THE ADVOCATE 655
VOL. 80 PART 5 SEPTEMBER 2022
ON THE
FRONT COVER
PERRY EHRLICH
By D. Michael Bain, Q.C.
Her name was Lulu. She was a showgirl. Lulu Sweet was a
member of the Potter Troupe, an American Music Hall theatre
troupe that performed in Victoria and New Westminster
in the mid-1860s. Something of a triple threat, Lulu was
introduced in the press at the time as “the beautiful Juvenile Actress,
Songstress and Danseuse”. One of the many Royal Engineers stationed in
New Westminster at the time (in fact the Commander of said engineers and
first Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia), Richard Moody, was travelling
with Lulu and her mother on a boat from New Westminster to Victoria,
and as they passed a large island in the Fraser River, Lulu asked what the
name of the island was. “By Jove!” Moody exclaimed, “I’ll name it after you!”
Lulu Island is still so named after that young performer, although today it
is more commonly referred to by the city that occupies most of it: Richmond,
B.C. It has also been the home of Perry Ehrlich for more than 40 years, where
he has raised a family and developed a thriving solicitor’s practice. It seems
somehow fitting, though, that Perry should live and work on an island
named after a showgirl, because Lulu Island is where, for the past nearly 30
years, Perry has nurtured the musical theatre skills of literally thousands of
young people between the ages of 9 and 19 through his programs for youth:
Gotta Sing! Gotta Dance!, Sound Sensation and ShowStoppers.
Perry grew up in Yorkton, Saskatchewan. His mother is a second-generation
Canadian and his father is a survivor of the concentration camp at
Auschwitz. His parents met and fell in love in Winnipeg, where Perry’s
father travelled to after the war. They settled in Yorkton, where they ran a
dry-cleaning business. The Ehrlichs had three sons: Perry (the eldest),