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Gertrude Ettershank Guerin

(Klaw-law-we-leth)

Chief

(March 26, 1917—January 25, 1998)

Delbert Guerin once asked his mother why the family always ate at a restaurant called the New Pier on Main Street in Vancouver. She told him that, fifty years before, the Guerins had been hustled to a corner table at the Trocadero Grill on West Hastings Street. The manager explained, “Indian people want to be in here, they have to sit in the corner out of sight.” The family walked out, never to return.

Gertie Guerin did not take such snubs lightly. She traced her lineage to the great warrior Ke’epalano, who defended his people against raids by the Haida. Gertie, too, was a warrior, her weapon of choice her character.

A daughter of the Squamish on her mother’s side and of the English on her father’s, she was left at age twelve to care for a younger sister, Vivian, when their mother died. Life was harsh on the reserve. Even as Vancouver’s skyline began to grow across the harbour, the Squamish trudged from their homes to the single tap that provided water for the entire reserve.

As a teenager, Gertie Ettershank worked at a cannery, where she met a quiet, hard-working, slick-haired fisherman. Victor Guerin was ten years older, a handsome lacrosse player. In 1936, they were married at St. Paul’s, the reserve’s church where Gertie had been christened and confirmed.