This is the first of a series of organizational histories that I’ll be posting here throughout the next several months. From November 6–28, I’ll be in Vancouver, BC, to visit the major PLEI projects there: the People’s Law School, the Law Courts Education Society, and the BC Legal Services Society’s legal information department. In preparation for those visits, I’ll be posting brief histories of each organization.
- Organization History
Most people point to the People’s Law School in British Columbia as the very first sole-purpose public legal education organization in Canada. In every year since its 1972 founding, the People’s Law School has focused on providing free law classes and plain-language publications to the British Columbian public, offering programs province-wide and in many languages.
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The People’s Law School got its start in May 1972 with $11,650 (about $57,000 in 2006 dollars) from the Canadian federal government’s “Opportunities for Youth” (OFY) program. Founder Diana Davidson, a second-year University of British Columbia law student at the time, got the idea for a community-based public legal education project when she learned about a “People’s Law School” operating in the San Francisco Bay area. With the OFY money and help from about seven initial volunteers, the group began operations out of Davidson’s basement laundry room as the “Vancouver People’s Law School” (VPLS). The project’s purpose, as Davidson articulated it at the beginning, was to instruct Vancouverites not only about “what the law is” but also on how to influence the law and “recognize the danger of those bills that seek to curtail or eliminate fundamental rights.”