George Woodcock
Former residence, 6400 Block, McCleery St.
"I found in Vancouver the mixture of stimulation and detachment that I need, and I have been fortunate enough to find it in a physical setting of whose beauty I have never tired. Settling in Vancouver was, in the creative sense, finding home."
From Beyond the Blue Mountains
Self-described as “a British Columbian by choice, a Canadian by birth,” the England educated anarchist George Woodcock was B.C.’s most prodigious man of letters. Here he lived as “a man of free intelligence” from 1959 to 1995 with his wife Ingeborg, raising funds for two charities they founded, Tibetan Refugee Aid Society and Canada India Village Aid, while writing and editing approximately 150 books. Here, as well, Woodcock edited Canadian Literature, the first publication entirely devoted to Canadian books. A friend and biographer of George Orwell, and a friend to the Dalai Lama, Woodcock became the first author to receive Freedom of the City from Vancouver City Council. After their deaths, the Woodcocks’ little house on McCleery Street became part of a bequest of almost $2 million to the Writers’ Trust of Canada to support writers in distress.
