Late Hilda Thomas embodied life and humour to the end
Women’s rights activist, environmentalist and music lover mourned
Just one week before political activist Hilda Thomas died, she was still thinking about the future.
“There’s so much more to be done,” she told Anne Hamilton, speaking about women’s rights. “She was eager to the end,” said Hamilton, who with Thomas helped open the first free-standing abortion clinic in B.C., the Everywoman’s Health Centre.
Hamilton visited the 77-yearold Thomas a few days before she died on Nov. 25.
Thomas was hospitalized two months ago after experiencing an irregular heartbeat. She suffered from lung cancer just last year, for which she had received radiation treatment, and from nonHodgkins lymphoma for several years before that.
Thomas had been a member of the New Democratic Party since its inception and before that, of the Co- operative Commonwealth Federation. She was active both provincially and federally.
Thomas, who was born in Kimberley, never saw a dull moment, a fact reflected by the activity in her Vancouver Hospital room.
The day she died, three women from the B. C. NDP came to read a unanimously passed resolution about her. “ Hilda Thomas embodies the personal and political spirit of commitment that has built the CCF and the NDP,” it read.
As a member of the B. C. Women’s Rights Committee, she joined forces with other women’s groups to form the B. C. Coalition for Abortion Clinics in 1987. She was key in establishing the Everywoman’s Health Centre, which opened in 1988 and was a board member until 1994.
She was also an environmentalist interested in preserving local parks and a senior lecturer from 1968 to 1972 in the English department at the University of B. C., from which she received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
“ She’s like 10 people to me,” her daughter Theresa said of her mother’s numerous roles. “Most people couldn’t do one of them.”
Thomas was a musician and she retained her passion for music until the end. The evening of Nov. 25, after the NDP presentation, close family and friends recited one of her original songs, Days Like This.
In 1959, along with her husband Philip, Thomas started what is now the Vancouver Folk Song Society, then called the Vancouver Folk Song Circle.
“She wrote very witty songs — the condom song,” Philip recalled before breaking into verse: Oh, put on your condom, your big rubber condom, and I’ll wear the sexiest smile.
“ There’s a whole handful of them, political parodies,” he said.
Margaret Birrell, who first met Thomas at 1970s rallies, came every evening for dinner. “ We would talk about her day and what’s new in politics ... she was very concerned about where things were going in Iraq, and privatization of health care,” she said.
Thomas was vocal on every level, including on the love lives of her three children.
A rare silence was reserved for the love of her own life. “ We would have this quiet moment, when all visitors had left,” Philip said. “ I would kiss her... Hilda was dying yet there was life and humour there.”
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