Gordon Fulerton GibsonOBC (August 23, 1937 – November 10, 2023), often referred to asGordon Gibson Jr., was a Canadian author, political columnist, and politician inBritish Columbia. He was aLiberal member of theLegislative Assembly of British Columbia from 1974 to 1979, and served as the leader of theBC Liberal Party between 1975 and 1979. He was the son ofGordon Gibson Sr., who was a prominent businessman andLiberal Party politician in British Columbia in the 1950s and 1960s.

Gibson received aBA (honours) in mathematics and physics at theUniversity of British Columbia and anMBA fromHarvard Business School, and he did research work at theLondon School of Economics.^[1]

Gibson worked forArthur Laing, the federalMinister of Northern Affairs and National Resources and the senior cabinet minister from British Columbia in thePearson Ministry, from 1963 to 1968. He became executive assistant toJustice Minister andleadership contenderPierre Trudeau in 1968 on the suggestion ofMarc Lalonde, then an advisor in Pearson'sPrime Minister's Office (PMO) and laterPrincipal Secretary to Trudeau, and joined PMO upon Trudeau's appointment asPrime Minister.^[2] He was known to be one of few who could get Trudeau to consider western Canada perspectives on issue.

Gibson contested his first election in the1972 federal election, running as theLiberal candidate inVancouver South to succeed his former boss Laing, but lost toProgressive Conservative candidateJohn Fraser by 3,000 votes.

After a stint as a provincial legislator and party leader, Gibson ran again for a seat in the federal House of Commons, in the riding ofNorth Vancouver—Burnaby. He was defeated in both the1979 and1980 federal elections by Progressive Conservative candidateChuck Cook by less than 1,500 votes on each attempt.

In 1974, Gibson ran in a provincial by-election as aBC Liberal in the riding ofNorth Vancouver-Capilano upon the resignation of incumbent Liberal MLADavid Maurice Brousson. During BC Liberals' long period of wilderness between the collapsed of the Liberal-PC Coalition in1952 and its2001 return to government, North Vancouver was one of the very rare spot where it had residual electoral strength.Gibson's father and party leaderRay Perrault held the duo seat between1960 and 1966. Brousson won three elections with comfortable margin. However with the continual declined of both the BC Liberals and Progressive Conservatives as centrist options, Gibson won the seat with a margin of only 57 votes out of 15,222 valid ballots, a margin smaller than the number of rejected ballots.

Three months before1975 election, three Liberal MLAs, including former leaderPat McGeer and futurelieutenant governorGarde Gardom, defected to theSocial Credit Party, leaving Gibson and party leaderDavid Anderson as the only two Liberals in the legislature. Anderson declined to be renominated to the leadership, and Gibson was approached to lead the party into the election. Just over a month before the election call on September 28, Gibson was acclaimed as leader, again following the footstep of his former boss Authur Laing. Given the party's disarray, voters abandoned the party en masse. For the first time in the province's history Liberals received less than 10% of the popular vote. That election saw former leader Anderson going down in defeat, andSurrey MayorBill Vander Zalm, who Anderson defeated in the 1972 leadership contest, securing his first victory at the provincial level and immediately elevated to cabinet, commencing his long march toward the Premier's chair. As the only Liberal in the legislature, Gibson remained party leader until 1979, when he resigned to seek a federal seat again.

Gibson attempted to return to politics as a candidate in a contest colloquially referred to as the "Battle of the Three Gordons", the 1993B.C. Liberal leadership challenge to incumbent leaderGordon Wilson after an extramarital affair between him and caucus memberJudi Tyabji came to light. Gibson's campaign was dealt a fatal blow just over a month before the vote, whenVancouver MayorGordon Campbell's supporters mobilized and successfully secured approval, by a single vote out of close to 700 cast, for a proposal to change the leadership election process from one where all electoral districts would have equal weight, to one where all member votes are counted with equal weight. Campbell was already seen as the front runner prior to that change, but a Gibson win remained a possibility given the broad respect he commanded among long-time members across the province. The amendment made Campbell's lead prohibitive given the large number of members recruited in Vancouver the political machine he headed as mayor, as evident by the swollen membership roll of 15,000. Campbell easily defeated Gibson on the first ballot by a margin of 63% to 24%, with incumbent leader Wilson securing only 8%. Campbell was the only BC Liberals leader elected where all votes are count equal. The party soon reverted back to a system where with equal weights for all electoral districts.

Gibson largely stayed out of partisan politics after the 1993 leadership bid, even when his immediate family members played prominent roles in thefederal Liberal Party or the Vancouver municipal partyNon-Partisan Association. He called himself non-partisan in a 2018 column, and have remained active and visible through public policy commentary throughout his retirement years.

Gibson was a senior fellow in Canadian Studies at theFraser Institute^[3] and has written several books onCanadian federalism and governance. Following the2001 British Columbia provincial election, he was hired by the government to make recommendations on the structure and mandate of theCitizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform. His report was substantially adopted. He also wrote extensively and critically about the Indian Act and first nation reserve system it created, calling it "both a fortress and a prison" and was critical about the policies guiding ongoing modern treaties negotiations.

His columns appeared frequently in theVancouver Sun,^[4] theWinnipeg Free Press andThe Globe and Mail.^[5]

Gibson was first married to Valerie Gauthier, with who he had three children before their divorce.

His second marriage was with Kilby Tobin, with whom he had two daughters. Kilby died in 2009.

He was married to Jane Baynham at this death. Gibson died on November 10, 2023, at the age of 86.^[6][7] Suffering fromheart failure from early 2023, he opted formedical assistance in dying.^[8]

In May 2008, Gibson was awarded theOrder of British Columbia.^[9]

• A New Look at Canadian Indian Policy: Respect the Collective - Promote the Individual (2009).ISBN 978-0-88975-243-6

• 1937 births
• 2023 deaths
• Leaders of BC United
• BC United MLAs
• Canadian columnists
• Harvard Business School alumni
• Candidates in the 1972 Canadian federal election
• Candidates in the 1979 Canadian federal election
• Candidates in the 1980 Canadian federal election
• Alumni of the London School of Economics
• Members of the Order of British Columbia
• University of British Columbia alumni
• Liberal Party of Canada candidates for the Canadian House of Commons
• Deaths by euthanasia
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• 20th-century members of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia

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