Shirley Chan is a third-generation advocate for her community and for others, mostly people at risk of displacement, discrimination and marginalization.
Her great-grandfather came to Canada for the gold rush, worked on B.C. railways, and started a successful import-export business in Vancouver’s Chinatown. Her mother and father (Mary Lee Wo Soon and Walter Chan) helped create the Strathcona Property Owners and Tenants Association in 1968, and Chan worked with them to successfully challenge city plans that would have displaced thousands of residents and run a freeway through Vancouver. The Chans were able to galvanize others to work together to stop the freeway and protect their neighbours and neighbourhoods. Chan campaigned with her parents, going door-to-door to build opposition to the freeway plans and organizing a network of block captains to keep residents informed. Community activism has remained fundamental to her ever since.
Chan’s work roles include CEO of Building Opportunities with Business Inner-City Society; director of sustainable development, healthy environments and consumer safety branch, Health Canada; regional director general, B.C./Yukon; regional director, population & public health branch, B.C./Yukon Region, for Health Canada; director, non-market operations division, City of Vancouver; chief of staff, mayor’s office, City of Vancouver; and many more.
Chan’s volunteer work is extensive including Learning for a Sustainable Future Board; Pathways Serious Mental Illness Society, VP; Vancouver Chinatown Foundation Policy advisor; Vancouver Chinatown Revitalization Committee; Chinatown Historic Area planning committee; UBC president’s advisory committee on the university library; UBC Asian studies advisory committee; and Dr. Sun Yat- Sen Garden trustee. She has served on many boards including B.C. Hydro, Powerex, VanCity Credit Union; VanCity Enterprises; Citizens Bank & Trust; VanCity Place for Youth Society; VanCity Foundation; UBC board of governors; UBC president’s advisory committee on downtown presence; UBC Foundation Board; Children’s International Summer Villages.
She has advised several B.C. premiers on many community issues.
More recently, in addition to community service, since her daughter developed schizophrenia, Chan has been active promoting mental health. She credits the North Shore Schizophrenia Society for helping her and her husband move from “a place of denial and confusion, with nowhere to turn, to one of strength and knowledge about what was happening to our daughter and ourselves and knowledge about the mental health system.” She currently serves as VP on the board of Pathways Serious Mental Illness Society as a fierce advocate for people with mental illness and chair of Pathways’ education and support committee.
