Our Story

Past, Present & Future

40+ years of supporting and empowering community.

We opened our doors as AIDS Vancouver in 1983 as one of the first AIDS service organizations in Canada. Founded by gay men who were angry and passionate as AIDS began taking lives, AIDS Vancouver was where community members and health care providers worked together in response to the growing need to support people living with, and dying from, AIDS.

When we changed our name, we made a commitment to holding the lessons of the AIDS days, as much as we know them, and to the generation that built our organization. Here are some of the places the stories of the HIV response in BC can be found today:

*Short documentary films from The 30 30 Campaign that showcase with a highlight from each year of HIV in Vancouver between 1983 and 2013, produced by AIDS Vancouver and Be The Change Group
*The HIV In My Day archive at the University of Victoria is available online and includes 108 interviews with those who were there, whether living with HIV or caregiving in the earliest days of this response.

I feel what I did helped everybody. And it was tough doing it, because we didn’t know much about HIV. But, slowly we learned.

– Ann Beaufoy, recipient of a 2014 Red Ribbon award. Ann Beaufoy was an HIV nurse at St. Paul’s Hospital through the early days of the HIV epidemic. She was one of three recipients of AIDS Vancouver’s 2014 Red Ribbon awards. In her speech, Ann shared her role in the decision to use reusable food trays, instead of disposable ones, for St. Paul’s patients living with HIV in the 1980s. While this practice was based on the evidence, fear about transmission meant the hospital served food on Styrofoam and plastic even after research established this was not necessary. HIV can only be passed when this virus, contained in a body fluid such as blood, comes into direct contact with another person’s bloodstream.