A formal pediatric neurosurgical service in British Columbia (BC) started with the opening in 1982 of British Columbia’s Children’s Hospital (BCCH) as a full service pediatric tertiary care center serving the population of BC and the Yukon (Fig. 1). There had been a Children’s Hospital in Vancouver prior to this at a different location. That previous Children’s Hospital opened in 1933 on West 59th Avenue as a Crippled Children’s Hospital and in 1947 the facility was renamed Children’s Hospital. Neurosurgeons participated at this Children’s Hospital only in the outpatient Spina Bifida clinic. Prior to the opening of the new BCCH in 1982, inpatient pediatric neurosurgical care, including operations, was provided in a wing of the Vancouver General Hospital (VGA), called the Health Centre for Children. VGH was the major tertiary care center serving adults and children in BC and was affiliated with the University of British Columbia (UBC). In 1964, Children’s Hospital and the Health Centre for Children agreed to develop a joint facility and finally, construction began in 1977 at 28th Avenue and Oak Street, the current site of BCCH. The new BCCH opened to its first patients in June 1982. In the years preceding the opening of BCCH, there was a well-established neurosurgical service and neurosurgical residency program at VGH, and this was chaired by Dr. Gordon Thompson. Children and infants, including pediatric neurosurgical patients, were operated on in the general operating room facilities of VGH, with anesthesia provided by general anesthesiologists. Intravenous access in the infants was a significant problem and often cutdowns had to perform to obtain adequate intravenous access. The adult patients typically received the highest priority in the neurosurgical operating room and elective pediatric cases tended to be left until late in the day. All neurosurgeons would do the occasional pediatric operation, especially for patients encountered while on call. However, for many years, the majority of the pediatric neurosurgical operations were performed by Dr. Peter Moyes, a technically-gifted, Mayo Clinic-trained neurosurgeon, but pediatric cases still accounted for a minority of his practice. In the late 1970s, Dr. Moyes was forced to slow down and eventually retire because of illness. The pediatric neurosurgical cases at VGH were referred more and more to Dr. Felix Durity, a graduate of the UBC Neurosurgical residency program in Vancouver, who had joined the neurosurgical group at VGH in 1975. In 1979, Paul Steinbok, who had also trained in the neurosurgical program at VGH, returned from a neurooncology fellowship with Drs. Steve Mahaley and Darryl Bigner in North Carolina and joined the VGH group. Gradually, the pediatric component of his neurosurgical practice increased. By the time that Peter Moyes retired, most of the pediatric neurosurgical cases at BCCH were being managed by Drs. Felix Durity and Paul Steinbok. In 1982, with the opening of BCCH, a pediatric neurosurgical service was required at the new hospital, which was located 2 km from VGH. Comprehensive pediatric * Paul Steinbok psteinbok@cw.bc.ca