Showing The Way

In this book, Ken Cameron has produced a compelling story of the life and contributions
of a legendary Canadian planner, educator, and humanist. Peter Oberlander is one of
several immensely influential immigrants – including Thomas Adams, Humphrey
Carver, Hans Blumenfeld, and Jane Jacobs-- who have shaped the way we imagine
and plan Canadian cities. This book ably addresses a gap in the history of Canadian
planning by documenting Oberlander’s trajectory – from elder child of a middle-class Viennese Jewish family, to interned teenage refugee, to brilliant student at McGill and Harvard, to university professor and to leadership roles in government agencies and international commissions. Peter Oberlander’s commitment to creating spaces for active, sustainable, and meaningful citizenship shines through on every page.

Jill Grant, Professor Emeritus and former Director, Dalhousie University School of Planning

Ken Cameron’s great tribute to Peter Oberlander is terrifically written! Peter was the
embodiment of an engaged citizen of the world, with a unique talent for turning ideas
about cities and citizenship into action.

Mike Harcourt CM, former Mayor of Vancouver and former Premier of British Columbia

In his characteristically perceptive profile of Peter Oberlander as global citizen, Ken Cameron has opened a new window of understanding into the character of Canadian
cities. Across Canada, and well beyond it, Oberlander’s thinking has opened minds to creating the cities that we now depend on.
Many people wonder: What lies behind the particular look and feel of a Canadian city?
Our urban communities often appear poised somewhere between the refined form and sophisticated function of the great Old World cities and America’s expansive civic
exuberance. Some marvel at how Canadian cities can offer up the best features of both
old and new urbanism in one place, and Cameron has contributed an important piece of the explanation for what makes our cities stand apart from, and often above, their counterparts. 
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Anthony Perl, Professor of Urban Studies and Political Science and former Director the Urban Studies Program, Simon Fraser University

In Canada we periodically get planners who are as much leaders and great teachers
as politically astute bureaucrats. Some become celebrities. But they are among the many who were trained to lead, guide and imagine at a time when the issues of Canadian cities began to emerge, and we believed we could plan ourselves a better future.

Peter Oberlander came to Canada from Eastern Europe as a victim of the Second
World War, but he was a global citizen. A student, a professor, a director. Competently trained and organizationally ambitious. Truly working at local, national and global scales - with a core belief in the possibility of creating beautiful, humane and democratic cities. Which Canada largely achieved.
This book is that story - of the man, his times and his achievements. Engaging,
entertaining, with a message of hope.

Gordon Price, former City of Vancouver councillor and Metro Vancouver director, former Director of Simon Fraser University’s City Program and Co- editor of PiceTags (https://pricetags.ca/ )

It is no understatement to say that Peter Oberlander is one of only a few people who
can be credited with originating the distinctive approach taken by Vancouver and British
Columbia to urban development and planning. He virtually invented the province’s
planning profession, he was the intellectual godfather of the Agricultural Land Reserve,
and he played a crucial role in the development of Vancouver’s citizen-based approach
to planning. Ken Cameron does us a great service by connecting these dots. More
importantly, however, he reveals the man in full and in his historical context. Self-
assured, optimistic, and brilliant, Oberlander always seemed to be in the right place at
the right time, soaking up the vital ideas of the times and building the networks and
coalitions needed to put them into practice. 

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Zack Taylor, Professor of Political Science, University of Western Ontario

In Showing the Way, Ken Cameron weaves together three themes in a triple helix: the
story of visionary Canadian planner Peter Oberlander; the development of community
and regional planning as a profession in Canada; and the meaning of citizenship in a
world of immigrants and refugees. Peter Oberlander’s lifelong dedication to building
community and a sense of place in his adopted country were forged by his early
experiences in World War II as an Austrian-Jewish refugee, forcibly separated from
family and interned in the UK and Canada. This compelling book draws on Cameron’s

personal knowledge of Oberlander, from student to colleague and friend. He offers
warm and sometimes humorous accounts of their collaborative attempts to influence the
federal and provincial governments to address Canada’s challenges as an urban nation. 

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Nola Kate Seymoar, CEO Emeritus, International Centre for Sustainable Cities and Co-Chair, Vancouver City Planning Commission