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2 May 2011 • FOCUS contents May 2011 VOL. 23 NO. 8 local food

good forevery delivering organic food to yourbody door since 1997 32 38 44 Make the Sustainable Choice and Celebrate the Local Harvest with Us 4 A REGISTRY DOESN’T CUT IT Editor’s Letter 4 BC should start clinical trials for venoplasty for MS patients. Call before May 29 Leslie Campbell Letters 6 and receive $10 off your first produce box 8 BATTLE OVER FARMLAND IN CENTRAL SAANICH HEATS UP You are supporting… Shenanigans piled on top of shenanigans. Talk of the Town 8 Zoe Blunt and Mark Worthing • Local Island growers and the local economy • Organic growers working with Mother Nature Conversations 16 12 123 YEARS OF RAIL COMES TO AN INGLORIUS END • YOURSELF by enjoying fresh healthy foods! Why did the City suddenly close the Johnson Street rail bridge? David Broadland The Arts in May 18 Delivered to your Home or Office What could be easier? 14 WHY THE CRD IS BROKEN (AND HOW TO FIX IT) The CRD should be able to enforce its own plan. Show & Tell 28 Follow the links on our web site to order Will Horter Coastlines 30 250.595.6729 16 JEFF MOLLOY: BEYOND THE FACADE www.shareorganics.bc.ca Jeff Molloy’s new work comments on Cuban realities. Christine Clark Focus 32

28 PAINTING THE SKY My Dream City 38 Ken Faulk’s painterly gaze is often drawn above the horizon. Amanda Farrell-Low Urbanities 40 30 LOCAL HUMOUR Rosemary Neerings latest book proves that life in BC is pretty damned funny. Rearview Mirror 42 Amy Reiswig 31 ROBERT WHITAKER’S CURE FOR AN EPIDEMIC Natural Relations 44 Award-winning science writer comes to Victoria to discuss North America’s skyrocketing psychiatric drug use, and potential remedies for it. Finding Balance 46 Rob Wipond 32 MAKING OUR CIRCLES BIGGER A plethora of young groups are bringing extremely diverse people together to share knowledge, ideas and perspectives. Can getting us out of our silos lead to new types of collaboration, community building and social solutions? Rob Wipond ON THE COVER: “Albert Head 38 A RADICAL’S JOURNEY People in Janine Bandcroft’s dream city would be free to live their values. Morning” by Ken Faulks, 16 x 12 inches, • Aromatic flavourful teas Aaren Madden oil on board. See story on page 28. • High quality essential oils 40 THE FUTURE: LET’S PROCRASTINATE UNTIL THEN • Top quality herbs and tinctures for Notes on the illusion of administrative triumph over the random and unknowable future. your health & well being Gene Miller • Books, incense and other gift items 42 LET THERE BE LIGHTKEEPERS EXPERIENCED STAFF Government grants another reprieve to long-time guardians of our coast. • R.N. • aromatherapists • herbalists Danda Humphreys • consultations available 44 BETWEEN A FOREST AND A DEBT Will the Nuu-chah-nulth Nation log the ancient forests of Flores Island? Briony Penn Celebrating 35 years 46 A DREAM OF SAGACITY IN OTTAWA David Suzuki knows that Canadians need not choose 1106 Blanshard St. • 383-1913 between the environment and the economy. best prices • mail order available Trudy Duivenvoorden Mitic

May 2011 • www.focusonline.ca 3 editor’s letter

A registry doesn’t cut it LESLIE CAMPBELL BC should start clinical trials for venoplasty for MS patients.

y old friend Ernie Stigant has jumped off the fence and decided to have “liberation therapy” for his MS. He wanted to have Mit in Canada for both practical and political reasons, but with his granddaughter Marley reaching toddlerhood, he decided he couldn’t wait any longer, so will soon head to Seattle. “I want to be able to interact with her more, not just sit and watch,” explained Ernie. Ernie is not a rich man. So he is lucky his daughters, along with pals at his Rotary Club, are raising money for the surgery and follow-up therapy. Ernie’s MS was diagnosed in 1998 after eight months of tests, preceded by close to three years of wondering what the heck was wrong. Since the diagnosis, his ability to walk has deteriorated and one arm doesn’t work at all. Even so, he manages extremely well. He bombs around the city on a red scooter, usually tying in coffee visits with some kind of fundraising cause. He keeps in touch with friends near and far via skype and facebook. He loves to tell stories and talk politics, and he’s a doting grandfather. He also serves on the board of the Victoria chapter of the MS Society and is one of their top fundraisers. Ernie knows a lot of retailers and restaurants in Victoria because he’s hit them up for auction and raffle prizes over the years. But he’s been disappointed with the national MS Society in the past year for what he sees as an overly cautious approach to venoplasty, otherwise known as “liberation therapy.” Paolo Zamboni and other researchers have shown that a vein to the brain is often blocked in MS Safe, clean patients (chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency or CCSVI). Zamboni’s theory is that the blocked vein causes a reflux of blood back delicious water to the brain. This causes iron deposits which in turn cause the neural lesions that characterize MS. By inserting a tiny balloon, the vein can every day be opened up, restoring blood flow—and reducing at least some of the challenging symptoms of MS. The MS Society of Canada has failed to push for clinical trials in Canada. Ernie says the foot-dragging of the Society, along with that of the federal and BC governments has been “like waving a red flag before the many people who looked upon the treatment as the first non-phar- maceutical advancement in the treatment of MS.” The internet, he says, is rife with conspiracy theories and anger towards the Society. (He is ® quick to point out that the local chapters of the Society are much more sympathetic to venoplasty.) The drugs MS patients take constitute a good argument, in and of themselves, to try a different approach. First off, they aren’t all that effective. Secondly, they are hugely expensive. Ernie took them for about a decade, paying close to $1800 a month. That’s more than

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4 May 2011 • FOCUS LET’S IMAGINE THAT one-third of the estimated 75,000 Canadians with MS are paying $20,000 each year. That adds up to $500 million—each year. You’d think this sum alone would motivate the government to vigourously engage in clinical trials.

$20,000 per year, mostly covered through Pharmacare (ie taxpayers). Eventually Ernie and his doctor decided to see how he did without them. No different; they weren’t helping him. Let’s imagine that one-third of the estimated 75,000 Canadians with MS are paying $20,000 each year. That adds up to $500 million—each year. You’d think this sum alone would motivate the government to vigourously engage in clinical trials. Given that it’s a brief procedure, with no hospital stay, and performed without any anaesthetic, it’s likely well under $5000. No wonder people are talking conspiracy. (Those pharmaceutical lobbies are powerful.) Ernie tells me of a 75-year-old woman who reported that during the operation it was as if a light switch was turned on. Two-and-a-half hours later she was out walking and shopping (in Seattle), something she hadn’t been able to do in years. Some people have put aside their walkers and wheelchairs, but even if mobility is not regained, almost everyone reports new-found energy and the lifting of MS “brain fog.” Others have experienced dramatic improvements in their vision. Many are reducing or eliminating those expensive drugs. And one local woman told Ernie that six months after the procedure, feeling started to return to her toes—toes that had been numb for years. (She had experi- enced other benefits immediately.) When I ask Ernie about the recent study that some say suggests MS actually causes the blockage, Ernie says, “It doesn’t really matter. It’s a chicken-and-egg thing. If opening the vein reduces symptoms, it’s still worthwhile doing.” Finally, I ask what he thinks of the provincial government’s recent announcement of $700,000 in funding for a voluntary registry of patients in BC who have undergone the procedure outside the country, in order to monitor them. Says Ernie, “A registry doesn’t cut it.” People may have had their surgery in India or Scotland or Costa Rica or the US, so there’s no consistency, no controls. He also predicts many will not participate because the MS Clinics administering the registry have been so unsupportive of venoplasty. “The people who run MS Clinics,” says Ernie, “are neurologists, and they have been very defensive in this whole argument.” (Venoplasty is performed by “interventionist radi- ologists”—specialists in image-guided surgery.) Ernie wants BC to do what Manitoba and Saskatchewan are doing: Investing $5 million each to conduct actual clinical trials. This morning, the Rotary Club surprised Ernie at their breakfast meeting by telling him they’d raised $8,500 for his treatment. The tests and surgery in Seattle will cost about $5800; the balance will be spent on an all-important physio and exercise program. I am thrilled for Ernie. But it would have been nice to keep him and that money at home.

Leslie Campbell first met Ernie in 1970 in Winnipeg, where he later became the executive director of the Manitoba Arts Council. Watch for the MS Carnation Campaign, May 6-7. Most funds support local programs for people living with MS.

May 2011 • www.focusonline.ca 5 readers’ views

Be your own Forget Chickens; Invest in Eggs, April 2011 cation. There is a group in Sweden and Norway Great article exposing the “business creates repeating this study, which is the next step jobs” myth. Dictionary.com’s definition of in any scientific study. business is: “the purchase and sale of goods People complained of heart irregularities everyday... in an attempt to make a profit.” Profit is defined and we monitored them live while they were as: “to take advantage: to profit from the weak- exposed and unexposed during real-time nesses of others.” testing. Lorne thinks the results are an arte- There was work before business historically fact of the radiation but if that was the case, Have a existed. Some of life’s greatest inventors aren’t we would get the same results with everyone sun-filled motivated by personal gain. And some of the we tested and this is not the case. Enough said. Spring! world’s hardest workers do it for the joy of I think Mr Trottier needs to refocus his creation. There is no gene for personal gain energy to find out how to make this technology sans collective welfare. It’s all a matter of our safer to use. system-generating, ideologically-driven social Dr Magda Havas conditioning. (www.MagdaHavas.org) Business inherently requires exploitation— someone wins while another loses. Today, It Takes a Village, April 2011 around the world, another 15,000 children I was happy to read the story on Mary Ellen will die because healthcare, healthy food and Turpel-Lafond. It does take a village or commu- clean water are commodities to be bought and nity to raise a child. Teachers, counsellors, sold by businesses for social infrastructure- friends, community leaders, coaches, church suppressing profit. members, neighbours and others...all play an WINNING SERVICE Alternatives are locally controlled busi- active role here! nesses, cooperatives and what Naomi Klein Michelle Catharina 250-592-4422 recently stated at www.countercurrents.org: “I think more and more people are under- City Propaganda to be Countered [email protected] • www.WardeSims.com standing that we have a deep crisis of inequality The City of Victoria’s public engagement and what I’m trying to sketch out is how strategy is based on a promise to keep resi- you must address inequality if you’re going to dents informed with balanced, impartial and deal with climate change…[Socialism] is some- objective information for meaningful public thing that we don’t need to be terrified of, it’s participation in decision-making. Yet prior to actually something liberatory and exciting and last November’s referendum, the City spent I think that the number of people in the world tens (possibly hundreds) of thousands of dollars KULU RESTAURANT who would be empowered by that vision is from the public engagement budget on a Seasonal Asian Fusion Cuisine much greater than the number of people that promotional campaign to sell its decision to would be frightened by that vision…” build a new bridge. Frances Pearson Today, this taxpayer-funded public relations masquerading as public engagement continues Can Wi-Fi Harm Kids, March & April 2011 through the City’s Connect newsletter. Alongside Last month’s letter writer Lorne Trottier information about City programs and services has been trying to “debunk” and discredit are pieces that read like the Victoria City anyone who is doing good work in this area. Council official fan club. He makes his money via his computer busi- For Victorians to meaningfully partici- ness and he feels threatened by this type of pate in the most important decision in three information as he was one of the first to years—November’s civic election—they need bring wireless technology to McGill to be re-connected to the whole story. And University. He gave money to the univer- that’s the purpose of Victoria’s Re-Connect sity; they named a building after him, and Newsletter. Starting in mid-May, it will provide Salt & Pepper Chicken gave him an honorary degree. the balance assured under the City’s official I have no desire to waste my time responding public engagement strategy but absent in NEW LUNCH MENU featuring combination dishes to his false statements as he is not an expert Connect’s “spin” and PR. on the health effects of this technology. The True citizen engagement requires trust that 1296 Gladstone Avenue • Across from the Belfry designer of the HRV monitor was one of the the City is providing the promised informa- 778-430-5398 reviewers that approved this study, so Lorne’s tion for meaningful participation in statements are false. We have repeated this decision-making. Without this trust, we will study in several other communities and will continue to slide into disengagement and apathy. be submitting the paper in the fall for publi- John Farquharson

6 May 2011 • FOCUS ADVERTISEMENT Focus presents:Victoria Hospice Swim through the years with Victoria Hospice

Growing Disparity of Wealth Focus frequently addresses social issues, and here’s one that needs more awareness: the damage that growing disparity in wealth among Canadians is doing to our society. Recent research (see www.equalitytrust.org.uk) has shown that social problems ranging from mental illness to drug use to loss of trust and high infant mortality are worse in societies with large inequalities in wealth than in more equal societies. Communities with smaller gaps between rich and poor are more resilient, and their members live longer and happier lives. Disparity in wealth has ballooned in Canada in the past decade. With the excep- tion of Germany, inequality between rich and poor in Canada has grown more than in any other OECD country. The median income of Canadians today is approximately $40,000. The average annual income of best-paid CEOs in 2009 was $6.6 million— more than 165 times that of the middle- hen Nellie Stock founded the Victoria Hospice with a DJ to pump up the excitement and an MC to income earner. annual BMO Swimathon in memory of her oversee the whole event. Until now, Canada has been a socially Wson Robert, she little imagined the event Although the Swimathon is Hospice’s largest annual healthy country. But now, among all coun- would still be going strong 26 years later. Last year, fundraiser,the event also brings families and friends tries in the world, Canada’s infant mortality 165 participants on 22 teams raised $116,500 for together to share memories of their loved ones and rate has slipped from sixth place to 24th. Victoria Hospice,an organization that provides compas- give thanks to an organization that made so much Among 24 OECD countries, Canadian chil- sionate, supportive end-of-life care for patients and difference in their lives. dren’s health, education and material well-being their loved ones.This year’s event promises to be more “There are a lot of people who have participated have tumbled from ninth to 17th place. We’re fun than ever, as Hospice and their supporters cele- in the Swimathon for a number of years,”says founder going down fast. brate a long history of caring with the theme:“Swimathon Stock,a former lifeguard and long-time employee of Only two ways of reducing disparity in Through The Years.” Oak Bay Recreation Centre,who has only missed one wealth have so far been suggested: severely “Whether you want to swim laps, cheer for your or two Swimathons since its inception.“When I started taxing the very wealthy, and capping incomes friends and family as a spectator, or simply splash the Swimathon,I wanted to raise money and aware- of the very wealthy. Neither suggestion is around in the wave pool with your little ones, the ness, because back then, many people did not know currently politically acceptable, yet something Swimathon is a fun and relaxed event for everyone,” about the services Hospice provided.” She knew must be done. says Pam Prewett,Victoria Hospice’s Corporate her co-workers at Oak Bay Rec would support her We need a public discussion of the problem and Community Relations Officer who is organizing efforts with donations—just as they do to this day. and how we might resolve it. As Unitarians the event. “We’ll kick off the whole event with a Initially, she says, it was also “to thank Hospice for who promote justice, equality and compas- pancake breakfast in the Aqua Terra Café at Saanich helping my son.We’ve come a long way in 26 years, sion in human relations, we hope Focus magazine Commonwealth Pool starting at 8:30am, followed and Robert would be proud.” will help promote that discussion. by a parade of teams around the pool at 10:00am. To register your team or pledge support for a partic- Emily Whitney, John Hopewell, Betsy Finnie, Many teams dress up, and we encourage people to ipant,simply call Victoria Hospice or visit their website, Nanw Cariad, Sylvia Krogh, H.A. (Penny) choose costumes that go along with this year’s theme where you can download pledge forms and even Furnes, Herb Girard, Wally du Temple, Robin of looking back through the years.Why not pick a create your own team fundraising page.All funds Sacker, Louise Cole, Robert van Alstyne, Clare decade to design your costume around?” raised are used to help Victoria Hospice provide expert Vipond, Nan Fairchild, Barry Wiebe, Karen Prewett promises exciting prizes as well,including patient care, counselling and bereavement support, Furnes, Alan Boyle, Fran Pardee, Ted Humphreys, memorabilia-filled bags for the first 30 registrants and spiritual care and round-the-clock access so that fami- Doreen Burgess, Philip Symons a commemorative towel for participants who raise lies can be together and patients can have the best more than $100.“Teams and individuals are assigned possible care at end-of-life. lanes for lap swimming, but the entire pool will also This year’s BMO Swimathon for Victoria Hospice takes LETTERS be open for use by donation,including the wave pool, place on Saturday, May 21 at Commonwealth Pool. the waterslide and the dive pool,” she says, adding Send letters to: [email protected]. that Hospice’s own fundraising team,Hospice Sunflowers, Victoria Hospice Letters that directly address articles published will dive in too with their trademark sunny enthusiasm. in Focus will be given preference. A bouncy castle, games, and a synchronized swim- 250-952-5720 ming demonstration add to the family-oriented fun, Give online at www.VictoriaHospice.org www.focusonline.ca • May 2011 7 talk of the town Zoe Blunt and Mark Worthing 8 David Broadland 12 Will Horter 14

Battle over farmland in Central Saanich turns into SLAPP suit ZOE BLUNT AND MARK WORTHING

When a 2009 rezoning application by Peninsula Co-op to convert several acres of farmland into a supermarket was opposed by candidates seeking election to the Co-op’s board, the Co-op acted in a way that an arbitrator later found was “unlawful.” Now, on the eve of a new election for a board of directors, Peninsula Co-op has filed a legal suit against seven people, including one of the candidates.

t’s a stormy spring for Peninsula Co-op, advocates took exception to a plan to pave up a bogus “nominating committee” to screen and two pivotal events this May will shape farmland and overturn the Regional Growth candidates, and more. Ithe future of the influential 56,000-member Strategy. Rezoning the Co-op property also But the Co-op directors didn’t hang their gas and grocery chain. On May 4, the Co- could unlock future development on a stretch heads before this blast of condemnation. op’s rezoning application for a larger food of rural land strategically located between the Rather, they negotiated for a modified Consent store in Central Saanich goes to public hearing. urban boundaries of Brentwood Bay and Keating. Order to let the disallowed board members And on May 25 comes a court-ordered board Concern over the zoning application brought serve out their terms. The revised judgement election that could turf out the pro-develop- member Randy Pearson out to the Co-op’s orders the Co-op to put up six board posi- ment majority. fateful 2009 annual meeting. “I was pretty tions for election this May, instead of the In the past two years, the Co-op has spent upset about the farmland—putting up a food usual three. Furthermore, even though arbi- tens of thousands of members’ dollars trying store and blacktopping eight acres of farm- trator Jakob De Villiers ruled that manager to convince them to support rezoning. The land instead of looking at food security is Pat Fafard “unlawfully” interfered with the Co-op has also stated that it will pull up stakes what upset me in the beginning,” he told 2009 election, the Co-op board later promoted (and jobs) in Central Saanich if its zoning appli- Monday Magazine. Fafard to chief executive officer. cation is denied. And, in a surprise move, the At the meeting, Pearson witnessed proce- Also in 2009, it became clear that Peninsula Co-op has filed suit against some of its own dural abuses that drove him to file a complaint Co-op’s political ambitions were not limited members, while the incumbent board and staff under the Co-operative Association Act. Last to its own members and property. Its involve- risk potential contempt of court charges and year, arbitrator Jakob De Villiers threw out ment in the 2008 municipal election in Central another invalid election. the results of that 2009 election. De Villiers Saanich came to light after the RCMP inves- The latest brouhaha began back in 2009, concluded the manager and directors engaged tigated a complaint about improper campaign when Peninsula Co-op introduced a rezoning in “unlawful,” “illegal,” and “undemocratic” contributions. The Mounties recommended proposal to allow a new 40,000-square-foot behaviour. He concluded they acted in “bad 19 charges for campaign finance violations. grocery store and Co-op office near the inter- faith,” in a way that was “oppressive” to That’s when members learned the Co-op spent section of Keating X Road and West Saanich members—interfering in election campaigns, $16,488 supporting pro-development candi- Road. Some members, neighbours, and farm refusing access to membership lists, setting dates—without consulting the membership.

8 May 2011 • FOCUS ACCORDING TO THE SOCIETY of Professional Journalists, “a SLAPP suit is filed in retaliation for public participation in a political dispute. The plaintiff is attempting to intim- idate a political opponent and, if possible, prevent further public participation on the issue by the person or organization.”

(The Crown declined to lay charges, stating the prosecution was “not in the public interest.”) How much support does $16,488 buy? The rezoning proposal recently took a great leap forward with a recommendation for approval from Central Saanich’s Committee of the Whole. Perhaps that’s just coincidence, but Co-op member and former board candi- date David Lawson doesn’t think so. “It was apparent to me that the Co-op’s motiva- tion for having these developers elected was to get farmland, agricultural land, converted to a big box store,” he said. Sue Stroud, another Co-op member, said, “There’s all these shenanigans going on over municipal elections, backing the devel- opers and getting their crews on the council to get their stuff done…It’s not what’s best for the community.” “Those [councillors] who are voting in favour of the Co-op development are the people who were supported by Co-op during Patricia Gering BA, SW, DipATh the last election,” says David Wilson, a two- time Co-op board candidate. “Essentially, it Integrated Art Therapy is an appears the Co-op put people into council effective, creative way to resolve that are going to owe them favours.” issues, manage emotions and heal relationships. MORE “SHENANIGANS” STARTED IN • Individual sessions and group workshops late November 2010, when an unknown • Free 30-minute consultation prankster tacked up a “For Sale” sign on • Women’s Self-Esteem Workshop: June 5 Peninsula Co-op’s zoning application notice and followed up with a fake press release, using a phoney email address, phone number, HEARTWORK and voicemail recording of manager Fafard. Integrated Art Therapy Service Besides announcing the decision to sell the 214 - 2187 Oak Bay Avenue disputed property and find a more suitable 250-413-7185 location for the larger store, the release heartworkarttherapy.com www.focusonline.ca • May 2011 9 JEANETTE SHEEHY, a pro-farmland candidate for the Co-op board, notes the Co-op civil suit may end up sidelining potential pro-farming candi- dates. “They tried to disqualify two of our candidates because of the special resolution that says if you’re involved in a lawsuit with the Co-op, you can’t run for the board of directors.”

committed the Co-op to develop only within in this area that are trying to protect and preserve the CRD’s Urban Containment Boundaries, what we have. It’s anybody trying to protect and apologized for past behaviour and elec- property, and land, and farms…who are getting tion irregularities. those letters.” Lawson declined to name names, A few media outlets picked up the fake saying he feared he would be next. November 29 press release, and the Friends As it turned out, he wasn’t. But on April 8, of Peninsula Co-op, a group opposed to the Peninsula Co-op served a notice of motion for development, celebrated the good news, but a civil action against the Residents and Ratepayers only briefly. By the next day, the release had of Central Saanich Society (RRoCSS), three been exposed as a hoax. But the Co-op board, Co-op members, and others not yet named. which included two police chiefs and a former The complaint alleges Chris Paynter, Sue Stroud, deputy chief, reacted to the April Fools-style Alicia Cormier and others engaged in an elab- joke as if it were a siege. orate conspiracy to engineer the November Along with pasting an unauthorized hoax. It cites no proof and no criminal charges Crimestoppers logo into ads to catch the have been laid. The Co-op demands “damages pranksters, Co-op president Ron Gaudet, then and injunctive relief for defamation, injurious the Oak Bay chief of police, confused matters falsehood, trespass to real property, trespass by altering the fake press release so that it to chattels and civil conspiracy.” The defen- appeared as if it was sent by Friends of Peninsula dants had 21 days to respond to the claim. Co-op. Whether it was accidental or inten- Stroud and Cormier strongly deny any tional, the alteration was quickly exposed. involvement in the hoax, and Paynter, a director Days later, Gaudet retired from the Oak of RRoCSS, would not comment, citing advice Bay Police Department, but still reigns as pres- from his lawyer. ident of the Co-op, the seat he occupied when Ian Cameron, president of RRoCSS, vigor- the board decided the prank warranted calling ously rejected the Co-op claim: “There is no in the Central Saanich police (led by Central truth whatsoever in the allegations made in Saanich police chief and fellow Co-op director the lawsuit that RRoCSS was involved or had Paul Hames). The local police, perhaps mindful knowledge of the hoax,” he said in a state- of the optics, bounced the investigation over ment. to the RCMP. In February, an officer turned Cameron labels the court action a “SLAPP” up at Sue Stroud’s provincial government (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation) workplace wanting to talk. and “an attempt to silence reasonable debate The interrogation was surreal, said Stroud, about the Co-op plan to use perfectly good handmade gifts who denies any involvement in the hoax. farmland for an unnecessary supermarket. It’s from local woods “He said things like, ‘Do you people realize contrary to the Central Saanich Community this [prank] puts the profitability of the Plan, and RRoCSS has been fighting it, and Co-op in jeopardy?’” will continue to do so, in spite of this attempt Stroud told Focus she is filing a police to muzzle our voice,” the statement said. complaint, because the board’s behaviour goes According to the Society of Professional beyond Co-op politics. “It’s dangerous because Journalists, “a SLAPP suit is filed in retalia- it’s messing with the community, it goes to tion for public participation in a political misuse of farmland, and it puts the commu- dispute. The plaintiff is attempting to intim- nity, our ability to feed ourselves, at risk.” idate a political opponent and, if possible, Heartwood Studio prevent further public participation on the bowls and spoons, wooden utensils, IN FEBRUARY 2011, TENSION ROSE further issue by the person or organization.” In a urns, lamps and more with the arrival of defamation notices addressed Toronto Star editorial on SLAPP suits, Devon Visit the artist in his studio or online: to individuals who publicly criticized the Co- Page and Rick Smith state: “What is at stake op. People felt intimidated, said Lawson. “I can is nothing less than the democratic process 250-746-5480 tell you that the [legal threats] have been perva- itself. And whether ordinary citizens can www.heartwoodstudio.ca sive. There are a number of groups and individuals continue to defend their communities and

10 May 2011 • FOCUS ADVERTISEMENT Focus on smart driving

33 litres = 600 kms = $42 of fun! their environment without fear of devastating financial liability.” While the legal complaint itself may be baseless and may never see a day in court, it still has the effect of chilling debate and smearing the reputa- tions of those named. Jeanette Sheehy, a pro-farmland candidate for the Co-op board, notes the Co-op civil suit may end up sidelining potential pro-farming candidates. “They tried to disqualify two of our candidates because of the special resolution that says if you’re involved in a lawsuit with the Co-op, you can’t run for the board of directors,” she explained. The special resolution, adopted in 2010, states that anyone involved in a “legal dispute” with the Co-op may not stand for election. Cormier has filed to run for the board, but by naming her in the civil action, the Co-op may succeed in knocking her off the ballot. (In all, the Co-op Action Network has endorsed six candidates.) Pearson said he considered standing for election to the board, but in the event of ongoing complaints about the election rules, the Co-op would have banned him under the new rule as well. The new, improved election that’s supposed to fix the old, discred- Asia Moore with Boris and her 2011 smart. ited one is set to begin May 25, but it’s already falling off the rails. Sheehy reports the directors are defying the court order by refusing to hen Asia Moore and her husband drove their smart car from Victoria hand over the membership list to candidates. In answer to Sheehy’s to Wyoming and back,motorcyclists told them it got better mileage than requests for the membership list, director and chair of the current nomi- Wthey did.“We drove from Victoria to Scottsdale Arizona, up to Sedona, nations committee Gord Griffiths wrote: “as a director I do not have Arizona,across to Jackson,Wyoming and back—a distance of 6437 km—through access to a membership list to provide to you…It’s also my under- rain storms,wind,thunder and lightning,snow and desert heat,on major highways standing that as an organization, we (say management/operations) passing large transports, carrying two adults, one 6.5 kg dog and two suitcases, cannot share it with you either. On a legal basis, the Privacy Act (provin- feeling safe all the way,” reports Asia.The Moores also kept their fuel costs down cial one, not federal) precludes this from happening.” to roughly half of what someone driving a mid-size sedan would have spent. Griffiths appears to flatly contradict arbitrator De Villiers ruling in Their savings continue to flow back in Victoria,where the Moores drive to clients’ 2010: “The Manager’s refusal to provide the candidate access to the homes for their business,K-9 Super Heroes Dog Whispering.Despite all their driving, list of members on the spurious ground that he was concerned about they usually fill up only once a month.In the city,says Asia,they get about 500 kms members’ privacy was plainly unlawful, and by itself constituted a per tank;on the highway about 600 kms per tank.With its 33-litre tank,that means serious irregularity, handicapping Mr Lawson’s election campaign. that even at today’s high gas prices,she can fill up her smart for approximately $42. Sections 128 to 133 of the Act gave Mr Lawson the right, not only to So it comes as no surprise to Asia that the smart car won Natural Resources inspect the membership list, but also to be provided by the Association Canada’s ecoEnergy award for three consecutive years as the most fuel-efficient with a copy of that list on payment of a reasonable charge.” vehicle in the two-seater category. Randy Pearson said he’s watching the election closely. “If they violate But it’s when smart’s gas consumption is compared to other vehicle classes that the consent order, I would have to go to court to contest it,” he said. the savings are truly impressive.The average Canadian drives 24,000 km per year. “That would be contempt of court. They have to be very, very careful, When the experts calculate what this means for fuel costs, it looks like this: For an and follow the election procedures and all the rules.” He added, “This average mid-size sedan,one will spend approximately $2,657 per year,$4,928 per is serious. Contempt of court is a criminal charge.” year for a van, and $3,715 per year for a truck. Attempts to reach CEO Fafard were not successful, and general For those same 24,000 km, however, the smart will cost you only $1,393 per manager Ron Heal was “too busy” to discuss the upcoming elec- year.That’s a minimum savings of $1,264 per year! tions. When asked for the list of candidates, he said it would be available Besides such savings,Asia Moore says she loves the guilt-free feeling of driving from the nominating committee at some future date. smart. Classified as an Ultra-Low Emission Vehicle (ULEV), the smart is the lowest Cormier said the conflicts at Co-op made running for the board the in its class for exhaust emissions.As with gas mileage,though,it’s when you compare most challenging event of her life. Given recent events, she thinks “the the smart’s emissions to those of other types of vehicles that it really shines:a smart’s

2011 election will be equally difficult.” But she said she remains committed C02 emissions amount to half that of a mid-size sedan, and even a smaller frac- to her campaign for regional food security and economic sustainability. tion of emissions from trucks and vans. Pearson says he’s not about to let the board off the hook. “[The Co- As if safety,fuel efficiency,and being an environmentally conscious citizen weren’t op board has] never taken responsibility for their failings in the 2009 enough,according to Asia,there’s enough storage space in her smart for five small elections,” he said. “They shouldn’t be blaming others for their own to medium-size dogs! bad behaviour. They’ve put themselves in a bad light.” Asia Moore has owned many cars over her 41-year driving history,but says that The legal threats haven’t changed Pearson’s mind. “They want devel- her smart is the first one she has truly loved. opment on farmland—we intend to go after them,” he said. “We are Become part of the “smart family” today—we’re now on facebook and twitter. going after them.” Three Point Motors Zoe Blunt is a Vancouver Island writer who advocates for social and environmental 2546 Government Street justice through www.grassroots action. Mark Worthing writes for the Martlet. 250-385-6737 • www.threepointmotors.com/smart www.focusonline.ca • May 2011 11 talk of the town

123 years of rail service comes to an inglorious end DAVID BROADLAND Why did the City of Victoria suddenly close the Johnson Street Railway Bridge?

n the afternoon of March 29, engineer City of Victoria about their plan to insure Andrew Rushforth wrote a one- the safety and reliability of the Johnson Street Osentence letter to the City of Victoria. Bridge during the next four to five years while His message, stamped in red ink with the seal a new bridge is built. A request for informa- of a Professional Engineer, stated “Following tion filed with the City under the provisions our inspection of the Johnson Street Railway of the Freedom of Information and Protection Bridge (bascule span) this morning, it is my of Privacy Act has revealed that previous to considered opinion that it should be closed Rushforth’s appointment, no plan whatso- until emergency repairs are completed.” In ever had been developed by the City to a hand-written notation, Rushforth added, implement any of the safety and reliability “To Railway traffic.” recommendations made by Delcan Corp in The following day, Rushforth’s employer, February 2009. Back then, Delcan told the Stantec Consulting—an American-owned City it needed to take action “within two engineering company with operations around to three years.” the world—produced a remarkably un-detailed It should be noted that the deterioration five-page report on what had been discov- featured in Andrew Rushforth’s March 30 ered the previous day (this report cost the report had all been documented by Delcan, City $16,000). Placed prominently in the nearly three years earlier in June 2008. Rushforth’s report for greatest visual impact was a high “Figure 2: photo of Critical repair at Rail Bridge” resolution photo of dramatic corrosion near is the same damage presented in a photograph

the base of a steel column. Stantec gravely PHOTO: PETE ROCKWELL on page 3-19 of Delcan’s report. Comparison captioned this “Figure 2: photo of Critical The new normal for cyclists—and trucks—on of the two photos shows little has changed repair at Rail Bridge.” the highway side of the bridge. since the Delcan photo was taken. Responding with unusual speed to Rushforth’s If Delcan thought there was anything “crit- discovery, the City of Victoria quickly announced exists on this bridge, in his view it was better ical” about the deterioration, they failed to the Johnson Street railway bridge would be to close the bridge to all traffic.” John Luton mention it. They recommended no specific closed permanently to all traffic, including agreed. “We’re erring on the side of safety. action and none was taken. The Delcan survey pedestrians and cyclists, starting April 11— You may be familiar with the I-35 bridge in team that took the photograph, by the way, about 10 months ahead of schedule. Minneapolis which collapsed without warning was led by the current lead consultant on On the first weekday following that in 2007. Thirteen people died, dozens more the City’s new bridge, Dr Joost Meyboom. announcement, as the morning rush to work injured. And, you know, we don’t want to roll Back in 2008, after surveying the bridge’s began to build, freelance writer and photog- the dice on people’s lives.” condition, Dr Meyboom recommended that rapher Pete Rockwell interviewed City officials What delicious irony. The very situation the City repair rather than replace the bridge. along with cyclists about to cross the highway that is now officially safer and more predictable— The City’s dubious record on the issue of bridge. Rockwell spoke with one cyclist, bicyclists making the crossing on the highway bridge safety and maintenance combined with Brenda Boyd, who had identified herself as a bridge’s steel grate in the midst of heavy vehicle their dumping of thousands of additional supporter of the new bridge and a member of traffic—had previously been presented to cyclists onto the highway bridge for an addi- the Greater Victoria Cycling Coalition. When voters as one of the main safety considera- tional 10 months provokes one’s curiosity, asked whether she believed the bridge was tions for replacing the bridge. But we digress. does it not? What’s the real motivation behind unsafe for cyclists, she responded, “My opinion, Let’s go back to Andrew Rushforth’s discovery. their shock-and-awe closing of the railway as a cyclist, is that I want to ride safely. Therefore, Rushforth, by the way, has played an active bridge and hoisting it into the permanently if somebody like the City says it’s not safe, role in heritage preservation in Victoria, but upright position? then I’m going to believe them.” has, at the same time, been publicly and consis- One reasonable theory I’ve heard mentioned Rockwell also interviewed Victoria City tently negative about the merits of preserving is that there’s a municipal election this year councillor John Luton and Johnson Street the existing Johnson Street Bridge. And, for (stifle that yawn). If things had proceeded as Bridge project director Mike Lai. the record, his company is involved in—and planned and the rail bridge wasn’t decom- Lai told Rockwell, “In terms of cyclists and will profit by—work related to design and missioned until Spring 2012, then by November pedestrians, there was no immediate danger. construction of a new bridge. 2011’s campaign there would be no visible But the engineer had also recommended that Rushforth was engaged by the City as the sign that “progress” had been made. because of the unpredictable nature of dete- bridge’s “Engineer of Record” on February That’s an uninspiring platform from which rioration and the pervasive corrosion that 22, 2011, a week after Focus questioned the to seek re-election. Instead, why not create a

12 May 2011 • FOCUS IF THINGS HAD PROCEEDED AS PLANNED and the Smile with rail bridge wasn’t decommissioned until Spring 2012, CONFIDENCE! then by November 2011’s campaign there would be no visible sign that “progress” had been made . A dental implant: —safely and attractively big fuss right now, raise the bridge so it’s visble for miles around and replaces a missing tooth enjoy free advertising for eight months. The message is obvious: “See? —secures a loose denture The rail bridge has been condemned by engineers. We were right all along. And you, dear voter, were so right to trust us.” —offers the closest look, feel and functionality DOCUMENTS OBTAINED FROM THE City through FOI requests to natural teeth suggest the bridge project is not exactly proceeding as planned. In —provides a an email dated February 4 of this year, Mike Lai queried Joost Meyboom long term solution about why Meyboom was asking for an additional $700,000 for design work for rail on the bridge, noting that (I’m paraphrasing) it was Lai’s “I make sure the patient understanding that previous payments should have covered that design has time to ask all their work. Meyboom replied, “The work done previously was for a larger questions. All my staff span. We believe that NWPA [Navigable Waters Protection Act] will Dr. Todd Jones work the same way—we’re allow a channel width of 41 metres rather than the previously used Periodontics, Implant Dentistry relaxed and we don’t rush. 47 metres. 41 is still an improvement to the existing 39 metres channel 303-4400 Chatterton Way We like what we do. More and a better design.” www.perio.ca Heavens. The scope of the project seems to be changing rather dramat- to the point, our patients ically. Another document obtained from the City assists in interpreting 250-475-1996 like what we do!” what this might mean. The Navigational Assessment: Addendum Report, prepared for Meyboom’s MMM Group, makes the case that the design the City thought it was getting provided an unnecessarily generous navi- gational channel, previously touted by the City as one of the project’s great benefits. But in the report, MMM seems to be backing away from that design, noting “the new bridge would require one of the largest bascule leafs in North America and Europe.” Victoria’s only The report then outlines various risks that would involve, including that “wear and tear on the corresponding electrical/mechanical equip- private Memory Clinic ment would be higher than with a smaller leaf. This leads to a potential reduction in long term reliability of the bridge and significantly higher operating costs for the City.” In other words, Meyboom was telling Lai Having difficulty recalling names? they were going to build a different, smaller bridge. Less prone to mechan- Forgetting where you put your glasses? ical failure and the high operating costs of his first design. So they had to kind of start over. And he needed more money, even though it’s going to be a smaller bridge. In the same email, Lai asked Meyboom why the completion date for the bridge with rail on it had been pushed a year further away to late The Victoria Memory Clinic can help you 2015 or early 2016. This is a critical issue. If the City doesn’t complete optimize your thinking abilities in the face of the project by March 2016, they won’t qualify for $21 million in federal age-related change or early stage dementia. funding. Meyboom told Lai that rail on the bridge would add five months for additional steel fabrication and seven months for laying track and building a new train station. So, with completion pushed to early 2016, there would be little or Dr. Ingrid Friesen no buffer for the unexpected. On February 4, then, rail on the bridge Ph.D., R. Psych. (CPBC #1433) was really a moot question. In spite of that, City councillors went on to approve expenditure of an additional $800,000 for design work to [email protected] include rail on the bridge before eventually abandoning it. 250-881-1145 Hmmm. You know, maybe closing the rail bridge isn’t an election year thing at all. Maybe it’s just a dramatic diversion from other issues at a www.memoryclinic.ca time when the project itself seems to be headed off the rails.

David Broadland is the publisher of Focus Magazine. www.focusonline.ca • May 2011 13 talk of the town

Why the CRD is broken (and how to fix it) WILL HORTER The CRD should be able to enforce its own plan.

othing in the world is static. Biological forces such as natural selection and Ncompetition for scarce resources compel organisms to evolve, transform them- selves, or potentially die out. The same is true for communities. There are major challenges on the horizon. The combination of global warming, the rising cost of fuel and food and the increasingly unstable global economy means our local governments are going to have to quickly restructure how we feed ourselves, house ourselves and transport ourselves. Unfortunately the Capital Regional District’s decision-making rules are not up to these chal-

lenges. The voting structure is ill-equipped to PHOTO: PETE ROCKWELL deal with these larger collective problems that A meeting of the CRD board considers the merit of developer Ender Ilkay’s Juan de Fuca resort proposal. no one municipal government can resolve by itself. This isn’t just my opinion. The CRD’s Land-use decisions affect us all, which is public transport system to move our constituents track record speaks for itself. Despite years of precisely why the region created a growth around? How do we manage growth? effort, little progress has been made in devel- strategy in the first place. Attempts by developers and their political oping a top-notch regional public transportation Some argue the 13 municipalities need to supporters to chip away at the Regional Growth system, in solving the growing homelessness be amalgamated into one body like Ottawa Strategy highlight the CRD’s difficulty in problem, in protecting and expanding local or Toronto. I disagree. Many of the commu- dealing with collective problems. Back in 2003, food production, or in protecting green spaces nities in the CRD have distinct cultures, and after years of hard work, the CRD adopted from reckless development. the makeup of the CRD is too diverse for a a much-lauded Regional Growth Strategy, This doesn’t mean there aren’t some visionary, one-size-fits-all solution. The challenges facing which created a vision for where we should committed public officials working for our Sooke are different from those of downtown prioritize population density and what areas municipalities and regional district. There are. Victoria. The character of Saanich is unlike should be left for farms and forests. It’s just that the decision-making rules they that of the Juan de Fuca area. The problem is that the CRD has few effec- are working with are insufficient to address That said, decision-makers in each of these tive tools to enforce this collective vision. So, the challenges they face. In short, the CRD areas are confronted with common challenges. predictably, developers and rogue municipal- needs to be modernized. How can we build an efficient low-carbon ities have chipped away at the CRD’s growth strategy, exploiting loopholes, finding grey A crowd of people gathered outside the CRD offices on Fisgard. areas and, at times, completely ignoring it. Call it death by a thousand cuts. This is what has happened in Central Saanich with Ian Vantreight’s subdivision proposal on rural land, with the Bear Mountain fiasco, and now in Ender Ilkay’s proposal to bring urban sprawl to the Juan de Fuca region with a contro- versial plan to build hundreds of cabins within metres of a provincial park and wilderness trail. Unfortunately, developers have learned that because so few people participate in munic- ipal elections (turnouts are generally around 20 percent), slates of candidates with a lot of money have a good chance of winning and then pushing reckless proposals. As with too many issues, the real story gets lost in the spin. Ilkay and his supporters are PHOTO: PETE ROCKWELL

14 May 2011 • FOCUS ADVERTISEMENT Focus on real estate & eco services Creating healthy and happy homes WHAT WE REALLY NEED right now are modern decision-making rules that facilitate n Saturday, May 14, first-time home buyers co-operative decision-making on the enor- and sellers are invited to an information Osession—a sort of crash course in the ins-and- mous collective challenges facing our region. outs of both buying and selling property in Victoria. Called “Empowering You to Buy and Sell,”local realtor attempting to portray him as the victim, arguing Richard Gadoury will be joined by a mortgage broker, “outsiders” are attempting to deprive him of lawyer,interior designer,and financial adviser. his land. This spin ignores the fact that when Richard is an energetic young realtor—in March Ilkay purchased the former Western Forest he was one of the top sales leaders among Pemberton Product forest lands, they were zoned to allow Holmes’ 200 agents.But he also brings his passion for seven homes, which he is still entitled to build. health and the environment into his work as an Instead, Ilkay is pushing for a rezoning for “Eco Agent.” 266 cabins. He first became conscious of environmental effects The majority of CRD directors and the public on the body when he fell ill in his early 20s.He completely think Ilkay’s proposal is in contravention of the changed his lifestyle,becoming a Reiki Master Teacher Regional Growth Strategy, the official collec- and opening a health food store.After 15 years in the tive vision for the region, yet a sub-committee health and healing industry,he moved into real estate of CRD directors is still cued-up to approve the because he realized that the home—our most impor- rezoning. Land-use decisions affect us all, which tant asset and personal environment—is where we is precisely why the region created a growth Richard is an energetic young realtor—in March strategy in the first place. This is why I have been advocating for these types of collective he was one of the top sales leaders among Richard Gadoury decisions to be made by the CRD as a whole. Pemberton Holmes’ 200-plus agents. But he Last week, I was encouraged by the CRD’s deci- environmentally-friendly renovations, landscape and sion to ask the province for a new voting procedure also brings his passion for health and the envi- organic gardens.One satisfied client,Justin Robinson, for decisions to be made on the forest lands ronment into his work as an “Eco Agent.” notes,“Richard made the selling and purchasing process in the Juan de Fuca electoral area. very easy and stress free. He accomplished all my real The decision in Juan de Fuca is especially can really make a difference in our health and our estate needs and I would highly recommend his services.” important, because if Ilkay’s subdivision is world.“The conscious eco choices we make today For buyers,Richard emphasizes education and aware- approved, it will further erode the CRD’s shape tomorrow,” says Richard. ness:“Clients need to know all information about attempts to bring some sanity to regional growth. Now his real estate clients benefit from both his the property and know exactly what they are buying What we really need right now are modern keen understanding of the real estate market and —especially if there are any covenants, easements decision-making rules that facilitate co-oper- his wide-ranging knowledge of how to create a healthy, and/or needed repairs that could affect the purchase.” ative decision-making on the enormous collective environmentally-friendly home. This is valued by past clients like Colin Litster:“As challenges facing our region: how we are going Richard advises clients on how to choose heating first-time home buyers, we appreciated Richard’s to feed ourselves, house ourselves, and trans- and cooling systems, flooring, using paints with zero honesty,patience and work ethic.Richard was helpful port ourselves in a rapidly changing world. volatile organic compounds, how to utilize solar hot- and accommodating in all aspects of the home-buying And how, together, can we create and imple- water, and so on. His goal is to help create a more experience, and genuine with respect to finding the ment a plan to make our region the most liveable sustainable home. He’s also able to provide advice on right home for us.” in the world? the numerous grants and and rebate programs avail- A keen student of the market,Richard believes Victoria Two things are clear: the current system able for energy-efficient improvements. is a bit of a “microclimate” and that “right now the won’t get us to where we need to go, and politi- These “Eco Services,”as he calls them,are offered market is in a position where both buyers and sellers cians follow public opinion. as a free “bonus”to clients who desire them.Richard are doing well.Interest rates are helping a lot,”he says. The world belongs to those who organize is passionate about them because, besides making Learn more at the May 14 information session. It themselves and show up. Only when people sense from a health point of view,he sees their economic runs from 3:30 to 4:30 pm at the Fairfield Community from across the region stand up and demand sense as well.“As the demand for energy efficiency Centre in the Garry Oak Room.Admission is by dona- change will our politicians take the actions continues, homes may be required to have an energy tion and proceeds will go to Habitat for Humanity.There needed. We’ve done that and now we’re looking rating done—out-dated heating system,lack of insu- will be a door prize of a $150 gift certificate to the Moss to Ida Chong, BC’s Minister of Community, lation,poor windows will lower your energy rating and Street Market and organic appetizers will be served. Sport and Cultural Development, to act swiftly resale value.So it’s a good idea to start moving towards to approve the new voting procedure the CRD energy efficiency for all sorts of reasons.” Richard Gadoury, Real Estate Professional has asked for. Clients can also take advantage of Richard’s free Pemberton Holmes Real Estate market evaluations to determine their home’s top selling [email protected] Will Horter is the executive director of the Dogwood price,help with prepping,and his use of both advanced Initiative, a Victoria-based organization working to online technology and traditional marketing tools. He 250-384-8124 • 778-977-2600 make the CRD the most liveable region in the world. will naturally highlight and promote with passion any www.richardgadoury.com www.focusonline.ca • May 2011 15 Creative Coast conversations 16 the arts in may 18 show & tell 28 coastlines 30

Jeff Molloy: Beyond the façade CHRISTINE CLARK Boldy coloured and sculpturally complex, Jeff Molloy’s new work comments on Cuban realities.

Molloy was (and is) a well-known and active participant in the Victoria arts scene, but for Molloy, moving on is one of the greatest measures of success in art (and in life). He says, “I think that’s the key, you have to keep moving, you have to keep growing, otherwise you’re cheating yourself.” His new studio on Gabriola is well heated and redolent with the heady aroma of turps and damar and oil, and because Molloy works in encaustic, there is also the smell of wax. He uses “a pretty stan- dard encaustic mixture…85 percent beeswax, 10 percent microcrystalline wax and 5 percent damar…[as well as] some carnauba wax on the bigger pieces.” He’s got a collection of electric frying pans and old crock pots to create his wax colours, and a variety of brushes and homemade tools to apply and manipulate the wax once it’s laid out on the support. Encaustic painting is an incredibly enduring technique; there are examples of Egyptian mummy paintings done in encaustics from as far back as 100AD. This is an important consideration for Molloy. He remarks that, “The only true judge is time; if you create things that resonate with people, then they will protect them from destruction. The longer they survive, the more important and valuable they become.” He’s also currently working with plaster, another traditional art material. The Sistine Chapel, for instance, is made up of frescoes, which by definition are paintings applied to fresh plaster, but in typical Molloy fashion, he has experimented with the medium and developed a new technique. He pours plaster onto sections of either burlap or carpet, and once the plaster sets, he stains it with oil paints and then trans- fers laser print images onto the surface. He uses time-tested materials,

PHOTO: DOANE GREGORY but he’s not satisfied with the same old, same old. It is in the re-thinking Jeff Molloy and the manipulating of the physical foundations of art that Jeff Molloy is most profoundly creative. t’s a grey, misty afternoon and I’m standing with a small group of foot passengers, all of us with either backpacks or duffel bags, waiting “Fachada Cubana” Jeff Molloy, 36 x 48 inches, mixed media Ifor the boat to dock at Gabriola and bracing ourselves for the inevitable bump against the pilings. I’m here to meet Jeff Molloy, to visit his studio and to talk about his recent paintings, a series he calls Fachada Cubano (The Cuban Façade). He’s been working hard in preparation for his upcoming show at Winchester Galleries, which runs from May 7 to 28, and although the studio has (as he told me) been recently swept, there are the tell- tale signs of creativity everywhere, and especially on the walls. Before moving to Gabriola Island five years ago, Jeff and his wife Kathryn (who was the Executive Director of the Sierra Club for many years) lived in James Bay where they raised their three kids. He still speaks fondly of his early art studies with James Graham and Zane St Philip, way back in 1995 at the (short-lived) Victoria School of Contemporary Art. Later, he went on to study at the Victoria College of Art (where I first met him) under Joe Kyle and Robin Mayer; after graduation, he ran the Gallery at the Mac for almost a decade, and was a co-founder of the James Bay Art Walk. Over the years, Molloy has had numerous exhibits and won several awards. PHOTOGRAPHED BY: JORDAN WILCOX PHOTOGRAPHED BY:

16 Allow Yourself to Fully Bloom PHOTOGRAPHED BY: JORDAN WILCOX PHOTOGRAPHED BY: A detail of “Fachada Cubana” with Dr Deanna Geddo DDS About his newest paintings he says, “I went to Cuba this past January • holistic dentistry [and] I was enamoured by the colour and geometry of their crazy houses, and wanted to produce work that rode the line between realism • aesthetic work emphasizing and abstraction.” your natural smile The encaustic pieces in particular are boldly coloured and riveting • amalgam removal in their sculptural complexity; it’s difficult to determine the difference between the actual and the painted shadows, and there are little doors • crowns, bridges, dentures and windows built into some of the paintings that open to reveal unex- • relaxation techniques pected interiors. The work is incredibly well built; every piece a beautiful object, looking both ancient and as if it could last forever. for sensitive patients He says, “On a number of occasions I saw people carrying highly • other healing treatments decorated cakes through the street…When I say decorated I mean available decorated, an artist gone wild with a piping bag and a range of pastel- coloured icings. My goal with the [paintings] was to make them cake-like. I imagined cakes decorated as Cuban façades turned side- ways hanging on the wall.” Jeff Molloy refers to himself as a farmer of art, but farming seems too stationary a metaphor. Really he’s a traveller, always exploring, always searching for truth. Standing in the studio on a chilly West Coast day, I could literally feel the warmth and beauty of tropical Cuba just emanating from his paintings, but as Jeff points out, “Cuba itself is a façade; things aren’t as they seem. From the Cubans’ point of view, they are imprisoned by the regime.” He says, “It’s common to see people carrying…birdcages through the streets. Nobody talks about it [and] it doesn’t show up in travel books. As it turns out these little birds are important symbols for Cubans. [They mean] that a family member has been imprisoned for political reasons. The Cubans believe that when the canary [is freed], then their GIVE YOURSELF a dazzling new smile this Spring—just loved one will also be set free.” in time for the picnics, parties and people-watching In this big old world, we’re all travellers through time and through at sidewalk cafés. With Dr. Geddo, a beautiful and space. Some of us are happy with pretty pictures; some of us, like Jeff healthy smile can be achieved in one or two hours! Molloy, need to go beyond the façade.

Fachada Cubana (The Cuban Façade) runs from May 7-28 at Dr. Geddo believes a visit to the dentist should be a Winchester Galleries, 2260 Oak Bay Avenue. Reception May 15, 1- pleasurable and healing experience. 5pm. www.winchestergalleriesltd.com, www.molloy.ca.

Christine Clark is a Victoria-based artist and writer, Dr. Deanna Geddo, DDS • 250-389-0669 currently preparing for a group show at the Slide HOLISTIC DENTAL OFFICE AND HEALING CENTRE Room Gallery (May 7). 404 - 645 Fort St (across from Bay Centre) [email protected] www.integrateddentalstudio.ca

May 2011 • www.focusonline.ca 17 the arts in may

April 30-May 1 May 5-June 7 ARTIST STUDIO TOURS COMMON THREADS 3 Neighbourhoods Dales Gallery Gordon Head: www.artsmonth.saanich.ca. A group show with works by Louise Harding, Fairfield: www.fairfieldartistsstudiotour.com Woode, and Sharon Thompson. 537 Fisgard Saanich Peninsula: 250-656-0275. St. 250-383-1552, www.dalesgallery.ca.

Continuing to May 6 May 6 NEW HORIZONS VICTORIA CHAMBER ORCHESTRA Luz Gallery First Metropolitan United Church Digital imagery, scanography and Photoshop Yariv Aloni conducts a Mozart violin concerto techniques by Lis Bailly. 1844 Oak Bay Ave. featuring award-winning soloist Eehjoon 250 590-7557, www.luzgallery.com. Kwon, and premieres Island Suite by Sooke composer Brent Straughan. 8pm, 932 Balmoral Continuing to May 7 Rd. Tix at Long & McQuade, Ivy’s Book Shop, A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY Cadboro Bay Books, or at door. 250-598-1966, Langham Court Theatre www.victoriachamberorchestra.org. A story of privilege, intrigue, romance, laughter and disappointment. 8pm. 805 May 6 Langham Crt. www.langhamcourttheatre.bc.ca, SPRING FANTASIA 250-384-2142. Salvation Army Citadel Crystal Singers presents special guests, Continuing to May 15 Four Neat Guys. 7:30pm. $15, avail at Long 2 PIANOS 4 HANDS & McQuade, Ivy’s Bookshop, door. 250-479- Belfry Theatre 2257, www.crystalsingers.ca. From Chopsticks to Bach, the boys play it all in their quest to become concert pianists. May 6-8 250-385-6815, www.belfry.bc.ca. POTTERY SHOW & SALE Mahon Hall Continuing to May 19 Salt Spring Island Potters Guild annual LINEAR TRANSFORMATIONS event featuring Margit Nelleman. 10am-4pm. Collective Works Gallery 114 Rainbow Rd, Ganges, Salt Spring Island, Jason Grondin’s art and music are tied www.saltspringpottersguild.com. together with a common thread of spontaneity and movement. 1311 Gladstone Ave. 250- May 6-28 590-1345, wwwcollectiveworks.ca. DRIFTER’S CLIP Open Space Continuing to May 26 Showcases two cinematic projects that THE ELEGANCE OF BLACK tease memory and history. Opening May Martin Batchelor Gallery 6, 7pm. 510 Fort St, 250-383-8833, A show by the Watermark Printmakers. www.openspace.ca. 712 Cormorant St. 250-385-7919. May 6 & June 17 May 3, 5, 7 STORY FEST 2011 VANESSA Intrepid Theatre Club Royal Theatre Enjoy a series of concerts highlighting the Pacific Opera presents this haunting opera. joy of adult storytelling told by Victoria $37-$132. 805 Broughton St. 250-385-0222, Storyteller’s Guild. 7:30-9:30pm. $10/$5. www.pov.bc.ca. www.victoriastorytellers.ca.

May 4 May 6-15 10 BOOKS LAUNCH BROADWAY: DECADES IN REVUE Victoria Event Centre McPherson Playhouse New books from Orca’s local authors: Victoria Operatic Society presents this Lesley Pechter, Alex Van Tol, Mike Deas, Sara musical journey through the decades, complete Cassidy, Kari Jones, Laura Langston, Karen with dancing, singing and comedy routines. Rivers, Andrew Weaver, Mark Zuehlke. 7pm, Directed and choreographed by Sylvia Hosie. 1415 Broad St. 250-386-6121, www.rmts.bc.ca.

May 5 May 7 ARTWORKS ARTISTS SONGS OF TRAVEL Garth Homer Society Lutheran Church of the Cross View the works of Garth Homer’s Victoria’s six-member a capella vocal talented ArtWorks artists. 1:30-3:30pm. ensemble performs. 8pm. 3787 Cedar Hill Rd, www.artsmonth.saanich.ca. $18. 250-385-1335, www.hexaphone.org.

18 May 2011 • FOCUS May 7 PACIFIC RIM POTTERS SALE Knox Presbyterian Church Hall View works by 10 Island potters. 10am-4pm. 2964 Richmond Rd.

May 7-8 MOTHER’S DAY GARDEN TOUR Various locations The Victoria Conservatory of Music presents this annual fundraising event with live music. 10am-4pm. Two-day pass is $30. 250-386-5311, www.victoriagardentour.com.

May 7-8 SAANICH WEST STUDIO TOUR Various locations Fourteen artists show and sell their works at various venues in Saanich West. 11am-4pm. www.artsmonth.saanich.ca.

May 7-31 A LITTLE LITTLE LINNY SHOW She Said Gallery An intriguing selection of new small and tall Linnyland paintings by Linny D. Vine. Opening May 4, 4-7pm. 2000 Fernwood St, 250-361-3372, www.shesaidgallery.ca.

May 8 16TH ANNUAL MOTHER’S DAY PAINT-IN Royal Roads University Enjoy an outdoor festival of local artists and craftspeople, family entertainment, and more. 10am-4pm.

May 12 THE JEWS OF SHANGHAI Congregation Emanu-El Synagogue An evening with Leah Carrick. 7pm. By donation. 1461 a little, little LINNY show Blanshard St, 250-480-1081. ~intriguing new small & tall paintings~ May 7 - 31, 2011 May 13 Opening reception with Linny D. Vine DANCEWORKS GALA Saturday, May 7, 4 – 7pm Royal Theatre The final event of the Victoria DanceWorks Festival, high- lighting some of the excellent dance performances by the participants of the Dance Competition. 250-386-6121, www.rmts.bc.ca.

May 13 REID JAMIESON Alix Goolden Hall A classic Canadian singer-songwriter who is a regular performer on CBC’s Vinyl Cafe. 7pm, 907 Pandora Ave. www.reidjamieson.com.

May 14 THE 3RD ANNUAL BUTTERFLY BALL Marriott Hotel Inner Harbour An elegant event for dads and their daughters age 6 -18. 4:30pm. $125 per dad and $75 per daughter. 728 Humboldt

St. Proceeds to the Queen Alexandra Foundation for Children. LINNY D. VINE, 20 x“SPRING IN THE SQUARE” 10 INCHES, OIL ON CANVAS 250-519-6955.

May 14 THE RHYTHM OF LIFE Spirit Rising Choir Guest performers will be Arthur Murray ballroom dancers. $15, 7:30pm, St Aidan’s Church, 3703 St Aidan’s 2000 Fernwood Ave St. 778-430-4078. 250.361.3372 • www.shesaidgallery.ca

www.focusonline.ca • May 2011 19

May 2011 • 2011 May 20 US FOC

Sooke. 250-664-7045, www.travelingart.ca. 250-664-7045, Sooke. carvers from the gallery collection. www.alcheringa-gallery.com. 665 Fort St. 250-383-8224. St. Fort 665 www.alcheringa-gallery.com. collection. gallery the from carvers

our hearts with satisfaction and with love for art. Tues-Sun, 12-6 pm, 2075 Otter Point Rd, Point Otter 2075 pm, 12-6 Tues-Sun, art. for love with and satisfaction with hearts our Pat Amos, Ken Mowatt, Mark Porter, Ron Telek and Norman Tait, with those of pre-eminent of those with Tait, Norman and Telek Ron Porter, Mark Mowatt, Ken Amos, Pat

foreign and surrealist dance. The curiosity and energy we feel in front of her paintings fill paintings her of front in feel we energy and curiosity The dance. surrealist and foreign COLLECTION, a prestigious private collection of Northwest Coast masks including works by works including masks Coast Northwest of collection private prestigious a COLLECTION,

silhouettes leaving, or arriving from far away, accompanied by the movement of a of movement the by accompanied away, far from arriving or leaving, silhouettes Chris Paul, Rod Smith, John Wilson and more. May 12-June 9: MASKS: THE LINDA HELLER LINDA THE MASKS: 9: 12-June May more. and Wilson John Smith, Rod Paul, Chris

paintings seem to connect us to a world of conquest and travelling. Her characters are characters Her travelling. and conquest of world a to us connect to seem paintings the supernatural world below the surface. New works by Maynard Johnny Jr, Angela Marston, Angela Jr, Johnny Maynard by works New surface. the below world supernatural the

matic. They seem magical and mysterious. With their blue skies and warm deserts, her deserts, warm and skies blue their With mysterious. and magical seem They matic. wood tackle box by Richard Sumner will be featured amongst two-dimensional depictions of depictions two-dimensional amongst featured be will Sumner Richard by box tackle wood

Nathalie Provencher’s ability to paint scenes from beyond reality is seductive and enig- and seductive is reality beyond from scenes paint to ability Provencher’s Nathalie A selection of treasures inspired by the sea including a seal bowl by Tony Hunt Jr and a bent- a and Jr Hunt Tony by bowl seal a including sea the by inspired treasures of selection A

Dominguez Art Gallery Art Dominguez Alcheringa Gallery Alcheringa

NATHALIE PROVENCHER: INTROSPECTION PROVENCHER: NATHALIE SPIRITS OF THE SEA THE OF SPIRITS

May 3-27 May Continuing to May 9 May to Continuing

“APPARITION” NATHALIE PROVENCHER, 18 X 24 INCHES, ACRYLIC INCHES, 24 X 18 PROVENCHER, NATHALIE “APPARITION”

▲ ALDER INCHES, 8.5 X 9.5 JR, HUNT TONY BOWL, SEAL ▲

250-213-1162, www.viewartgallery.ca 250-213-1162, 250-388-6652, www.morrisgallery.ca. 250-388-6652,

the hidden aspects of self in an effort to experience them more clearly. 104-860 View Street, View 104-860 clearly. more them experience to effort an in self of aspects hidden the gallery.ca/workshops and www.paulineolesen.com. On Alpha St at 428 Burnside Rd E. Rd Burnside 428 at St Alpha On www.paulineolesen.com. and gallery.ca/workshops

moving between cycles of decay and renewal. Another recurring theme is the examining of examining the is theme recurring Another renewal. and decay of cycles between moving the gallery will also be hosting a workshop with Olesen on Mary 28, 2pm. See www.morris- See 2pm. 28, Mary on Olesen with workshop a hosting be also will gallery the

making and drawing on mylar explores the theme of relationship, specifically the process of process the specifically relationship, of theme the explores mylar on drawing and making travels, cultures and creatures from around the world. Besides featuring her work in May, in work her featuring Besides world. the around from creatures and cultures travels,

juried and non-juried exhibitions since then. Cheryl’s work in mixed media painting, print- painting, media mixed in work Cheryl’s then. since exhibitions non-juried and juried fused glass from her studio on Piers Island, near Sidney, BC. Her work in fused glass reflects glass fused in work Her BC. Sidney, near Island, Piers on studio her from glass fused

Fine Arts Diploma from the Victoria College of Art in 2004 and has been showing her work in work her showing been has and 2004 in Art of College Victoria the from Diploma Arts Fine fusing re-emerged in the early 1960s. Pauline Olesen is constantly experimenting with experimenting constantly is Olesen Pauline 1960s. early the in re-emerged fusing

Originally from Winnipeg, Cheryl Taves lives and works in Victoria. She graduated with a with graduated She Victoria. in works and lives Taves Cheryl Winnipeg, from Originally After a long period of dormancy following its birth as an artform in ancient Egypt, glass Egypt, ancient in artform an as birth its following dormancy of period long a After

View Art Gallery Art View Morris Gallery Morris

IMMENSE FUSED GLASS ARTIST PAULINE OLESEN PAULINE ARTIST GLASS FUSED

Continuing to May 21 May to Continuing Throughout May Throughout

“INDWELLING NO.1.” CHERYL TAVES, 19 X 15 INCHES, OIL, GRAPHITE, CHARCOAL, MYLAR, PAPER PAPER MYLAR, CHARCOAL, GRAPHITE, OIL, INCHES, 15 X 19 TAVES, CHERYL NO.1.” “INDWELLING FUSED GLASS, PAULINE OLESEN PAULINE GLASS, FUSED ▲ ▲ ▲ the arts in may in arts the “Water for Gardens”“Water Armstrong, Steven 48 x inches, acrylic on canvas WEST END GALLERY Steven Armstrong All Over”“Red (detail) Linda Thompson, 30 x 24 inches, acrylic on canvas Transitions NEW PAINTINGS BY LINDA THOMPSON An Exhibition of New Works: May 21 – June 2, 2011 Gallery Hours: Mon - Fri 10 - 5:30 & Sat 10 - 5 2184 OAK BAY AVENUE VICTORIA 1203 Broad Street • 250-388-0009 • www.westendgalleryltd.com www.theavenuegallery.com 250-598-2184

HIGHLIGHTS A group show Saturday, May 14, 1 to 4 pm “Silence Within”by Corrinne Wolcoski,72Within”by Corrinne “Silence x 96 inches,oil on canvas Mickie Acierno Kristina Boardman Philip Buytendorp Corrinne Wolcoski “Kananaskis on the Edge” Michael O'Toole, 30 x 40 inches, acrylic on canvas “Kananaskis on the Edge” Michael O'Toole, Carol Evans Douglas Fisher W. Allan Hancock After the Storm Tiffany Hastie Gail Johnson Clement Kwan May 7 – 21 Catherine Moffat Nancy O’Toole Michael O’Toole Opening reception May 7,1-4pm. Artist will be in attendance. 2506 Beacon Ave, Sidney 655-1282 www.pengal.com 606 View Street • 250.380.4660 • www.madronagallery.com

www.focusonline.ca • May 2011 21 May 28 & 29 SOUNDINGS VOCAL ENSEMBLE Oak Bay United Church and St. Mary’s Anglican Church THE CHORAL ENSEMBLE Soundings grew out of the amateur Gettin’ Higher Choir in 2001. At that time, about 20 members of that large community choir of several hundred voices were seeking a challenge and wanted to stretch their musical muscles. And so, Soundings was born. The ensemble is under the direction of Denis Donnelly, the 2010 winner of the Herbert Drost Award for lifetime achievement in Choral Music. Donnelly, who also co-directs the Gettin’ Higher Choir, was happy to take on the assignment. “I wanted a balance. I love the Gettin’ Higher Choir, but I also wanted a smaller group where I could pursue a different kind of musicianship and intimacy with a group.” Today, though half of the original members remain, Soundings is an auditioned chamber choir with trained singers drawn from Victoria’s choral community. The members of this selective ensemble are musically literate and passionate about their craft. In addition to their regular weekly rehearsals, many members take the initiative of meeting on their own to go over parts in sectional rehearsals. Donnelly says, “They’re a dedicated bunch!” But while they all work hard, he admits there’s still a lot of room for fun. Says Donnelly, “For me, it’s about making sure that the people who are on the stage are having as good a time as the people who are in the audience, if not better!” In addition to the demands of the repertoire, Donnelly challenges his ensemble further by making the group memorize their parts for perfor- mance. This makes Soundings unique among Victoria’s advanced choirs. According to Donnelly, “it increases the intimacy with the audience to have everything memorized.” Donnelly also shares the task of intro- ducing songs with individual members of the choir. Each member will “adopt a song,” whereby they provide the audience with background information on the song, and then describe what is personally appealing about it. This interaction between the choir members and their audi- ence is important to Donnelly: “I don’t want them to just be functionaries. I want them to be real people with real passions about the music.” The program for their May concerts centres on the theme of love, but not exclusively. There will be some nonsensical fun with an arrange- ment of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky.” Whimsical reminiscences of Ireland abound in “Galway,” written by Denis Donnelly. And Soundings tenor Brian Grady will provide his own arrangement of the 7th century Chinese poem, “Boatful of Moonlight.” The concert will cross the centuries musically, from 17th century French madrigals, to arrange- ments of contemporary pop. And all sung with the dense, taut, ethereal harmonies of Soundings.

Soundings performs Sat, May 28, 8pm at Oak Bay United Church, Mitchell St; and Sun, May 29, 2:30 at St Mary’s Anglican Church, East Saanich Rd at Cultra, Saanichton. Tickets $15 at the door (if available) or reserve at 250-544-4393. —Lisa Szeker-Madden

22 May 2011 • FOCUS the arts in may

May 14 May 19-29 YELLOW SUBMARINE SING-A-LONG UNO FEST Vic Theatre Two venues Yellow Submarine features many unfor- The 2011 line-up includes an eclectic gettable Beatles’ tunes including: Eleanor mixture of one-person shows by 15 of North Rigby, When I’m Sixty-Four, Nowhere Man, America’s finest alternative theatre artists Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Sgt. Pepper’s with walking tours, monologue slams, and Lonely Hearts Club Band, All You Need Is Love, more! Master storyteller Mike Daisey whose and, of course, Yellow Submarine. Doors at shows weave together autobiography, gonzo 6:30pm, show at 7pm, $20. 808 Douglas St. journalism, and unscripted performance 250-www.victoriafilmfestival.com. will perform his improvised show All Stories Are Fiction (May 25-26). Other performers May 14-15 include: Jeremy Bailey, Chris Gibbs, TJ Dawe, CADBORO BAY ART STUDIO TOUR Nile Seguin, Matthew Kowalchuk, Missie Various Locations Peters, Rosemary Georgeson, Lucas Myers, See vibrant art created by area artists as Celia McBride, Andrew Bailey, Morgan it happens in their studios.Maps, brochures Brayton, Justin Carter. Intrepid Theatre Club and further information available from and Metro Studio. $16/$65 for 5-show pass. www.gobc.ca and www.artsmonth.saanich.ca. 250-590-6291. www.intrepidtheatre.com.

MAY 14-15 May 20-June 9 THE BODY SPEAKS SENIOR PAINT IN Collective Works Gallery Goward House Chiarina Loggia’s photopolymer gravure Enjoy the musical stylings of harpist Darlene etchings. Opening May 21, 7-9pm, 1311 Phillips or drop by to interact with the senior Gladstone Ave. wwwcollectiveworks.ca, artists painting on both days. 1-5pm, 2495 250-590-1345. Arbutus Rd. 250-477-4401. May 21-22 May 14 & 15 SCATTERED ARTISTS STUDIO TOUR VERDI REQUIEM Artists’ Studios Royal Theatre View 22 artists; includes pottery, textile, Tania Miller leads the Vic Symphony, photography, printmaking, glass and painting. 120 choristers, and four soloists. May Studios open from noon-5pm. Brochures 14, 8pm; May 15, 2:30pm. 250-386-6121, and maps avail at Cedar Hill Rec Centre. www.scattered-artists.ca. www.rmts.bc.ca. May 21-June 2 May 14-28 STEVEN ARMSTRONG: TRANSITIONS HIGHLIGHTS West End Gallery Peninsula Gallery Armstrong aims to capture the ephemeral Group show of 12 artists with new paint- beauty of our wild West Coast landscapes. ings and sculptures. Opening May 14, Dramatic coastal scenes, camas in Garry Oak 1-4pm. 2506 Beacon Ave, 250-655-1722, meadows, and lush forests each present their www.pengal.com. own dynamic sense of movement and place. These moments, secured on canvas, ultimately May 16 reflect our own perceptions within nature’s PEN-IN-HAND READINGS transitions. 1203 Broad St. 250-388-0009, Serious Coffee www.westendgalleryltd.com. Featuring Carol Matthews, Jay Ruzesky May 21-June 4 and Kim Goldberg. 7:30-9:30pm. $3. Open KEN FAULKS: Mic sign-up at 7:15pm. 230 Cook St. BRINGING HOME THE LIGHT Coast Collective Gallery May 16 Mercurio Gallery STORYTELLING EVENING A special opening will be held at Coast 1831 Fern Street Collective, 3221 Heatherbell Rd, Colwood, Join the Victoria Storytellers Guild at their Sat and Sun 12 -5, with an artist’s reception monthly meeting. 7:15pm, $5/$3. 250-477- May 21, 2-4pm. From May 24-June 4 at 7044, www.victoriastorytellers.org. Mercurio, 602 Courtney St. Tues-Sat 10-5, Sun 12-4. 250-388-5158, www.mercurio.ca. May 18 See story, page 28. WAYSON CHOY May 22 BEYOND MULTICULTURALISM VESELKA UKRAINIAN DANCERS McPherson Playhouse McPherson Playhouse Camosun College Insight Speaker Series Dancers of all ages, performing in brilliant with award-winning Canadian author and costumes, showcase both traditional and educator. $22.50/14.50 for students, 7:30pm. modern Ukrainian choreography. 7pm, $15. 250-386-6121, www.rmts.bc.ca. 250-386-6121, www.rmts.bc.ca.

www.focusonline.ca • May 2011 23 the arts in may

▲ “EAGLE PERCH” 54 X 96 INCHES, BLU SMITH, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA “AFTER THE STORM” CORRINNE WOLCOSKI, 36 X 60, OIL ON CANVAS ▲ Throughout May May 7-21 BLU SMITH CORRINNE WOLCOSKI: AFTER THE STORM The Avenue Gallery Madrona Gallery Blu Smith completed his bachelor of fine arts at the University of Victoria in 1993. Vancouver artist Corrinne Wolcoski’s inspiration for this exhibition is based on further His mature style as an abstract painter began as an exercise to free himself from the exploration of her critically acclaimed “Inside Passage” series. This body of work technical restraints of realism and evolved into his unique voice as an artist. His early expands the scope and scale of the subject matter and brings further refinement to her influences included the abstract expressionists of the New York School. Most notable iconic seascapes. Wolcoski’s compositions are often a paradox. What appears monochro- of these artists were Willem DeKooning, Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell. Blu’s matic will consist of a wide range of colour. What appears still and contemplative will work has been shown in Florence, Italy and Las Vegas. 2184 Oak Bay Ave. 250-598-2184, develop into a symphony of motion. Opening Reception May 7, 1-4pm with artist in attendance. www.theavenuegallery.com. 606 View St, 250-380-4660, www.madronagallery.com.

“STREAM IN SHIMMERING SUN” CAROL EVANS, 30 X 12 INCHES, WC ▲ May 14- 28 HIGHLIGHTS Peninsula Gallery Known for her amazing ability to capture light and mood in her paintings, Carol Evans is one of the gifted artists featured in this group show of new paintings and sculp- tures. This treasure trove of unique works includes Mickie Acierno’s lustrous still lifes, Philip Buytendorp’s landscapes, Douglas Fisher’s striking wood carvings and Clement Kwan’s dynamic portraits amongst others. The contrasting styles of 12 different artists results in this distinctive show. 2506 Beacon Avenue, Sidney 250-655-1282 www.pengal.com. ▲ “CALYPSO II” ANNABELLE MARQUIS, 60 X 30 INCHES, MIXED MEDIA May 2-13 ANNABELLE MARQUIS West End Gallery Acclaimed Quebec artist Annabelle Marquis debuts her latest collection. Working with both representational and abstract images, her mixed media, collage-inspired canvases strike a graceful balance between fragmentation and beauty. Blending rugged edges and torn paper motifs with painterly brushwork, she is able to create a dynamic interaction of colour, form and texture. A young star on the rise, Annabelle has been impressing collectors across North America and Europe. 1203 Broad St. 250-388-0009, www.westendgalleryltd.com.

24 May 2011 • FOCUS MICHEL MAILHOT RICHARD PEPIN MARTIN BEAUPRE

KEVIN JENNE NATHALIE PROVENCHER LOUISE MARION

CAROLINA ECHEVERRIA LISE DESROSIERS MARIE-FRANCE ROULEAU Dominguez Art Gallery 2075 OTTER POINT RD. SOOKE www.travelingart.ca 250-664-7045

www.focusonline.ca • May 2011 25 the arts in may

May 26-29 FIRED UP! CONTEMPORARY WORKS IN CLAY Metchosin Community Hall FOR THEIR 27TH ANNUAL SHOW and This year the collective has gone a step sale, the 11 artists of BC’s Fired Up! collec- further by inviting the renowned Jonathan tive will combine their own artful clayworks Bancroft-Snell Gallery of London, Ontario with those of 11 guest artists from across Canada. to get involved. Formed in 1984 when their first joint exhi- The collaboration with Bancroft-Snell bition was held in the garden of Metchosin will offer visitors a rare opportunity to view potters Judi Dyelle and Robin Hopper, the an exceptional collection of 21st century collective’s annual May exhibition draws ceramic art. both loyal followers and new visitors, many Jonathan Bancroft-Snell will speak at the who travel great distances to attend. opening night reception about the important Fired Up!’s 11 core members, all estab- role the collector plays in the creation of art. lished ceramic artists, are Gordon Hutchens, Susan Delatour LePoidevin, Gary Merkel, Opening Night Gala reception, Thursday, Pat Webber, Meg Burgess, Alan Burgess, May 26, 6-9pm. The exhibition runs May Kinichi Shigeno, Cathi Jefferson, Glenys 27 to 29, 10am-4pm at the Metchosin Marshall Inman, Meira Mathison and Community Hall. Free. 250-592-8257, Marlene Bowman. www.firedup.ca.

“Seed Pod” by Gordon Hutchens “Being” by Marlene Bowman

“Wink” by Gary Merkel

26 May 2011 • FOCUS ADVERTISEMENT Focus presents:Adore Jewellery Crafting an ancient art form into symbols of love May 25-Sept 3 WILLIAM KURELEK: THE MESSENGER Art Gallery of Greater Victoria hat do Samurai swordsmiths and a talented The Manitoba-raised artist’s paintings recall a simpler and timeless past, as well as chronicle the experiences of various local jeweller named Alexander Carey have cultural groups in Canada. This is the first large-scale survey Win common? The answer is Mokume Gane, of Kurelek in 30 years. 1040 Moss St. 250-384-4171, an ancient metalworking technique used to fuse precious www.aggv.ca. metals into distinct layers to create multicoloured May 28 designs of astonishing intricacy. THE HOUR HAS COME Inspired by an appreciation for nature that took First Metropolitan Church The Linden Singers of Victoria present a spring concert of root during his Lasqueti Island upbringing,and nurtured choral music featuring Psalm and Hebrew prayer settings, by three generations of family jewellers, Carey hand- Yiddish folk songs, and music from Broadway. 7:30pm. crafts pendants, bracelets, earrings and rings that $18/$15 at Ivy’s Books, Long & McQuade, First Metropolitan Church office. Balmoral at Quadra. www.lindensingers.ca. highlight his ability to capture a little piece of the West Coast’s quiet splendour inside each of his creations. May 28-29 “Our space-aged version of this ancient art form is MT TOLMIE ART STUDIO TOUR Various Locations more precise,allowing me greater range when manip- Check out art studios in and around Mt Tolmie. ulating the layers into patterns,” says Carey, who www.artsmonth.saanich.ca. teamed up with friend Greg Matajic to invent a new, May 29 more reliable way to bond the metals.The resulting ARTISTS IN MOTION

Fairmont Empress Hotel Photo:Tony Bounsall 20 diversified artists present a special one-day show, sale Alexander Carey and silent auction. This first group exhibition for AIM is a fundraiser for Canadian Red Cross for the Japanese Relief Fund. 4-9pm. 604-378-1918, www.aimcenters.com. find Carey at work behind a workbench handed down May 29 from his late father, affording visitors a fascinating OUT OF EDEN opportunity to see exactly what happens when precious Lutheran Church of the Cross metals fall into the hands of a talented designer. Music written by women, about women, played by women. “Speaking of talent,most of what you see on this 3pm, 3787 Cedar Hill Rd. $15/$10. 250-477-6222. display was created by Cynthia Williams, whom I’m Throughout May lucky to have hired as my store manager,”says Carey, WINDOWS INTO HEAVEN Mokume Gane wedding ring by Alexander Carey pointing to a collection of intricate designs Williams The Well An exhibition of iconographic art by Alina Smolyansky. crafted onsite. Carey also features work by several 821 Fort St. 250-590-4995, www.thewholemartenterprises.com. swirl of wood grain-like colour is at once elegant other local artists, an eclectic mix of styles ranging and contemporary,with intricate patterns that become from shadowbox pendants with interchangeable Throughout May YOU BLEW IT richer with time.A perfect combination, especially images to whimsical earrings made from “upcycled” THE IMMORTAL GARDEN when it comes to just the right timeless quality for vintage Chinese tea tins. Just the sort of accessories SERENITY: THE ASIAN GARDEN engagement and wedding rings. that can really add wow factor on your wedding day! FLORA DOWN THE GARDEN PATH “Wedding and engagement rings should be able Clients looking for wedding rings bring their ideas SILENT AS GLUE to stand up to the rigours of daily life,”says Carey,who to Carey, to which he applies his own imagination EMILY CARR: ON THE EDGE OF NOWHERE continues his family’s tradition of creating high jewellery and skill to create custom rings that stand as true Art Gallery of Greater Victoria 1040 Moss St, 250-384-4101, www.aggv.ca. within an affordable price range.“My grandfather symbols of their wedding vows.“My rings are made always said people should be able to garden in their up of two metals joined together forever but still Throughout May jewellery. Like him, I want my clients to really live in uniquely different,” says Carey.“Time only exposes ART SHOW & SALE Goward House their jewellery;to scratch it up and then come in every more of the pattern, deepening the beauty. In this View the works of Goward House Painters. 2495 Arbutus once in a while for polishing.” way,I like to think they are perfect symbols of marriage.” Road 250-477-4401. Carey’s career began in his grandfather’s shop in Wedding bands and engagement rings are among Sundays in May Cape Cod, Massachusetts, producing the famous the most sentimentally valuable pieces of jewellery FOLK MUSIC “Screwball bracelet” designed by John Carey in the money can buy.They are symbols of love, commit- Norway House 1970s. After a two-year apprenticeship under his grand- ment,and an unbreakable bond between two people. May 1: Rig-a-Jig, May 8: Jay Amar, May 15: Ken Hamm, father and uncle,and training at the American Jeweller’s When crafted by the gifted hands of jeweller Alexander May 22: Tim Hus Trio, May 29: Bob Evans. Featured performers follow open stage. 1110 Hillside. 7:30pm. $5. Institute, Carey brought his talents back to Victoria, Carey, the rings people exchange on their wedding 250-475-1355, www.victoriafolkmusic.ca. opening Adore Jewellery in 2009. day become heirlooms as timeless as the sentiments June 4 The gallery-style shop outside Market Square is that brought them together. FROM CLAY TO CLASSROOMS as much a work of art as Carey’s jewellery,illustrating Da Vinci Centre just how far beyond goldsmithing his imagination Adore Jewellery A fundraiser dance to help with school projects in Tanzania. stretches. Most striking are the display cases, which Alexander Carey, jeweller Rukus performs, silent auction, video presentation, art raffles, snacks, cash bar. 7pm-1am. $50. 195 Bay St, 250-386-6121, float above massive pedestals Carey fashioned from 539 Pandora • 250-383-7722 www.rmts.bc.ca. the roots of a wind-fallen cedar tree.Most days,you’ll www.adorejewellery.ca www.focusonline.ca • May 2011 27 show & tell

Painting the sky AMANDA FARRELL-LOW Ken Faulk’s painterly gaze is often drawn above the horizon.

It’s these en plein air works that will be showcased at Bringing Home the Light, Faulks’ upcoming exhibition at Coast Collective and Mercurio galleries. Mercurio owner Kym Hill wanted to open the show at Coast Collective Gallery—which is housed in a mansion on Esquimalt Lagoon—before moving it to Mercurio for a couple of reasons. “I really want to give him some big room, because he’s going to have some large pieces. His work, you need to stand back from it a ways,” says Hill. “It’s also somewhat to do with what they’re doing out there ... [the gallery] is slightly less-known than it should be. They’ve done quite a bit to foster the en plein air work.” Hill feels Bringing Home the Light could be a breakthrough exhibi- tion for Faulks, who she’s been representing at Mercurio for about four years, since the young gallery’s early days. “He’s got a strong following, he’s got collectors, people from all over the world, but more importantly, to me, is that the local painters, of which there are reams of them, they follow him closely, which is high praise,” she says. “It’s just really great to see him treat the local land- scape in that great Canadian tradition of oil on board. It’s not the Group of Seven from long ago, it’s here and now.”

PHOTO: TONY BOUNSALL The show will feature very recent work by Faulks—mostly paintings he’s created in the past two months—some of which he’s done with pon meeting Ken Faulks, one might not immediately peg him the Al Frescoes, a loose collective of local artists who have a common as a fine artist. The gregarious, down-to-earth man, who looks interest in painting outside. While the Al Frescoes have been around Uyounger than his 40-odd years, seems more like the kind of for 17 years, Faulks has only been painting with them the past couple— guy who would be applying coats of paint to the side of a house as and he says their casual attitude is a good fit with his pragmatic style. opposed to a canvas or piece of board. But Faulks is an accomplished “I’m not into pissing contests or egos or keeping up with the Joneses, Victoria artist who works in a wide variety of mediums, from digi- I just want to be around good people,” says Faulks, adding he’s about tally-crafted abstract works to hand-drawn illustrations to en plein 60/40 in favour of painting with people as opposed to going it alone. air landscape paintings. “Definitely, if I’m painting with somebody, I might be throwing out the “It keeps me off the streets,” Faulks jokes. “It’s almost like a smart-ass lines as much as I am painting. The banter is always good.” public service.” Faulks only briefly flirted with the idea of living the blue-collar “Dallas Road Waterfront” Ken Faulks, 12 x 16 inches, oil on board life. After graduating high school, he delivered for McGill & Orme Home Health Care and loaded trucks at Canadian Tire for a couple of years before deciding he wanted to do something different. “I was going to get a job at Dockyard as a machinist because my dad worked there as a machinist, but I thought, ‘Maybe I’ll do [art] because I’ve always been doing it,’” he says. Faulks has been drawing “since I could hold a pencil” and kept up with art by taking correspondence classes throughout school, which “kept me painting when I got too interested in girls and sports.” He became a professional illustrator in 1984 (he still freelances) and took up painting en plein air—a French expression meaning “in the open air,” which is a reference to the artist working outside—a few years later as a way to get himself outside and away from his desk, where he was mostly working from photographs for his illustration work. “You know the old London Drugs 4x6s: the darks get black and the lights get white and where’s all the colour?” he says. “The eye can see so much more than the camera when it comes to contrast…all of a sudden, you’re pulling all these colours out that you wouldn’t see in the photograph.”

28 May 2011 • FOCUS SEEING RED? Calm skin down.

Rosacea typically begins as a redness or flushing on the cheeks, nose, chin or forehead that may come and go. Over time, the redness becomes more persistent, and visible blood vessels may appear. Since rosacea is progressive, if left untreated it may become especially troublesome and even disfiguring. “As a rosacea sufferer myself, I knew I had to find a better way to deal with this common and bothersome disorder,” says Shelley Rollick, “Saanich Peninsula Snow” Ken Faulks, 10 x 8 inches, oil on board founder of Glow Rescue. “I feel I have done this with the development of my Faulks’ oil-on-board en plein air works are often thick with paint, 10/10 program for rosacea.” giving rich texture to his West Coast landscapes. “At the end of the day, To look at Shelley’s skin, one would the paint is the subject, not the tree or the sky or the water,” he says. never know hers is a skin prone to blushing While he’s attracted to close-up subjects that offer perspective, his and flushing. “I have had an enormous painterly gaze is often drawn above the horizon. amount of success treating rosacea with “I like skies, definitely skies,” he says. “There’s nothing more boring this program, including my own,” says than just a blue sky, so you kind of have to raise the horizon line and Shelley. “The result is unequalled in any find something below the horizon line that’s interesting. But if other treatment regimen I have seen, there’s a really interesting sky, the horizon line goes way down and I and it is very rewarding to be able to provide an effective solution for paint the sky.” And it seems Faulks’ affinity for skies is infectious. “Ever since I’ve my clients.” seen Ken’s work, I look at skies differently,” says Hill. “Every time I see “Generally when one goes to their physician with the types of a sky, I look up and think, ‘I wonder what Ken would do with that.’ It’s concerns associated with rosacea, clients are often prescribed antibi- had a big effect, which says something to me.” otics or even accutane,” says Shelley, “There are very few safe and effective options available to physicians in the treatment of this disorder, Ken Faulks: Bringing Home the Light runs from May 19-22 at the with the list of prescription drug side effects being virtually endless.” Coast Collective Gallery, 3221 Heatherbell Road, then moves to Mercurio To find out more, call us for your very own consultation. Gallery at 602 Courtney St (250-388-5158) from May 24-June 4. There will be an opening reception from 2-4 pm, May 21 at the Coast Collective Receive 10% off your Glow Rescue product Gallery. See www.kenfaulks.com, www.coastcollective.ca, and when you “like” us on facebook. www.mercurio.ca.

Amanda Farrell-Low is a Victoria-based Glow Rescue Skin Solutions arts and culture writer. She spent five 907 Gordon Street years as a staff writer and arts editor at (off Broughton) Monday Magazine. 250.385.7546 www.glowrescue.ca

www.focusonline.ca • May 2011 29 coastlines

Local humour AMY REISWIG Rosemary Neering’s latest book proves that even—or especially—in BC, life is pretty damned funny.

hink you know BC history? Are you From the standpoint of cultural history, it’s up on the $5 million-a-year opium fascinating to see what makes it to a news- Ttrade of the 1880s, complete with paper’s front page. While some of my friends processing factory located behind today’s mock the Times Colonist for front-page features Victoria City Hall? Or how about how on, say, a dead cow washing up on the beach, Richmond’s Lulu Island got its name, or that there is something comforting in countering rogue camels once roamed Cadboro Bay, or the “if it bleeds it leads” approach, even a story that Russian anarchists ran a counterfeiting about a man breaking off a nail pulling a potato operation on Nootka Island? from his garden, as apparently made the front Rosemary Neering’s British Columbia Bizarre: page of the Chilliwack Free Press in 1911. While Stories, Whimsies, Facts, and a Few Outright some of the weird little stories in British Columbia Lies From Canada’s Wacky West Coast Bizarre are not that interesting in themselves, (TouchWood, April 2011) is a compendium it is interesting that they made their local papers of that which is curious—at times downright at all. As Neering points out in a piece on poten- cracked—about this province’s people, places tially explosive silk garments, “With no Internet and predicaments. It’s a collection of over 150 to publish urban myths, British Columbians strange facts and near fictions gleaned from had to depend on their newspapers.” newspapers across the province—stories Neering’s own attraction to these stories

Neering bumped into during her career of PHOTO: TONY BOUNSALL is partly just sheer amusement, but also because research for other writing projects; stories that Rosemary Neering each strange tale begs the more philosoph- were too good to let go of, but that never found ical question: “Where does that come from a home, till now. embedded in sly editorializing comments. The in us? What is the genesis of the strange ideas “It’s what doesn’t fit,” she explains over book as a whole recalls and fits into the tradi- people have all over this province? You tug coffee and brownies at her home near Mount tion of tall tales and the “local colour” sketches on the thread,” she tells me, “and look at Douglas Park. Indeed, where would you put of writers like Twain and Harte. She writes in what’s at the end.” a story about escaped elephants in Cranbrook the introduction: “This is not a balanced, This love of the absurd is also not at all as or Swiftwater Bill’s attempt to woo dance hall nuanced history of BC that chronicles the “superficial” as Neering’s introduction would artiste Gussie LaMore by buying her all the important events, people and trends that have us believe—indeed, it’s a genre that has eggs in Dawson? As she says in the book’s formed this region. Instead, this book is unapolo- long been a release for the steam of social pres- introduction: “Into the ‘Who’d a thunk it?’ getically superficial, a tribute to the strange, sures. Therefore, one of the interesting elements file they went, to be brought out as this book sometimes wonderful, and frequently insignif- of this book is how certain serious consider- took shape.” icant events and people…It has virtually no ations sneak up on you: you’re having a good This 230-page book, accented with whim- socially redeeming value. It makes no claim guffaw over someone getting shot in the butt sical line-drawing illustrations, is not, one to gender, race or age balance. With luck, it is and all of a sudden you realize, “Hey, wait a could say, of traditional shape, and is not meant equally unfair to everyone.” second. I’m thinking!” to be read front-to-back straight through. “What gets forgotten in official histories,” “By laughter,” Neering says, “we can escape There is no real organization to the chaotic the exuberant Neering explains, “is that people the weight around us.” Therefore, for a book content other than being simply sorted alpha- had fun!” And she is a writer who knows all of brief escapes, pick up British Columbia betically. The first chapter promises “Anarchists, about that official BC history. Neering has made Bizarre. Because despite the horrible head- Bawdy Houses, Bullets, Buttocks and Bears,” an award-winning career out of exploring and lines, as Neering says with a smile, “Life is still and the last warns of “Witches, Wolverines learning about BC. pretty damned funny.” and Want of Women.” Neering describes But despite Neering’s claim about any lack the book as “dippable,” a kind of bathroom of social value, the book has a lot to say about Facing into the wind of both reader or something you pick up when you human nature and perhaps unexpectedly also federal and provincial votes, can’t sleep. “It’s also great for anyone with a provides a window into the social and cultural writer and editor Amy short attention span,” she says—which means evolution reflected in/affected by changes in Reiswig is indeed convinced most of us, these days. journalism and editorial practice. that a healthy dose of the These short pieces—anywhere from one Neering’s stories are from the now-gone absurd is good for what paragraph to several pages—are sometimes time of independent papers, when editors were ails you. direct quotes from small-town papers, some- free to print what they liked, in the tone and times summaries in Neering’s own words and style that they chose to fit their community.

30 May 2011 • FOCUS Robert Whitaker’s cure for an epidemic ROB WIPOND Award-winning science writer comes to Victoria to discuss North America’s skyrocketing psychiatric drug use.

hy has the number of people who are sick indefinitely. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization severely disabled by mental illness in North was finding that the Western World’s record for curing WAmerica tripled in the last 20 years? Why people of mental illnesses was plummeting when measured are we experiencing a mental health epidemic of such against Third World countries that had little or no access proportions that over a thousand more of us are falling to modern psychiatric medications. ill every single day? However, something else happened around that These are the questions that launch Robert Whitaker’s same time. A clever mass-marketing campaign virtu- new book, Anatomy of an Epidemic. And the answers ally overnight turned an obscure antidepressant being he unearths turn out to be even more provocative and taken by a tiny percentage of people into a social trend, disturbing than the questions themselves. a popular icon, and a multibillion-dollar cash cow. His findings can’t be taken lightly. Whitaker is a That drug was called Prozac, and for profit-driven dogged investigative journalist, a thorough scientific multinational pharmaceutical companies, and there- researcher, and a probing thinker. His previous inves- Robert Whitaker fore the rest of the world, mental illness would never tigations into mental illness and psychiatry have received look the same. Suddenly, mental illnesses, and treat- the George Polk award for medical writing, a National Association ments for them, were big business. of Science Writers award, and a Pulitzer nomination. His exposé of the On May 17 in Victoria, Robert Whitaker will make a presenta- ragged, dubious history of our treatments for mental illnesses, Mad tion and engage in a question-and-answer session concerning these in America, was one of Discover Magazine’s Best Science Books of 2002. and other important findings revealed in Anatomy of an Epidemic, And Anatomy of an Epidemic itself recently won the award for best about the astounding spread of mental illnesses, the dangers of psychi- book of 2010 from the prestigious US-based organization, Investigative atric medications, and alternative approaches to healing serious Reporters and Editors. psychological problems. So what do Whitaker’s latest investigations reveal? Back in the 1980s, Following the presentation, there will also be discussion of the current the medical literature was filled with studies showing that psychiatric situation in BC. medications like antipsychotics and antidepressants didn’t heal chemical imbalances in the brain, but in fact created such imbalances. Essentially, Rob Wipond has been a freelance writer of magazine features, news articles, the weight of scientific evidence was exposing that, in long-term use, political commentaries, social satires, theatre and performance art for over psychiatric drugs were actually making people become sicker, and stay two decades.

Focus Magazine & South Island Health Coalition present: An Evening with Robert Whitaker A presentation by the author followed by discussion

Hosted by Rob Wipond

7pm Tuesday, May 17 St John the Divine Church Hall 925 Balmoral Road ADMISSION FREE

www.focusonline.ca • May 2011 31 focus the frontlines of cultural change Making our circles bigger ROB WIPOND

A plethora of young groups are bringing extremely diverse people together to share knowledge, ideas and perspectives. Can getting us out of our silos lead to new types of collaboration, community building and social solutions?

arrive at the Victoria Event Centre not knowing exactly what to stories about things like a master’s thesis on body scars, a proposed expect at a “PechaKucha.” I leave a couple hours later having had documentary exploring elephant-human relations, innovative container Ia great time—but still not knowing exactly what I’ve experienced. house construction, a drive to make a landscape painting out of 30,000 However, I’m becoming increasingly sure it’s part of a growing local dots, and award-winning photography of origami. Some were less than and international social movement of immense vitality, astonishing stellar “performers,” but it hardly mattered—their intriguing subject creative breadth, and intriguing political possibilities. matter and their obvious passion for it won the audience over. PechaKucha nights, I’ve discovered, are just one of a growing number Nevertheless, clarifies Samji, “The whole night is kind of the set- of unusual ways that diverse Victorians are being brought together to up for what it’s really about and what really happens...” share ideas and explore collaborative possibilities through relaxed, “It’s about creating a platform to open up dialogue between people, open processes. Some are even trying to generate new approaches to and a place where people can go to share ideas and find inspiration tackling serious social problems. and make connections,” explains Smith. “For me, and I think for At a later meeting at the Event Centre, PechaKucha co-organizer Aleya others, it feels like a massive infusion, almost like you’ve been bombarded. Samji, who’s worked in advertising for ten years, concedes, “It’s not an Like going to see a movie and then you go for a drink afterwards, easy thing to promote, because it’s really hard to explain what it is.” it’s like that, but...” “Everyone gets a giggle even trying to say it the right way,” adds “But times twelve, amped,” intervenes Samji. “The aftermath of Centre general manager Amanda Smith. it...it’s huge...” Nevertheless, thanks largely to (albeit stumbling) word-of-mouth, And indeed, after the event, the sense of wonder about the wealth all five Victoria PechaKucha nights this past year have been standing- of creativity in our community, and the vibrancy of discussions in the room only. (And for the record, it’s spoken rapidly with emphasis room, were palpable. Who knew origami could be so subversive and on the second and fourth syllables, “p-cha-k-cha,” meaning “chit chat” hilarious? Some of those elephant photos were too painful to look at! in Japanese.) Could those containers really end homelessness? What literally happens? A presenter displays exactly 20 pictures in Samji adds that our society’s growing legions of self-employed profes- a projected slideshow, and talks as those pictures change exactly every sionals have no ready-made “infrastructure” for them to advertise their 20 seconds. services. Therefore, aside from just being fantastic explosions of mental Developed in 2003 by two Tokyo architects who wanted to help fireworks, PechaKucha events also provide important networking designers share their work and ideas in a casual atmosphere but succinct opportunities. “I think that has something to do with why this partic- manner, PechaKucha caught on virally and now occurs in pubs, theatres, ular type of event is really well appreciated by those people.” lecture halls and other spaces in hundreds of cities worldwide. At And she’s right. Patricia Sims says her presentation was “enormously Victoria’s February event, I watched 12 local folk present their personal successful” at gathering “collaborators and volunteers” for her Elephants

32 May 2011 • FOCUS DESIGN SOURCE

WarehouseHOME AND GARDEN Clockwise from top left: Amanda Smith Aleya Samji Kris Constable Christopher Bowers Carol-Lynne Michaels

Never Forget documentary project. Sammie Gough of Intrepid Theatre watched Matt Salik’s slideshow of artwork, and Salik was promptly hired to design Intrepid’s UnoFest poster. Samji says her own advertising firm, which works with the CRD and the Victoria Film Festival, has profited immensely. “There’s been a huge difference in the energy and the inspiration in the work that we’ve produced since we started this, because we’ve drawn on the resources and the creative people that we’ve met through this—people who there’s just absolutely no way we would have ever known about otherwise.” Smith agrees that PechaKucha events can help break down some of the small, fragmented enclaves many of us travel in, professionally or personally. “What this does is, it makes the circle bigger and broader and sort of invites everybody in to form a bigger community.”

IdeaWave’s expanding wake Another person bringing diverse, local minds together for fun, inspi- ration and productive collaboration is Kris Constable. He’s a privacy and information security specialist by day, but by night (and frequently throughout the days, too, if you follow him on Twitter or Facebook), he’s constantly experimenting with new ways of prying open portals for community bridge-building. One of Constable’s most renowned local projects has been IdeaWave. “Most conferences you go to have a theme of some kind: environ- ment, technology, media,” says Constable. “I thought, wouldn’t it be interesting to get as many critical thinkers in a room as possible?” So he modelled IdeaWave after other conferences with widely varied topics, like TED and Toronto’s IdeaCity. However, those have speakers who are almost exclusively rich, powerful, famous, and highly expert, and cost thousands of dollars to attend. Constable wanted something 553 Hillside Ave more rooted in the community, more culturally diverse, and more affordable. So IdeaWave, he decided, would have no limits on subject (between Bridge and Rock Bay) matter, no hard rules about speaker qualifications, and would cost just 10 am - 5 pm Tues - Sat $50 for the entire two days. At this year’s IdeaWave at the Comfort Hotel, we heard ten-minute 250.721.5530 talks on topics as varied as artisan bread-making, social media’s popu- www.designsourcewarehouse.com larity amongst people with autism, redesigning how police operate, and the likelihood of life on Titan. www.focusonline.ca • May 2011 33 The presentations are always divided by ample time for people to Unique Finds! mingle, question and share, and for Constable, one break-time conver- sation at last year’s conference epitomized what IdeaWave is all about. An exclusive melange Margaret Pulton had spoken about the pain of watching her sister struggle with lymphedema following treatment for breast cancer— of hard-to-find items lymphedema is a debilitating condition that requires frequent monitoring from designers and and self-massage and affects hundreds of thousands of North Americans. She’d wondered aloud if somebody couldn’t design a wearable, elec- artists near and far. tronic massage device to do the work instead. Over lunch, Constable and others started discussing Pulton’s moving talk. A nurse next to him reinforced the dire need for such a device. • Home and Garden Then an engineering student across from Constable said he could design a prototype. Then an investor at the table said he would fund it. • Euro-country Classics The hair on his back started tingling, says Constable. “This is where • Vintage Style Décor I realized the value of IdeaWave. If you had a themed conference, if you had something on nursing, you could get the nursing perspective. • Poetic Silver If you were at an investment forum, you’d get those people. If you’re & Brass Jewelry at an engineering conference, that’s the kind of people you’re going to get, but that’s it. You don’t get the diversity. Because of having no limit • Canadian Handmade on subject matter, this is the first time you would ever have those people Leather Bags in a room together. It would, I believe, never happen otherwise.” A year later, Pulton says she’s working with a group that’s now near the patenting stage. She’d had even more motivation, she says, after a hematologist she’d bumped into at IdeaWave had told her lymphedema is also spread by mosquitoes and affects millions in tropical countries. “It was a great event,” says Pulton. “I’m so grateful to Kris for allowing me to speak at it.” For Constable, it’s just one part of a much bigger 634 Yates Street • 250-388-5364 • www.dogaboutthehouse.ca effort of reshaping our community.

Ideas that activate Another project of Constable’s involving bringing together diverse people to discuss diverse ideas is just dubbed, aptly, “Ideas Meetings.” It began running monthly several years ago at the Canadian Pacific Lawn Bowling Club, but soon went weekly. “It’s the first organization I’ve ever been involved with where people actually want to meet more often, instead of less, so that’s kind of exciting,” comments Constable. “It’s the guaranteed time in your week where the wheels are going to be spinning and you get to challenge yourself mentally; the sky’s the limit.” Anyone and everyone is encouraged to attend, as often or as little as they like, and no idea is out of scope. “The only thing that binds us all together is that we’re active minds and critical thinkers,” says Constable. “And I love that.” At these informal meetings, you might walk in to find just a few techies arguing indignantly about Shaw’s block on email port 25, or 25 people discussing the provincial government’s latest anticrime initia- tive. Most often, someone’s pet project idea is being vetted—a process that can continue off and on for months if that person’s idea gains trac- tion with others in the group. “These aren’t just people who talk about ideas,” clarifies Constable. “These are people who, when they get energized about an idea, it’s like, ‘How do I help make that happen?’” And in only a few years, for a group with no established rules of order, structure, mandate, funding or even clear common ground amongst members, it’s impressive how much they’ve indeed helped make happen in our community—and how diverse those accomplishments are. The ultimately successful initiative to save the Lawn Bowling Club itself from developers began at an Ideas Meeting.

34 May 2011 • FOCUS ADVERTISEMENT Focus on health

Give Mom a pampering, healing gift The unique concept of selling pixelated sections of the Mary Lake property online, to help raise money for the Save Mary Lake campaign to purchase the endangered Highlands gem, emerged from Ideas Meetings. oday’s moms are busier than ever,which means they have a real need to be The Victoria Makerspace, “a community-operated shared work- pampered once in a while.Cherished.Told just how special they are.“Mother’s shop,” also sprung from Ideas Meetings. For a small fee, people can TDay is one of the most important days of the year,”says Diane Regan,owner join the Makerspace, store and share tools, and get in on collective of Triangle Healing Products,an alternative health store devoted to cleansing,replen- purchases. Apart from a lathe, drill press and table saw, their Central ishing and revitalizing body and soul.“One of the best ways to tell your mother you Saanich facility has also become home to more exotic tools like a multi- truly care is to treat her to a gift that promotes good health.” material laser cutter and three-dimensional printer. “My mother was always the most special person in my life, and I can’t think of A project run by several Ideas Meetings members to bring free anyone who doesn’t appreciate their mother,” says Diane, who has devoted 40 Wi-Fi to downtown—something both the City and Chamber of years of her life to researching the best alternative healing products on the market. Commerce have long dreamed of—is expanding as it becomes known In fact her interest in natural healing stems from a childhood spent observing her to local businesses. grandmothers,‘farm doctors’ who Ideas Meetings also gave birth to the Awesome Shit Club, where 20 healed with herbs,poultices and home people donate $50 each and, after listening to pitches for everything remedies rather than medicinal drugs. from child care co-ops to “urban games” initiatives, award the pot of When Diane founded Triangle Healing $1,000 to help kick-start their favourite local project idea. It’s an infec- Products in 1990, she carried on her tiously fun exercise in crowd-source funding that recently saw Missie family’s matriarchal tradition of natural Peters use her winnings to launch the first-ever Victoria Spoken healing,bringing generations of knowl- Word Festival, and Mandy Leith receive help towards the purchase edge to her clients. of a van for the cross-Canada “We Love Documentary” awareness- The products at Triangle Healing are raising tour. remarkably diverse.There are delicious So what happens when something more controversial comes along? teas, bath and beauty products, cook Constable notes that when an idea was recently proposed to publicly books and books on wellness, crystal protest certain police abuses, early on, the discussion polarized because lamps,beautiful pendants and bracelets, some members have strong interests in civil rights, while others strongly and sleek Japanese glass water bottles support or even work in law enforcement. However, says Constable, so Mom can stay hydrated on the go. in the end, this diversity helped in the development of a consensus “For busy working moms we have elec- proposal for a creative public action that has never been done before tromagnetic frequency protectors for (it’s still under wraps, though). cell phone and computer use,”suggests “Being willing to dialogue like that is very rare in my experience,” Diane. Hand-held massagers are the observes Constable. “It’s being an activist in a productive way.” perfect remedy for the stresses your Controversial proposals may be pushed back and forth in the discus- mom may face day-to-day,as are detox- sions, but “eventually the flow is equal amongst everybody, and ifying foot spas.Diane also offers a full that’s now a force to be reckoned with.” complement of spa services so that Camosun College communications student and fellow Ideas Meetings your mom can reap the benefits of far- member Carol-Lynne Michaels points out that such a frank, construc- infrared sauna therapy and amethyst tive idea-vetting process amongst diverse people can have positive bio-mat treatments.“Many moms and impacts in the other direction, too—it can open up and change the daughters love to enjoy our pampering people engaged in the discussion. “You’re bringing an idea out onto spa services together,”says Diane.“It’s Top:Titanium non-stick cookware. the table and you’re asking people to find the holes, so that you can fill a wonderful way to spend time together, Bottom: Radiant Health Sauna them. You’re asking them to show you your weaknesses that you can’t sharing the process of healing.” see yourself,” she explains. “So I think it encourages not only intel- Moms who love to cook will delight in Diane’s wonderful array of state-of-the- lectual growth, but emotional growth.” art culinary products.There are juicers,blenders and food dehydrators,and Titanium She also believes these kinds of meetings of diverse minds can help non-stick cookware that will last her a lifetime.“Anything that helps make Mom’s precipitate broader social changes that we desperately need. That’s job easier in the kitchen will be much appreciated on Mother’s Day!”Can’t decide? why she’s been inspired to organize a TEDx Victoria for November. A gift certificate is a wonderful way to give the gift of healing,while allowing Mom the fun of a shopping spree. TED’s conspiracy of friends Moms are caregivers.That’s what they do. But Mother’s Day is their day to sit Launched in 1984 as an exclusive “Technology, Entertainment and back, relax, and be pampered.“Mothers deserve the very best we can give Design” conference of high level scientists, executives, artists and others, them,” says Diane.“You’ll find the best gifts at Triangle Healing.” From Diane and one British journalist cleverly described TED today as a “shadowy, elite her staff, Happy Mother’s Day! conference where masters of the universe converge in order to plot how to make the world a nicer, fairer, better place.” Triangle Healing Products Online TEDTalks videos from the conferences have collectively 770 Spruce Avenue,Victoria, BC garnered hundreds of millions of views and spawned hundreds of similar 250-370-1818 • www.trianglehealing.com (though usually community-oriented and much cheaper) “TEDx” conferences around the world. Triangle Healing Products, its owner,its employees do not provide medical advice or treatment.They provide information and products that you may choose after evaluating your health needs and in consultation with health professionals of your choosing. www.focusonline.ca • May 2011 35  Elegant designs Math and engineering grad turned organic farmer John Mardlin has last a lifetime been organizing TEDx Juan de Fuca for April 30, where there’ll be a strong focus on creative ideas for social change, like talks on self-gener-  Three times ated bionic energy, innovative small-scale farming techniques, and the virtues of becoming less efficient in daily tasks. And, says Mardlin, the stronger than whole purpose and point is inspiring through diversity, sharing and concrete cross-pollination. “TED especially is a very powerful brand,” says Mardlin. “So when   Semi-porous for you bring it local, it does help to bring together those diverse groups— better drainage the arts community, the tech community, the not-for-profit and socially-driven communities…It unites those very, very effectively.”  Local business He concedes that regarding TEDx events as an effort in saving using only the world “sounds idealistic”—but then, that’s the whole point. “I BC-made brick think what we are doing is kind of idealistic,” he says. “We’re realists, BC-made brick but we feel like there’s potential for change when everybody gets  Call Dallas for a together and collaborates.” Call Dallas for a Carol-Lynne Michaels, whom I bumped into at practically every free estimate event related to this article, has a similar passion for the potential of getting us all out of our ivory towers, political silos and private belief systems for such cosmological pow-wows. “We need to start talking,” she says, readily expressing her deep dissatisfaction with the dominant political systems that either polarize our discussions or disenfranchise us completely. “We need to start under- standing each other, because miscommunication is the number one cause for any kind of disruption, on a small scale all the way up to war. If you don’t understand the other person or the other group, then there’s 250.889.6655 • www.roosterbrick.com usually going to be a battle or some form of avoidance.” Indeed, that’s why Christopher Bowers, for his part, is trying to more proactively facilitate such discussions.

Your personal think tank Bowers notes that one of the most vital aspects of TEDx, PechaKucha, and IdeaWave involves the “buzz” of discussion that happens after- wards. So why not try to strengthen that? “All of those things are about giving people a platform to share,” he comments. “What we do is, we’re giving you a platform to be engaged around.” A retired teacher, Bowers manages the monthly entrepreneur and activist schmoozer Green Drinks, and runs ConversationWorks, a non- profit that brings successful local figures for school visits. He draws on these varied connections to put together small but diverse collabora- tion teams in a project he calls “What’s Gone Well Today?” Bowers has developed various techniques to help guide the dialogues along positive, practical and self-reflective channels—hence the title, which he’d like to see replace “How are you?” in our daily lexicon. But essentially, you pose an issue or problem you’re grappling with professionally or personally, and then are queried and intently listened to by people with a wide array of different backgrounds, experiences and skills. Afterwards, there are opportunities for less formalized sharing of observations, ideas and suggestions. It’s a little like a personal-growth version of an Ideas Meeting, or having your own private think-tank. “How often does it happen in life where you’re in a room and people are like, ‘How can I help you?’” comments Constable, who was in a What’s Gone Well Today group with me along with people with exper- tise in finance, public relations, golf, music, education, charitable fundraising and whales. “That’s a really powerful thing.” The experience inspires me to open up two days later at an Ideas Meeting about one of my own long-frustrated visions, building a tool

36 May 2011 • FOCUS for helping non-profits for which I don’t have sufficient technical skill. Mardlin. “It’s rooted in the belief that by getting together and talking A software developer offers to help build it for free. and working together and sharing our ideas, we can make things better.” My interview with Bowers comes back to mind: This type of opening Michaels agrees and, like Bowers, notes that true sharing, learning up and sharing with each other is built “on a principle of empathy,” and collaboration between strangers requires an “exchange of trust.” he’d suggested, and on a deep trust in our collective wisdom and So to see so many more people every day willing to do that, she says, community strength. “The answer’s often right beside you, separated “gives me a lot of hope and it gives me a lot of energy.” by a conversation.” “They say the telephone was invented on two different sides of the So naturally I can’t help but start wondering if all these diverse groups planet around the same time,” Michaels adds. “It’s something that’s uniting diverse people in diverse ways might ultimately be leading us happening naturally for everybody, and it’s really empowering...I think to some sort of political common ground…with new-found unanimity... it needs to happen more, and I want for that to happen in Victoria.”

Is this a movement? Every person, group and project mentioned in this article can be “What’s changed in the last five years that all of a sudden these things found linked through at least one of the following links: are all coming out of the woodwork?” contemplates Constable, noting www.pecha-kucha.org/night/victoria/ that like TED and PechaKucha, Ideas Meetings itself has inspired sister www.ideawave.ca/ groups in other Canadian cities and is now spreading overseas. www.ideasmeetings.org/wiki/VictoriaChapter Samji suggests that, because it’s now the norm in social media, we’ve www.awesomeshitclub.com/ all become more open and comfortable regularly encountering and www.tedxjuandefuca.com/ engaging with new people and new ideas. www.tedxvictoria.com/ Of course, it’s also difficult not to notice that many of these new groups www.conversationworks.ca/whats-gone-well-today/ are emerging to do work in areas where our increasingly negligent govern- ments are leaving vacuums: environmental sustainability, poverty reduction, Rob Wipond admits his bias—he has really enjoyed collaborative social initiatives, support for the arts, small business and getting involved with these groups. non-profit sectors etc. So are we witnessing a burgeoning societal shift, where we’re all starting to recognize the vital value of bypassing top- down structures and partisanship of any stripe to share perspectives and forge solutions together at the grassroots level? “I certainly do feel like there’s a movement going on,” declares

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www.focusonline.ca • May 2011 37 this place my dream city 38 urbanities 40 rearview mirror 42 natural relations 44 finding balance 46

A radical’s journey AAREN MADDEN With income and housing accessible for all, people in Janine Bandcroft’s dream city would be free to live their values.

t’s the late 1980s and Janine Bandcroft, a student at De Anza College in Cupertino, California, is filled with trepidation. Her History of ILatin America teacher has urged her class to engage in social change instead of just studying it, so she ventures out to a meeting of the local Communist party. But instead of braving the red menace, she feels her entire worldview shift. Sitting in a favourite Victoria café in April 2011, she remembers that day in the ’80s: “I am a product of the mainstream, dominant culture, and in northern Alberta we were all a little bit afraid the communists were going to come over the north and drink our beer and beat us at hockey,” she jokes. “I had this image of people marching in their red cloaks and hats, and I was really scared, but I went. It was in this old bookstore, and there was this African-American woman talking about how everyone has a right to health care and education, and I just thought, ‘What’s so scary about this?’ That was a turning point for me. That’s where I really got radicalized,” she shares. Today, nearing her 50th birthday, Bandcroft is the founder and coor- dinator of Victoria Street Newz, host of the radio show Winds of Change on CFUV, and tireless activist for dozens of environmental, human rights and social justice causes. Well before that fateful meeting, she was “living the life” in Vancouver working at a small accounting software start-up. PCs were just emerging onto the scene. Smart, and motivated by her family’s work ethic, she landed the dream job four years out of high school, after just a bit of office experience. “It was the glory days; we rode this wave of popu- larity. Then the company grew, and they sold it to a corporation… we [became] just a number,” she says. Disillusioned, but with enough savings to support her desire to study, Bandcroft set out for California and, eventually, that bookstore. She was there for the San Francisco earthquake in 1989 and it made her realize, “This earth is really powerful, and I am just this little thing. It

was different from that corporate cog-in-the-wheel feeling. It was PHOTO: PETE ROCKWELL more a profound awareness of the precarious situation on our planet,” Janine Bandcroft she recalls. Drawn home to Canada, in 1990 she came to Victoria and again papers will sell to consistently cover the cost of printing. It happens, immersed herself in learning and activism. During years of wide-ranging but rarely. Providing an alternative voice while contributing to a digni- study at UVic, she began (and became rather famous for) the much- fied livelihood for the vendors is her main motivation. “A lot of people valued “Left Coast Events,” a weekly emailed list of meetings, screenings, are on disability or senior pensions, and it’s not easy when your income talks and various events related to social and environmental justice. doesn’t increase with the cost of living. This helps pay the rent, but it (Though Vancouver Island Public Interest Research Group at UVic now also helps them be able to help their friends, buy Christmas presents, compiles it, Bandcroft still forwards the “Left Coast Events” list.) and have a little fun now and then.” After graduating with degrees in English and education, Bandcroft Constant immersion in weighty issues can take its spiritual toll, so recalls, “I knew there was no going back for me. Once my eyes were to supplement her own small income from Street Newz, Bandcroft has opened, I couldn’t go back to a pencil-pushing job that didn’t fulfil my a dog-walking business. Getting into the woods she loves and focusing sense of values, of wanting to make a difference somehow,” she shares. on the animals helps her stay grounded. “I feel really blessed and At a meeting of the Victoria Intercultural Association, a discussion about honoured to be able to truly live my values. I am not going to be a the lack of alternative media in the city inspired her to create Street millionaire, but that was never the goal,” she reflects. Newz in 2004. Vendors pay fifty cents for a paper and keep what Allowing others to live their values forms the basis for her dream they make, and can sell when they wish. One day, she dreams, enough city. In 2008 and 2009, she participated in the Pastors for Peace program

38 May 2011 • FOCUS WHEN PEOPLE ARE TRULY FREE, when they don’t “feel indebted to any financial institutions or political parties or ideologies and belief systems, I believe that a shift to a more just and equitable and peaceful and safe world will commence.” —Janine Bandcroft

bringing humanitarian aid to Cuba and taking back an understanding and appreciation of their ways. Quick to point out it’s far from a perfect system, she saw some ideas she would apply here. One is the guaran- teed liveable income. “Everybody gets enough—barely. It’s tough because of the economic embargo, but they get enough, and if they want to be a doctor, their education is paid for. Whatever you want to do as a kid, the whole society will support you.” Bandcroft doubts it would make people layabouts. “I don’t think people are inherently lazy. I think that happens because people get depressed because the world is such a screwed-up place. If we weren’t scrambling constantly and worrying about how we were going to pay the rent, we could really start to flourish as the creative human beings that we are,” she suggests, adding, “There is research proving that it would be much less expensive than trying to manage two or three hundred thousand homeless people a year across Canada, which is just shameful,” she notes. That’s why, hand in glove with income, Bandcroft would see a much more innovative housing strategy. She offers Portland’s Dignity Village, a self-governing, city-recognized community, as one of many approaches. Though it began as a tent city on city-owned land, it has evolved to a community of small homes built by its members in sustainable, coop- erative ways. “If people want to invest in land and property that’s fine, but not all of us want to or are able to, so we need to provide afford- able rental, cooperative, and eco-village style alternatives,” she suggests. A tall order in our profit and power-driven world. It requires major changes in thinking, starting with breaking down current structures. “When people are truly free, when they don’t feel indebted to any financial institutions or political parties or ideologies and belief systems, I believe that a shift to a more just and equitable and peaceful and safe world will commence. When people feel they’re able to liberate their imaginations, I believe they’ll be more accepting of [these ideas],” she predicts. Bandcroft knows we’ve a long way to yet towards such a vision. But she continues to strive for it. She says, “Maybe it will happen after the next disaster; maybe people will say there’s got to be a better way.” Let’s hope all it takes is more bookstores holding the odd meeting.

Having her worldviews challenged and expanded every month makes Aaren Madden feel continually honoured and blessed. Find Street Newz and links to Bandcroft’s blog and photography sites at http://web.mac.com/bandcroft. She’s also on Facebook and Twitter (envirovegan).

www.focusonline.ca • May 2011 39 urbanities Purple Garden Chinese Restaurant The future: let’s procrastinate until then GENE MILLER Voted for best “All You Can Eat” restaurant Notes on the illusion of administrative triumph in 2009 and 2010 Best in City over the random and unknowable future.

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t was a brilliant, crystalline moment. At the storey buildings are threatened by a 16-storey end of Saanich Councillor Vic Derman’s building proposed down the block. We feel it Ihour-long presentation called “The Natural like a physical threat, and the prospect of City,” recently delivered to about 75 of us in greater density within our subjectively defined a Reynolds High School auditorium, the first zone of self-interest awakens nothing short of audience question came from a woman who animal alarm. noted: “When you asked us earlier about the most important feature of a single family A FRIEND WITH NOTHING BUT MY BEST home, I wasn’t thinking ‘the back yard.’ I was interests at heart pointed out to me that for going to say ‘privacy.’” the last several months, I’ve used this space to Vic had spent much of his hour logically ankle-bite Victoria’s Mayor Dean Fortin, diss building up the case for density. It was his point the regional transit effort, muss poor, defence- that carefully planned density represents victory less Oak Bay’s hair, sneer (twice) at the US, over sprawl, that there are ecological and envi- and treat the Japanese earthquake disaster ronmental imperatives for moving away from as an opportunity for standup. a car-based culture, and that nature and ecolog- I think the likely cause is mind-rotting mould ical design can be brought more fully into spore syndrome. I just discovered a bruise- urban planning to produce an attractive arca- coloured mould bloom on my home-office dian urbanism. wall, behind some tall bookcases. It had been His interlocutor though, unhappy with this watered by a leak within a wall cavity where theoretical vaporizing, made it clear that she a cracked cast iron wastewater stack had been wanted not more density, but less. “Isn’t that weeping moisture for a very long time. what we all came here for?” she asked, putting I went to my doctor, hopeful that if the a very fine point on the paradise paradox. disease had a name, it had a cure. He asked I suppose it always goes like this. Folks in me to sit on the examining table, back to him. single-family homes are threatened by the He tapped and poked invasively for a couple possibility of nearby duplexes. Folks in 12- of minutes, then said “Ah!”

40 May 2011 • FOCUS Landscape Specialists • Creative Design • Quality Construction “What’s up, doc? Did you find the problem?” still, I’m worried about that word, “leader.” • Professional Organic “Yes. You have a screw loose. Also a tumour.” Like, does that mean we have to actually do Maintenance Tumour…and a screw loose. something more than maunder on about “We’re just delighted “Well, can you maybe grab a Phillips head Dockside Green? I hope not. with the process,and the transformation of and tighten the screw?” “Walkable neighbourhoods?” If people were our garden.” “Nope. Threads are stripped.” meant to walk around the neighbourhood, —Barbara Hintz,Gordon Head Colin Eaton “What about the tumour?” they would have been born with feet instead “You have too much irony in your system. of wheels. Victoria would be the size of a You look like Jabba the Hutt, by the way. Sitting pueblo, or an Italian hill town, or Hobbiton. 250.590.5808 in front of the computer all the time isn’t a Like, tomorrow? I have a 7 at Union Pacific www.southislandlandscaping.com lifestyle. You get any exercise?” Coffee, an 8 a.m. conference call back at “I use the bathroom a couple of times a day, the office, a 10 at Starbucks, an 11 out in and I never drive there, I always walk.” Saanich, lunch with a colleague at J&J Wonton Noodle House on Fort Street at noon. Then, Dispute resolution support WALKABILITY REMINDS ME THAT WE I promised to help a buddy move some crap for your parenting, your need to talk about the City of Victoria Official out of his basement for a dump run, and I family and your workplace. Community Plan Update, fully known as have to go dinner shopping. Plus sometime, The Official Community Plan Update: Shape I have to get to Rona in Langford to replace •MEDIATION Your Future. (And I’m Gene Miller: Napping a cupboard door handle that pulled loose PATRICIA or Dead.) from its screws. Now put “walkable” in a •DECISION I would have preferred Fight the Future sentence with any of that. LANE MAKING C. Med, LL.B or Flight From the Future or, with Telus’ indul- Walkable neighbourhoods? Dude, is your SUPPORT Lawyer*/Mediator gence, The Future is Terrifying. Or Yesterday world filled with 22-year-old yoga hotties Was Better! coming and going from the Fort/Cook self- •PARENTING 250.598.3992 Mark Hornell, are you into numerology? improvement nexus? If the answer is yes, I’ll CO-ORDINATION *denotes Law Corporation (Mark is assistant director of community plan- buy you a beer so you can tell me about it in ning with the City of Victoria) lurid detail. There are 11 letters in your name, Mark. And this village hierarchy concept? I can’t Those 11 letters have a numerological value quite figure this one out. It starts with big Introducing Gail Ritchie of 55, and your destiny number is 1, whose circles for Mayfair and Hillside Shopping Licensed Professional Esthetician characteristics are: initiating action, Centres (colloquially named town centres) • facials for pioneering, leading, independence, attain- and works its way down to something called • waxing Mother’s Day give her a ment, individuality. the “May At Moss Village.” There is some- • manicures Gift Certificate Your destiny number denotes the skilled thing wrong—some false note—with defining • pedicures executive with keen administrative abilities. shoppertunities as towns and villages. It’s too • eye-lash & brow care You have the tools to become an original person rhapsodic, charm-ified, and it fosters a synthetic • anti-aging treatments with a creative approach to problem solving, and spurious narrative. and a penchant for initiating action. You have How about this for a vision statement for A world of relaxation eclectic a good mind. On the negative side, you may the next 30 years: awaits you at... day spa at times become too optimistic, tending to Acknowledging that vision falsely augurs an scatter forces and accomplish very little. (My outcome, and that Official Community Plans 697 St Patrick Street • 250.382.4641 God, it sounds just like Victoria!) simply support the illusion of administrative In other words, you have great potential, triumph over the random and unknowable Mark, so don’t blow it, okay? Right out of future, Victoria will create fewer lofty plans the blocks, the Draft OCP vision statement and put much more focus on execution. We worries me: will more intensively invest our very limited Victoria is an urban sustainability leader resources so as to finish what we start. inspiring innovation, pride and progress towards greater ecological integrity, liveability, economic Gene Miller is the founder vitality and community resiliency as we confront of Open Space Arts the changes facing our society and planet today Centre, Monday Magazine, and for generations to come. and the Gaining Ground I mean, I understand that while this rhetoric Sustainable Urban seems written in fire if you’re staring at it from Development Summit. the cheap seats, it’s actually constructed out of papier maché and packing-crate wood; but www.focusonline.ca • May 2011 41 rearview mirror

Let there be lightkeepers DANDA HUMPHREYS Government grants another reprieve to long-time guardians of our coast.

he federal government’s recent deci- efforts, 37 of the 154 souls on board were sion not to remove staff from BC saved. However, an enraged US public demanded Tlighthouses has lightkeepers and sailors answers, and in the ensuing mayhem, Anderson everywhere breathing a sigh of relief. For and the Department authorized a new light at almost three decades, the government has Pachena Point. It was completed in 1908. maintained that, in these days of automated Closer to home, Trial Island, separated from weather readers, foghorns, and other high- Oak Bay by Enterprise Channel, has long tech navigational aids, lightkeepers are obsolete. proved a challenge for mariners. Originally But here on our rough and rugged West Coast, named for its function as a sea-trial destina- they play a crucial role. tion for British naval ships after refits at Lighthouse-keepers have been part of our Esquimalt, the island proved a trial in more history since Fisgard Light was built in 1860 ways than one. Waters rushing through the at the entrance to Esquimalt Harbour. channel caused vessels to founder. One night Eventually, more than two dozen lighthouses in 1895 during a southeast gale, two ships cast their warning beams along our coast. came to grief in those icy waters. Stories of disasters and rescues abound, The tugboat Velos battled the strong wind including a few in the first two decades of the as it struggled to pull the Pilot, fresh from 20th century that illustrate how lightkeepers delivering stone blocks for the façade of saved others’ lives while risking—and some- Victoria’s new legislative buildings, around times losing—their own. the waterfront. Near Trial Island, the captain In 1909, Department of Marine and Fisheries of the Velos decided to take shelter in Cadboro chief engineer Colonel William Anderson Bay. He pulled the Pilot into Enterprise chose the summit of Triangle Island, north- Channel, where they were destined to meet west of Cape Scott, as the site for “the ultimate their fate. Caught in the rip tide, both ships lighthouse.” It was the tallest on the BC coast— smashed and splintered on the rocks. The and the most dangerous, as its light was too cable between them snapped. The Pilot

high to penetrate through fog to the vessels DER VALK PHOTO: JASON VAN grounded on Trial Island. The Velos and several below. Fierce winds blew away everything Fisgard Light, built in 1860. of her crew were lost. that wasn’t anchored down, rocking houses Soon after, the Marine Department lobbied on their foundations and making their occu- sinking, but they could do nothing to stop Ottawa for a lighthouse, and by 1907 the Trial pants seasick. Howling gales forced lightkeepers the vessel, her 26-member crew, and the Island light was sending its beam out over the to bend double and hang on to handrails housekeeper, going to a watery grave. waters. Automated decades ago, its original set into concrete pathways as they moved It was the worst calamity in the Department’s top now stands in Bastion Square, close to the between buildings. history. Two years later, the Triangle Island Maritime Museum. In November 1918, the lighthouse tender light was abandoned. Today the historic cast- Donald Graham’s fascinating book Keepers Galiano dropped anchor off Triangle Island. iron and glass dome stands on the grounds of of the Light (Harbour Publishing, 1985) Her workboat, laden with mail and supplies, the Sooke Region Museum. tells the tale of some of the brave people who, ploughed through the heaving waters to The Pachena Point Light, 10 kilometres over the years, have served as the eyes and ears where two of the lighthouse’s crew members— down the lifesaving trail from Pachena Bay, of our coast. Some say the government’s recent an operator, and the bachelor crew’s near Bamfield, was constructed following a reversal may be an election ploy. Only time housekeeper—were waiting. Bad news awaited particularly horrific 1906 shipwreck. Almost will tell. Suffice to say the men and women one of them; the crew member’s replace- three days after leaving San Francisco, the stationed on BC’s 27 lighthouses today can ment had fallen sick, so his leave had been passenger ship Valencia, blinded by thick rest assured. Their jobs are safe…for now. cancelled. Disappointed, he turned and fog and battling a howling gale, had been trudged back up the 1,000 steps to the light- carried way off course by the strong current Danda Humphreys, who station. The workboat, with the housekeeper and smashed against the rocks northwest of grew up on England’s north- aboard, left the landing-place, and shortly the Carmanah Light. A few battered and west coast and always after, the Galiano steamed away into the eye exhausted survivors managed to make their wanted to live in a lighthouse, of a sudden, violent storm…never to be seen way along the telegraph trail to Cape Beale, has written several books again. A frantic radio message alerted the where the lightkeepers relayed news of the about Victoria’s early history. Triangle Light’s crew that the Galiano was tragedy and rallied help. Because of their www.dandahumphreys.com.

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www.focusonline.ca • May 2011 43 natural relations

Between a forest and a debt BRIONY PENN Will the Nuu-chah-nulth Nation log the ancient forests of Flores Island?

uu-chah-nulth territory, the edge of the world where Captain Cook decided Nto anchor his boat and step ashore, is back in the news again—indeed it has hardly been out of the news over the last 200 years. It has a habit of making us reconsider how the West relates to aboriginal cultures and the rich natural environment that supports their commit- ment to self-sufficiency. The deep sheltered sounds and forests on the west coast of the Island have been branded as bonanzas for two centuries. From fur traders to sealers, miners to missionaries, and loggers to fish farmers, they come from all over the world. They come to conquer but inevitably fail. They come to domesticate and the wild inevitably wins. The priests’ feral cows, Cougar Annie’s dahlias, and the Norwegians’ Atlantic salmon don’t linger long. From the “friendly” people Cook met at

Yuquot to “friendly” whales, the Nuu-chaal- BROADLAND PHOTO: DAVID nulth have captured the world’s attention, but Flores Island, Clayoquot Sound have never been captured themselves. These were also the first people to stand up against Western Canada Wilderness Committee, Sierra Amongst the environmental groups, says industrial logging at Meares Island and forge Club BC, and Natural Resources Defense Joe Foy of the Wilderness Committee, the the first alliances with the environmental move- Council) and Iisaak Forest Resources to avoid news of the road permit “put everyone in a ment. Their protests led to the largest number logging in pristine, intact areas like Flores tough position.” Foy wanted to pull out of the of arrests for civil disobedience in Canada and Island. The agreement followed on the historic agreement as his organization couldn’t support the creation of a World Biosphere Reserve. 1995 recommendations from the Clayoquot logging in these pristine areas. Now, the Nuu-chah-nulth are back in the Scientific Panel. Valerie Langer, formerly with Friends of spotlight again with news of a different sort: A lot has happened since then. In 2001, Iisaak Clayoquot and now with ForestEthics, char- their potential logging of Flores Island by Iisaak, made news with the first Tree Farm License acterizes Iisaak’s position as “between a rock the Nuu-chah-nulth-owned logging company. (TFL 57) to become Forest Stewardship Council- and a hard place.” As she observes, the debt On April 5, the Ministry of Forests issued certified. In 2005, the Central Regional First has led the First Nations to have to log in places a road permit for Iisaak Forest Resources to Nations bought out Weyerhauser (formerly that they didn’t originally want to log. She also build 2.5 kilometres of logging road. Iisaak, MacBlo), making it the first 100 percent aborig- points out that “the chiefs are taking the hit meaning “respect,” jointly created in 1998 inal-owned TFL. The last ten years have seen for all the terrible management of forests on with Macmillan Bloedel, is now fully-owned as many watershed plans following the guide- the rest of the island.” The real culprit, Langer by the five nations of the Central Region First lines of the Scientific Panel. In the last two years, suggests, is the Province, which has prioritized Nations of the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, the communities and environmental groups getting plans in place that would open up including the three from Clayoquot Sound: have been exploring possibilities of developing logging in Clayoquot Sound’s intact old-growth Ahousaht, who have a reserve on Flores; the a conservation financing package to enable full areas rather than responding to science and Tla-o-qui-aht, who are based around Meares conservation of intact areas and improvement facilitating conservation along with commu- Island; and the Hesquiaht in northern Clayoquot of logging practices in valleys that are already nity well-being. “The Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations and Toquaht and Ucluelet to the south. partially logged. Everything from carbon credits are leading in this regard, and government is Though once again testifying to the Nuu- to ecotourism is being discussed. dragging its heels,” she maintains. chah-nulth’s indomitable spirit of self- However, loans incurred in buying control Groups like Ecotrust, under Neil Hughes, determination, the road permit has rattled a of the TFLs from Weyerhauser and Interfor have been working with the Central Region memorandum of understanding forged in have put lots of pressure on Iisaak to log in First Nations for over two years to model 1999 between five environmental groups order to service that debt—hence the Flores different land use scenarios other than busi- (Greenpeace International, Greenpeace Canada, Island plan. ness-as-usual cut blocks, but have been hampered

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www.focusonline.ca • May 2011 45 finding balance

A dream of sagacity in Ottawa TRUDY DUIVENVOORDEN MITIC David Suzuki knows that Canadians need not choose between the environment and the economy.

n late March came the news on quality of life. His contention that we would once again get that, “we are all interconnected Ito ride the $300 million elec- and interdependent with nature” tion carousel—an exercise in would be a guiding principle stepping right up to go round throughout his term. and round and likely end up where I think he would work to enhance we started. our food security by supporting Also happening that week was diversified domestic agriculture the 75th birthday of David Suzuki, and championing stricter regula- an eminent scientist and envi- tions for keeping toxins out of food ronmentalist with a knack for and personal products. No more connecting with people and gender-bending chemicals in speaking in plain language. For cosmetics nor artificial dyes in food, decades he’s been collaborating especially not in foods typically with many groups—including eaten by children. those with disparate interests Guiding the country through and priorities—to find compre- such an all-encompassing transi- hensive and realistic long-term tion would be a nail biter for any solutions for complex problems. politician, but Suzuki would have Just last year his foundation joined a few advantages over the current with forestry companies and lot in Ottawa: He knows what needs other environmental groups to to be done without, as the old adage seal the Canadian Boreal Forest goes, throwing the baby out with Agreement, an unprecedented the bathwater. He seems to prefer pact between unlikely allies that respectful collaboration to aggres- will help preserve northern forests sive discord. He knows the value while developing a sustainable of intelligent colleagues and seems forestry industry. comfortable around them, so he ILLUSTRATION: APRIL CAVERHILL ILLUSTRATION: Imagine, I thought to myself, would likely not rule his side of the what Canada might be like with David Suzuki as prime minister. Imagine House with an iron fist. He seems neither punitive nor paranoid, so what could be accomplished for Canadians by gathering improbable some cooperation with the Opposition—who are also elected by partners around the table to collaborate on solutions for non-partisan Canadian voters—would not be out of the question. His love for Canada priorities. His website and previous work suggest that the climate would is without question. remain his top concern, but also that he would tackle its inherent chal- He’s not vindictive; if he was, he would never have surmounted the lenges holistically and in tandem with other urgencies, including the gross injustice of the expropriation of his family’s property and their economy. Far from simply throwing the old economic order out on its forced internment in BC’s interior during the Second World War. ear, he would support the phasing-in of new, sustainable industries and He would work for the future, not just for the next four years in enterprises so the workforce could transition from old to new jobs. office. And I’m betting he wouldn’t call his team the Suzuki Government. The ruinous falsehood that Canadians must choose between the envi- Ah, it’s all just fantasy on my part. David Suzuki is not a young man. ronment and the economy would finally be laid to rest. Why would he want the burden and power of being prime minister? Suzuki gives every indication that he would stop subsidizing the coal, Still, I can hope that someday someone with both vision and courage oil and gas industries that currently receive about $1.4 billion annu- will bring a new sagacity to Ottawa. In the meantime, it’ll be business ally, and funnel the savings into the development of technology for as usual back up on the hill. harvesting alternate energy. True, that would drive gas and electricity prices up in the interim, but in the long run we’d draw far less from the Trudy Duivenvoorden Mitic is a Master Gardener and pump and power grid than we have to buy now. That would mean both writer. An revised edition of one of her earlier books, savings in our pocket and cleaner air, land and water for our children Pier 21: The Gateway that Changed Canada, will be and their children. released by Nimbus Publishing later this year. If Suzuki was prime minister, he would bring to Ottawa an in-depth understanding of how health, well-being, a clean environment, protected ecosystems, meaningful work, and user-friendly communities all impact

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