Don Bellamy, a former longtime Vancouver city councillor who was involved with the Pacific National Exhibition (PNE) for over 50 years, died Friday at the age of 91.
But he was more than a politician — Bellamy also worked to support the young and the adult through his work as a police officer and a military veteran with a love for music.
Coverage of Vancouver city council on Globalnews.ca:
Born in East Vancouver, Bellamy would spend much of his life there, buying a house on Dundas Street near the PNE in 1947 and living there for more than five decades.
At 16 years old, Bellamy joined the Royal Canadian Navy and was called to active service in 1944.
He would serve as an air gunner on the corvette HMCS Chicoutimi and the destroyer HMCS Kootenay during the Battle of the North Atlantic.
He would marry his wife Ness in 1947; that year they moved into their home near the PNE.
Once his military service was finished, Bellamy worked as a motorman for B.C. Electric Inter-Urban Trams, then joined the Vancouver Police Department (VPD), serving there from 1952 to 1967.
While there, he founded the VPD’s “Youth Squad” and developed outreach programs so that teens would have alternatives to drugs and street crime.
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“He had a rough upbringing himself,” his son Darrell Bellamy told Global News.
“He just wanted to be involved with youth and was from his early days on the police department.”
But that’s not all he would do for young people.
He started teaching drumming with the Optimist Boys Pipe Band in the mid-1950s; the group would later become the White Spot Youth Pipe Band for kids aged between eight and 16 years old.
Bellamy would serve as bandmaster and drumming instructor for three decades.
“I believe it was Don’s patient ability to teach, and his uncompromising ‘right is right’ manner in that teaching, that led him to relish instructing young boys and girls in his White Spot pipe band,” said friend and former Vancouver Sun writer Jack Lee, who wrote Bellamy’s obituary.
“In his gentle yet uncompromising manner, he was teaching them early that there is only one way to perform music correctly, and if you fail, the false note or out of sync timing will certainly embarrass you.”
“He was therefore showing these malleable youngsters that wrong moves in life would have the same, and possibly much more serious, consequences.”
After his career as a policeman, Bellamy became executive director of the B.C. Restaurant and Food Services Association.
He first won a seat on Vancouver city council in 1976 and served as a member of the Non-Partisan Association (NPA) under a suite of mayors: John Volrich, Michael Harcourt, Gordon Campbell and Philip Owen.
While on council, he served on a committee that played an important role in the development of the SkyTrain system. He also served as chair, director or an executive member of organizations including the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD), the Union of B.C. Municipalities (UBCM) and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM).
“His decisions were made with his heart,” Darrell said.
“He did what he thought he was right.”
Sometimes that put him in conflict with other councillors — like Harry Rankin, with whom he would “fight like cat and dog in council chambers.”
The two nevertheless had a strong relationship — they would fight, and then they would go have a coffee at the White Spot across from city hall at 12th Avenue and Cambie Street.
Bellamy represented the City of Vancouver on the PNE’s board of directors.
In 2001, the exhibition recognized him for over five decades of service in its annual report, after he worked with the PNE Parade, the board of directors, the agricultural advisory committee and “untold programs and committees.”
“He is respected throughout the extended PNE family of management, staff, exhibitors and contractors,” the report said.
While on council, Bellamy founded the Vancouver Naval Veterans Band, serving as president and drumming instructor.
Today, that band is housed at HMCS Discovery, a naval facility just off of Stanley Park.
In 1999, the Bellamy home on Dundas Street was sold, and he and Ness moved into a condo in Burnaby’s Brentwood area.
He mulled over whether to run again and ultimately decided not to — it didn’t feel right to be a Burnaby resident and run for council in another city.
“I said to him at the time, go out on top, go out as Wayne Gretzky,” Darrell said.
“Don’t hang around and do things you’re not comfortable with.”
In 2007, Bellamy was inducted into the BC Restaurant Hall of Fame after his service with the B.C. Restaurant and Food Services Association.
Then, in 2012, he and Ness would move to West Kelowna so they could be closer to family.
A son, Don Bellamy Jr., would pre-decease him in 2017.
Bellamy Sr. died in a West Kelowna hospice after living with a number of age-related ailments, said Lee’s obituary.
A funeral will take place in Vancouver at a place and time to be determined.
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