Andrea Lebowitz

By Anne Roberts

Born in 1941 in Connecticut, Andrea Pinto Lebowitz received her B.A. from The College of New Rochelle, a women’s Catholic college in New York, and her M.A. at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. In 1965, she and her then husband Michael Lebowitz moved to Vancouver to take positions at the newly established Simon Fraser University, he to teach economics and she to teach English.  The marriage was short-lived, and Andrea soon formed a life partnership with high school teacher Wayne Wiens.

Andrea’s research and teaching were heavily influenced by her political activism, her commitment to feminism and her belief that true equality could only be achieved in a socialist world.

Andrea, one of an elite cadre of 16 female faculty out of a total of 126, never pulled rank when it came to organizing with students and university staff to form Women’s Caucus. She was also a founding member of the Corrective Collective that published two pictorial and popular histories: She Named It Canada, which developed out of the Indo-Chinese Women’s Conference in 1971, and Never Done (1974), which sold 10,000 copies and was distributed by the BC government to teachers throughout the province.

With Chemistry Professor Maggie Benston, she battled the blatant misogyny of the university administration, particularly its Senate, to establish SFU’s Women’s Studies program in 1975, the first of its kind in Canada. Andrea served as the first coordinator of the program. 1975 and All That is Andrea’s personal account of the thinking and analysis that motivated their proposal.

For 36 years, Andrea taught English and Women’s Studies, including five years as Associate Dean of Arts. A popular teacher with the ability to encourage reluctant students to participate, she was the first recipient of the 3M Excellence in Teaching Award in 1989. Andrea authored a guide to feminist literary criticism, Stargazing, and edited a collection of nature writing in Canada called Living in Harmony. She co-authored a biography of the Canadian nature writer Gilian Douglas.

A Master Gardener, Andrea transformed her gardens at her home and at her cottage on Hornby Island into “works of art.” Together for 43 years, Wayne hailed her as a “wonderful chef, baker and hostess; a lover of good music, especially the opera, and of art and photography. She was her own best critic and supportive of others. She could often be their best critic as well.”

Andrea died of cancer in March 22, 2011 at 69 years old.