Jim Cairnie: A lifetime of creating lasting change in service of public education
- syoung679
- Nov 7, 2025
- 5 min read
By Ken Novakowski and Larry Kuehn, BCTF past-presidents
Jim Cairnie was the oldest living past-president of the BCTF when he died at the age of 99 on August 4, 2025. He had been elected president at the age of 36, serving in 1963–64, and after holding that office spent much of the next 25 years working on behalf of teachers and the BCTF in other capacities.
Jim was a remarkable leader, an articulate and effective speaker, and a supportive and hardworking colleague. When hearing of his passing, past-president Jim MacFarlan noted, “Jim loved children, loved teaching, and loved the Federation and all that it stood for.” Said another past-president, Bill Broadley, “A great guy who never ducked a challenge.”
As president of the BCTF, Jim led the organization through some key changes in the governance structures. As a staff person he shaped and honed the BCTF Salary Indemnity Plan into one of the finest and strongest such plans anywhere. Even in retirement Jim kept on giving of himself for teachers and for public education.
Jim was born in Scotland in the village of Haddington, a short distance from Edinburgh. But His parents emigrated from Scotland while Jim was very young and he grew up and attended school in Victoria. He soon developed a keen interest in mathematics that stayed with him until he went to university. There, while preparing himself to be a mathematics professor, he soon realized he was never going to take on the challenge of writing a Ph.D. thesis in mathematics. He changed his plans and decided to become a high school teacher instead.
After a brief stint in the army, Jim spent a number of years at Victoria College and then UBC. It was at that time that Jim met Marion Griffin, who was to be his wife for 76 years.
Jim began a teaching career that would start in Lake Cowichan School District then moved on to Victoria. There he assumed a leadership role in his local and was soon travelling to Vancouver as a member of the BCTF Executive Committee (EC). Within a short time he was elected president.
Jim was one of the first presidents to have full-time release to do the job. The BCTF was moving toward having the elected president, rather than the appointed general secretary, become the chief public spokesperson for teachers and the BCTF. In Jim’s words, “The primary motivation to make the president full-time was to display to the public, to teachers, to administrators, to the media, that the chief spokesperson for the teachers’ federation was, in fact, a practising, professional teacher, and that the individual had direct contact with youngsters, with teachers, with the community, and therefore spoke from the heart of what really concerned teachers.”
The highlight of Jim’s presidency was the key role he played in bringing about significant changes to the governance structures of the BCTF. At that time, the only two governance bodies were the AGM and the EC. And the EC was sometimes up to 30 people: 5 table-officers elected by the AGM and the remainder appointed representatives of district councils around the province. The EC often got tied up trying to sort out regional concerns raised by executive members while little time was spent on the welfare of the organization as a whole. Change was very much needed.
After a year of working on this with a committee, and after extensive discussions with members, the committee recommended an 11-person EC elected by the AGM, a Representative Assembly consisting of representatives from locals, and of course the Annual General Meeting. When these changes were brought to the 1964 AGM, they passed by a very slim margin. Jim, as president, and chairing the AGM, was concerned by the serious division in the membership over this issue. So he suggested the committee table the recommendations and have extensive discussions in locals on the proposed changes over the ensuing year. When these same changes were brought to the next AGM, they were adopted by a near unanimous vote of the delegates. And these governance structures, with minor modifications over the years, are still the basic structures that govern the Federation today.
One humorous anecdote from Jim’s year as president relates to a meeting he had with the Minister of Education of the day. The BCTF was requesting that government eliminate the practice of requiring homeroom teachers around the province to read scripture from the Bible to their students and having students recite the Lord’s Prayer. At that same meeting the BCTF advocated the introduction of a program called Effective Living. A subsequent Vancouver Sun headline claimed the Federation’s position was “Out with God, In with Sex.”
After his term as president, Jim secured a vice-principal’s job in North Vancouver so he and Marian and their family moved there. Shortly thereafter he was lured to employment at the Federation where he worked in many capacities but clearly left his mark through his work in Income Security. Jim was a central architect of the Federation’s Salary Indemnity Plan, developing it to the viable and effective program it is for teachers today.
Following retirement in 1986, Jim was called upon to continue in the service of teachers. The BCTF president at the time, Elsie McMurphy, asked Jim to take on the task of organizing elections for the new BC College of Teachers. He did that well and went on to carry out a number of significant organizational tasks for the new organization. Through the BC Retired Teachers’ Association, he also served on the Teachers’ Pension Plan board. Additionally, at the request of both teacher and trustee representatives, Jim served as chair of the board of the Teacher Qualification Service for nine years. When the Federation was again examining its governance structures in the late 1990s, Jim spoke to the Representative Assembly, vividly recounting the experience of organizational change he lived through when he was president. And as recently as 2016, at the age of 90, Jim agreed to be interviewed for a video produced by the BC Labour Heritage Centre on the 1974 one-day strike/protest of Surrey teachers over class size.
For many years, Jim and Marion attended the annual dinner of BCTF past-presidents, held in conjunction with the BCTF AGM. Jim had a prodigious memory and often told stories of past experiences both in the classroom and in the Federation.
Jim MacFarlan said, “Jim Cairnie was one of the finest staff members with whom I had the pleasure to work.” Elsie McMurphy added, “I share my own appreciation for the opportunity I had to work with such a consummate leader and supporter … always with a twinkle in his eye and a wry smile.”
Jim Cairnie will be missed by his loving family and his many friends. He will also be missed by all of us who had a chance to know him and work with him at the BCTF.
