BEVERLEY MAY GARTRELL

July 4, 1930 March 9, 2023

Born to an agricultural family in Summerland, BC, during the Great Depression, Beverley learned about scarcity early. In spite of mobility issues that put her in leg braces, she had an active childhood. After being bed ridden for two years with a heart issue, Beverley completed high school in three years.

Driven by her values of equality, fairness, and defending against the unethical use of power, Beverley was active in the CCF youth movement to champion working class causes. There she forged life-long friendships.

At a time when women were expected to focus on family, Beverley worked her way through UBC, earning an honours BA Philosophy. She worked as a CBC journalist in the late 1950s, pushing through notions that women were not ’authoritative enough’ to report the news. Eventually she was reading the news on air. At age 29, she received pioneering heart surgery, opening up many possibilities. With her husband of 16 years, Patrick Brock, she moved to Tanzania and Uganda, writing about the family relationships of the Nyiha people, earning a Masters degree from the University of Leeds, teaching at the University of Makarere, and giving birth to her son Kenneth. While finishing a Ph.D. in Anthropology at City University in New York, Beverley returned to Vancouver to teach at Simon Fraser University. Despite being a single mother to a teenager and caring for her mother, she defended her dissertation and published a number of scholarly papers (including Is Ethnography Possible? A Critique of ”African Odyssey”). Notwithstanding the challenges, she obtained tenure. She was a gifted teacher, supervisor of many graduate students, supporter of many careers. Retiring early due to another health challenge, Beverley continued to inspire young minds to question ideas, values, and authority. Beverley was deeply honoured to attend a Kwakwaka’wakw Potlatch in Alert Bay, invited by a former student.

In her fifties and sixties, she often traveled alone in Mexico for months at a time, her anthropological lens gaining her friends and a Spanish fluency. Survived by her son, Ken (Laara); grandchild, Keila; nieces, Shelagh (Callum), Cheri (David); nephews, Pat, Grant (Mai); grandniece, Caitlan (Alex); and many friends. Beverley’s siblings, Joan and Bob, predeceased her.

A staunch atheist and hard-nosed realist, Beverley does not want a funeral. She will grudgingly allow a celebration of life so that those of us left behind can have closure. The family is planning a celebration on what would have been Beverley’s 93rd birthday.