David Anderson played rugby in high school and as a student at Victoria College, which later became the University of Victoria. Upon graduation he entered the University of British Columbia to study law and took up rowing, first representing Canada at the 1959 Pan American Games, where he captured silver as a member of the coxed eights crew (alongside Sohen Biln, Glen Mervyn, and the non-Olympians Ian Beardmore, John Cartmel, John Madden, Dave Park, Peter Robbins, and Lawrence Stapleton). He then travelled to the 1960 Summer Olympics as a spare on the coxed eights team, but earned a spot on the starting squad after veteran Lorne Loomer was sent to aid Keith Donald in coxless pairs. With Biln, Mervyn, Donald Arnold, Walter D’Hondt, Nelson Kuhn, John Lecky, Archie MacKinnon, and Bill McKerlich, Anderson won silver in the eights, behind the Germans.
Anderson graduated from UBC in 1962 and spent the next six years in the Foreign Service, working in various positions in East Asia. He was elected as a Member of Parliament for Canada in 1968 and remained in that position until 1972, when he shifted his focus to provincial politics and spent three years as the head of the Liberal Party of British Columbia. He did not return to the political arena until 1993, when he once again became a Member of Parliament. He held four ministerial appointments between then and his 2006 retirement: National Revenue (1993-1995), Transport (1995-1997), Fisheries and Oceans (1997-1999), and Environment (1999-2004). Among his many honors, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2010 and has been inducted into the British Columbia (1977), Greater Victoria (2007), and University of British Columbia (2012) Sports Halls of Fame.
Canada