The Lois M. Bewley Fund assists with reasonable costs of educational programs, activities and services that promote understanding of intellectual freedom and freedom to read. The Fund may assist in the defense of colleagues or other workers in the writing, publishing, distribution, or retail sectors who suffer from censorship attacks in the workplace. The Fund is not intended to pay lawyers’ fees.
Read the complete terms of reference for the Fund.
Lois M. Bewley (April 3, 1926 – August 28, 2023)
Lois Bewley graduation photo (undated)
Lois Bewley, Kitsilano Beach 2018
Thank you to Alice Crook (Lois’ niece) for providing the photos and biography of Lois Bewley.
Born in 1926 in Regina, Saskatchewan, Lois moved to BC with her family in her teens. There she committed her first act of civil disobedience by starting a petition to Prime Minister Mackenzie King protesting the removal of her Japanese Canadian school friends. She subsequently graduated from UBC and went on to post-graduate degrees in Library Science from the U of Toronto and U of Illinois. She taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and was instrumental in the establishment of a public library system and the development of a state-wide program of continuing professional education. The late ‘60s was a wild time to be on a US campus and Lois had the stories to prove it. She was happy to come home in 1969 to join the library faculty at UBC, which became her academic home for the rest of her career.
Teaching was central to Lois’s career and fostered her interest in the development of public library services and library legislation and architecture. She was a strong advocate of free public library service in Canada and the legislation to make it possible. Over the years, she was engaged as a consultant regarding library development and legislation in BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Nova Scotia.
Lois was nationally recognized for her defense of intellectual freedom. At an annual meeting of the BC Library Association (BCLA) in the late 80s, she announced the formation of the lntellectual Freedom, Education and Defense Fund to fight against literary repression (wearing a shirt that read “There is something in my library to offend everyone.”). In 2007, the BCLA renamed the Fund in her honour in recognition of her extensive career and her influence in promoting intellectual freedom in libraries in BC and throughout Canada.
Lois was very active in her professional associations. She served as President of the BC and Canadian Library Associations and as a member and Chair of many Canadian and American library and library educators committees. She was involved in or conducted several national library research studies and chaired the Vancouver Public Library Foundation. She wrote many articles on library legislation and service to the elderly, as well as writing or giving articles, speeches and interviews on intellectual freedom, censorship and the freedom to read.
Lois was recognized with her profession’s highest awards – by the BCLA with the Helen Gordon Stewart Award for “Outstanding Achievement,” by the Canadian Library Association for “Outstanding Service to Librarianship” and by the Canadian Public Library Association for “Outstanding Public Library Service.” There is a UBC graduate student scholarship named for Lois in recognition of her teaching and devotion to public service. One of her most treasured awards was from her students, the “Just Desserts” award (UBC Library Students’ Association).
Lois is remembered by friends and family for her feistiness, her engaging and sometimes outrageous sense of humour and her never-failing curiosity about life. She travelled widely, loved music (opera in particular), and was very active – as a golfer, fisherperson (dry-fly and salt-chuck), sailor, curler, lawn bowler and walker. Her lifelong love of books and reading is legendary, with Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf being two of her favourite authors.