Sitting in her comfortable living room, Jackie Hooper tells the story of her life.
Now 88, she grew up in Vancouver, watching the city change from a town of 250,000 people to what she now describes as a “cosmopolitan” city.
Hooper’s living room is covered in paintings. When the Courier arrives, the lively senior is searching for a place to hang another painting — a landscape featuring what she will later tell me are her primary inspirations, the mountains and ocean.
“There’s no space left. I’ll have to get the manager up here to create a spot for it,” she said. “I’ve got a hammer and nail all ready for him.”
Hooper was born in North Vancouver, where she lived with her mother and sister. Hooper talks about growing up poor during the Great Depression.
“But that was just the way it was then. Everyone was in the same boat,” she said.
Hooper went to King George Secondary in the West End. Promptly upon graduating, she enlisted in the military to help with the war effort, lying about her age of course. Only 17, she wasn’t able to go overseas and instead was sent to Halifax, where her job was to drive the “injured, but not too injured” soldiers home once they arrived in Canada. It was an interesting job, she said, despite the atrocious roads.
“When I drove them, I would ask, do you want me to get you there real fast or take my time, since they were injured. They always told me to get them home as fast as possible.”
When Hooper moved back to Vancouver, she took her B.A. in economics and geography at UBC. After school she worked as a photogrammetrist.
“There’s a new word for you,” she laughed.
She made maps from aerial photographs and was responsible for surveying much of the North Shore. Hooper eventually had to leave mapping because of eye problems so went back to school to study library science.
She then worked in a library, supporting her two sons and husband as he recovered from cancer. Around this time, three things happened which would ultimately shape the course of the rest of her life. Hooper’s best friend betrayed her, leaving her out of work. Her younger son became involved with a gang and her marriage was crumbling. This series of events caused depression and Hooper described how she spent the next several years in and out of One West inpatient care at UBC as she struggled.
“There were quite a few suicide attempts,” she acknowledged, adding despite those attempts, she liked living at UBC One West. “It was like heaven.”
When she left the program, she noticed a gap in health care. Over the next few years, along with help from Costal Health, she started a housing project for ex-patients in an apartment building at Pendrell and Bute in the West End known as the Hooper Apartments.
Her efforts for mental health care saw her awarded the Courage to Come Back award last year — six recipients across various categories are recognized
for their advocacy work.
The real win, Jackie said, was the $1 million cheque given to Coastal Mental Health at the ceremony. It funds a great deal of their work, she said, including more residences and a resource centre.
Jackie was also a Courier columnist years ago – how many, she’s not exactly sure. Her column, “Hopping Around,” included advice for the urban senior.
These days, Hooper said, she mostly spends time sitting out on her balcony and drawing. The art on the walls represents a fraction of her work. There are stacks more around the apartment.
One of her favourite things to do now is make the four-mile walk to UBC, where she treats herself.
“There’s a MacDonald’s out there, so I’ll get a coffee. It’s the best coffee in the city, I think. Starbucks is too bitter,” she said.
It takes her about an hour and a half to walk round-trip, but she loves it anyway.
When asked why she likes Vancouver, she refers to a sheaf of poetry sitting on the side table.
“My Vancouver poem says it all,” she muses before handing me a copy.
“We love our mountains and we prize the seagulls call. The ocean’s at our doorstep in its shades of grey and blue. We admire our harbour, its problems far and few.”
Note: This story has been corrected since first posted/
