Patrick McGeer was leader of the B.C. Liberal Party before he crossed the floor in 1975 and joined the Social Credit Party under Bill Bennett and became a cabinet minister. He was first elected as a Liberal in a 1962 by-election. He was born on June 29, 1927 in Vancouver. Educated at UBC and Princeton, he joined the Medical Faculty at UBC in 1959 and became widely respected in the field of neurobiology prior to his retirement in 1992. Since 1992 he has conducted research with his wife Edith as professors emeritae at UBC, specifically studying Alzheimer's disease. Back in the same year W.A.C. Bennett was finally defeated, McGeer published Politics in Paradise (Peter Martin, 1972), which contained his views of B.C. politics at the time. "The reader is bound to be disappointed," wrote Walter Young in B.C. Studies, "for the book is simply a recapitulation of some of the major events in the recent past with some of the author's proposals for reform tucked in. There is little that is autobiographical and little that can be classified as 'inside' information... There is in this book more than a little evidence of what can best be described as the great Canadian Liberal myth. And that myth is that to be a Liberal is enough of an indication that one is fit and able to rule, that the label alone is sufficient evidence of competence and rectitude to satisfy all circumstances."

[BCBW 1992] "Politics"

Review of the author's work by BC Studies:
Politics in Paradise