Showing 6163 results

Person/organization

Rowling, John

  • Person
  • 1940-

John Rowling is past President and co-founder of CAMRA BC (the Campaign for Real Ale Society of British Columbia) and a co-founder and long-time director of Victoria's Great Canadian Beer Festival Society.

Rowling was born in the United Kingdom, in Sidcup, Kent in the suburbs of London on May 11, 1940. He survived the Blitz and a bomb that destroyed all the houses on his street save his family home. Rowling studied at London University, graduating with a B.Sc. in Geology in 1962. He emigrated to Canada later that year to pursue graduate studies at the University of New Brunswick (UNB) in Fredericton. After four years at UNB, Rowling settled in Calgary, working as an exploration geologist for Chevron and other companies for the next 20 years. In 1988, he moved to Victoria to take up a position in the Petroleum Geology Branch of the BC Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, continuing there until his retirement in 1997.

In 1968 Rowling married Carol Graham, and they had three children and six grandchildren. Carol passed away in 2022.

Rowling has been a beer and pub enthusiast all his life. From Canada he followed the activities of the UK's Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) movement. His brother Rob had joined CAMRA UK in 1974, later becoming President of the Boston, Licolnshire branch. Shortly after his move to Victoria, John learned of the existence of a CAMRA Canada and signed up. On April 7, 1990 at a meeting at Spinnaker's Pub in Victoria, Rowling along with his wife Carol and Phil Cottrell and Dave Preston founded a CAMRA Victoria branch. The group opted for independence from the eastern-based CAMRA Canada and in September 1990 registered CAMRA BC as an incorporated society, with its own constitution, by-laws and finances. Rowling served as the first President from 1990-1992, with a further term in 2000-2003.

Rowling and other CAMRA BC members participated in Victoria's first beer festival in July 1992. The experience inspired them to create an annual festival under CAMRA's auspices. Starting in 1993 as the Victoria Microbrewery Festival, it showcased BC's craft breweries, while also bringing in a smaller number of brewers from other provinces and the USA. In 1995, the event was renamed the Great Canadian Beer Festival (GCBF) and a separate body, the GCBF Society, was spun off from CAMRA to assume ongoing responsibility for planning and organization. Rowling and Gerry Hieter were for many year the main organizers, and Rowling remained a GCBF Director until 2018. In 2019 the GCBF Society disbanded and a new organization, the Victoria Beer Society, took over responsibility for the festival.

Rowling was a frequent contributor to CAMRA BC's newsletter, What's Brewing, launched in June 1990 under the editorship of Phil Atkinson. (CAMRA UK, CAMRA Canada and CAMRA BC all had newsletters by this same name.) With the very first issue of What's Brewing BC, Rowling started the long-running column that would eventually become The Hopbine, "a fresh gathering of news and gossip"). In his column Rowling brought together short news items, announcements, reviews, comments and opinions on happenings in the beer world; he continued to write it until the end of 2003. From about 2004-2015, Rowling regularly wrote about beer and the BC craft beer scene for Victoria's Eat Magazine, and during the same period he was the BC correspondent for the California-based Celebrator Beer Magazine.

In 2002, Matt Phillips of Victoria's Phillips Brewing Company created a special beer to honour Rowling as "a trailblazer and true champion of the craftbrewers' art" – Big Bad John's Traditional English Barley Wine. "Giants fear him / Taste buds applaud him" declared its label. In 2018 Rowling stepped down from the Board of the GCBF Society. The following year, Rowling and Gerry Hieter were presented with Legend Awards at the BC Brewing Awards, in recognition of their contributions to BC's craft beer community.

Rimmer, Jim

  • Person
  • 1934-2010

Jim Rimmer was born in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1934. In 1950, he undertook a six-year apprenticeship with local printer and publisher J.W. Boyd and Sons. He subsequently worked for seven years as a journeyman compositor for several BC newspapers, including the Vancouver Province, Vancouver Sun, and the Williams Lake Tribune. From 1972 to 1999, Rimmer ran a freelance design office, working as an illustrator, graphic designer, and type designer; some of his more notable commercial designs include the logo for Canadian Pacific Airlines, and the provincial mark for British Columbia.

Rimmer designed and cut his first typeface, Juliana Old Style, in 1980. In the years following, he designed and produced numerous faces in both metal and digital format, including proprietary fonts and typeface revivals. For several years during the 1980s Rimmer worked with Giampa Text Ware, operated by Gerald Giampa. Rimmer designed digital type fonts with this firm and its successor, Lanston Type Company. He was an active member of the American Typecasting Fellowship beginning in 1984, and founded the Rimmer Type Foundry in 1998.

In 1974, Rimmer founded Pie Tree Press, named after an old apple tree in his backyard, the fruit of which was used to make pies. As Pie Tree Press, Rimmer printed numerous broadsides and books, including Alison’s Fishing Birds, commissioned by Colophon Books. He subsequently produced four major limited edition publications, for which he did the typesetting, illustrations and book-binding: Shadow River: the Selected and Illustrated Poems of Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) (1997), A Christmas Carol (1998), Leaves from the Pie Tree (2006), an autobiographical work including “how-to” knowledge, and Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (2008). Rimmer was working on the design of the ‘Dubloon’ typeface for a fifth book, Treasure Island, at the time of his death (this font will be released as the “Rimmer” typeface).

Over the course of his career, Rimmer taught drawing and typography classes at many local colleges and universities, including the Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design, Capilano College, Kwantlen College, Simon Fraser University, and the University College of the Fraser Valley. He also held workshops in hand-setting, printing, and book-binding. Rimmer’s work earned him awards from the Creative Club, Graphic Designers of Canada, Art Direction Creativity in Illustration, and the American Typecasting Fellowship. A series of broadsides designed for Westgraphica, now Karo, earned him the “Communication Arts Award of Excellence” in the self-promotion class. “Rimmerfest : An Evening to Celebrate Jim Rimmer and His Many Contributions” took place on November 25, 2006; the event was organized by Simon Fraser University Library. In 2007, Rimmer was made a fellow of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada.

Jim Rimmer passed away in New Westminster on January 8, 2010.

BC Book Prizes

  • Corporate body
  • 1985-

The BC Book Prizes, including The Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence, are presented annually at the Lieutenant Governor’s BC Book Prize Gala in April.
The awards carry a cash prize of $2000 plus a certificate. The exception is the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence, which is a separate prize category. Prizes include: Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize, Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize, Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize, Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize and the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence, and the Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award.

Campaign for Real Ale Society of British Columbia (CAMRA BC)

  • Corporate body
  • 1990-

The Campaign for Real Ale Society of British Columbia (CAMRA BC) was founded in 1990. It acts as a champion of the consumer in relation to the BC and Canadian beer and alcoholic beverage industry and seeks to advance British Columbians' access to quality beer and cider.

CAMRA BC's origins look to the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) movement that began in Britain in the 1970s. CAMRA UK was founded on March 16, 1971 by Michael Hardman, Bill Mellor, Jim Makin and Graham Lees. They criticized the dominance of the British "Big Six" brewers on the British beer scene. CAMRA opposed the loss of independent regional breweries, the "tied house" system that bound pubs to the big brewers, the demise of traditional British cask-conditioned ales, and the declining quality of the remaining mass-produced beers. CAMRA defined "real ale" as beer that has not been filtered, pasteurized or pressurized, but is conditioned and carbonated by a secondary fermentation in the cask or bottle itself. Modern industrial brewing techniques were eliminating real ales, and CAMRA fought successfully to pressure brewers to revive their production. Membership grew rapidly, reaching 5000 members across the UK by 1974. In 2023 CAMRA had over 150,000 members in more than 200 local branches.

Outside the UK, beer drinkers inspired by CAMRA's success created organizations with broadly similar goals, and they sometimes used the CAMRA name. But there is no provision in the UK organization for international branches and affiliation is mainly symbolic. A CAMRA Canada was established around 1983 based in Ontario and Quebec. Members paid dues into the national organization, which in turn was to provide funding to local chapters. CAMRA Canada produced its own newsletter (What's Brewing) but there were no national meetings and chapters saw few if any funds for local initiatives. Vancouver members meeting at the Rowing Club in Stanley Park in the summer of 1985 opted for independence, formally incorporating CAMRA BC as its own society on October 29, 1985. This organization was based mainly in the Lower Mainland. It produced a newsletter (BC Beer Front News) and held regular meetings and social events. But after the first year, it failed to file annual reports with BC's Registrar of Companies and was de-listed in 1989. Around the same time the newsletter ceased operations.

Shortly after this, a separate initiative created a local CAMRA branch in Victoria. John and Carol Rowling, Phil Cottrell, and Dave Preston established CAMRA Victoria at a meeting at Spinnakers pub on April 7, 1990. It was only afterwards that the Victoria group became aware of the existence of the earlier CAMRA BC organization, and Rowling contacted Phil Atkinson who had been involved with it. The Victoria group proceeded to incorporate on September 24, 1990. Rather than revive the old CAMRA BC registration (and pay back fees), they registered as a new entity, but took up the old name.

Like its predecessor, the new CAMRA BC was dissatisfied with the affiliation model proposed by CAMRA Canada. Preferring independence, CAMRA BC created its own constitution and by-laws and retained its own finances. John Rowling served as the first President (1990-1992). Phil Atkinson became editor of the newsletter, What's Brewing, launched in June 1990 (CAMRA UK, CAMRA Canada and CAMRA BC all had newsletters with this same name). CAMRA Canada meanwhile faded out of existence in 1990s.

The purpose of CAMRA BC, as set out in its constitution, is "to actively promote and encourage a greater range of choice of quality beers." To this end it lobbies for changes to BC liquor policy to better support BC craft-beer and cider consumers; provides public education relating to craft beer and cider; promotes the establishment and success of quality brewpubs, neighbourhood pubs, and craft breweries and cideries in BC; supports quality home brewing; supports the production of cask-conditioned beers and events relating to those products; and encourages responsible and safe consumption of craft beer and cider.

CAMRA BC is run by volunteers. Like its UK namesake, CAMRA BC is a consumer advocacy organization. Breweries are encouraged take out corporate memberships, but corporate members cannot sit on the Board and do not have voting rights. Membership grew from about 40 after the first year to 120 in 1992 to over 250 by 1997, and numbers seem to have stabilized around that figure in subsequent years.

CAMRA BC's constitution provides for local branches with their own committees and Executive Board, elected at an Annual General Meeting. But for the first decade Victoria was the primary hub and focus of activity, and the line between CAMRA Victoria and CAMRA BC was fuzzy, with Victoria's Executive effectively operating for BC as a whole. By the early 2000s, branches outside Victoria had been more formally established - in Nanaimo, Osoyoos, Peachland, Prince George, Prince Rupert, Richmond-Steveston and Vancouver. Some of these were short-lived, while the Victoria branch has remained stable over the years.

In 2003, changes were introduced to more clearly separate branch and central finances. Branches retained a portion of the fees of their individual and corporate members, another part went to CAMRA BC as a whole (e.g. for Directors' insurance) and another part to the production costs for the newsletter. It was at this time that the tagline for What's Brewing changed from "the CAMRA Victoria newsletter" to "the magazine of CAMRA BC." But until 2010 the Executive of the Victoria branch continued to be the Executive of CAMRA BC. This changed in April 2010, when AGMs of the Victoria, Penticton and Victoria branches met independently but elected a provincial Executive separate from branch boards for the first time. At the time of writing (April 2023) CAMRA BC has four active branches in Victoria, the South Okanagan, Vancouver and Powell River.

One of CAMRA Victoria's earliest initiatives was the creation of an annual craft beer festival in 1993. Initially called the Victoria Microbrewery Festival, it was renamed the Great Canadian Beer Festival (GCBF) in 1995. A separate society was spun off from CAMRA and incorporated to assume ongoing responsibility for managing the festival, though the two organizations remained closely linked. In 2019 the GCBF Society dissolved itself and responsibility for the festival was taken over by the Victoria Beer Society. After a two-year hiatus occasioned by the Covid-19 pandemic, the GCBF resumed in September 2022.

Chief officers

  • John Rowling, President (1990-1992)
  • Tom Thomson, President (1992-1993)
  • Paul McGrarty, President (1993-1994)
  • Steve Fudge, President (1994-1996?)
  • Mark Bridges, President (1997)
  • Steve Fudge, President (1998-2000)
  • John Rowling, President (2000-2003)
  • Glen Stusek, President (2004-2010)

For a more detailed listing, see Appendix A in the pdf finding aid for F-318.

Results 181 to 210 of 6163