Saanich, Blood Tribe in Alberta, and the Northern Tutchone in Yukon. He wrote several course curricula, pioneered simulation techniques, and worked on computer-based education design. He designed and taught Aboriginal Negotiation Skills and Strategies, Indigenous Government Administration and Aboriginal Human Resource courses.

John treasured his opportunity to come alongside First Nations communities.  About ten years ago John, then well into his mid-fifties, decided that he wanted to do a Masters degree, and I was honoured when he applied to work with me.  John’s Masters thesis, Aboriginal Community Economic Development: Overcoming Barriers to Aboriginal Entrepreneurship, explored how aboriginal communities can foster a supportive climate for aboriginal entrepreneurs and business start-up.  The titles of three other publications that John edited during that period further illustrate his interests in aboriginal community economic development: Our Own Vision, Our Own Plan – What six First Nations organizations have accomplished with their own economic development plans; Minding Our Own Businesses – how to create support in First Nations communities for Aboriginal Business; and Rebuilding First Nations – Tools, Traditions and Relationships.  All three of these publications are available on the Centre’s web site free of charge and, at John’s insistence, with no rights reserved. 

John continued as an Associate with the Centre for Sustainable Community Development after completing his graduate studies.  Over the years John researched Aboriginal Housing Authorities as possible models to introduce in B.C., conducted program evaluation for Kw’umut Lelum Child and Family Services, and designed an organizational development assessment tool for Aboriginal non-profits.

John’s passing is a real sadness to the Centre and to me personally.  Positive to the end, when John’s doctors said he only had 8 to 12 months left, he told me: “grim news I know, but hey, better than 6 months.” Our heartfelt condolences go out to John’s family and friends. In John’s memory, a scholarship fund is being set up at the Native Education Centre (www.necvancouver.org/) and donations are welcome to Amnesty International (www.amnesty.ca/).

Mark Roseland
Director, SFU Centre for Sustainable Community Development