Bob Robinson

Bob Robinson was born in 1920 in Fort William ON, now Thunder Bay. He started school in Vancouver in 1926, but his family soon moved to Burnaby, where they ran a small farm and vegetable garden. Bob graduated from Burnaby South Secondary School in 1937. He wanted to be a doctor, but medical school fees were prohibitive for a family with three boys, and so he enrolled in the one-year teacher training program at the Normal School on the corner of 12th Avenue and Cambie Street in Vancouver. His first teaching job was in Pender Harbour Superior School, a two-roomed school encompassing Grades 1-12, where he taught all the subjects to all the students in Grades 9-12.

Two years of summer school and a few years of full-time studies at the University of British Columbia earned Bob a Bachelor of Education degree in 1945. That summer he married his wife Kay and the two moved to North Vancouver. The next September he started teaching Mathematics and Physical Education at North Vancouver Secondary School, where he remained until 1961, except for one year as an overseas exchange teacher in England. Bob was president of the North Vancouver Teachers' Association 1949-50 and he served on the executive both before and after. From 1961, until he retired in 1979, he was vice principal and principal at various North Vancouver elementary schools, except for two years in Melbourne Australia.

An avid golfer, softball player, soccer player, coach, volunteer, and fan, Bob was always devoted to sports. In the early 1950s, with St. Andrew's United Church in North Vancouver as a base, he founded a scout troop which soon became the largest in Western Canada and a Sunday school soccer club for children aged six to ten. Bob was proudest, however, of his role in inducing legendary sprinter Harry Jerome to switch from baseball and football to track and field. In the mid-1990s, he performed a similar office for 77-year-old Olga Kotelko, who has now earned dozens of gold and silver medals around the globe. To help students continue track and field after they left school, Bob founded the Nor'westers Track and Field Club in 1960 and persuaded the three North Shore municipalities to construct a training track at West Vancouver Secondary School in 1991. In the mid-1980s, Bob hitchhiked to Tuktoyaktuk, north of the Arctic Circle, to visit one of his sons.

A member of the North Shore Optimists Club for 40 years, Bob spearheaded the "Opti-bears" program, which has donated over 3,000 knitted, stuffed bears to police and rescue organizations for distribution to children. Bob died October 3 2000.