Vancouver author, human rights activist Stan Persky dead at 83: 'He will be terribly missed'

Longtime Vancouver writer, activist and college professor Stan Persky died in Berlin on Oct. 15

Published Oct 16, 2024  •  2 minute read

Well known Vancouver writer, activist and educator Stan Persky died in Berlin on Oct. 15. Photo by Wayne Leidenfrost /Vancouver Sun

Vancouver writer, human rights and LGBTQ2S+ activist, and educator Stan Persky has died.

Perskey, 83, died in Berlin on Oct. 15 of complications from cancer surgery, kidney collapse and diabetes.

Persky was born in Chicago on Jan. 19, 1941. Persky, who served in the U.S. navy, made his way to Vancouver in 1966 and attended the University of British Columbia, receiving degrees in anthropology and sociology.

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He became a Canadian citizen in 1972 and called Vancouver home until moving to Berlin a decade and a half ago.

“Stan has multiple legacies,” said Tom Sandborn, a fellow writer and longtime friend. “As a public intellectual, columnist, reviewer and impressively prolific author, he added a humane, reasonable, reflective and intelligent voice to Canada’s public discourse. As a tireless activist for civil liberties and human rights, he was an example and an inspiration to generations. As an educator, he invited his students into the adult, reflective thought that informs democratic citizenship.

“He encouraged many he knew to become writers themselves.”

Vancouver writer, human rights and gay activist and educator Stan Persky died in Berlin on Oct. 15 at the age of 83. Here Persky (striped shirt and black jacket) is seen at a protest at Simon Fraser University in 1968. PROVINCE

Persky wrote 20 books, including: Budddy’s: Meditations on Desire; Reading the 21st Century: Books of the Decade, 2000-2009; Robin Blaser (with Brian Fawcett); The Short Version: An ABC Book; Reading the 21st Century: Books of the Decade, 2000—2009; Post-Communist Stories: About Cities, Politics, Desires and Letter from Berlin: Essays 2015-2016.

Persky was the recipient of the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize in 2006 for The Short Version: An ABC Book and in 2010 received B.C. Lieutenant-Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence.

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His media career included columns for The Vancouver Sun, The Globe and Mail, The Tyee and a long list of magazines. He also often appeared as a media commentator for the CBC.

A great deal of his work life was in academics. He taught at Northwest Community College in Terrace, Malaspina College in Nanaimo, and SFU. From 1983 to 2016, he was a political science then philosophy professor at North Van’s Capilano University.

Sandborn, who had known Persky since 1970, said it was friendship that powered Persky’s personality.

“As a friend, he was exemplary, teaching us all by example what real friendship means,” said Sandborn. “He will be long remembered and missed terribly. In his final years in Berlin, he was a loving and much-loved member of his informally adopted family there, Thomas Marquard and Nadya-al Wakeel and their children. In one of his emails to me this year, he said ‘When, many years hence, (I hope ‘many’ years) the obit writers come around to collect reflections, you can assure them that my period of semi-retirement, featuring a 20-year or so relationship, was a happy ending.)'”

The relationship he refer to, Sandborn said, was with his longtime companion, Damian.

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