Sandy Shreve, beloved BC poet, painter, visual artist, editor, and community organizer, passed away on February 8, 2026. Her legacy spans beyond her own work and the lives she touched—among other community contributions, Shreve played a central part in putting poetry on the bus starting from 1996, a program that has blossomed into Books BC’s Poetry in Transit campaign. We at Books BC and Read Local BC are saddened by the loss of this beloved fixture of the literary community in BC. We remember Sandy through the lens of her poet friends.
Born in 1950, Shreve helped Vancouver become one of the first cities in Canada to establish a poetry program on public transit in 1996 after campaigning and convincing the then-CEO of BC Transit to create annual funding for it. After managing it for three years, she passed over the administration to the Association of Book Publishers of BC (Books BC). Every year, 10 poems by BC poets are selected to be shown on transit buses in Vancouver and around BC. Celebrating its 30th year, the program brings new and established voices to commuters across the province.
“Sandy Shreve was a force to be reckoned with, a committed writer of poetry, a whirlwind of ideas and, of course, the main driver behind what became the Poetry in Transit project,” says Margaret Reynolds, the Association’s Executive Director who took over the program.
Fiona Lam, who spoke with Shreve about her role in Poetry in Transit for the Tyee, recalls her enthusiasm about bringing poetry to the public through Poetry and Transit. She reported how “people [would] come up to [Shreve] to tell her how much the transit poems have meant to them. “One of [Shreve’s] favourite stories is about how passengers on one bus burst into applause when a proud mother announced, ‘That’s my daughter’s poem!’”
“Sandy’s smiling face was often in the audience at the annual launches for the program,” remembers poet Evelyn Lau, who has been a pillar of support for the program over the years through her participation in the jury and reading events.
The birth of Poetry in Transit goes back even further, however, with a 1986 Vancouver Centennial project organized by the Vancouver Industrial Writers Union, where Shreve worked with poets Calvin Wharton and Tom Wayman, and where she first found inspiration for an annual program. Wayman recalls Shreve’s staunch support for labour arts and her dedication to raising awareness about the lives of working women, reflected in her own poetry. He recalls her poem “Grievance Procedure,” “arising from an incident from Sandy’s union involvement. The narrator is:
listening to
a woman worried—
the harassment’s there
though often so subtle
it evades articulation.
“The woman who has gone to the union doesn’t want to file a grievance. ‘And yet she grieves,’ leaving the narrator’s office garbage can, containing used tissues, ‘an archive of pain.’”
Shreve explained her process in her introduction to a special issue of Room of One’s Own that she edited, Working for a Living: “Becoming conscious of and writing about the worlds of our work can be a vehicle for seeing through and beyond the claims of ‘equal opportunity,’ ‘democracy,’ and ‘justice’ in our social, political and economic system.”
As a poet, Shreve was a strong community presence and inspired many prominent BC poets in their own creative journeys. “In Fine Form: The Canadian Book of Form Poetry, the anthology about poetic forms that she co-edited with Kate Braid,” says Lam, “has been an influential textbook for teaching poetry since 2005, promoting Canadian poets and poems.”
Poet Rob Taylor’s experience illustrates Shreve’s impact on a young aspiring writer: “Not having grown up in the literary world, when I was young ‘writer’ felt like an occupation more akin to ‘unicorn wrangler’ than ‘teacher’ or ‘accountant.’ Sandy Shreve, at first through Poetry in Transit, then through In Fine Form, and finally through her poems and friendship, made a life in writing seem possible.” Taylor has been a Poetry in Transit jury member for several years, and also does an annual interview series with BC poets.
For Vancouver Poet Laureate Elee Kraljii Gardiner, “Sandy’s presence in the poetry community felt… like a mainstay, gave me a ‘been there forever’ kind of feeling that arose from her connectedness and contact with so many of us.”
One of the strongest connections Shreve had was with close friend, author and poet Kate Braid, with whom she co-edited In Fine Form. Braid shares with Read Local BC a cherished memory:
“One of the most powerful things Sandy ever said to me was about five years ago when she first told me she’d been diagnosed with terminal cancer. I cried, and Sandy said very firmly, ‘Kate, we’re all going to die. The important thing is: what are we going to do in the time we have left?’
“Those are still some of the wisest words I’ve ever heard. And she put her money where her mouth was—headed down to her studio and produced some dramatically powerful paintings, as well as unique ways of combining painting and poetry. Sandy was one of the strongest, clearest, toughest women I ever met.”
“In my favourite memories of Sandy,” Taylor reminisces, “we are sitting together in her living room, her husband Bill grumbling around in the kitchen, the room warm, almost glowing. The warmth came from the sun, sure, but mostly from the conversation (about poetry, then soon enough about everything else, until the poetry and the everything else became gloriously intertwined). I will miss Sandy’s living room, though I know, in some way, it will endure, made anew whenever someone reads a poem (in a room of their house, or the room of a bus) and turns to the person sitting next to them to talk about it, and about so much more.”
The poetry community will remember Sandy Shreve’s strength, wisdom, and warmth for years to come, and, thanks to her efforts, BC bus riders will find small moments of joy and reflection in the poems they encounter onboard.