Former Socred MLA Kripps wasn’t shy about sharing her convictions
Agnes Kripps was never afraid to speak her mind. The former Social Credit MLA for Vancouver South ( 1969- 1972) and backbencher in W. A. C. Bennett’s government, who died Sunday at the age of 88, was well known for both her humanity and her opinions.
“She was very human,” said daughter Julie Northey on Thursday of her mother. “She always spoke her mind and she had strong convictions and beliefs about what’s right and what’s wrong.
“And she loved connecting with people of all cultures. She loved her Ukrainian culture and she loved her family and singing and dancing. She loved walking and she was very busy. She couldn’t be ignored and she’s really going to be missed. She was so beautiful.”
Back in the ’ 60s, Kripps’s reputation for speaking her mind gained traction in the political vocabulary of the day when she rose during debate one day to talk about sex education. Kripps felt that the word “sex” had the wrong connotations for many people and called for the word in school textbooks to be changed to Biology of Life Today ( BOLT). Her motion met with braying and hooting in the legislature and earned her “the BOLT lady” handle.
But Kripps also proved to be well ahead of her time when she called for a ban on smoking in the legislature, again igniting a chorus of catcalls.
A staunch, longtime Social Credit party member, Kripps was provincial president of the party’s women’s auxiliary after the Socreds were defeated in 1972. “I never thought the party was dead then ( in 1972),” Kripps said later. “I just thought we needed to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps.”
Northey said her mother was involved in many charities and was the local president and national board member of the Children of Chernobyl Canadian Fund, which raised money for children possibly harmed by the nuclear accident in Ukraine.
Northey also recalled as a child how her mother put up her own “Stop” sign at 57th and Arbutus to stop cars from speeding through.
Kripps will be remembered at a service Monday at 11 a. m. at Mount Pleasant Universal Funeral Home, 306 East 11th Ave., Vancouver.