The Big Push: How UBC Turned a Hospital Bed into 7,000 Books

In 1962, a hospital bed left Peace Arch, on the Canada–United States border, and was pushed towards the University of British Columbia campus. What looked like little more than a student prank had a clear purpose: to draw attention to a book donation campaign.

Who came up with the idea of pushing a bed to campus?

The stunt was devised by the Intellectual Stunts Committee, a University of British Columbia student group known for staging public challenges to tackle campus apathy. A bed was selected precisely because it was bizarre enough to attract attention along the route from Peace Arch to Point Grey.

Known as the Big Push, the challenge saw students take turns pushing the bed, turning a journey of dozens of kilometres into a travelling spectacle. It combined physical endurance, comedy and publicity - an ideal mix for a period when universities competed to set ever more outlandish records.

What did the stunt have to do with books?

Its purpose was to promote a textbook collection campaign for developing countries. According to UBC's alumni magazine, the organisers expected to collect around 500 books. The publicity generated by the challenge ultimately delivered a result far beyond that original target.

The university collected more than 7,000 books. This gap helps explain why the event was remembered for decades: a bed on wheels became a moving billboard, turning an academic cause into an occasion that students, the press and local residents could follow as it happened.

How did other universities join the competition?

The Big Push did not remain an isolated event. Bed-pushing began appearing at other Canadian universities, with each institution attempting a longer, faster or more complicated version. McGill took a bed from Quebec to Montreal, while Western Ontario students pursued a speed record.

At Queen’s University, a ban on using roads did not bring the fun to an end. Students modified the challenge, completing hundreds of laps on a track to build up a vast distance. The rules might have changed, but the formula stayed the same: an unlikely object, collective endurance and an audience looking on.

• UBC made a hospital bed the centrepiece of a book campaign.
• The original goal was around 500 copies, but the collection exceeded 7,000.
• Other universities responded with their own routes, speeds and distances.
• The competition turned an everyday object into a symbol of 1960s student challenges.

Watch the video shared by the British Pathé YouTube channel, which shows footage of a bed race held in 1969.

Why were these kinds of challenges so popular?

The 1950s and 1960s brought several university crazes centred on records and the collective occupation of public space. Fitting as many people as possible into a telephone box, pushing beds and inventing challenges with no practical purpose were ways to build group identity and secure coverage in local newspapers.

Without social media, publicity relied on photographs, radio, newspapers and imitation between campuses. As a result, each university tried to devise a version that could outdo the previous one. The logic resembles today’s viral challenges, but it required large numbers of people to be physically present to push, count laps and witness the record.

What does a bed on wheels reveal about university life?

The episode demonstrates that the absurd could be an effective tool for mobilisation. UBC's committee did not see the stunt merely as a distraction: its members believed that carefully planned spectacles could pull students out of their routines and bring attention to campaigns that might otherwise go unnoticed.

More than six decades later, the bed remains memorable because it paired humour with a tangible outcome. A campaign expecting hundreds of books ended up with thousands, showing that an unusual idea can be useful when it turns curiosity into collective participation.