Helen Potrebenko

Helen Potrebenko (June 21, 1940 – August 10, 2022) was a Canadian author and activist based in Vancouver. Her books were noted to be sharp-witted works that explored themes of feminism and spoke about the class divides and inherent misogyny in society. She was described as an uncompromising feminist writer who brought together ideas of Marxism and feminism in her works. Her most notable works included Taxi!, No Streets of Gold (1977), A Flight of Average Persons (1979), and Sometimes They Sang (1986).

Early life Potrebenko was born on June 21, 1940, in Woking, Alberta, in the province's Peace River Country to Olena and Makar Potrebenko. She was the fourth among five siblings in a family of Ukrainian immigrants who had come to Canada in 1928.

Career When Potrebenko moved to Vancouver, she first worked as a delivery truck driver, and later as a taxi driver, while studying. In doing so, she highlighted poor working conditions for taxi drivers, prevailing sexism, misogyny, and sexualization, as well as the class divides existing in the city in the 1970s, exemplified by oil industry executives being taxied to the airport whereas the unemployed frequented skid rows. She also wrote about the prevailing gender wage disparity, with men being paid twice what she was paid for the same deliveries. Vancouver of the time was described as sleazy, with the rampant solicitation of women for sex, and drugs being peddled. In the 1970s and 1980s, Potrebenko wrote for Pedestal, considered among the first of Canada's women's liberation newspapers.

Potrebenko's other books included A Flight of Average Persons (1979), Two Years on the Muckamuck Line (1981), and Hey Waitress and Other Stories (1989). Her 1986 book, Sometimes They Sang, was a commentary on social displacement, while her 1999 book Letters to Maggie was a collection of letters that she wrote to her friend and fellow social activist Margaret Benston after Benston's death in 1991, the letters touching on themes of aging, homelessness, and culture. Potrebenko also wrote poetry, with her works including Walking Slow (1985), a collection of poems describing her support for striking restaurant workers, and Life, Love and Unions (1987). She has also been described as being committed to the conjunction of "Marxism and feminism", with her works dealing with the relegation of women to "economic and sexual inferiority" in a male-led capitalistic society. Potrebenko's poetry has been described as being written in simple language but that speaks against social injustice perpetrated against working-class women by a male-dominated society.

The Vancouver Public Library installed a plaque commemorating Potrebenko's work on Davie Street, not far from the Muckamuck restaurant, as a literary landmark.

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Personal life Potrebenko was married to Earl Scott, with whom she lived in Burnaby in the larger Metro Vancouver region.

She died from cancer on August 10, 2022, at the age of 82, in Vancouver. Earl died in 2025.

Select published works