Bernice Gerard, Woman of God

(Picture: Bernice Gerard, left, Velma Chapman, right)

Who exactly was Bernice Gerard?  Douglas Todd, Religion Reporter for the Vancouver Sun, described the late Bernice Gerard as BC’s most Influential spiritual leader in the 20th century.  She was a consummate storyteller with a dry thoughtful sense of humour. She openly shared her own painful family story on TV, radio, newspaper, and in books, she helped others come to know Christ’s healing love. She called her remarkable life ‘a big, whomping journey.’

Her mother Ada Nielsen, who had six children in eight years, spent forty years in the Essondale/Riverview Psychiatric Hospital.  Bernice (birth name Peggy) was falsely told that her mom had died.  Before Ada’s death, Bernice was able to meet her face to face, which she said “did much to heal my inner person of the wounds of childhood.” She commented, “my last prayer beside her bed was ‘Please take her home, Lord! She’s yours, she’s ready.” Her birth dad, who was often away as a telegraph operator, owned a hotel in Dawson Creek, called Mile Zero.  While Ada gave birth to Bernice in 1923 at Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster, she was not medically well enough to keep the baby.  An indigenous patient asked if she could adopt her baby girl because she only had boys.  Bernice wrote,

I was adopted as a baby by a Mrs. Annie Gerard …  She didn’t live very long. I vaguely remember looking down at the coffin … One of our neighbours said “Look at your mother, this is the last time you’re going to see her.“

She lived with her adoptive family on a fishing scow house on the banks of the Fraser River. After her adoptive mom died when Bernice was only age 3, she was shuffled around to eight different homes by Leo Gerard, her French-Canadian adoptive father. Bernice, a blond-haired Swede, had not been told that she was adopted. When an indigenous boy told her that she was adopted, she was so upset that she physically attacked him. Eventually her adoptive dad showed Bernice her adoption papers. 

…whenever I was bad, which unfortunately was quite often, the ‘old man’ (Leo) would say, ‘We should have sent you to an orphanage.  You really don’t belong here anyways; we just took you in.’

One might assume that such a famous pastor as Bernice must have been raised in a very religious family. In fact, her adoptive father Leo wanted nothing to do with religion, raising Bernice in a complete spiritual vacuum. He was very angry that his own sister Elizabeth had become a Roman Catholic Sister Superior, saying he would rather have her hit on the head with a baseball bat. When Elizabeth and another nun visited to potentially raise Bernice in a convent, Leo firmly refused. Afterwards, he kept muttering, ‘If any priest sets foot on my property, I’ll fill him full of salt (using empty shotgun shells)”

Bernice commented, At thirteen years of age, I had never seen a Bible, never heard a hymn sung, nor anyone talk to me about God. He was completely unknown to me except to the extent that I heard His name mentioned frequently in profanity.

Bernice’s first exposure to religion was when she attended her aunt’s funeral at a Roman Catholic church.  Being very thirsty, she drank the holy water in the vestibule, before being told off,

I fearfully asked, ‘Will I die because I drank holy water?’ ‘No,’ muttered Harold, ‘but the priest won’t think much of you.’…The funeral, the incense, the mournful chanting and the sight of Auntie dead made me sick to my stomach. 

Later at age 13, Bernice attended an evangelistic meeting at her school led by two women.  This good news that Jesus died for her sins felt almost too good to be true, but she wanted it to be true,

Could it be that He (Jesus) loved me? Why, nobody had ever loved me. I was the little Gerard girl who would never come to any good, the black sheep who was always leading the other little lambs astray.  I never really belonged… I was nobody’s child. 

Upon Bernice’s conversion, she was immediately teased at home, “This is worse than becoming a nun”. …her brothers told her that “all your fun is over.” Bernice however felt clean and strong through experiencing God’s transforming power and love. Her adoptive father took away her hymn book and New Testament, saying that a thirteen-year-old could not possibly know anything about religion.

Dr. Linda Ambrose, in her new book on Bernice, holds that Bernice experienced abuse.  Bernice said, “I still have nightmares relating to this stage of life.”  Even years later, Bernice commented:

My sleep was all too frequently disturbed with terrifying reruns of my childhood, in which my drunken and abusive adoptive father was stumbling and pawing about.

After the evangelistic ladies reported young Bernice’s story, the BC Government social workers stepped in, removing her from her adoptive father’s house. While at the Vancouver Alexandra Orphanage, Bernice survived by reading her New Testament as much as possible. 

For a season, she lived in foster homes in the Okanagan where her water baptism took place in Lake Okanagan. Out of the blue, her guardian social worker moved her back to Vancouver where she was required to attend her new foster parents’ more respectable church St. Philip’s Anglican Church in Dunbar. They even had her read the Elmer Gantry book to ‘cure’ her of any attraction to revival. During that time at St. Philip’s, Bernice taught a Sunday School class of twelve-year-old boys, most of whom attended private school. All that abruptly ended when her social worker discovered that she was giving her witness to alcoholics at street meetings on Sunday afternoons.

After being kicked out of her host home, she taught school in Rossland, BC, even though she only had one year at UBC and one year at the Teachers Normal School. There, Bernice met the McColl sisters.  After WWII travel and petrol restrictions were lifted in 1945, she spent the next fourteen years with the McColl sisters as travelling evangelists in North, Central, and South America, the West Indies, Europe, and Asia. Brian Stiller, Global WEC Ambassador, made a key surrender to Jesus at one of their rallies.  The McColl-Gerard Trio were given a donation to purchase a 1,000-seat gospel tent (called the Cloud Cathedral). Through selling their gospel music records in North America, they were able to raise enough money for their many global mission trips. Bernice commented, “Gospel or no gospel, life as an evangelist was not always one grand sweet song. “During this season, there were two hundred North American churches planted directly and indirectly through their outreaches.  

In 1959, Bernice returned to the University of British Columbia, eventually obtaining two degrees, with her 1967 Masters thesis focusing on John Milton’s Paradise Lost.  From 1962-1980 (UBC) and 1965-1977(SFU), she served as a University Chaplain to many searching students.  Bernice developed a friendship with David DuPlessis, known as Mr. Pentecost, who helped bring spiritual renewal interdenominationally. During this time of spiritual renewal, Bernice brought into Vancouver many speakers to UBC and SFU like David DuPlessis, Tommy Tyson, Dennis Bennett, and David Wilkerson of Teen Challenge. 

This led in 1964 to her and Velma Chapman planting Fraserview Assembly (now Harvest City Church) as an offshoot of Broadway Church. During her twenty-one years there, they first built a five-hundred seat sanctuary, followed by an eleven-hundred seat sanctuary in 1980. 

Bernice became good friends with Pastor Bob Birch of St Margaret’s/West Coast Christian Fellowship, a key centre for the Jesus Movement and spiritual renewal. They helped co-sponsor many outreaches together, including the 1975 Vancouver Reachout with Leighton Ford, Citizens for Integrity which critiqued the rising hard-core porn, and leadership in the Pro-Life movement.

Bernice was described by Professor Linda Ambrose as a pro-life feminist, something seen as a contradiction in terms by many.  She was a founding director of the Pro-Life Society of BC and for three years served as a national director of the Alliance for Life of Canada. The realization had come to her that she would have likely been aborted nowadays, given her birth mother’s difficult situation. Bernice commented,

Now, strange as it may seem, ‘being unwanted’ in our society is a crime punishable by death, and the ‘unwanted’ have no right of appeal…I believe that it will be seen that the greatest tragedy of our times was the decision for death – death by the millions of our own flesh and blood. The darkest possible scenario for the child in the womb is to be abandoned to the whims and fancies of a me-centered society.

In 1980 Bernice’s biblical and feminist convictions led her with Citizens for Integrity to peacefully picket Penthouse Bob Guicci’s violently sadistic movie Caligula. “The film”, said Bernice, “is rotten, it is violent, it is sadistic and barbaric.” On that first night, six people gave their lives to Christ. Even obscene phone calls, personal death threats, a bomb threat at CJOR Radio, and being spit in the face did not stop Bernice. Well before the ‘me-too’ movement, Bernice took a stand against the often-violent exploitation of women being justified in the name of ‘free love’. The famous film critic Roger Ebert gave Caligula zero stars, calling it “sickening, utterly worthless, shameful trash”. It was one of the few films Ebert ever had walked out from after feeling “disgusted and unspeakably depressed”.

In 1967, Bernice Gerard and Bob Birch co-founded the Vancouver Inter-Church Fellowship which in 1968 gathered hundreds of people at the Oakridge Peretz Auditorium to hear Rev. Dennis and Rita Bennett. Every summer, they would have Inter-Church camps held at Springcrest in Langley, using Bernice’s new 1,000-person Cloud Cathedral.  Many world-class speakers were brought in, including David Watson of England, Bob Mumford, and Juan Carlos Ortiz. 

Bernice, with her ministry partner Velma Chapman, hosted a Christian talk-show host Encounter and Sunday Line CJOR Vancouver 1971-88, Sunday Line KVOS-TV Bellingham WA-1979-2000, and a daily show KARI Blaine WA 1985-2,000. I (Ed) fondly remember being interviewed by Bernice about Anglican renewal on her Sunday Line TV show.  She interviewed Malcolm Muggeridge as he came to faith through Mother Teresa. In 1991, Sunday Line transitioned from regional television to national television when it moved to VISION TV. Bernice was also a board member for 100 Huntley/Crossroads, often co-hosting TV programs with the founder David Mainse.  David Wells, PAOC General Superintendent, commented that Bernice always treated all people, being made in God’s image, with respect and dignity, even when she may have disagreed with them.

At a time when many pastors saw politics as ungodly, Bernice served for two terms as a Vancouver Alderman from 1977 to 1980, serving occasionally as deputy mayor, “I literally preached my way into politics, shocking as the idea may be to many conservative, other-worldly evangelicals.” Every Christian, said Bernice, should have a prophetic witness. Before Premier David Barrett took power, BC Provincial law had barred anyone criminal, lunatic, or clergy from taking political office.  Jesus’ birth in John 1:14 inspired Bernice to move outside the church walls into politics,

Because we participate with the Incarnation … we can serve God in a very effective way if we move out and rub shoulders with people that we normally wouldn’t be talking with at all.

Bernice sometimes got into hot water when she encouraged the City Council to actually enforce its existing bylaws against exploitation. More than once, people shouted at her, “Shame! You are bringing your personal morality into Council Chambers.”

During her City Council days, she went on a symbolic ‘silent hike’ with Pastor Bob Birch, Pastor Allen Hornby, Alderman Stella Jo Dean, and other Vancouverites to the West Spanish Banks public beach which some of the Wreck Beach crowd was trying to take over.  Where exactly does Wreck Beach start and end? Her prophetic hike may have been the key when the reluctant City Council decided to enforce the existing clothing laws at West Spanish Banks beach. She commented in her autobiography: “No amount of telling on my part could convince the reporters that I had not gone to Wreck Beach…I have never been to Wreck Beach, but that was not important to reporters creating a story…The real story is who uses public beaches?”

Bernice was also a gifted writer, serving on the Board of BC Christian News.  Teaching English at Summit Pacific College (WPBC), she produced four books, including two autobiographies and two about her travels to Israel.  Standing against antisemitism and replacement theology, she inspired many to love Jewish people and the land of Israel, saying “Every visitor to the land of Israel can see with his own eyes that God is keeping his promises.” Bernice, who took thirty-three trips to Israel, was the first Chair of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem. She actively encouraged others to help reforest Israel by planting trees, and was acknowledged by the Prime Minister of Israel.

While Bernice never had her own physical children, she had many spiritual children.  With philanthropist businessman Jimmy Pattison, she was a co-founder of Pacific Academy, now attended by 1,500 students. She was involved in Christian-initiated cooperative housing in Richmond and downtown Vancouver. Out of her Sunday Line Television and Radio ministries emerged a mission outreach for needy children in Africa, India, and the Philippines, as well as Vancouver inner city ministries that still continue today under the leadership of her pastoral team Rev. Roman and Pat Kozak. 

In 2000, after Bernice’s Parkinson’s disease became more severe, she stepped down from public ministry. When she passed on at age 84 in 2008,  around 1,000  (including ourselves) attended her funeral at Broadway Church in Vancouver.

Bernice was a real pioneer for women taking on a leading role in pastoral ministry.  While few of us will accomplish all that Bernice did, may her life inspire us all to seek first God’s Kingdom in every area of our lives.