THE ADVOCATE 563
VOL. 79 PART 4 JULY 2021
NOS DISPARUS
By R.C. Tino Bella
Walter George Rilkoff
Walter George Rilkoff, of Doukhobor heritage, was
born on Christmas Eve in 1948 in Grand Forks, B.C.
Walter spent his youth and university summers in
the South Okanagan, scooting back and forth across
the border to the town of Danville, sometimes, but
not always, with the blessing of the border guards.
After high school, Walter took off for the big city and,
in particular, to the University of British Columbia, where he received his
undergraduate degree. During the summers, however, he returned to Grand
Forks, where he worked the sort of down-to-earth jobs students used to do
in those days: graveyard shift at the mine and trying to avoid being pressed
into forest firefighting service. He did not, as some might suppose, work at
the eponymous Rilkoff General Store in Grand Forks, which as he pointed
out to anyone who did so suppose, was owned by different Rilkoffs. Subsequently,
he took off for the even bigger city (well, close) when he attended
law school at Osgoode Hall in Toronto (well, Downsview). He was proud
that he did not go to that other law school in Toronto, whose male students
he often referred to as being so uptight that they refused to take their private
school ties off in the shower.
Upon completing law school, Walter returned to Vancouver to article at
Russell & DuMoulin (now Fasken), where he got his first introduction to
labour law, a field in which he would practise for much of the remainder of
his life. In the early ’70s, B.C. labour law as we now know it was in its
infancy. Many young lawyers who were drawn to practise in the field spent
a year or two at the new Labour Relations Board as in-house counsel, and
Walter was no exception. It was during those early years that Walter met
many of those who would remain close to him throughout his life, including