Pat McGeer, a former B.C. cabinet minister, stands over top a model in his Vancouver home August 5, 2008 displaying a proposed crossing from Greater Vancouver to Vancouver Island. He died on Aug. 29, at the age of 95.Jeff Vinnick/The Globe and Mail
There are certain politicians who bristle when faced with public outcry. Some duck for cover. Some get defensive.
Pat McGeer was not one of them. The basketball star-turned B.C. cabinet minister and neuroscientist didn’t shy away from insults and criticism, according to former CBC journalist Greg Dickson. He readily agreed to go on call-in radio shows to take the heat from angry citizens.
In the 1970s, when bumper stickers, bearing the slogan “Stick it in your ear, McGeer,” appeared in response to his unpopular decision to raise car insurance premiums in the province, he responded with what Mr. Dickson describes as his characteristic wit; in the B.C. legislature, he drily warned against the dangers of sticking anything in anyone’s ears.
“He was a gutsy guy,” Mr. Dickson said. “He was not afraid to stick his neck out.”
Dr. McGeer died on Aug. 29, at the age of 95. According to his former policy co-ordinator Jane Burnes, his approach to life was captured by the quotes he kept framed behind his desk. By science fiction writer Robert Heinlein, they read: “Specialization is for insects,” and “To enjoy the flavour of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks.”
As a basketball player, he excelled. As a politician, he championed big ideas – many successful, others not. And as a researcher, who focused on Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases, he was prolific.
Patrick McGeer was born in Vancouver on June 27, 1927. His uncle, Gerry McGeer, was the mayor of Vancouver from 1935 to 1936, who served as a parliamentarian and senator before being re-elected mayor in 1947. His father, James McGeer, was a judge, and his mother, Ada McGeer, was the first female producer at the CBC.
McGeer, seen in 1946, played for the University of British Columbia’s basketball team as an undergraduate student and competed in the 1948 Olympics in London.UBC SPORTS HALL OF FAME
His mother’s friend Ethlyn Trapp, the first female president of both the B.C. Medical Association and the National Cancer Institute of Canada, encouraged his eventual interest in medicine.
But as he told Mr. Dickson, who recorded his personal history, his first love was basketball. He played for the University of British Columbia’s basketball team as an undergraduate student in chemistry. A top scorer, he helped UBC defeat the Harlem Globetrotters, then considered the best team in the world. He travelled with his teammates across the Atlantic on an ocean liner that had been used as a wartime troop ship to compete in the 1948 Olympics in London. The team came in ninth place, despite comprising the best players from Vancouver and Montreal, largely because they never had a chance to practice together beforehand.
After the Olympics, he pursued graduate studies in chemistry at Princeton University, following in the steps of his older brother, Peter. There, he found himself among science giants, like Albert Einstein and Nobel Prize-winning physicist Eugene Wigner.
Upon finishing his PhD, he was hired by DuPont in Wilmington, Del., in the early 1950s, a time when the chemical company was scooping up chemistry graduates from across North America. One of the products he helped develop was Teflon. (Teflon was later tied to a massive company scandal involving a toxic compound used to make it that doesn’t break down and is considered a “forever chemical.”)
During his time at DuPont, he met fellow chemist Edith Graef, who became his partner in marriage and in research. The couple moved to Vancouver in 1954 so he could study medicine at UBC. He became an academic faculty member in 1960, and helped establish the university’s division of neuroscience.
The McGeers entered neuroscience at a time when the fledgling field was bursting with new findings about how the brain worked. In The History of Neuroscience in Autobiography, the Drs. McGeer said they suspected in the late 1950s that biogenic amines, chemical compounds produced within the body, were central to neurotransmitters. The two zeroed in on studying these signalling molecules. Their pioneering work on neurotransmitters and later, on the role of neuroinflammation in neurodegeneration, was internationally recognized and widely cited. Their research earned the couple multiple awards, including a joint appointment as officers of the Order of Canada in 1995.
“What excited him so much was the research and discovery,” said Ms. Burnes, who described him as the “best boss” she ever had. She became a close friend of the McGeer family.
If asked what he was proudest of, he would probably have said his family and his partnership with his wife, Ms. Burnes said. But then, she said, he would “go into how many times he’d been cited in scientific journals. And all of that was because of things he discovered.”
He viewed entering politics as a way of contributing to public service, while he continued to do his research, Ms. Burnes said. Elected in 1962 in the Point Grey riding, he went on to become leader of B.C.’s Liberals before crossing the floor to join the Social Credit party in 1975.
McGeer on UBC's basketball court on Jan. 10, 2006. A lead scorer, he led the team to a famous victory over the Harlem Globetrotters, who happened to be the reigning professional world champions at the time.JOHN LEHMANN/The Globe and Mail
Although he was loyal to and supportive of his colleagues, he wasn’t a partisan person, Ms. Burnes said. In the legislative dining room, all the New Democratic Party members sat together at one table, the Liberals sat at another, and the Socreds at another, she recalled. But perhaps because he raised in Vancouver at a time when the city was relatively small, and he knew and went to school with various elected officials, he could work and mingle among them all, she said.
“He sat anywhere and talked to anybody,” she said. “He wasn’t going to be favouring people from his own caucus. He was there to help everybody and listen to people.”
Some regarded him as arrogant, but Ms. Burnes said once people got to know him, they would see he had the knowledge and ability to back up his confidence.
As Minister of Universities, Sciences and Technology, he established some of the province’s key institutions, including the Knowledge Network public broadcaster and the Discovery Foundation, created to foster science and technology innovation. The latter involved the creation of “Discovery Parks,” spaces close to university and colleges campuses that encouraged businesses to take ideas from the postsecondary institutions and commercialize them. He also supported the province’s college system, and the growing of engineering schools at the University of Victoria and Simon Fraser University, Ms. Burnes said.
These efforts have left a lasting mark on B.C., said David G. Harper, president and chief executive of the Discovery Foundation.
“Employment is high and the tech sector is doing very well right now. And a lot of that is due to his vision 40 years ago,” Dr. Harper said.
His visions were grand and abundant, but not all of them got off the ground. Perhaps most notable was his interest in building a fixed link, involving a tunnel and bridge route, between Vancouver and Vancouver Island. As Mr. Dickson explained, one would have had to have been “a miracle worker” to win the support of residents of the Gulf Islands to allow the construction of such a project through their communities. But even within the last year, he told Mr. Dickson he still thought the fixed link would be built one day.
Ever a believer in the scientific process, he shared in a recent conversation with Mr. Dickson during the pandemic that he felt confident any challenge can be overcome with science.
“Science always wins,” he told him.
He leaves his wife, Dr. Edith McGeer; their children, Rick, Tad and Tori; and grandchildren, Rory, Owen, Sean, Kailee, Liam and Simone.