The family of Louis van Blankenstein is grieved to announce his passing on January 17, 2022, in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Louis was born in Bloomsbury, London, on Nov. 16, 1931. His mother Florence (nee Gibson) was determined that her young sons would not speak like barrow-boys, so Louis and his brother Michael (1928-2021) received elocution lessons. Louis and Michael spoke beautifully and eloquently, and became distinguished for their erudition.
Louis and Michael were evacuated from London during the Blitz to Sibford School, a Quaker school in Sibford Ferris, Oxfordshire, and then to Sidcot School in Somerset, where they stayed for the duration of the war. Louis returned afterwards to study advanced mathematics and earn a P.Eng. at Imperial College, which from plotting roads through the jungles of Guyana, South America, and putting the later infamous Jonestown on the map, he arrived in Vancouver in 1959 and began an illustrious career that shaped the city. His name appears on many bronze plaques.
Louis first left his mark as a design engineer in Vancouver with H.A. Simons, doing pioneering work in precast concrete. He designed the first avalanche shed to protect the Coquillhara Highway, engineered the Georgia Viaduct, and went on to major projects such as Robson Square, the Vancouver Courthouse with the eminent Gordon Shrum and Arthur Ericson, and Vancouver Science World. During his tenure as Vice President of Construction, Expo ’86, he worked on the British Columbia Pavilion. The pinnacle of Louis’s civic engineering career was BC Place Stadium with its inflatable roof—the largest in the world when built in 1983.
Louis had an extraordinary conceptual mind and aesthetic eye until the end of his life. He was a true Renaissance engineer; he appreciated art and architecture, as well as classical music and films. He loved sailing on his boat, Ianthe. Predeceased by his first wife Barbara, son Michael (1958), daughter Michelle (1967), and son Edward (2018), Louis lives in the loving memory of his wife Anna van Blankenstein, their sons Nicholas and Julian, and his son David van Blankenstein (Sharon), daughter Karen van Blankenstein, and daughter-in-law Kim (Edward). His tribe of seven grandchildren and four great grandchildren will carry his legacy into the future.
As his loved ones, friends, and colleagues, passed away, Louis, being of resolute, stoic, and unapologetic character, often found resonance in the following poem, Invictus, by William Ernest Henley:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
On your way, dear “Old Trout,” to pleasant streams where peaceful willows trail in gentle eddies. We will miss you and speak of you often.