***Mar 2006 Focus pg 1-32 - Focus Magazine

FOCUSVictoria’s monthly magazine of people, ideas and culture July/August 2013 $3.95PM 40051145

contentsJuly/August 2013 VOL. 25 NO. 104 30 344 CRD: GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER AND HOLD A REFERENDUMHealthy democracy is more critical than secondary sewage treatment.Leslie Campbell10 AT A GLANCE• Is Gorge swimming safe?• Illicit drug users host their own college• Curiouser and curiouserRob Wipond, Simon Nattrass12 FOX TO FINALIZE RULES FOR HENHOUSE?With questions about her own conduct still unanswered, is the City managerthe best person to approve a Code of Conduct for her staff?David Broadland14 A BRIEF HISTORY OF ORCA AND PEOPLEA recent symposium of whale researchers examined the progress we’vemade in understanding these once-reviled creatures.Briony Penn16 DECOLONIZING OURSELVESFrom dishonouring treaties to fostering inauthentic relationships,colonialism hurts us all.Simon Nattrass18 FESTIVALSArtful ways to build community.Chris Creighton-Kelly30 THEATRE SKAM’S 18-YEAR ROAD TRIPA one-night stand led to an unexpectedly long journey,including that night in the Volaré. Damn right.Joe Wiebe32 EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORYRenee Nault draws viewers into a vivid, dreamlike world.Aaren Madden34 POETRY FOR THE EARTH, FROM VICTORIAFriday night poetry gatherings have birthed a book reflecting life in the whole.Amy Reiswig36 MEET YOUR DOCTOR’S GENEROUS FRIENDPharmaceutical companies have paid billions of dollars in fines in the USfor giving bribes and kickbacks to doctors. Are their drug salesrepresentatives behaving any differently in Victoria?Rob Wipond42 DOWN THE DRAINCan Victorians afford—literally—to let the CRD build a sewagetreatment facility that’s based on outmoded thinking?Gene Miller46 THE BIZZARO WORLD OF GNPOur standard measurement of economic successis at odds with most things we truly cherish.Trudy Duivenvoorden MiticJuly/August 2013 • www.focusonline.caeditor’s letter 4readers’ views 6at a glance 10talk of the town 12culture talks 18the arts in summer 20curtain call 30palette 32coastlines 34focus 36urbanities 42finding balance 46ON THE COVER“River” by Renee Nault, watercolourand ink on paper. See Aaren Madden’sprofile of Nault on page 32.FOR ALL WHO CAREabout PLANTS,HEALING and the PLANETaromatic flavourful teas, high-qualityessential oils for your scented pleasures,top-quality herbs & tinctures foryour health & well-beingSELF-HEAL HERBSCelebrating 37 years1106 Blanshard St.tel: 250-383-1913 fax: 250-383-3098best prices mail order availableEXPERIENCED STAFF• R.N. • aromatherapists • herbalists• consultations available3

editor’s letterCRD: Get your shit together and hold a referendumLESLIE CAMPBELLHealthy democracy is more critical than secondary sewage treatment.Local AND Organic since 1997Join the Bulk Buying Groupto order cases of ORGANICOkanagan fruit direct fromthe farmer.To order, follow the links atwww.shareorganics.bc.caor call 250.595.6729The CRD has spent $50 million towardsplanning the area’s liquid waste treatmentfacilities, and the most obviousthing they have to show for it so far is a distrustful,angry public. Perhaps it’s time for an intervention—inthe form of direct democracy.I attended a couple of the recent open housesthe CRD hosted about the Biosolids EnergyCentre component of the plan. CRD bureaucratswere out in force, explaining the prosand cons of the Hartland vs Viewfield sites.So were citizens from Esquimalt and VictoriaWest who feel victimized by the possibility ofa large sewage plant in the midst of their familyfriendlyneighbourhood. Councillor ShellieGudgeon described the situation as “an issueof social justice.”Yet the Hartland site poses other issues,including those incurred by sewage making a36-kilometer round trip through pipelines.The “choice” between two highly problematicsites for biosolids treatment within thelarger plan involving a massive liquid wasteplant at the entrance to Victoria’s harbour,with a $783 million price tag, is causing thoseof us who’ve long been in favour of sewagetreatment to demand a change of course.On the same evening (June 24) that over200 protesters marched from Victoria West tothe open house at Burnside Gorge CommunityCentre, Esquimalt council unanimously calledEditor: Leslie Campbell Publisher: David BroadlandAssociate Editor: Rob WipondSales: Bonnie Light, Rosalinde ComptonADVERTISING & SUBSCRIPTIONS250-388-7231 Email focuspublish@shaw.caEDITORIAL INQUIRIES and letters to the editorfocusedit@shaw.caWEBSITE www.focusonline.caMAIL Box 5310, Victoria, V8R 6S4SUBSCRIPTIONS(Tax included):$31.50/year (12 editions)$52.50/2 years (24 editions)Copyright © 2013. No portion of this publication may bereproduced in whole or in part without written permissionof the publisher. The views expressed herein are not necessarilythose of the publisher of Focus Magazine.Canadian Publications Mail Product Sales AgreementNo. 40051145for Denise Blackwell to resign as chair of theCRD’s sewage committee and as vice-chair ofthe CRD. They also agreed to proceed to publichearings (July 8-10) to consider the CRD’sapplication to rezone land at McLoughlin Pointto allow for the liquid waste treatment plant.Will these open houses and hearings makea difference—or is it all just elaborate windowdressing—faux consultation? Have decisionsalready been made? Will all those survey sheetsand letters and presentations to the CRD carryany weight? Many doubt it. But citizens arenot giving up, and they are a force to be reckonedwith. At the open houses I met manyresidents who have bloomed into activists andsewage treatment researchers. Their wordsand numbers should make a difference.Most of those I spoke with at recent eventsare not (as Blackwell has suggested) opposedto sewage treatment. They just don’t like theplan as it stands.Esquimalt resident Carole Witter, in a recentpresentation to the CRD’s sewage treatmentcommittee, spoke of the wrong-headed decisionsthat have been made on this file. Shenoted the CRD’s disregard of its own peerreviewedreports indicating that McLoughlinPoint was too small and that liquid and solidwaste treatment should be located on the samesite. Like many others she condemned theCRD for not embracing the waste-to-energysystems that are the new global standard. Shetermed “inexcusable” its funding of a $50,000PR campaign but not a $20,000 cost-benefitanalysis. She used the word “bullying” todescribe the CRD’s approach to Esquimaltaround zoning.Later, she told me, “While communities arebeing pitted against each other arguing aboutwhere to put this monstrosity, people are losingsight of the fact that the type of plan is theproblem. I am lobbying that the province pausethis plan and go back…and investigate integratedresource management in a meaningfuland transparent way.”Lobbying the province is definitely onestrategy for citizens, and local MLAs will likelybe onside. Andrew Weaver has advocated fora delay till 2020 (from the current implementationdeadline of 2016) so that “best-practice”examples from Europe can be studied. As hehas written, “the proposed solution appears4 July/August 2013 • FOCUS

Family LawLAWYERfor 30 yearsCitizens protest the CRD’s sewage treatment planrushed and constrained to meet completely artificial timing deadlinesput in place by politicians and government bureaucrats. Thequestion is not if we need sewage treatment but rather if there is somethingthat can be done better given a little more time.”I agree with Witter and Weaver, and Focus has run articles over theyears in support of treatment. The precautionary principle alone meanswe need to stop dumping sewage into the sea. But like so manyothers, I have no confidence in the CRD’s plan or its $783 million pricetag. (Name one recent infrastructure project that hasn’t gone over budget.)GENERALLY IF A REGIONAL DISTRICT WANTS TO BORROWa lot of money, it needs to hold a referendum. Unfortunately, in 2007the BC Liberal (Campbell) government amended the rules around referendain the Local Government Act to state: “Elector approval is notrequired if the liability is to be incurred for the purpose of…implementing…awaste management plan approved by the minister…and the inspectorof municipalities approves the proposed liability.”Allowing the CRD to avoid a referendum, even if well-intentioned,has made a mockery of democratic process. The CRD can go throughthe motions of consultation knowing full well it gets to make thefinal decision without approval from citizens. If, on the other hand,the Liberals had left citizens the automatic right to a referendum, theCRD would have had a real incentive to come up with a much betterplan, one based on sincere and thorough citizen participation.But it’s not too late to do things democratically. Perhaps with someprompting (a web petition, maybe), the CRD would agree to voluntarilyput their treatment plan to a referendum.I would vote against their current plan. The clincher for me is thatthe CRD’s plan will not remove petrochemicals (largely from stormwaterdrains), pharmaceuticals, fire retardant and other contaminants, sothere’s actually little environmental benefit from the proposed $783-million megaproject. As Andrew Weaver has said, “The solution doesn’tmatch the problem.” At least with an integrated resource managementapproach (such as the one the CRD rejected), costs for smaller, localizedplants are incurred over time, as are revenues from waste recovery(producing heat, electricity and potable water)—and toxins don’t flowinto the ocean.I think the CRD owes all taxpayers a vote on its final proposal.If the referendum fails? Well, some resignations will be in order. Andthen we will need to design a plan—through genuine public consultation—thata majority of citizens will endorse.Leslie Campbell is the editor of Focus. She congratulatesRob Wipond on winning a Western MagazineAward for his November feature in Focus (see page11). Wishing all Focus readers a wonderful summer.See you in September!MEDIATOR andARBITRATORunder the newFamily Law Act“A better way toget things done”William Murphy-Dyson, B.A., LL.B.BARRISTER AND SOLICITOR3rd Floor, Burnes House, 26 Bastion Square, Victoria250-388-4457 barristerbill@coxtaylor.caSUMMER SALE20-80% off storewideBEST OF BOTHWORLDSIMPORTS AND DESIGN2713 QUADRA (AT HILLSIDE)250.386.8325WWW.BESTOFBOTHWORLDSIMPORTS.COMPhoto by Rob Destrubewww.focusonline.ca • July/August 20135

DISCOVERY ISLANDS LODGEQuadra Island’s Kayak InnDiscover affordable backcountry comfortat our truly-green kayaker’s inn nearQuadra’s best sea kayaking!• Friendly, oceanfront B&B• Guest kitchen & sauna• Parks, lakes & hiking trailswww.Discovery-Islands-Lodge.comreaders’ viewsClean tech, collaboration and civilityIt’s easy for Andrew Weaver to take a swipe at both the Liberalsand the voting public by suggesting that in the recent election theLNG proposal was “a convenient myth, a carrot to attract voters.”But does the Green Party have anything better to offer?With global competition at hand, LNG is a collapsing market,according to Andrew Weaver. But can his “clean tech” BC industriescompete against markets—after all, there will be others withlower costs?Were BC voters taken in by the Liberal message of natural gas, jobsand prosperity? Was it a “pipe dream” that prevailed at the polls—or was it simply optimism? In a world of uncontrollable populationgrowth, how compatible is a static position such as economic sustainability?When in human history has there ever been economicsustainability? How will an economic model of non-growth feed aworld population that is projected to increase from its current levelof some 7 billion to perhaps 10 billion by 2050?Aren’t we hard-wired to look forward, to risk, to improvement,to more and better, however difficult or unlikely? After all, we’relooking at colonizing Mars, and outer space mineral exploration.Isn’t this who we are? Isn’t that what the election result was all about?Brian NimeroskiGlobal psychiatric war hits homeThank you for Rob Wipond’s article about the Diagnostic andStatistical Manual of Mental Disorders. He’s right—this mental health“bible” has profound power and a critical understanding about itsrisks is sorely lacking. As someone who worked in BC’s child andyouth mental health system, I saw firsthand how the DSM is usedand abused. Misdiagnosis is common and, therefore, so is misguidedtreatment resulting in the long-term use of therapies and medicationsthat are ineffective and harmful. The most common example I sawwas the misdiagnosis of the effects of trauma, abuse and neglectand developmental/learning disabilities such as ADHD, anxietyand depression. The symptoms can be similar but, when the DSMis used, it is far more likely for the latter disorders to be diagnosedand for medication to be prescribed. This was particularly concerningin the cases of children at risk or in foster care who rarely have anyoneto advocate on their behalf. It is tragic to see that our society seemsfar more prepared to medicate these children rather than invest intrauma-informed care or the educational supports to meet their needs.Manuela BizzottoThe pharmacist of filmAs a long-time fan of Movie Monday, it’s great to see Bruce Saundersget the credit he deserves. I’ve attended a number of the outstandingfilms mentioned in Rob Wipond’s article and, as someone who workswith people with mental health issues, I have frequently encouragedthe people I work with to attend Bruce’s movies.I would like to point out, however, that it was through my contactsin the Japanese taiko community, that I was able to bring Inclusion—the movie about developmentally disabled drummers from Nagasaki—toCanada and screen it as part of Friends of Music Society’s “MusicMovie Wednesday” program that runs in partnership with MovieMonday. Friends of Music Society deserves to be acknowledged fortheir role in the Canadian premiere of Inclusion and for initiating thecollaboration with Uminari Taiko.Jacob Derksen, Uminari Taiko6 July/August 2013 • FOCUS

Too many decibels, too few quiet momentsThe article in June’s Focus on noise is spoton. One of the biggest culprits is sirens. Livingin Oak Bay it seems the fire department isintent on proving that. I cannot fathom whysirens are needed in the wee hours of themorning when there is nary a vehicle on thestreets. And as they often travel in processionwhy do all vehicles need to use sirens? On arecent weekend trip to Seattle I heard onlytwo sirens, although that city has a lot of othernoise—mainly a constant hum of traffic.Ralph BurnsJobs, jobs, jobs—and otherexaggerationsI wish to commend Focus for its excellentreporting on last year’s CRD ad campaignfor the beleaguered sewage treatment project.Many of the CRD’s claims, including that of10,000 jobs during construction, simply don’thold up to basic scrutiny.The story behind the story of the advertisementsis also very interesting.Denise Savoie stepped down from her seaton August 31, 2012 which created the needfor a by-election. The writ for the by-electionwas issued on October 21, 2012 and theelection ran until November 26, 2012. TheseCRD ads began to appear in local newspapersduring the last week of October in themiddle of the by-election and weren’t pulleduntil November 5, 2012.Our group was instrumental in gettingthose ads pulled by the CRD after we initiatedan online letter writing campaign thatbegan on November 2. By November 5, afterreceiving hundreds of emails, the ads werepulled by former CRD Chair Geoff Young.It was clearly the right thing to do but howdid these ads get authorized in the first place?Who has taken the responsibility for that?What was the purpose of these ads? To date,we have heard little to nothing.What is more telling is that the ads promisedan insert, which was to appear on November14, 2012, which has never seen the light ofday. This was the same day that the CRD wasto vote on the “commission bylaw” (nowpassed), which handed control of their sewageproject over to an unelected body of experts.The optics of this ad campaign remainawful and yet the CRD continues to struggleto engage the community in a more meaningfulway than simply feeding it glossy imagesannotated with their opinion emphasizingonly the project’s positives as they see it.Richard AtwellGENERAL CONTRACTING CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT CHARACTER RENOVATIONDavid Dare250-883-5763roadsend.caTara PankhurstVictoria born and raisedAre you thinking of buying or selling?I listen, I work hard, and I get results.Let me work for you!250.384.8124tarapankhurst@shaw.cawww.glennandtara.comWorld-famous biologistRUPERT SHELDRAKEand sound-healing pioneerJILL PURSEpresent an exploration ofthe power of Body, Voice & MindSheldrake will speak on his new bookScience Set FreeFriday July 12, 7 – 9pm, $20Canadian Memorial United Church1825 West 16th Ave, VancouverSheldrake & Purse will also be leading workshopsat Hollyhock in Julyearthliteracies@gmail.com250-220-4601 • www.earthliteracies.orgwww.focusonline.ca • July/August 2013 7

Living Your Active Lifestyle?Imagine Pain Free!Innovative Laser Treatments forAchilles Tendinitis, Ankle Sprains, Neuromas,Plantar Fasciitis, Post-Op Swelling/Pain and Shin Splints.Covered by most Extended Health PlansDr Gregg Congdon & Dr Bill MirchoffDoctors of Podiatric Medicine350 - 1641 Hillside Ave • 250-592-0224Learn more at: www.ftdocvictoria.comor www.drgreggcongdon.comreaders’ viewsThe thin air of bonus densityThe idea of bonus density or the return of benefits to a city was taboo,if not illegal, back in the ’70s. I remember the city solicitor at that time,Jacob deVilliers, continually advising the planning department that arezoning application be considered on the basis of land use and not onwhat benefits the applicant was offering or the City requiring.Of course, the City is stone broke and is looking at any means tofill their coffers, even if irrational thinking is involved. Perhapsthey have finally noticed that Stew Young started selling rezoningover a decade ago and now they want a piece of the pie.Ian PhillipsCry my beloved cityOur magnificent little city is in peril. The core of this wonderfulGreater Victoria Regional District is showing signs of rot.Victoria, with its small population of 83,000 largely modest-incomecitizens and fragile business community, is fast being overwhelmedby huge financial undertakings, undertakings far exceeding thepopulation’s financial capability. Nearly 60 percent of households arerenters; well over 90 percent of the business community are tenants—and they are showing signs of trouble.The city I love, the city that has given us so much, needs capable leadership.It needs a well-informed mayor and City manager to meet thenatural challenges of City governance.When I was mayor we asked the then City manager to resign andpersuaded the City’s financial director to take over as City manager.This necessary reorganization was undertaken by the unanimous voteof council after much discussion.At present, there appears to be no recognition of the challenges beforethe City. More and more capital expenditures are blindly being undertaken:a $40 million bridge that now has an estimated cost of $100million. Hotel travel lodges for the homeless—millions more. RunawayCity staff numbers and salaries are disconcerting. And the bottomlesspit of a billion-dollar sewage system we can’t possibly afford. But thereis more, much more: millions on park beautification; on advertisingincluding an ad for a development manager and another ad for “meetingthe mayor.” The folly continues.I had the honour of being elected to five terms of office—ten yearsof service. Our council faced many challenges. All of the members ofthe council of the day had the perception and the courage to meetthe problems confronting the management of the City.The new City manager at that time advised council of the financiallimitations of the core city. For example, the beautiful Lower Causewayin front of the Empress Hotel was built by the City only when the BCpremier persuaded his treasury board to provide the funds. Anotherexample was the Royal Theatre, bought by the City for $270,000 tosave it from demolition and to use as an affordable performing artscentre. The City manager recommended the purchase as city taxpayerscould not afford the millions for a new facility.In my experience, problems must be faced and prudently dealt with;now the City manager, as a first step, should go. Perhaps the City’sfinancial director should again be considered as a replacement to changethe course before the ship goes on the rocks. Cities and even states aregoing bankrupt through imprudent government. It is urgent that weas a community demand action.Peter PollenSend letters to focusedit@shaw.ca. More letters at www.focusonline.ca8 July/August 2013 • FOCUS

Focus presents: Dr. Deanna Geddo, DDSADVERTISEMENTHonouring the whole person through holistic dentistryHolistic dentist Dr. DeannaGeddo approaches each ofher patients with thefollowing question in mind: “Howcan I truly serve this person, givingthem something precious, restoringtheir health and natural beauty?”The loving kindness she practicesshows up in everything from thecomfy waiting room where herbaltea is served, a yoga/meditationroom for patients who want to practicerelaxation techniques, consultingwith patients about their music preferencesduring treatment, and thelavender-scented hot towels appliedat the end of a treatment.Dr. Geddo’s deep knowledge ofdentistry and her appreciation ofpatients as whole persons exemplifiesher kind-hearted, gentleapproach to dentistry. Holisticdentistry, explains Dr. Geddo, takesinto account the biological aspectsof a person, along with their valuesand spiritual, emotional, and psychologicalaspects.Her many clients obviouslyapprove. Young people think she’scool, seniors feel nurtured, andall feel respected as individuals.Sensitive patients benefit from herempathy and coaching in relaxationmethods, and no longer fear goingto the dentist. Twenty-five-year-oldKelsey Carter writes that “She hasnot just helped my teeth, she hashelped me smile. She has been suchan inspiration…She truly cares aboutyour health and you as a person. She has made sucha difference to my whole life.”Dr. Geddo offers a full range of dentistry services,including amalgam removal (she has specialized equipmentonsite); metal-free crowns, bridges and dentures;and aesthetic work.Regarding the latter, Dr. Geddo stresses that eachsmile is unique. “I want to dispel the myth that if youbeautify your teeth you will have Hollywood’s versionof a perfect smile. The most beautiful smiles are theones developed from what the person already lookslike, minor imperfections included. There are diverseforms of beauty,” says Dr. Geddo, who has a backgroundin the arts.She urges her patients to bring in a photo of themselvesas a young person, smiling. She explains thatover time, not only do teeth themselves get dull orwww.focusonline.ca • July/August 2013“Holistic dentistry takes into account the biologicalaspects of a person, along with their values andspiritual, emotional, and psychological aspects.”—Dr. Deanna Geddoworn down, but that the whole bite can change, reducingthe harmony of facial features. “Sometimes the backteeth need to be replaced or built up to restore theheight of the face; this will often also transform theposition of front teeth and therefore the smile.”Veneers are another technology that Dr. Geddo usesto enhance her patients’ smiles. Like a sculptor, Dr.Geddo can create veneers that look naturally beautiful,avoiding the assembly-line look. Often she’ll dowhat’s called a “chairside veneer,” a transitional onethat can last for a couple of years, but which allowsfor modifications before opting for a permanentlybonded veneer that’s an exact replica of the transitionalone. Chairside veneers are considerably lesscostly and do not harm your teeth. Besides resultingin whiter, more even teeth, veneers can also enhanceappearance by lifting lip lines. Says Dr. Geddo, “Wellcraftedveneers can make you look 10-15 years younger.”Patient Dorothee Friese, a patient who showed Dr.Geddo a photo of herself at age 17, is thrilled with hertransformation: “My smile is dazzling, with a uniformityof colour, yet still retaining the character of smilethat I originally had…but the best change is that Ihave the confidence of my youth back.”Dr. Geddo feels honoured to have helped transformmany patients’ lives through helping them feelgood about their smile. “It can be a very healing experience,”she explains.Some people hate toopen their mouth, letalone smile, and theythink there’s nothingthat can be done. Theirconfidence diminishes.Yet modern technologyand a gentle, informedapproach can workwonders. Even denturewearers can be helped.Often, for instance,as we age, gums andbones in the jaw changeso that dentures nolonger fit properly. Dr.Sensitive patients benefitGeddo can create a newset of dentures that from Dr Geddo’s empathytransforms the face. She and relaxation methods,also notes that “Manyand no longer fear goingolder dentures don’tcapture the spirit of the to the dentist.person—they are toostandard, too phoney.”That’s why with older patients, she likes to work withold photos. Tears of joy well up in senior patients’ eyeswhen they “recognize” the original expression oftheir smile. One lady told Dr. Geddo that she once againfeels like the young war bride she was in the photo shebrought and that she kisses her husband’s picture everynight with her new teeth.Perhaps the ultimate compliment was from a patientwho used to be terrified of dentists, yet now is so happythat she told the fellow she was dating in Seattle thatshe wouldn’t leave Victoria to get married because herdentist is here.Dr. Geddo believes a visit to the dentist should bea pleasurable and healing experience. Call her todayto arrange a consultation.Dr. Deanna Geddo, DDS • 250-389-0669Holistic Dental Office And Healing Centre404 - 645 Fort St (across from the Bay Centre)doctor_dg@shaw.cawww.integrateddentalstudio.ca9

at a glanceIs Gorge swimming safe?The data is being processedLAST YEAR WE THREW COLD WATER on the Gorge Swimfest byreporting that only fecal bacteria safety levels were being tested. Whatabout the industrial pollutants in the sediment, or flowing in throughsewer outfalls? We discovered that no one was testing if those toxinswere getting into swimming areas.However, the Capital Regional District and Vancouver Island HealthAuthority have begun collaborating on broader testing.“We have done more extensive and comprehensive water qualitytesting both in the fall of 2011 and the summer of 2012,” says theCRD’s Supervisor of Stormwater, Harbours and Watersheds Program,Dale Green.The CRD isn’t examining the sediment, but has begun testing themain Gorge waterway during dry and wet seasons for heavy metalsand other chemical contaminants, as well as for water quality parameterssuch as nitrogen and phosphorous levels. “We’re just trying toget a handle on what the water quality is in the harbours,” says Green.“We’re looking at the system as a whole, to just understand if and wherecontamination is in the water.”A CRD report is due out next year. “We’re currently processing allthat data,” says Green. “But it’s been given to VIHA for their review.”VIHA’s supervisor of environmental health officers, Erwin Dyck,has not completed his review but, he says, “If areas or chemicals ofconcern are identified, then we can certainly get more informationrelated to just what the risks of those chemicals might be.”Unfortunately, there are no guidelines in Canada establishing thelevels of chemical contaminants that are safe for swimming. “We haveour medical health officer and others that we can use to bounce theinformation off of, to see whether there’s anything that needs to bedone to alert the public,” says Dyck.—Rob WipondIllicit drug users host their own collegeElders’ stories illustrate challengesMISCONCEPTIONS ABOUND when it comes to active illicit drugusers in our community. Police, Block Watch programs, and neighbourhoodassociations repeating the not-in-my-backyard mantra too oftenencourage us to view addicts as people to be feared and avoided.In early June, I was one of the few people outside Victoria’s streetcommunity to be invited to the second annual Convergence of PeopleWho Use Illicit Drugs. The day-long event is the culmination of aprogram called Street College, organized by and for members of thestreet community in partnership with AIDS Vancouver Island andthe Society of Living Illicit Drug Users.During the Street College program, members of Victoria’s communityof illicit drug users design and carry out a curriculum for personaldevelopment. The program reflects the needs of those who organizeit—each year, participants may develop skills or work to address issuesof street survival, personal struggle, or institutional barriers.In a workshop entitled Elders on the Street, as attendees discussedhow Victoria’s streets have changed in the past 15 years, I heard firsthandwhere the criminalization of drug users has led. Participants agreed(unanimously) that a dramatic increase in police presence downtownhas matched an increase in disorder and violence in what was once acoordinated drug trade. “As a teen on the streets,” remembered oneparticipant, “I used to talk to a cop maybe once a week. Now I getjacked up once or twice a day.”Another theme in the Elders workshop was the steady decline in thequality of street drugs. One participant mentioned having used crackfor several years, only to discover after a visit to the doctor that he hadnone of the drug in his system. While this may not seem like a pivotalissue, for experienced users who know their limit, unpredictable drugscan easily mean the difference between life and death.For the most part, even when the topic matter was somber, spiritsremained high. A notable exception was the workshop on accessinghealth care. Nearly everyone had stories of hospitals refusing to helpdrug users or administering the wrong treatment after assuming that anill person was overdosing or just looking for a fix. Several participantsrecalled being asked to sign Do Not Resuscitate orders while under theinfluence and unable to understand the form. One man even had a doctorrefuse to tell him the meaning of the word “resuscitate.”There are few reliable statistics, but with as many as 2000 injectiondrug users in Victoria, the community of illicit drug users in the CapitalRegion easily numbers in the thousands. Despite discrimination, violence,and personal struggle, the members of this community whom I metthat day were warm, caring, and most of all, possessed by a tremendouswill to survive.—Simon NattrassCuriouser and curiouserRuling on BC Police Chiefs contradictory and confusingIN MAY, Acting Deputy Registrar of Lobbyists Jay Fedorak issued adecision that the BC Association of Chiefs of Police (BCACP) andMunicipal Chiefs of Police (BCAMCP) do not need to register as politicallobby groups under BC’s Lobbyists Registration Act. Unfortunately,rather than providing clarity, Fedorak’s reasoning has merely fuelledquestions swirling around the secretive activities of our police chiefs.Deputy Registrar of Lobbyists Mary Carlson launched an investigationof the two police chief associations in October after I reported myquestions about the associations to her (Focus, November 2012,May 2013). The associations were claiming to be “private groups”exempt from BC’s freedom of information laws covering public bodies.However, I asked, if the associations are actually private groups, aren’tthey legally required to be registered and tracked as lobby groups, sincethey do a lot of political lobbying? (Police chief associations in otherprovinces are registered lobby groups in their provinces.) One wayor another, I reasoned, our police chief associations have to be accountableto some laws covering either public or private entities, surely?Carlson was actively investigating the case for months. However,Carlson suddenly went on leave. Fedorak took over in April and quicklyissued a surprising—and surprisingly brief—decision.Fedorak didn’t grapple with any of the actual substantive issues ofthe case. Only a single item of evidence was cited in his analysis—aletter of defense from the BCACP President. Fedorak wrote that heagreed with the BCACP President that “when police chiefs areparticipating in [the BCACP and BCAMCP], they are not ceasing toact as federal and local government employees or police chiefs… [Theyare working] on behalf of their respective local governments or theRCMP.” Basically, Fedorak concluded that these associations are simplycomprised of police chiefs performing their normal public duties as10 July/August 2013 • FOCUS

Focus presents: Victoria HospiceADVERTISEMENTNo gift is too smallpublic servants for public bodies, and therefore are not required to beregistered as lobby groups.Okay…except this is a strange conclusion for a number of reasons.Fedorak did not even address the fact that both associations havecontinued claiming the exact opposite to Focus and to the Office ofthe Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC); that is, the policechiefs have continued claiming to us that they are “private” groups notsubject to public freedom of information laws. Fedorak also did notaddress the fact that the BCACP as of January became a registered nonprofitsociety, and have long had their own independent budget anda non-government employee. And Fedorak also did not address thefact that the OIPC in September made the determination that theBCACP and BCAMCP “are not a public body.”And all of this is even morepeculiar considering Fedorak’sregular job is OIPC AssistantCommissioner. He was appointedtemporarily to the Office of theRegistrar of Lobbyist’s byElizabeth Denham, who technicallyoversees both independentoffices in her role as both Registrarof Lobbyists and InformationAnother award for RobOn June 22, Focus AssociateEditor Rob Wipond won theWestern Magazine Award inthe Science, Technology andMedicine category for “The CaseFor Electroshocking Mia,” whichappeared in the November2012 Focus. Wipond was alsoshort-listed for two NationalMagazine Awards this year.and Privacy Commissioner. SoFedorak surely knew that theOIPC had previously concludedthat the BCACP and BCACP arenot public bodies, even as he wasconcluding in his role as the ActingDeputy Registrar of Lobbyiststhat the associations essentiallyare public bodies.BC Civil Liberties Associationpolicy director Micheal Vonncomments, “You can’t be applesin this basket and oranges in thisbasket. You are either a public, or private, entity. Because all citizens’rights in relation to you depend on this distinction…Transparency andaccountability issues hinge on this.”Would Vonn call the decision of the Office of the Registrar of Lobbyist’sconfusing, then? “Confusing is a fair characterization, but I thinkyou want to go a little farther than that,” she answers. “We have a decisionfrom another body [the OIPC] that comes to a completelycontradictory conclusion. Not a different conclusion. Contradictory…Thisdoes not square. We need an umpire here to call this one, and we don’thave it at the moment.”Interestingly, after a copy of a final communique with me about thecase was emailed out to various parties, the Lobbyist Registrar’s contractedlawyer on the case, Frank Falzon, chose “reply to all” apparentlyaccidentally. “I’m sure you’ll be hearing more on this issue,” Falzonwrote to Fedorak and another Registrar staff member.Hmm, so apparently even the Registrar’s own lawyer doesn’t believethe case is as cut and dried as Fedorak’s decision made out?I hope Mr Falzon is right; we at Focus would like to take all theoutstanding questions about these police chief associations to a judicialreview. Any lawyer out there who can offer pro-bono help?—Rob Wipondwww.focusonline.ca • July/August 2013Every gift makes a difference and no gift is too small,” says Natasha Benn,Victoria Hospice’s new Planned Giving Officer. The Victoria native brings awealth of experience to her new role at Hospice. She not only managed thePlanned Giving program at the University of Victoria for the past six years, but priorto that Natasha worked as a paralegal specializing in the area of wills and estateswith a local law firm for over 13 years.Planned Giving is not something new at Hospice, but having one person dedicatedto it is. “First and foremost, what I do is all about relationship building,”says Natasha. “I feel it is extremelyimportant to get to know a donorand the reasons behind why theyhave chosen to support VictoriaHospice. Victoria Hospice is aunique and special place, andpeople who support us havebeen affected in some way bythe services that we provide, notonly to the patient who is facingdeath, but also ongoing supportfor the family and friends whoare grieving and dealing withthe loss of a loved one.”Natasha describes a varietyof options available to donorswho wish to include Hospice intheir estate plans. For instance,a bequest gift made in a will, ora gift of life insurance, designationof an RRSP or a RRIF,gifts-in-kind such as artwork orNatasha Bennother personal items, gifts ofstocks and bonds, or even a gift of a house, are some of the ways in which youcan leave your legacy to Victoria Hospice. Part of Natasha’s role as Planned Givingofficer is estate administration, so that when a donor passes away and VictoriaHospice has been named as a beneficiary in a will or other type of arrangement, sheworks with the lawyer, executor or family to ensure that the gift is received and usedthe way the donor intended it to be used.One recent planned giving donor had been a Hospice volunteer since 1988,working in the Hospice Rooftop Garden and volunteering for many special fundraisingevents over the years. Described in her obituary as a tireless volunteer, thisretired nurse not only gave her time consistently to Hospice and other charities, butshe would also show up with treats and goodies for the Hospice unit. When shedied last year, it turned out that she had named Hospice as one of the beneficiariesin her will. Natasha said this volunteer “not only made a significant impactduring her lifetime with all she did for the community, but continues to do so afterher death by leaving a planned gift to support Hospice.”A planned gift is generally the biggest gift you will make—usually far more thanyou could donate during your lifetime. By leaving a legacy to Victoria Hospice, youcan make a significant impact to the future of Victoria Hospice and help ensure thatwe continue to provide exceptional care for our families, friends and neighboursin the community. To learn how you can make a difference, contact Natasha. Shewill be pleased to talk with you.Victoria HospiceNatasha’s direct number: 250-519-1743Give online at www.VictoriaHospice.orgNatasha.Benn@victoriahospice.org11PHOTO: TONY BOUNSALL

talkof thetownDavid Broadland12 Briony Penn14 Simon Nattrass16uch delicious irony: In late March a group of 12 Victoria citizens,including a former mayor, petitioned City councillors to hold aninquiry into the conduct of City Manager Gail Stephens arounda report she gave shortly before the last civic election. Their requestwas openly supported by councillors Geoff Young and Lisa Helps, whocalled for Stephens to provide a written explanation of her conduct.Then, at the very same council meeting in April at which Stephenswas expected to explain herself (behind closed doors), councillors werepresented with a report by KPMG, the City’s financial auditor, thatincluded a recommendation that City Hall develop a “Code of Conduct”for its staff. And now more irony: In late June, councillors received—without so much as a single comment or question from any of them—astaff report noting that such a code was “in the process of being finalizedand approved by the City Manager.”As you may recall, the citizens group wanted to know why Stephenshad apparently misrepresented the financial state of the Johnson StreetBridge Project before the last civic election. Documents obtained by thegroup through an FOI showed Stephens had been advised in a memowritten by senior staff in the City’s finance department that $5.2 millionin known costs had not been included in any public accounting of theproject’s budget. In spite of that advice, Stephens went on to report tocouncillors and the public—45 days before an election—that the projectwas on budget. Documents obtained by FOI show that two days afterthe election, the estimated cost of the project had climbed by $11 million.The appropriateness of Stephens finalizing and approving a Codeof Conduct for City of Victoria staff could well be a matter of publicconcern, especially for those 12 citizens who petitioned councillors foran inquiry into her conduct. It will be interesting to see what she approves.The conflicts that could arise can be predicted, to some degree, byconsidering the City of Vancouver’s Code of Conduct, first introducedthere in 2008 and amended in 2011.For example, Vancouver’s Code of Conduct states, “The City Manager,General Managers and their equivalents shall not engage in any publicPolitical Activity other than voting in an election.” Vancouver’s definitionof “Political Activity” includes “carrying on any activity in supportof or in opposition to a candidate before or during an election period.”How will Stephens handle this issue? Let’s consider the conflictinvolved in her taking on the establishment of an effective code ofconduct around the issue of “political activity” by looking at her ownconduct before the last civic election. She publicly reported that acontroversial infrastructure project was on budget. She coupled thatwith the announcement of a grant from the federal government andconcluded the City would not have to borrow as heavily for the projectas had previously been expected. Her report provided support to MayorFortin’s political position in relation to the bridge project. That positionwas: We have made a good decision and everything is going betterthan planned; we won’t have to borrow as heavily for this project aswe thought, which will allow us to look after other needs.If Stephens’ report had been strictly factual, nobody would havesuggested it had been political. But the 12 citizens found evidence thatFox to finalize rules for henhouse?DAVID BROADLANDWith questions about her own conduct still unanswered, is the City manager the best person to approve a Code of Conduct for her staff?SStephens’ report was not based on all the facts available to her. In herdefence, Stephens has said that at the time she made her report, herstaff were still gathering facts. But if they were still gathering facts, whydidn’t her report say so?One possible answer to that question is that Stephens actedpolitically. Her untrue report provided support to a candidate, orcandidates, in the subsequent election. If she had been the City Managerof Vancouver, her activity arguably would have contravened hergoverning Code of Conduct. So how will she handle the issue of“political activity” in a Victoria Code of Conduct? Will she provideadequate safeguards against City managers engaging in politicalactivity? Or will she protect the kind of political involvement herown administration apparently practices?The question of whether Stephens is the most appropriate personto be overseeing development of a Code of Conduct for City employeesbecomes more compelling considering the recent release of a recordsought by Focus through an FOI request.After we reported in our April edition on Stephens’ apparent misrepresentationof the facts before the last election, Stephens hiredlawyer Joe Arvay who demanded that we retract our story. Arvay, ina letter copied to City councillors, claimed, “...Ms Stephens was advisedthat some of the estimated costs had actually been reduced, based onchanges to the cost of materials and that such cost-savings would offsetany of the added costs set out in the memo. There was no reason forMs Stephens to doubt the accuracy of the advice that she had receivedin September that the project was on budget.”Was Arvay’s letter to Focus really a message to City councillors thatStephens had evidence that would support her claim, but because ofimpending legal action against Focus, he couldn’t provide it to them?After requesting that Stephens provide us with any record that wouldsupport her claim, and having received no response, Focus filed an FOIrequest for the written record that would back up Stephens’ claim. Inearly June the City responded to that FOI stating that “a staff searchfor records held in the City Manager’s office...has resulted in no responsiverecords.” Sheryl Masters, the manager of the City’s FOI office,explained the absence of a record this way: “I am advised that the CityManager regularly receives verbal information and advice and she hasconfirmed this is the circumstance in relation to this matter.”Stephens didn’t respond to a recent request from Focus for specificdetails on the advice she was given that led her to report the project wason budget.The verbal advice Stephens was given appears to be what a lawyerwould call “hearsay,” and would be inadmissible in a court of law. DidStephens provide that hearsay evidence to Victoria City councillors?Did they accept it? If so, why? The rules around closed council meetingsconveniently allow these questions to go publicly unanswered.Similarly, Stephens’ leadership in producing a Code of Conduct foremployees will raise an eyebrow or two if it includes in its key principlesany commitment to “Accountability.” On that subject the Vancouvercode states: “Council officials, staff and advisory body members are12 July/August 2013 • FOCUS

THE QUESTION of whether Stephens is the mostappropriate person to be overseeing developmentof a Code of Conduct for City employees becomesmore compelling considering the recent release of arecord sought by Focus through an FOI request.obligated to answer for a responsibility that has been entrusted to them.They are responsible for the decisions that they make. This responsibilityincludes acts of commission and acts of omission. In turn, decisionmaking processes must be transparent and subject to public scrutiny;and proper records are kept and audit trails in place.”Stephens’ administration has a highly unusual record on the issueof accountability. Assistant Information and Privacy Commissioner JayFedorak recently confirmed to me that Stephens’ administration is theonly municipal government in the 20-year history of BC’s Freedomof Information and Protection of Privacy Act to apply for a Section 43authorization against a journalist—not to mention a group of three journalists“and anyone acting on their behalf.” Section 43 is a provisionin FIPPA that allows a public body to take a break from its legal obligationto provide access to public records. In the City’s case, it could haveblocked access for a year or more to the record that showed Stephensapparently ignored her finance department’s assessment of unaccountedbridge project costs. Fedorak said that previous to the City’s Section 43application, the only other attempt against a journalist was by a “policeforce” in 2003. (Business in Vancouver’s Bob Mackin was Sectioned43ed by BC Pavillion Corporation in February 2013.)When I mentioned to Fedorak that it had taken the Office of theInformation and Privacy Commissioner 45 days before any of the peoplenamed in the Section 43 application were notified, Fedorak said, “Ithink what happened there is the investigator had been working on[the City of Victoria] for some time and hadn’t realized you hadn’t beeninformed. It was very unfortunate.” But the delay wasn’t material tothe outcome, Fedorak said, because “we were working on the City.”Fedorak described to me how OIPC handles such applications and said,“We tend to work with the party that is not on the right side of the law.”He made it clear, in this case, the party “not on the right side of thelaw” had been the City of Victoria. Fedorak said the City would havebeen advised by an OIPC investigator that should its application go toan adjudication and an order, it would have little chance of success.Even while Stephens’ administration was spending thousands oftaxpayer dollars trying to evade accountability, it misled councillorsabout the real implications of its application, and failed to inform themof the advice OIPC had provided—that they were on a fool’s quest.Stephens’ administration withdrew its application hours before an adjudicationprocess was to begin. A subsequent FOI showed the Cityhad prepared no submission for OIPC in support of its application.Stephens’ public resumé now lists a dismal historic attack on bothmedia access to public records and the basic principle of governmentaccountability. With questions about her apparent misrepresentationof the financial state of a major infrastructure project before a civicelection still publicly unanswered, it’s a measure of how effective MayorFortin and his council are at protecting the public interest that theywould sit passively on the sidelines while Stephens finalizes and approvesa Code of Conduct for City employees.David Broadland is the publisher of Focus.SLEEP CHESTGreat small space solution • No installation requiredIncludes storage for pillows & bedding • Easy to operateComfy Queen-size memory foam mattressAVAILABLE AT BOTH FINE RETAILERSmodern living• • •Mon-Sat 10-5:30 Sun 12-5Mon-Sat 9:30-5:30 Fri 9:30-7 Sun 12-51630 Store St758 Cloverdale Ave250.360.1238250.384.5263www.modernlivingcanada.ca www.standardfurnituregroup.cawww.focusonline.ca • July/August 201313

s a child in the 1930s my mother sawa rare pod of what she called “blackfish”from her rowboat in Haro Straitand was terrified. The conventional wisdomof colonial society then was that they were“killer” whales, rejected by the whalers fornot being oily enough and shot indiscriminatelyas ruthless killers.By 1955 there was still nothing that coulddispel the aura of fear around these marinemammals. And fear unleashed brutality: Amachine gun was mounted on Quadra Islandnear Ripple Rock, ready to shoot the killersas they passed by. Coincidently, that sameyear, Murray Newman, fresh from a doctoratein ichthyology at UBC’s zoology department,was hired as the first director of the VancouverAquarium, at the time hardly more than aseries of fish tanks.That same year, zoologist Ian McTaggartCowan, head of UBC’s zoology department,set up a marine station at East Point on SaturnaIsland to teach his students marine biology.He was also starting the first CBC televisionnature show, forerunner to The Nature ofThings, and was filming from the beaches ofSaturna the first TV footage of such marvelsas hooded nudibranchs and plankton with hisnew invention of a television camera mountedon a microscope.East Point happens to be on the main migrationroute for the southern resident orcasfollowing the Chinook, and the resident podshad been swimming by fairly predictably overthe years. So when Newman sought Cowan’sadvice on where to get an orca specimen—for a skeleton and a sculpture by artist SamBurich for the aquarium—Cowan suggestedEast Point.In 1964 plans were hatched to kill a whaleand a harpoon was set up at East Point. Aftermonths of lying in wait, Burich and Joe Bauer,the fisherman hired to harpoon the whale,managed to injure a young male on the firstshot they made. They chose not to kill himafter two adult orcas helped the wounded babyto the surface. Instead, it was towed across thestrait to a corner of a flooded drydock in NorthVancouver. Overnight the obviously intelligentmammal—named “Moby Doll” in a publiccontest—changed the way people thoughtabout orca, starting the world-wide phenomenaof whale watching and research.A brief history of orca and peopleBRIONY PENNThis spring, Saturna Island hosted a symposiumto celebrate 50 years of orca research inBC with three generations of scientists represented:from Newman, now well into his 90s,to Peter Ross, the latest casualty of Prime MinisterHarper’s cutbacks to the scientific community.The representatives of each generation havemade enormous international contributionsto conservation and the health of our oceans.It was a spectacular event to honour everythingthat is great about the coast, our scientificcommunity and the values of coastal peoplewho spend time observing marine life.At the symposium, the story of Moby Doll’scapture was told by Murray Newman andPatrick McGeer. McGeer, still practicing as aneurological researcher, had got involvedinitially just to do a post mortem on the brain,but ended up in charge of treating his woundsand figuring out what to feed him. Zoologistsfrom Woods Hole Oceanographic Institutecame to record vocalizations. Newman spokeof the emotional bonding after witnessing ananimal capable of a language, social organizationand social intelligence—connecting inan unprecedented way with the 20,000 peoplewho came to see him in the three months hesurvived, including Prime Minister Trudeau.The era of orcas in marine aquariums waslaunched and spread around the world. BobWright had seen Moby Doll, which led to hisopening Victoria’s Sealand. Newman observedthat in that era, “the live animals proved moreimportant than the dead animals” in generatingan appreciation for ocean life. Duringthat time, the last whaling stations were closed;the shooting of orcas was stopped; McTaggartCowan became Canada’s advisor to theInternational Whaling commission and providedan emphasis on conservation; and FarleyMowat wrote A Whale for the Killing.Just as Newman had pioneered the conceptof whale aquariums, it was the next generationof aquarium scientists, like John Ford,who pioneered the subsequent era of watchingorca in the wild. Ford, at age nine, had beenone of the onlookers when Moby had beenbrought in and it ignited his interest in marinelife. Having observed that captivity was untenablefor these highly social, migratory animals,and a poor substitute for observing them inthe wild, he worked with Michael Biggs, anothergraduate of the UBC zoology department.talk of the townA recent symposium of whale researchers examined the progress we’ve made in understanding these once-reviled creatures.AUnder Cowan’s directorship, researcherswere encouraged in the recognition of individualanimals as a way of understanding behavior.Cowan had pioneered this type of work withwolves and Biggs developed the system ofobserving distinctive characteristics of individualorcas through vocalizations and physicalmarkings. He started the work of separatingout the resident fish-eating pods, with theircharacteristic dialects, from the silent marinemammal-eatingtransients—now called Biggswhales. David Ellis followed in this traditionand built up the extensive photo ID programwith which every whale-watching tour is equippedto point out members of J, K and L pods.Ford told the symposium audience howwe now can identify entire lineages of thedifferent resident pods all the way to Alaska.We know matriarchs can live as long as 80 to90 years and that as many as four generationsof her clan will stay with her. We also know thatover 75 percent of their diet is Chinook salmon—which relies on herring—and that maintaininghealthy food supplies in the oceans is the keyto their survival. When Chinook decline, asthey did in the late ’70s and ’90s, so do our residentorca, while the rise in harbour seal populationshas corresponded with a rise in Biggs whalesightings, who are now more commonly seenin the Salish Sea than the residents. We also nowknow that there is a third race of orca, theoffshores, seen off the coast, who are primarilyshark eaters, and that their sightings are increasing.Ford suggested that whale watchers, actingrespectfully, are not a big problem for orca. Asa federal Fisheries and Ocean’s director ofcetacean research, he wasn’t at liberty to saywhat the real threats were, so that was left toKen Balcomb of the Centre for Whale Researchon San Juan Island. Balcomb has been doingwhale censuses since 1976. The main threatson his list are open net fish farms which releaseviruses that kill wild salmon; dams and hydroprojects which reduce salmon populations;overfishing; and hatcheries that diminish thegenetic diversity of wild salmon stocks.Lance Barret-Lennard, who studies the variabilityof the cultures of orca, told the symposiumhow these different cultures are critically relianton the matriarchs to transmit behaviours,whether it is what to eat, how to recognizethreats or how to prevent inbreeding. Thisfact presents a conservation challenge as to14 July/August 2013 • FOCUS

Early orca researchers with Moby Dollhow to protect not only habitat, but the matriarchswho guide their pods through it.Finally, Peter Ross had some good news,despite a gloomy prognosis for governmentsupport. Although orca in our waters are themost contaminated animals on Earth, from thepossible 100,000 chemicals released into theSalish Sea, there are signs that some of the bigpoisons are declining. PCBs banned in 1977are starting to show signs of diminishing in thelipid content of fat in orca. Dioxins are goingdown and much of that is due to controls onpulp mill effluent. Fire surfactants, or PBDEs,are due to be banned next year. These chemicalsare hormone mimickers, which have aprofound effect on reproduction.None of these scientists are going to acceptthe recent dismantling of environmental legislationfrom Ottawa without a fight, especiallyin light of news that the resident orca populationhas declined to 82, the lowest in more thana decade. The parting words from Ross werethat we ignore toxicity of the ocean at our peril,as well as that of orca. He will continue to mentorothers and lobby for political action. Ironically,it was Pat McGeer, a Liberal and Socred provincialpolitician for 24 years, who made thestrongest call to action, not just for the orca,but for the Chinook and herring. He was secondedby Pat Carney, a Conservative senator responsiblefor championing the protection of the sitewhere Moby Doll was captured—East Pointlighthouse. One year from now marks the 50thanniversary of Moby’s capture, so Saturna mightwell become the place where another internationaltipping point is reached: when politicalconservatives realize that the conservation ofthe oceans is in their interests too.Briony Penn, PhD is currently working on a biographyof Ian McTaggart Cowan.www.focusonline.ca • July/August 201315

In late May, a crowd of several hundredpeople gathered to watch as membersof the Tsawout, WSÁNEĆ, andSonghees people reclaimed the traditionalname of PKOLS for what has beencalled Mount Douglas. The mood wasboth celebratory and somber. Speakersat the event drew upon the current swellof support for indigenous peoples acrossCanada, but throughout the day conversationinevitably returned to the forgottenhistory of the mountain. Over 150 yearsearlier, Sir James Douglas signed a treatywith indigenous peoples on the site ofthe day’s celebration. The broken promiseof that treaty—that colonists were notto interfere with local clans’ lands orway of life—was to become the themeof a century and a half of colonizationon the South Island.Many of us are willing to accept thatthe version of history we heard in gradeschool is false. Today, historians willconfirm that the legend of the HudsonBay Company’s conquest of the “untamed,unoccupied wilderness” is at best a mythand at worst an outright denial of theviolence of colonialism.Some of us have taken the next logical stepfrom admitting our history to recognizing thatit continues to shape the present. In the loggingof the Juan De Fuca trail, in attempts to opencoal mines in the Comox Valley, in pipelinesand gold mines and fracking in traditionalterritories, we see relationships play out justas they did 150 years ago.While the most dramatic modern examplesof colonization are to be found in territorialrelations, anthropologist and former UVicprofessor Marc Pinkoski says colonial mentalitygoes far deeper than the use of land. “In myview, colonialism is much greater than simplyadministering other people’s territories. It’s apolitic that permits not just the acquisition ofother people’s land but the acquisition of otherpeople’s ways of life, to be subsumed and dominatedby another force.”To colonize, in short, is to force someoneelse to be like you—a process which Pinkoskisays is central to understanding indigenoussettlerrelations. “When we ask why indigenouspeople don’t want to go to school, don’t wantDecolonizing ourselvesSIMON NATTRASSFrom dishonouring treaties to fostering inauthentic relationships, colonialism hurts us all.PHOTO: PETE ROCKWELLTsawout hereditary Chief WEC’KINEM (Eric Pelkey) at PKOLSto live in a city, don’t want to give up theirtraditional way of life, we’re demanding thatthey behave like us.”For Taiaiake Alfred, a member of the Mohawknation and professor of Indigenous Governanceand Political Science at UVic, colonialism beginswith denial of access to the land. For Alfred,removal from the land severs a connectionthat is central to indigenous culture. “Theother aspect is that you have been redefined,you’ve been forced to take on the identity andthe way of life that suits the colonizing peoplerather than one that means anything or is inany way healthy and productive for you.”Over time, the unique identities of indigenouspeoples dissolve into the broader culture,says Alfred. “Your identity and your being isshaped to the extent that as a colonized subjectyou have very little sense of yourself.”In 1969, Pierre Trudeau introduced the quintessentialexample of this drive towardassimilation. The Statement of the Governmenton Indian Policy, colloquially known as TheWhite Paper, was created in response to a reporttalk of the towndescribing indigenous peoples as “citizensminus,” and sought to integratethose peoples as Canadian citizens. Amongthe recommendations—all of which wererejected by several associations of indigenousleaders—were the extinguishmentof Indian Status and the termination ofall existing treaties. These and otherrecommendations prompted Cree leaderHarold Cardinal to describe the documentas “a thinly disguised programmeof extermination through assimilation.”While the goal of the White Paper wasostensibly to address inequality, its implementationwould instead have codifiedthe extermination of indigenous cultures.According to Pinkoski, this contradictionbetween goal and result is inevitablewhen working within a colonial frameof mind. For non-indigenous people,“what it means [to operate from a colonialperspective] is that we can’t see thispolitical relation of demanding that otherpeople capitulate to us.”These invisible relationships, saysPinkoski, illustrate the extent of colonization’simpact on our own society.“Colonialism is how we live our livesright now, and it’s not just hurting indigenouspeoples. It ensures that non-indigenous peoplecan’t act in another way.”THIS SPRING, at a “Decolonization Teachin”at the University of Victoria, participantsattempted to answer the question: If we don’twant colonization, what do we want? It becameclear that these conversations were treadingnew ground. While begun in earnest, discussionsoon became mired in the inevitablecomplexity that results from trying to boilany complex social structure down into itscomponent parts.For Pinkoski, what’s clear is that there is nopredetermined solution. Instead, he says, “whatI can try to do is construct my own relationshipsin ways that I know don’t demand thatothers be like me or force me to be like them.”Anthropologist Michael Asch has spent thepast several years studying early Canadiantreaties, which he says are a blueprint for whatthose relationships could be. Early numberedtreaties such as Treaty 4 and Treaty 6, says16 July/August 2013 • FOCUS

Focus presents: Rooster Interlocking BrickADVERTISEMENT“[COLONIALISM IS] a politic thatpermits not just the acquisition ofother people’s land but the acquisitionof other people’s ways of life,to be subsumed and dominated byanother force.” —Marc PinkoskiAsch, contain promises to honour Indigenousland and culture which still hold true today.“We have to believe strongly enough that thetreaties are our legitimacy, so that if you or Ior Harper became prime minister we wouldbe as nervous about dishonouring these treatiesas we would about denying freedom of speech.”While Asch finds promise in the early treaties,neither he nor anyone else interviewed forthis article places the responsibility of decolonizationin the hands of government, eachemphasizing interpersonal rather than institutionalrelationships. According to WSÁNEĆmember Kevin Paul, who has spent most ofhis life learning his people’s language andhistory, “The government’s tactic toward nativepeople will always be forced assimilation untilthey see what we have to offer them as equalto what they have to offer us.”For Paul, one of the relationships that mustbe pursued is between indigenous peoples andtheir traditional land and culture. “Decolonizationis redeveloping an understanding, a belief in,a trust in, and seeing the beauty in the old ways.”Beneath many of the recent events here inVictoria—from the symbolic reclaiming ofPKOLS to marches related to Idle No More—lies a yearning for something beyond thesolutions offered by generations of Ministersand administrators. During our interview,Kevin Paul said to me, “There’s nothing peoplewant more these days than authenticity”—and perhaps that’s it. Perhaps we already knowdeep down that what we’re told about ourselvesand our history isn’t true, and that what worksfor you or me or the Canadian Governmentdoesn’t have to work for everyone. Perhaps anon-colonial relationship is simply an authenticone; one where we recognize that neither wenor anyone else is always right or ever perfect,and from there seek out the best in one another.Simon Nattrass is a Victoria-basedwriter who focuses on radical politicsin BC.www.focusonline.ca • July/August 2013Interlocking brick speaks for itself. It is three timesthe strength of concrete, it lasts a lifetime, it beautifies,it never cracks and is unaffected by roots, andit is one of the oldest trades on the planet—Romanroads are still around!” Rooster Interlocking Brickowner Dallas Ruud speaks with the enthusiasm andconfidence of knowing his company installs a qualityproduct that homeowners love for how it complementsthe beauty of their property at the same time as itenhances the value of their home.Dallas compares changing your home’s asphaltor cement driveway and pathways to interlockingbricks, to replacing melamine with granite countertopsin your kitchen. The change is a dramatic one, andalways for the better. He says that with all of the stylesavailable, homeowners can feel confident and comfortablechoosing to go with brick. He points out thatinstalling interlocking brick can bring a change inlifestyle, as for instance a beautiful new patio inviteshomeowners to spend more time outdoors entertainingfriends and family.Homeowner Gerard Price is one of Rooster’s happycustomers. In short, he says, “Dallas delivered on time,on budget and to our expectations.” Gerard had chosento go with brick over asphalt to help ground the appearanceof his new house, to offer a more interesting lookaround the curves of his property, and because heknew that the bricks would offer a natural irrigationsystem around the Garry Oak trees on his property.While Gerard initially hired Rooster to install an interlockingbrickwork driveway and pathways around hisnew home on the multilevel three-quarter-acre lot, inthe end he got much more.Dallas had planned to liaise with a landscaper tobest showcase the multilevel property, but insteadDallas suggested that he do the landscaping as well,so that he could coordinate the entire job. The outcome?“The timeless beauty of interlocking brickDallas Ruud with the Prices’ new interlocking brick driveway.Gerard was very pleased. “Dallas has an artistic eye.He looked at our property and he had a vision. Hesaw it in 3D and then he explained it to us. The bestpart is that what he delivered is exactly what hedescribed to us.”These days “locally sourced” and “green practices”are important to businesses and customers alike.Rooster gets full marks for both. The company obtainsits bricks from Abbotsford Concrete Products, wherediamond blades are used to cut the wide array of stylesand colours of available brick. And, there is no wasteon the project. Any cut pieces of brick are grounddown and recycled.Environmentally, the bricks offer a natural drainagesystem. Dallas explains, “Unlike asphalt or concrete,brick is semi-porous; the sand in the joints lets thewater soak into the ground below.” If tenacious rootsdo manage to heave the ground, the bricks can belifted and reassembled, and owners are not leftwith an unsightly patch of new asphalt or concrete.“The Rooster team works together to deliver thebest possible product,” says Dallas with justifiablepride. The crew is efficient, and does not leave the siteuntil the job is complete. “We can outlay and outperformanyone in the business.” Dallas says his companylays the bricks to last, and his company will match anywarranty that clients find.Call Rooster Interlocking Brick today, so that youcan enjoy the beauty that interlocking brick will bringto your home now, and look forward to the enhancedvalue of your home when it comes time to sell.Rooster Interlocking BrickDallas Ruud, owner250-889-6655www.roosterbrick.com17

CreativeCoast culture talks18 the arts in summer20 curtain call30 palette32 coastlines 34FestivalsCHRIS CREIGHTON-KELLYArtful ways to build community.Imagine. There is no Empress Hotel. No Chinatown. No CrystalGardens. Before James and Amelia Douglas. Or Emily Carr. OrFrancis Rattenbury.Imagine this place before any Europeans arrived here. For thousandsof years, Coast Salish people from around our region came togetherto share food, honour their elders in celebration and give thanks to thebounty of the land. They danced, sang traditional songs and told theatricalstories. Often these gatherings had a spiritual component.Fires burned, people joked and laughed, children stayed up late.Were these coming-togethers called festivals? No, not really, not aswe think of a festival in today’s world. But they involved a “feast” andwere, no doubt, “festive”—words that are etymological cousins to theconcept of festival.For millennia, folks all over our planet have created “festivals” forprofound cultural reasons. Ritualistic, social, sometimes with religiousroots, they usually involve fun, food, wonder, singing and dancing,travelling to a special place and a strong sense of community.And we are still doing it. In Sooke, Langford, James Bay, Fernwood,Saltspring and all over the CRD. From small, local events—like FernFestor the Phoenix Walking Festival to the specific themed—like the PrideParade or the Ska Festival—to more open ended gatherings like Luminaraor the One Wave Festival, we love to gather, nosh, laugh and hang out.Especially in warmer weather. Yes, we do have a few winter festivals.But being Canadians—with our short, seasonal bursts of heat—we rushto pile up outdoors, warm up our flesh and revel in those long, languid,liquid days of summer.Why? Sure, the arts bureaucrats will recount how the Canadiangovernment started funding festivals in the ’80s and that is what createdthe festive boom. Sure, the cultural tourism boosters will tell you allabout the 15 million Canadians who attend festivals annually andthe millions of dollars that they contribute to the GDP.All true. But there is something deeper, something in our DNA.These thoughts were running through my head after a “what-startedas-an-innocent-chit-chat”with a person on the phone. I was buyingtickets to the Victoria JazzFest with a helpful and patient staff personon the line. At one point, I mentioned that I was thinking of writingabout festivals. I struck a gold mine; she had lots to say. Astutely, thoughtfully,she opined.Our conversation went something like this.Me: “So how do you feel about festivals in Victoria?”She: “I think they are great. I am a student, with not a lot ofmoney and I really like the fact that there are free events at mostfestivals. The venues are a problem though. We have great spaces upto around 800 seats. Then there is the Royal Theatre with 1400seats, then nothing until Save-On-Foods Memorial Arena with 7000seats. So if you want to do a mid-size concert, say around 3000 to 5000,there is no suitable venue”.This sounds a little too inside arts production to me.Me: “So, what about using an outdoor venue?”She: “Well, that does not work year round and anyway, these spacesThe Victoria International Chalk Art Festival features the work of artistsof all skill levels, on Government Street September 14-15.are limited. Beacon Hill Park is not bad, but there are huge access issues.I understand why people do not want the flowers to be crushed, butstill, there has to be some compromises possible. We have to get creativewith our outdoor spaces.”Oh, the endless conversation about cultural venues in Victoria. Cannotdo festivals right. Need more all-ages venues, with cheaper rental rates.Less concrete, more grass. More family-style events. Better attentionto Aboriginal arts.Me: “And artistically?”She: “The content gets better every year. Victoria is growing up inits artistic choices. I have heard music, seen films, attended theatre anddance that is innovative, wonderful and with lots of talent. I totallyenjoy the feeling of being part of a community, of going to festivals andshowing ourselves to ourselves.”Showing ourselves to ourselves. That’s it in a concise, crisp phrase.It seems that we humans need to congregate, to converse, to constructnew rituals in a social space. Some studies show that festivals are stillgrowing in Canada. Anecdotal evidence suggests that maybe we havepeaked—there are only so many weekends in the year—that our societyis now saturated with festivals.For over a decade the Inter-Cultural Association (ICA) produced ahighly successful lantern festival, Luminara, in Beacon Hill Park. Ithas not been held since 2009. I asked Karin Scarth, ICA arts manager,what happened.18 July/August 2013 • FOCUS

TO ME, festivals occupy a critical position in the artsecology—they attract citizens to a popular, fun eventwhere they are exposed to artists and art forms.“Yes, it had to do with losing our funding. But also, in some ways wewere too successful. Luminara was growing every year and the parkwas becoming ‘too full.’ Sometimes young kids felt overwhelmed byso many people. Plus, we wanted to try new things, not just repeat thesame formula year after year.”Karin continued: “The spirit of Luminara lives on in our MoonFestival in Gordon Head, coming again this September. We alwayswant our art projects to reflect the ICA mandate of welcoming andempowering new immigrants to Victoria. Big festivals can do thatbut perhaps there are other, more effective ways of doing that.”One of the knocks from the arts establishment towards festivals hasbeen that they are too popular, not artistic enough, too “beer-gardeny.”I have never felt this way myself. To me, festivals occupy a critical positionin the arts ecology—they attract citizens to a popular, fun eventwhere they are exposed to artists and art forms. To me, this is a goodthing. The first time should always be free!And in sync with Ms Scarth’s observation, more and more festivalsare producing one-offs in the off-season. Concerts, workshops, communityconsultations, all with the purpose of being more engaged in thelocal; more effective; more open to fresh ways of elaborating culturalforms in public spaces.While doing research for this column I came across an impact studyon festivals in Edinburgh, Scotland. Of course, it contained all thosemagic, economic spin-off numbers beloved by those who make thearts-are-good-for-business arguments.But the study thoughtfully included a bunch of other outcomes—providing enriched, unique cultural experiences; developing creativeindustries; presenting learning benefits for citizens; enhancing localidentity; supporting cultural diversity; generating social networks andencouraging community cohesion.Kath Mainland, chief executive of the largest festival in the world—the Edinburgh Fringe Festival—responded to the study in this way: “Ifyou don’t value the quality of the experience,” she said, “then theeconomic benefits simply don’t flow.”Exactly! So go out and have some festival fun. Spend as much money—or not—as you like. Do not worry about the GDP.But, oh yeah, do remember to give thanks to the bounty of this land.You will be carrying on a critically important tradition which honourswhere we live. On this territory, we are guests of the Coast Salish peoples.The ones who kept those fires burning long before any non-Aboriginalsever came to this land.We are lucky to live here.I wish you a delectable, festive summer.Supporting arts,culture and our community.John West & Holly Harper1286 Fairfield Road, Victoria250-385-2033 • www.HollyAndJohn.cawww.newportrealty.comWith 50 years ofcombined real estateexperience, Johnand Holly share yourpassion for GreaterVictoria's unique andexciting housingopportunities.Chris Creighton-Kelly is a Canadian artist and writerwho lives in the Victoria area. Along with FranceTrépanier, he is the co-author of UnderstandingAboriginal Arts in Canada Today.www.focusonline.ca • July/August 201319

We make and sell potteryPottery classes for all levelsSauerkraut fermenting crockEarth & Fire Pottery Studio1820 Government Street250-380-7227www.earthandfirepotterystudio.camusicJuly 6AUNTIE KATE & THE UNCLES OF FUNKUpper Deck Sports LoungeLocal blues and funk singer ‘Auntie’ Kate Rolandand blues-belter Summer Hay headline the next VictoriaBlues Society’s Saturday Night Juke Joint show atthe Travelodge, Gorge Rd East. 250-592-5764,www.victoriabluessociety.ca.July 7-Aug 25 (Sundays)VICTORIA FOLK MUSIC CONCERTSNorway HouseJuly 7: Tim Readman Duo. July 14: Allison Brownwith Dan Henshall. July 21: TBA. July 28: TR Ritchie.Aug 4: closed for Symphony Splash. Aug 11: ChrisRonald. Aug 18: TBA. Aug 25: The Chimney Swallows(Raghu Lokanathan & Corwin Fox). 7:30pm, 1110Hillside Ave. $5. www.victoriafolkmusic.ca.July 9-13VICTORIA SKA FESTShip Point, Inner HarbourMos Def is the headliner, with Sierra Leone’s RefugeeAll Stars, Chicago Afrobeat Project, Tanya Stephens,Blitz the Ambassador and Mad Caddies. Some freeevents too. www.victoriaskafest.ca.July 10PAT BENATAR & NEIL GIRALDOFarquhar Auditorium, UVicThis husband and wife rock team had hits throughoutthe 1980s with songs like Love is a Battlefield, HitMe With Your Best Shot, Heartbreaker, and We Belong.7:30pm, $55-85 from UVic Ticket Centre at 250-721-8480 or http://tickets.uvic.ca.July 11JOY KILLS SORROW AND FISH & BIRDUpstairs CabaretJoy Kills Sorrow formed in 2005, bringing togethervirtuoso musicians who share a love of American rootsmusic. Together with Fish & Bird, now a five-piece indiefolkpowerhouse, they perform an evening of innovativestring music presented by the Victoria Django Festival.8:30pm, $14 adv/$16 door, available at Larsen Music,Lyle's Place and Ditch Records.July 13KATHRYN CALDER & MOURNING COUPLucky BarIndie-rocker Calder, a veteran of the Victoria musicscene, has toured the world and recorded three albumswith The New Pornographers. A fundraiser for GirlsRock Camp Victoria, a six-day experiential music campfor girls ages 8-18. 8-10:30pm. Advance tickets are$10 at Ditch Records and Lyle’s Place. At door $12.517 Yates St. www.girlsrockvictoria.ca.July 13-14PACIFIC TATTOOSave-on-Foods Memorial Centre100s of military and civilian performers in a productionthat honours first-responders, police and fire fightingservices. Includes Canadian tenor Ken Lavigne. $35-plus.250-220-7777, www.selectyourtickets.com.the arts in summerJuly 19 & 20PHILLIPS BACKYARD WEEKENDERPhillips Brewery lotThe Cat Empire (Melbourne) and Hip Hop legendsDe La Soul headline a 2-day concert experience thattransforms the craft brewer’s parking lot into an outdoormusic-super-party. $35 each eve, at Lyle’s Place, DitchRecords, Phillips Brewery and www.TicketWeb.ca.2010 Government St. Gates 5:30pm.August 2-4TANGO AND LATIN MUSIC FESTCentennial SquareThis year’s festival doubles as Kumbia’s 25th AnniversaryCelebration, a tribute to the band by the Latin Communityand Tango and Latin dance groups. This diverse groupof musicians represents the multicultural society thatCanada is today. Kumbia–with its cumbia, socas,merenges, cha cha chas, rumbas and batucas–has beeninstrumental in keeping alive the rhythms from theirhome countries of South and Central America and Cuba.Performances by various musicians and dance groupswill perform in their honour. 1-6pm, free. Also Argentineanand Latin food booths etc. 778-432-0112,www.passion4tango.com.August 4VICTORIA SYMPHONY SPLASHInner HarbourVictoria Symphony maestra Tania Miller will againconduct from a floating stage—amid bells, cannonsand fireworks—culminating in a performance ofTchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. Suggested donation $5.August 23-25VICTORIA SUMMER CHOIRSVarious VenuesHymn of Praise–Symphony No. 2 by Mendelssohnand a selection of opera choruses and arias directedby Simon Leung with soloists Anna Shill, soprano; EveDaniell, soprano; and Jeremy Notheisz, tenor. Aug 23,7pm at Christian Reform Church, 930 Trunk Rd, Duncan;Aug 24, 7pm at First Met Church, 932 Balmoral Rd,Vic; Aug 25, 3pm at St Elizabeth Church, 10030 ThirdSt, Sidney. $20 at door, Ivy’s Bookshop, Long & McQuade,Russell Books, Tanner’s Books. 250-380-0496.August 31-September 2BLUES BASHShip Point, Inner HarbourDuke Robillard, Adam Karch, the Steve Barry BluesBand and more. www.jazzvictoria.ca/blues-bash.Throughout SummerSUMMER IN THE SQUARE CONCERTSVictoria’s Centennial Square.An eclectic mix of live music from folk, worldbeatand jazz to baroque and blues. Free, noon-1pm.Throughout SummerCONCERTS IN THE PARKBeacon Hill ParkFree concerts Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and holidayMondays, 1:30-3:20pm, featuring folk, jazz or blues,or classical and swing. Children’s Concerts in the Parkon select Weds,11-noon. Free, “rain or shine” at Stagein the Park (Cameron Bandshell). www.victoria.ca/cityvibe.20 July/August 2013 • FOCUS

July 23-August 8VICTORIA SUMMER MUSIC FESTIVALPhillip T. Young Recital Hall, UVicFOR LOCAL ENTHUSIASTS of live Classical music, the monthsbetween the end of one musical season and the beginning of the nextcan be long indeed. Enter the Victoria Summer Music Festival whichhas given hungry audiences a healthy fix of world class, live Classicalmusic during the aurally dry summer months for the last 18 years.This year’s festival offers seven chamber music concerts featuringlocal and international artists. There will be a new face this year, aspianist Minsoo Sohn makes his Victoria debut on July 26. Festivalboard President Marilyn Dalzell says, “We’revery excited about him. He was the 2006Honens International Piano Competitionwinner, and he is really a person to watchout for in the piano world. He had a fabulousreview from the New York Times[October 10, 2012]. It’s a big coup, actually,for us to get him!”The first of the summer concerts (July 23)is a festival staple: “Basses Loaded XVII,”introducing all of the participants of renownedbassist Gary Karr’s “KarrKamp.” There’snothing like the mind-blowing sound of 16double basses in stereo surrounding the audience!On July 30, the festival’s Artistic DirectorArthur Rowe (piano) performs with goodMarie Joseé Lord friends William Preucil (violin) and Eric Kim(cello). As Dalzell explains, “…we have agreat treasure in Arthur Rowe because he plays chamber musicacross the continent, and he gets to know people who are very, veryfine musicians, and he brings them here. The connection that he haswith William Preucil and Eric Kim goes back many, many years. It’sjust a dynamite combination!”Recently retired UBC piano professor Jane Coop joins Cris Inguanti(clarinet) and Ariel Barnes (cello) for an all-Brahms programme onAugust 6. The trio promises to electrify audiences, and Dalzell enthusiasticallyendorses them. “These people are really heavy hitters in theWest Coast community,” she says.After soprano Marie Joseé Lord’s debut at the festival in 2010, audienceswere left breathless and wanting more. Dalzell concedes that,“She was just astonishing, and we’ve been trying to get her back eversince!” She returns with guitarist David Jacques and bassist Ian Simpsonto present an all Latin programme on August 8.It’s no accident that most of the performers are university educatedand university educators. “What’s important for us,” explains Dalzell,“is that they are good communicators. It’s not enough for them to begood performers, it’s a step beyond that. So there’s this wonderfulconnection between the composer, the performer, and the people sittingin the Phillip T. Young recital hall. And that’s something that we really,really treasure...” She stresses the importance of the audience in thistrinity of music making. “It’s not music,” she muses, “if there’s nobodythere to hear it.”Tickets $30; students $10 with valid ID, available at www.vsmf.org/ticketinfo.php,Ivy’s bookshop, or 250-383-9555. Pre-concert talks 6:40pm;concerts, 7pm. See www.vsmf.org.—Lisa Szeker-Maddennancy ruhlMadrona Gallery, Victoriawww.nancyruhl.ca“The Empress Arbutus” by Nancy Ruhl, 24 x 18 inches, acrylicwww.focusonline.ca • July/August 201321

“BEEN HERE FOREVER” KEN KIRKBY, 40 X 60 INCHES, OILThroughout summerKEN KIRKBY AND GALLERY ARTISTSMorris GalleryKen Kirkby is famous for his inukshuks, which were inspired by his time in thenorth, including 5 years walking from Alaska to Baffin Island. He no longer paintsinukshuks–but you can see the mystic grandeur of these creations at Morris Gallery,along with Kirkby’s more recent work. He is just one of many artists always on displayat Morris Gallery, one of the largest galleries in the city. Other artists include MaryConley, David Goatley, Jim McFarland, Linda Skalenda, D.F. Gray, Joanne Thomson,Tetiana Zakharova, and Roy Henry Vickers. Tues-Sat 10am-5:30pm, Sun 12-4pm.On Alpha St at 428 Burnside Rd E. 250-388-6652, www.morrisgallery.ca.“SWISS PURPLE” MARGARET BERRY, 32 X 48 INCHES, ACRYLIC ON HEMP CANVASJuly 6-August 31COLOURS OF SUMMER EXHIBITIONMadrona GalleryThis 4th annual summer group show features new works from Madrona’s nationallyrecognized stable of artists. Each artist has contributed specific works that embodytheir idea of summer. The gallery also introduces three new artists in this exhibition:Kapil Harnal, a Toronto-based painter focused on contemporary figurative subjectmatter; Margaret Berry, internationally recognized for her handling of realism inacrylics; and Leonard Butts, a local ceramic artist known for his exceptional ceramicsculptures. Check the website for special events throughout the summer. 606 View St.250-380-4660, www.madronagallery.com.“GABRIOLA ISLAND ROCK FORMS NUMBER 23” JOHN POIRIER, 24 X 36 INCHES, PHOTOGRAPHContinuing to July 20JOHN POIRIER: DOUBLE EXPOSUREMartin Batchelor GalleryPoirier’s photographic art is informed by a 20-year career with many interestingprojects involving technical photography, event photography, documentary work,and archival photographs, but also by a sense of the energy and processes that arethe underpinnings of our planet’s ecosphere. The photographer, who lives on GabriolaIsland, says, “I believe the future of humanity lies in embracing our magnificent multilayeredworld rather than poisoning it for profit.” The 25 large format prints in thisexhibit are drawn from two ongoing themes–natural subjects and somewhat ironicurban images. 712 Cormorant St, 250-385-7919.UNTITLED, CHRIS LINDSAY, WOOD AND STEELContinuing to July 27CHRIS LINDSAY: CHANGEDeluge Contemporary ArtThis installation manifests from Lindsay’s ongoing investigations into sensoryperception and imagination: our sum experience as human beings acting as contrailsfor how we try to understand our singular place within a manifold universe. This workhas been conceived and constructed as a sort of laboratory/maquette for the expansionof our insight, playing with the interrelationship between sculpture and space.When we are inside of it, we absorb, consider, abandon and reconsider our conscious,unconscious and uncontrollable relationship to the nature of the piece, as well as ourresponses. Wed to Sat, 12 to 5 pm. 636 Yates St, 250 385 3327, www.deluge.ws.22 July/August 2013 • FOCUS

“Morning Fog” (detail) 24 x 48 inches, oil on canvasBi Yuan ChengNew Paintings2184 OAK BAY AVENUE VICTORIAwww.theavenuegallery.com 250-598-2184WEST END GALLERYGlass Sculptureby leading Canadian ArtistsThroughout July & AugustTriangle Vessel by Lois Scott, blown, carved and cold-worked glass“Ray of Light – The Bugaboos” 36 x 36 inches, acrylicMichael O’Toole2506 Beacon Ave, Sidney 250.655.1282 www.pengal.comGallery Hours: Mon - Fri 10 - 5:30, Sat 10 - 5, Sun 11 - 41203 Broad Street • 250-388-0009 • www.westendgalleryltd.comwww.focusonline.ca • July/August 201323

the arts in summertheatreContinuing to to August 25SINGIN’ IN THE RAINChemainus TheatreHollywood’s most acclaimed moviemusical hits the stage with dazzling dancenumbers and memorable songs including“You Were Meant for Me,” “Make ’emLaugh,” “Moses Supposes” and “Singin’In The Rain.” Also visit the Gallery: featuredartists are Rose Cowles Martin (to Jul 14)and Martin Kaspers (Jul 15-Aug 25).www.chemainustheatrefestival.ca,1-800-565-7738.July 2-14BRIGHTON BEACH MEMOIRSMcPherson PlayhouseNeil Simon’s comic masterpiece is setin Brooklyn in 1937 and based on Simon’smemories of growing up in there in theyears just before WWII. An audience andcritical favourite since it premiered in1983, Brighton Beach Memoirs is led byactress Jane Spidell (Stratford Festivalof Canada) in the role of Kate Jerome,with Amitai Marmostein as Eugene.Marmostein recently appeared in theDora Mavor Moore nominated productionof Legoland at Theatre Passe Muraille.Jack Jerome is Brian Linds. Tickets at 250-386-6121 or www.rmts.bc.ca.July 3-August 25WINGFIELDBelfry TheatreThe Belfry reprises the first three episodesof Canada’s most enduring comedy series,all of which premiered at the Belfry. JoinWalt, Freddie, Don, The Squire, Willy, andDave for an incredible summer eveningor three. 250-385-6815, www.belfry.bc.ca.July 6THE YOU SHOW: UNTITLEDIntrepid Theatre ClubDianna Kuch presents Untitled, a standupcomedy show that takes you on ahilarious romp through her extended midlifecrisis which spans over two decades. Theshow is a celebration of imperfection anda testimony to the power of F$@!ingup. Part of Intrepid’s YOU Show, celebratingemerging local theatre artists.1609 Blanshard, at Fisgard. 250-590-6291, www.intrepidtheatre.com.July 6-7, 13-14THEATRE SKAM’S BIKE RIDECecelia Ravine ParkA mobile feast of live performance–13short shows along the Galloping GooseTrail. Box office, bike decoration, foodand fun at the Park hub. 3:30pm withfinal tours at 6:30pm. Tickets at 250-386-7526 or www.SKAM.ca. (See story p.30)July 19-28VIC INTL BUSKERS FESTIVALDowntownCheck website for lineup. The 2012edition featured performers from as faraway as Switzerland, Argentina, Australiaand the UK in more than 600 shows on8 stages. www.victoriabuskers.com.August 3WATCH FOR BONESIntrepid Theatre ClubLaunch Pad Productions presents thisfast, fresh, and uproariously funny comicsketch show that combines the stylishlysmart with the side-splittingly silly.Part of Intrepid’s YOU Show, celebratingemerging local theatre artists. 1609Blanshard, at Fisgard. 250-590-6291,www.intrepidtheatre.com.August 6-18MY FAIR LADYMcPherson PlayhouseBlue Bridge Repertory Theatre presentsone of Broadway’s musical theatre masterpieces.Famed phoneticist and confirmedold bachelor Professor Henry Higginstakes a bet from his colleague ColonelPickering that he can transform an unrefinedCockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle,into a lady. He does but in the processgets more than he bargained for. 250-386-6121, www.rmts.bc.ca.August 22-September 1FRINGE FESTIVALVarious VenuesThe Fringe is an unjuried and uncensoredinternational theatre festival.Participating companies/artists bring theirshows to the festival, and receive 100%of their box office revenue. Victoria hostsone of the oldest Fringes in Canada with50 indoor shows in 7 venues over 11days in downtown Victoria. Watch forperformances such as “Lesbian Etiquette:World’s Greatest Living Oxymoron” byGabriola artist Sheila Norgate. Programat www.intrepidtheatre.com.filmThroughout Summer (Mondays)MOVIE MONDAYEric Martin PavilionUpcoming movies include Blackbird(Jul 8), about a boy whose goth stylemakes him a target of high school bullying,entangling him in the cyber world andthe legal system; Shakespeare in Love (Jul15); This Way Of Life (Jul 22), about afamily living intentionally off the grid inNZ; and Here At Home, based on a projectdocumenting the effects of housing previouslyunhoused people. Fort St at Lee Ave.250-595-354, www.moviemonday.ca.24 July/August 2013 • FOCUS

eadings & presentationsdanceJuly 4ANTARCTICA’S TALLEST PEAKSRoyal BC MuseumIn 1982, BC-born Pat Morrow becamethe second Canadian to summit MountEverest. By 1986, he had become thefirst person in the world to climb theMessner List of “Seven Summits”: thehighest peak on each continent includingMount Vinson in Antarctica. The politicaland physical logistics he developedto complete that climb have remainedin place to guide and inspire climbersever since. He will accompany his lecturewith photos and video footage shotduring the first several seasons of operationin Antarctica. 7:30- 9pm at theClifford Carl Hall in RBCM. $16 at RBCMor www.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca or call1-888-447-7977.July 6PRIDE IN THE WORDAmbrosia Conference CentreEvery year Pride Week showcaseslocal word artisans, providing an opportunitywhere the inner voice of youth,experience, passion, sadness, happinesscan be expressed free of judgement.This year’s contributors include storyteller/performerIvan E. Coyote andwriters Leah Horlick, Billeh Nickerson,Lukas Bhandar, Nicola Harwood, andmore. $10 at door. Doors at 6:30, readingsat 7:15pm. 250-812-4973,www.victoriapridesociety.org.July 8POETRY AND IMAGESUniversity of VictoriaGovernor-General’s Award winnerpoet and artist Heather Spears will presenta short video of her art “Drawn from theFire” followed by poetry reading withHeather and Theresa Wolfwood. Free.5pm, George and Ida Halpern GraduateStudent Centre meeting room (behindStudent Union Bldg). bbcf@bbcf.ca.August 24ARTIST’S TALK: MOWRY BADENLegacy Art GalleryGovernor General’s Award winnerMowry Baden will speak about his artisticpractice during his tenure in the Departmentof Visual Arts at UVic and reference thework of colleagues Fred Douglas andRoland Brener, with whom he workedclosely during the 1980s and 90s. Badenis considered a pioneer of body art andtogether with Brener, continually challengesthe existing order of contemporarysculpture in Canada. Part of the IntegrateArts Festival. 1:30pm, 630 Yates St, 250-472-5619, www.uvac.uvic.ca.July 31-August 10REMEMBERING AMELIAOpen SpaceCelebrating the contributions of dancemaverick Amelia Itcush. As a dance artist,teacher, mentor, fitness pioneer, healer,and one of the country’s finest somaticmovement analysts, Itcush left an astonishingbody of work that still lives on byword of mouth. New Dance Horizons(Regina) produced an exhibition and aseries of movement workshops to honourItcush that will touch down at Open Spacefrom July 31 to August 10, 2013 (in partnershipwith Dance Victoria). Join RobinPoitras of New Dance Horizons andVancouver dancer Yvonne Chartrand atthe opening reception July 31 at 7pm.Register for special movement workshops,open to anyone, by contactingOpen Space. 510 Fort St. 250-383-8833,www.openspace.ca.August 27-September 1STOMPRoyal TheatreBroadway in Victoria presents Stomp,the award-winning show that has thrilledaudiences all over the world, combiningelements of theatre, dance, comedy andpercussion to turn the clutter of urban lifeinto the source of infectious rhythm andwonder. 250-386-6121, www.rmts.bc.ca.September 14-15CALLING ALL ARTISTS:CHALK ART FESTIVALDowntownJohn Vickers, the man behind theBuskers Festival and Victoria Intl ChalkArt Festival, is searching for artists toparticipate in this year’s Chalk Festival.It doesn’t matter if you’ve never workedwith chalk–or an 8 x 10-foot piece ofsidewalk. He has organized tutorials withinternationally-acclaimed chalk artists tohelp you adapt your skills. And he’llsupply all the chalk you need.The chalking sites, which artists havetwo days to complete, run alongGovernment St. It’s a great place to meetthe art-loving public–“like a Moss St-Paint-in of chalk art,” says Vickers, notingpeople can work as a team.This year Centennial Sqaure will hosta music stage, a kid chalk zone, foodvendors, etc. The festival will also featurestunning chalk art by 20 internationalchalk artists. Kurt Wenner, consideredone of the greatest in the world, will visitthe festival.Student and professional artists areall welcome. Check out the applicationform at www.victoriachalkfestival.com.BatemanCentre@BatemanCentrenancy ruhlMadrona Gallery, Victoriawww.nancyruhl.ca“Russell Books on Fort” by Nancy Ruhl, 24 x 30 inches, acrylicwww.focusonline.ca • July/August 201325

“TIDAL POOL” KEN CAMPBELL, 30 X 60 INCHES, OIL ON CANVASThroughout summerLEADING CANADIAN ARTISTSWest End GalleryThis exhibit showcases the diversity and talent of our country through landscapes,still lifes, abstracts, impressionist, urban and figurative styles. Participating artistsinclude Steven Armstrong, Ken Campbell, Claudette Castonguay, Rod Charlesworth,Kari Duke, Ken Faulks, Greta Guzek, Laura Harris, Patricia Johnston, Raynald Leclerc,Grant Leier, Annabelle Marquis, Elka Nowicka, Guy Roy, Michael Rozenvain, RobertSavignac and Claude A. Simard. Accompanying these painters is work from leadingCanadian glass artists: Kathleen Black, France Grice, Tammy Hudgeon, TanyaLyons and Mathieu Grodet, Darren Petersen, Paull Rodrigue, Lois Scott and DominiqueBeaupré St Pierre. 1203 Broad St, 250-388-0009, www.westendgalleryltd.com.“BREADSTICKS-BOUND” CATHERINE MOFFAT, 8 X 24 INCHES, OIL ON CANVASThroughout summerCATHERINE MOFFATPeninsula GallerySpecializing in still-life paintings and using the traditional tools of shading, perspective,colour harmony, intense attention to detail and careful composition, CatherineMoffat creates realistic and appealing images which convey an underlying senseof stillness, calm and elegance. A Victoria artist, Moffat’s work has receivedawards in national and regional exhibitions and can be found in private andcorporate collections worldwide. 2506 Beacon Ave, Sidney, 250- 655-1282.www.pengal.com.“PICKLED EGGS” ANGIE REES, 6 X 8 INCHES, ACRYLIC ON PANELThroughout summerINTRODUCING ANGIE REESThe Avenue GalleryWhimsical, playful and eccentric come to mind in describing the painting styleof Calgary artist Angie Rees, BFA. Her imaginative, well-crafted works have richsurface textures and a vibrant, arresting palette. The wit and humour of her clevertitles add another dimension to these “visual puns.” She admits: “I feed my imaginationa very rich and steady diet of children’s storybooks and theatre and try toindulge its every whim…My rules for making art are simple: ‘What if…’ and‘Why not?’” Angie’s work is widely collected and can be seen in many galleries acrosswestern Canada. 2184 Oak Bay Ave, 250-598-2184, www.theavenuegallery.com.JAMES JOYCE IN “SHAKESPEARE AND CO.” BOOKSHOP, GISÈLE FREUNDContinuing to August 12THE LONG NOW OF ULYSSESMaltwood Prints and Drawings Gallery, UVicSubtitled “Curating Literature after the Internet,” and using James Joyce’s“Ulysses,” this student-curated exhibit asks “How are interpretations of literaturechanging in a digital age?” Relying on materials from the University’s SpecialCollections and Art Collections with 3D replications of objects, as well as a digitalenvironment and guided by the question of self-remediation–how do we seeourselves as others see us?–the exhibit places “Ulysses” in its contemporary contextand engages its long, often unanticipated afterlife. Audiences can interact withmany of the curated materials. McPherson Library, UVic. 250-472-5619, www.uvac.uvic.ca.July/August 2013 • FOCUS

“Drifting Landscape” by Karel Doruyter, 40 x 90 inches, acrylic and oil on canvasCOLOURS OF SUMMERGroup ExhibitionJuly & AugustWith special events throughout the summer606 View Street • 250.380.4660 • www.madronagallery.comwww.focusonline.ca • July/August 201327

the arts in summerTHE GALLERY AT MATTICK’S FARMpresentsIRA HOFFECKERJuly 1 - 31, 2013Opening July 2, 5 - 8 pm109-5325 Cordova Bay Road • (250) 658-8333www.thegalleryatmatticksfarm.comOpen 10am - 5:30pm every day9th AnnualGuest ArtistsPat Martin Bates, Robert AmosMarion Evamy, Martin MachecekThis event features Oak Bay,Victoria and emerging youth artistsDemonstrations, Public Paintingand Kids Painting CornerBowker Creek Brush UpArt Show & SaleSunday August 11, 11am - 4:30pmJewellery • Painting • Pottery • Photography • Sculpture • More!In Oak Bay at Bowker Creek Park on Hampshire Roadbetween Oak Bay Avenue and Cranmore Road“Berlin Map II” (detail), Ira Hoffecker, 18 x 24 inches, acrylic and resin on cradled panelvisual artsContinuing to July 6VICTORIA DESTINATIONSArt Gallery of Greater VictoriaAward-winning North Saanich artistSheen Lott, Robert Amos, Adam Noonan,Grant Fuller, Linny D. Vine are presentedin the Art Rental and Sale Gallery. 1040Moss St. www.aggv.ca, 250-384-4171.Continuing to July 6STUDIO ARTISTS SHOWGallery 1580Jane Coombe, Sarah Cowan, Luis MarioGuerra Veliz, Margaret Hantiuk, Ira Hoffecker,Lynda McKewan, Richard Pawley, LindaPeters. Gallery Hours: Tues, Thurs-Sat:12-5pm. 1580 Cook St. 250-415-5480.Continuing to July 7POSTCARD FROM VICTORIAArt Gallery of Greater VictoriaAn immersive exhibition featuringvideo, artefact and works on paper thatraise questions of place, class, authenticityand belonging. 1040 Moss St.www.aggv.ca, 250-384-4171.Continuing to July 20PLAY, FALL, REST, DANCEOpen SpaceArtist-in-residence Valerie Salez hostsplay sessions allowing children to createtheir own installations using componentsof the artist’s sculptures. 510 Fort St. 250-383-8833, www.openspace.ca.Continuing to July 27BRAID HARVESTERSOpen SpaceAmalie Atkins’ “We Live on The Edgeof Disaster and Imagine We are in aMusical” is a cinematic fable using hersophisticated blend of film and textiles.Her short films and cinematic performancesborrow from the structure oftraditional myths and fairy tales, whilealso representing personal symbolism.www.openspace.ca. Tues-Sat, noon-5pm, 510 Fort St, 250-383-8833.Continuing to July 27THE SHADOWS BEHINDEclectic GalleryUcluelet artist Marla Thirsk evokes thewild woman spirit through the mythologyof Red Riding Hood. 2170 Oak Bay Ave,250-590-8095, www.eclecticgallery.ca.Continuing to July 31IRA HOFFECKERGallery at Mattick's FarmGeometric shapes in architecture and mapsinspire Hoffecker’s compositions.109-5325Cordova Rd, www.thegallerymatticksfarm.com,250-658-8333.Continuing to July 31LADMORE & LADMORE VIGoward HouseDavid Ladmore and Laurie Ladmoreexplore landscape themes—both surfaceand the undercurrents beneath. Mon-Fri9am-4pm. Artists’ reception July 7, 1:30-3:30pm. 2495 Arbutus Rd, 250-477-4401,www.gowardhouse.com/artshow.Continuing to July 31OAK BAY ART CLUBAbkhazi GardenMembers of the Oak Bay Art Club,many also members of the FCA, SketchClub, CAC and SPAC. A percentage ofsales will support the garden. Seewww.oakbayartclub.com for artist biosand current events. 1964 Fairfield Rd250-598-8096.Continuing to August 31DAVID BLACKWOOD:Winchester ModernSelected works on paper. 758 HumboldtSt. www.winchestergalleriesltd.com.Continuing to September 8DAVID BLACKWOODArt Gallery of Greater VictoriaDavid Blackwood is one of Canada’sleading printmakers and most popularartists. This exhibition, “Black Ice: Printsfrom Newfoundland,” situates his epicvisual narratives in time and space bylooking at the history of Newfoundlandand the people who settled there. 1040Moss St. 250-384-4171, www.aggv.ca.Continuing to September 22JAPANESE BANKO CERAMICSArt Gallery of Greater VictoriaBanko pieces produced in Japan in thelate 19th and early 20th centuries havebeen described as charming, bizarre,fantastic–and a bit grotesque. 1040 MossSt. 250-384-4171, www.aggv.ca.July 6METCHOSIN PAINT-INMetchosin Art GalleryThe first ever Metchosin Paint-In, abirthday party celebrating the gallery’s firstyear. 11am-4pm, 4495 Happy Valley Rd,250-478-9223, www.metchosinartgallery.ca.July 6-27OCEANS: VICTORIAWinchester GalleryVictoria seascapes. Although in hiswork as gallery director, author, and artsadvocate, Terry Fenton is recognized asa champion of abstraction, he himselfpaints from nature. Opening receptionwith artist and his new book “About Pictures”,July 6, 1-5pm. 2260 Oak Bay Ave. 250-595-2777, www.winchestergalleriesltd.com.28 July/August 2013 • FOCUS

July 11-August 4TEN THOUSAND HOURSMetchosin Art GalleryStinking Fish Artists exhibit pottery, mixed mediapaintings, fibre art, landscapes, nudes, mosaics, metalsculpture, jewelry, etchings, furniture and carvedstone. Meet the artists July 13, 2-5pm. 4495 HappyValley Rd, 250-478-9223, www.stinkingfishstudiotour.com.August 16-25ISLAND EYESArtspring, SaltspringSalt Spring Island Painters’ Guild Annual SummerArt Show and Sale, Island Eyes, is an eclectic mix ofcontemporary art in all mediums, including many smallunframed original pieces at reasonable prices. Opendaily 10am-4pm, 100 Jackson Ave in Ganges.Continuing to October 26CORE SAMPLESLegacy Art GalleryThis exhibition presents an overview of UVic’s VisualArts department, 1966-85. Includes works by JohnDobereiner, Donald Harvey, Pat Martin Bates, PeterDaglish, Roland Brener, Mowry Baden. 630 Yates St.250-472-5619, uvac.uvic.ca.July 11-August 29HOBNOBPolychrome Fine ArtGallery artists including Ken Banner, Bill Blair, LissaCalvert, Charles Campbell, Caite Dheere, Donna Eichel,Roy Green, Cody Haight, Tyler Hodgins, PJ Kelly, LanceAustin Olsen, Robert Randall, Kate Scoones and ShawnShepherd. Opening July 11, 7-9pm. 977-A Fort St, 250-382-2787, www.polychromefinearts.com.July 15-August 25MARTIN KASPERSThe Gallery at ChemainusKaspers is known for his fine photographs and gicleeprints. 250-246-9806, www.chemainustheatre.ca.July 20MOSS STREET PAINT-INArt Gallery of Gtr Victoria & Moss StreetVancouver Island’s largest outdoor visual art eventcelebrates 26 years with invited professional andemerging artists from the region who demonstrate theirart. Moss St from Fort to Dallas Rd. 11-4:30; food andbeverage garden till 9pm with dancing to Kumbia.August 17-September 14OUR BLANKETS–OUR STORIESAlcheringa GalleryChris Paul, Coast Salish and Mark Preston, Tlingit.Opening with artists, Aug 17, 2-5pm. 625 Fort St, 250-383-8224, www.alcheringa-gallery.com.OngoingROBERT BATEMANThe Robert Bateman CentreOver 160 works by Bateman, spanning 7 decades,encourage visitors to explore their relationship with theenvironment. 470 Belleville St, www.batemancentre.org.CALL FORARTISTS!July 26-August 13GALLERY ARTISTSAlcheringa GalleryNew works by NW coast artists Rande Cook andlessLIE, Sepik artists Teddy Balangu and Claytus Yambon.625 Fort St, 250-383-8224, www.alcheringa-gallery.com.August 1-31COLLECTOR’S CHOICE SUMMER 2013Winchester Galleries Humboldt ValleyA mix of historical and contemporary work. 796Humboldt St. www.winchestergalleriesltd.com.August 10-22JIMMY WRIGHT: A RETROSPECTIVEMartin Batchelor GalleryWright was a regular character in downtown Victoriaand many people know him for his iconic polar bearsand his razor wit. On the 5th anniversary of his death,this retrospective includes stories written by Jimmypresented alongside his paintings. 712 Cormorant St,250-385-7919. www.jimmywrightart.com.August 11BOWKER CREEK BRUSH UPBowker Creek Park50 artists practice their craft en plein air, while interactingwith visitors. Guest artists, include Pat MartinBates, Robert Amos, Marion Evamy, and Marty Machacek.Featured each year are youth artists, many of whomgo on to promising artistic careers. Art table for thosefrom 2 years to 92. 11am-4:30pm, Hampshire Rd, OakBay Ave to Cranmore St.JOIN THE CHALK ART FESTIVALFOR TWO DAYS ONGOVERNMENT STREET!Artists receive taped 8’ x 10’ pavementsquare, free high quality chalk and tutorial byan internationally acclaimed chalk artist.Register today!www.victoriachalkfestival.comALL SKILL LEVELS WELCOME!September 14/15thwww.focusonline.ca • July/August 201329

Theatre Skam’s 18-year road tripcurtain callJOE WIEBEA one-night stand led to an unexpectedly long journey, including that night in the Volaré. Damn right.Matthew PayneVictoria’s Theatre Skam turned 18 this year—quite a featgiven its humble origins. Co-founder and current ArtisticProducer Matthew Payne recalls a simple phone call from AmielGladstone back in January 1995.“Ami called me up and said, ‘I think there’s this café owner who’lllet us do a show and there’s these two gals. Are you in?’ And I said sure.”Before the four friends could stage a night of five short plays underthe title “Table for Two,” they figured they had to call themselves something.Maybe an acronym based on their names? But none of theirsurnames began with a vowel—Donald, Gladstone, Payne, Turner—so that wouldn’t work. What about their first names: Sarah, Ami,Matthew and Karen?Here’s where the creation story becomes mythic. Ask Gladstoneand Payne, who together grew Theatre Skam into a prominentVictoria company that has produced theatre internationally, and youget two slightly different stories. Gladstone says it was his idea,but Payne disagrees.“I remember somebody said ‘mask’ and we all laughed at that, andthen somebody said ‘skam’ and I remember kind of going, ‘Oh yeah,’and Ami loved it. He got it right away so it must have been one of thegirls who said it, because it wasn’t me and he jumped on it. Sarah Donaldclaimed it was her, so I’ll give it to her.”In response to Payne’s claim, Gladstone says, “Wow. I have a memoryof it being me, but the fact that we are having this conversationmeans I question my own memory.”“But the other thing about that time was that we were just puttingon a show,” Gladstone continues. “We weren’t forming a theatrecompany that was going to be around 18 years later. It was just thename to put on this one little evening of small plays. So we knew it wasthe right name because it was cheeky and fun.”PHOTO: TONY BOUNSALLWhen that first show sold out its four-night run and led to severalmore successful shows, they realized that they had formed a theatrecompany—and the name still worked.“We were named for our initials, but it really created a spirit andidentity for the company,” Gladstone says, looking back. “It always feltlike the right name because we were really trying to be an alternativeto all the other stuff that was happening.”It is interesting to note that was the only time the four founders actuallyperformed together. “We only ever did one show together,” Payneexplains, “which is amazing since this is our 18th year.”As they formalized the company and began staging productions inand around Victoria, Gladstone took on the role of artistic directorwith Payne as artistic associate. The other two founders were ofteninvolved in projects—Sarah Donald as an actor and musician, andKaren Turner as a director from time to time—but Gladstone and Paynequickly came to be identified as Skam’s artistic leadership.The two friends had met while studying theatre at the Universityof Victoria in the early 1990s, and were roommates for a time alongwith a third theatre student, Lucas Myers, who became one of a coregroup of regular performers for a time. Other “skammers” came andwent; the company became an incubator for a generation of performerswho cut their teeth in Skam shows and then moved on to professionalsuccess elsewhere.“You think of Julia Mackey and Michelle Monteith and NaomiSnieckus and Graham Somerville and Paul Fauteux,” Payne lists namesoff the top of his head. “These are artists who are well established intheir careers now, with the success of [Mackey’s] Jake’s Gift or theShaw Festival or Stratford or Second City in Toronto.”Theatre Skam was also defined—at least in the early days—by itspreference for “site-specific” theatre: plays staged in unusual locationssuch as back alleys and loading docks—even the front seat of a1978 Plymouth Volaré with room for up to four audience memberstightly squeezed in the back (Norm Foster’s Louis and Dave, whichGladstone and Payne performed many times in fringe festivals acrossNorth America).Skam began an annual summer theatre festival called Summer Kampin 1997, presenting George F. Walker’s Zaztrozzi as well as The CompleteWorks of William Shakespeare (Abridged) and 29 Plays in 59 Minutes.Using the Fringe Festival circuit as a foundation, they reached out toaudiences beyond Victoria, staging productions in Toronto, New York,Philadelphia, Seattle, and even in France.In 1998, Theatre Skam produced a play called District of Centuriesby Sean Dixon, a Toronto playwright “whose imagination was as boldas ours,” according to Payne. As Gladstone writes in the introductionto Dixon’s collection, AWOL: Three Plays for Theatre Skam, “Thatproduction marked the beginning of a collaboration that eventuallyspawned three full-length plays and a strong sense of identity, creativityand joy for our little company. In the past we had relied upon our interpretationof scripts to give our plays a certain Skam style. Now we hada collaborator from the ground up, a partner in crime.”Dixon wrote two plays for the company—Billy Nothin’ (1999) andAerwacol (2000)—which were staged in Victoria, Toronto and Vancouver.30 July/August 2013 • FOCUS

“AMI CALLED ME UP and said, ‘I think there’s this caféowner who’ll let us do a show and there’s these twogals. Are you in?’ And I said sure.” —Matthew PayneThen, Theatre Skam began producing Gladstone’s plays, including TheBlack Box (2001), The Wedding Pool (2004), Hippies and Bolsheviks(2005), and My Three Sisters (2008).As Theatre Skam gained notoriety nationally, the core membersfound themselves being pulled in various directions. Gladstone movedto Vancouver and began focusing more on directing and writing. Paynebecame a regular performer/stage manager on the children’s theatretouring circuit. Then, in 2007, Gladstone decided it was time forhim to leave. He had already been living in Vancouver since 1999,returning each summer to produce Summer Kamp.“At first it was great to come back every summer to do shows,” hesays, “but then it became harder and harder to justify doing that. I can’tbe running a theatre company in Victoria from Vancouver. It’s just notfair to the idea of the company, and then coupled with my ownwork, it was kind of like I wanted to break off and do some solo albums.”The choice was to either fold the company up or for Payne to takeover the reins, and they agreed that Skam’s artistic producer neededto be based in Victoria. After a few years in Toronto, working on Skamshows on a project-by-project basis, Payne had recently returned toBritish Columbia.“I kept coming back to the roots of where I’d started,” he says of hisdecision. “I just felt like I think I’ve got to be back in Victoria. And Ialso knew that if I was going to come back to Skam and to Victoria,then the company was going to have to move from project-based toyear-round operations.”In the six years since then, the company has done just that—in spiteof the significant cuts to provincial arts funding that occurred duringthat period—and now Payne proudly boasts of Skam’s year-round staff:two full-time employees and one part-timer, along with many othershired on a project basis. Summer Kamp has evolved into Bike Ride, anannual “mobile feast of live performance” where audience memberscycle along the Galloping Goose Trail in Cecilia Ravine Park to see12 live, brand new short works.And this August will mark a reunion of sorts as Theatre Skam willbe producing Smalltown: A Pickup Musical, written by Amiel Gladstoneand Lucas Myers, and staged outside in the back of a truck parked ina field at Victoria High School. Quintessential Theatre Skam.Bike Ride runs July 6, 7 and 13, 14, from 3:30-6:30 pm (last tourdeparts at 6:30) at Cecilia Ravine Park.Smalltown: A Pickup Musical runs August 6-25, 7pm (no showsMondays) at Victoria High School field (access via the Belfry lobby).And in September (dates TBA), watch for Cariboo Buckaroo, writtenand performed by Matthew Payne, and developed in partnership withthe Xeni Gwet’in First Nation. www.skam.caVictoria writer Joe Wiebe’s Balkan guidebook to BC’s boomingcraft beer scene, Craft Beer Revolution, has just been released.www.joewiebe.com or www.thirstywriter.com.www.focusonline.ca • July/August 201331

paletteEvery picture tells a storyAAREN MADDENRenee Nault draws viewers into a vivid, dreamlike world.In artist and illustrator Renee Nault’s “HighGround,” a fox clings precipitously to amoss covered rock while a waterfall coursespast. In “Leaving,” created for The Los AngelesTimes, the departing swish of a woman’s intricatelypatterned skirt tells all that is neededabout two gold rings abandoned in the stormcloud of her shadow. In “Fleeting,” a winged,antlered deer—with a fawn’s spots and thetail of a lion—glides across the page. It’s acreature out of Nault’s imagination, evokinga mythology that is as unique as it is hauntinglyfamiliar. Like so much of her illustrationwork, each of these have an uncanny wayof opening a door into a larger narrative, onethat offers glimpses into a dreamlike worldof her own creation.Nault creates dynamic images with contrastingsurface treatments. Washes of watercolour—some saturated with lush colour, some a moodygrey—bleed into each other, erupting in spontaneousbursts by touching a bead of water.They are reined in by precise outlines andpatterns rendered in ink. In “High Ground,”which was featured in a recent exhibitionat the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria,this results in a madly rushing waterfallthat is also controlled, linearand strikinglylyrical.Born in Vancouver, but raised in Victoria,Nault at first hoped to become an animatorbut had the self-awareness to realize that itwasn’t for her. “When I learned what is involvedin the lifestyle of an animator, it’s pretty dull,”she says. “You can’t move; you have to staywith your studio, and you’re just at it five daysa week. You have to be on someone else’sschedule.” For one who craves travel (she hastoured Europe, Asia and Africa) and the allureof big cities like Paris and Tokyo, that clearlywould not work. So, she studied illustrationat Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario, andfor six years has beenattracting clients likethe LA Times,EMIPHOTO: TONY BOUNSALLRenee Naultrecords, and numerous magazines and books,as well as creating her own illustrations andprints. She has exhibited in Toronto and herein town at the fifty fifty arts collective and, asnoted, at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria.Nault has lived in Vancouver and Torontobut returned to Victoria, where her familylives. “When I came back to Victoria, I thoughtit would be boring,” she admits. “But actually,it’s really easy to focus here, and it’s nice tobe close to nature,” she says. “I can go for awalk in the forest after lunch and just soak upthe atmosphere, get some visual inspiration.I don’t have to take a train out of the city toget to the forest or the ocean. You go outside,and there it is.”More than that, though. Something aboutthe underwater landscapes she sees here alwaysstrikes a chord with her. Besides vivid colour,they contain what she describes as a “languidweightlessness” that has found its way intoLeft: “High Ground” watercolour and ink onpaper. Right: “Jane and cats” (from Witchling),watercolour and ink on paper.32 July/August 2013 • FOCUS

her work. Looking at Japanese Ukiyo-e prints,she found a similar effect and a profound,connecting influence. Begun in the 17th century,these are popular Japanese woodblock prints,most familiar, perhaps, being Hokusai’s “GreatWave off Kanagawa”.Ukiyo-e actually translates as “pictures ofthe floating world,” being the ephemeral, unattainablerealms of entertainment, pleasure,natural beauty and historical greatness thatare detached from the cares of daily life.Since the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, Japanese prints have influencedWestern artists in form and content. Hokusai’swave certainly echoes in Nault’s rendering ofthe water in “High Ground” and she loves thepatterns and vivid colours in the prints, butshe also reaches for what she calls the “fleeting”quality they convey. It’s that sense of an otherworldjust beyond reach, one made all themore vivid for its elusivity. Explains Nault, “Iam interested in that dreamlike state wherethings become hyper real.”That’s because, for Nault, it’s a place rife withimagery and inspiration. Creatures emerge fromit that, in their mystery, take on an ambiguoussymbolism. “I don’t like to pin it down to somethingthat can be decoded,” she says of these enigmaticfigures, “but definitely there are some recurringmotifs. The deer I use a lot as a totem animal,” sheexplains. Horned animals fascinate her: “Theyseem almost symbolic; their horns are reaching forthe sky and it’s almost like a crown. It seems sosupernatural to me,” she says. The horns are likea conduit through the otherwise impenetrableinterface between the dream world and reality.It’s a notion at the heart of Nault’s latestproject. She has just completed the first issueof her graphic novel series called Witchling.It begins, of course, with a vivid dream anda horned mythical creature. No text appearsfor several pages, but the action and atmospherein the images captivate the readerimmediately. “It is a fantasy about gods,monsters, witches—and a girl who talks tocats,” Nault says.The story travels from city to forest andthrough epic adventure. “I actually had tocut a lot out of it because it got so complicatedwith all these overlapping symbols, allthese mythologies weaving together,” sheshares. Even so, it will eventually comprise12 to 16 issues, collected into three bookvolumes—but Nault, smiling, refuses to revealthe exciting conclusion.It seems it will be anticipated by many, eventhough Witchling only made its debut at theToronto Comic Arts Festival in May. Meredays before attending, Nault had 100 copiesprinted. It was a wild success. “This is my firstcomic, and I sold all my books, all my prints[at the festival],” she marvels. Demand on herwebsite is high, and she’s quickly getting morecopies printed.Lloyd Chesley, owner of Legends Comicsand Books on Johnson Street (where localscan purchase the book) isn’t surprised: “Isee uncountable comics, and this is one of themost beautiful to be produced this year,” hesays. “And I mean wherever: France, England,America, Canada. Turning every page, youjust want to be there.”And you are. Rendered in transporting,beautifully reproduced ink and watercolourimages, it’s a graphic novel that is also a handheldartwork. It’s a door open even widerinto Nault’s rich, floating world of imageand imagination.Aaren Madden is lookingforward to introducing theincredible world of comic artto her children, who werefascinated by Nault’s many creaturesand images. See more atwww.ReneeNault.com.Planting PeaceA Two-Part Evening Event featuringDr. Will TuttleAuthor of “World Peace Diet”Recipient of the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience AwardSept. 1: LECTURE-PRESENTATION: Being Healthyand Saving Our Planet: The World Peace DietSept. 2: WORKSHOP: Opening the Intuitive Gate:The Keys to Developing Your IntuitionBoth at 7:00 – 9:00 pmUkranian Culture Center, 3277 Douglas StDoors open at 6:30 pm for Door Ticket SalesIQbrite@shaw.ca 250-721-1101www.members.shaw.ca/IQBrite/Events/ALL.pdfwww.focusonline.ca • July/August 201333

coastlinesPoetry for the Earth, from VictoriaAMY REISWIGFriday night poetry gatherings have birthed a book reflecting life in the whole.As backyard sun filters through amberliquid crowned by green leaves ofmint, I think: poetry is a lot like makingtea. Words, like herbs and flowers, are gatheredcarefully, thoughtfully, into compactpackets and dropped into the often bland waterof our daily lives, infusing minds and momentswith new ideas, imaginings, observations,meditations, passions and perspectives.Depending on what we’re in the mood for,we can choose from a variety of forms andflavours—sip on an elegy, lyric, prose poem,sonnet or sestina; savour something on love,death, family, nature or art itself. And if Victoria’sPlanet Earth Poetry reading series is anythingto go by, poetry is also a good thing to gatherover with friends.Planet Earth Poetry (PEP), formerlyMocambopo, is Canada’s longest-runningweekly reading series and has been a meetingground for poets and poetry appreciators everyFriday night since 1995. Now at Moka Houseon Hillside and renamed after P.K. Page’s poem“Planet Earth,” the series is also the basis of anew anthology, Poems from Planet Earth (LeafPress April 2013), edited by PEP artistic directorYvonne Blomer and guest host CynthiaWoodman Kerkham.Blomer and Kerkham are accomplishedpoets in their own right. Blomer is author ofa broken mirror, fallen leaf; The Book of Places;and Bicycle Brand Journey. She has beenincluded in anthologies, including In FineForm: The Canadian Book of Form Poetry;Force Field: 77 Women Poets of BC; and ACrystal Through Which Love Passes: Glosasfor P.K Page. Her new volume Caged is forthcomingin 2014. Kerkham is author of GoodHolding Ground and has won the Federationof BC Writers Literary Writes Competition,The Malahat Review’s Open Season Awardfor poetry, and had a poem selected for theBC Poetry in Transit initiative.In Poetry for Planet Earth the two womenhave blended their poetic and PEP experience(and long friendship) to create a sampler of117 voices—from the well-known to theneophyte, the international and local, theaward-laden to at least one person for whomthis represents his first publication. What’scommon is that they’ve all read right here onVictoria’s premier poetry stage.Cynthis Woodman Kerkham (l) and Yvonne BlomerWith its open mic plus featured readerformat, PEP attracts and welcomes all-comers.And the editors wanted the book to reflectthat inclusivity as well as the social goals ofthe reading series. “You make a lot of connectionswith people,” Blomer says, “but not tosee what you can gain. You might have had abad week, but you come and listen to eachother’s poems and it opens you back up. Wesit down and we all listen.” Kerkham admitsthat “sometimes it’s hard to drag yourself downthere on a Friday evening, but we alwaysfeel nourished in a way that sitting on the couchdoesn’t provide.” In 2003 Kerkham took ayear off work and went to every reading seriesin town. “They welcomed me,” she says withgenuine emotion. “They brought me along,got me over my terror. However corny itsounds, I feel like I found my tribe.”The anthology’s call-out went to everyonewho had read at the series between 2006 andJanuary 31, 2012. With about 150 poetssubmitting, Blomer laughs that she couldn’topen her door due to the pile behind the mailslot. So Kerkham came to her aid, sharingin the sitting and sifting. “It was hugely fun,”Blomer exults, her smile competing with thesunshine flooding Kerkham’s backyard.PHOTO: TONY BOUNSALL“Spreading them out all over the floor—wewere IN the poems!” “We wanted it to be likethe reading series, with different voices butmaintaining the standards of good poetry,”Kerkham explains. The selection process wastherefore another form of listening, beingcareful with words with each other.The 207-page book is divided into sevensections: life and loss, nature, place, love, deathand hope, music and art, family. They are interlinkingthemes within which we encountertopics as diverse as human experience: travel,suicide, urban change, observations and meditationson individual objects (doorknob, apple,stone) or creatures, like a hummingbird or thecarcass of a dead bear—“gargantuan/ shoulderof meat that once had/ felt her senses blossomas she/ ambled over a ripe salmonberry bush.”We find riffs on old myths, like RhondaGanz’s quietly comic “Persephone Tries InternetDating but Every Man Reminds her of Hades,”in which “Demeter insists I go on blind dates,disregard my conjugation underground”but poor Persephone concludes: “Sniffingburnt toast in the elevator,/all I can think aboutis you…I miss you./I miss our dog.” We alsoexperience modern difficulties like squeezinginto and out of a wetsuit in a surfshop changeroom(“It is moments like these that test themettle of the man.”), and other poems arepurely playful, like Liz Zetlin’s simply titled“&,” a symbol she calls “My buxom pretzel,twisted gift/of conjunction & connection…Youbeckon us to join you with/a wag of your tail,promises/of always together.”Readers find new takes on the familiar likeLeonard Neufeldt’s “Juan de Fuca Evening,”where we see the “Small dome of a seal’speriscope/and gulls rising falling/in the freshwrappedsound/of the water near the blackpier” and Harold Rhenisch’s “The Lords andLadies of Upper Cook Street” where crows“drop sticks into the perms of old ladies,/andpass the joke along from branch to branch.”But we are also treated to the more exotic,like Kate Braid’s “Mumbai,” Derk Wynand’s“Guanajuato,” Eve Joseph’s “Pantanal,”Michael Fanshawe’s “Ortona” or Pat Smekal’s“Last Man” which inhabits the thoughts ofLuis Alberto Urzua Iribarren, the last Chileanminer rescued in October 2010 after 69 daysunderground. These different eyes and styles34 July/August 2013 • FOCUS

Focus presents: Fernwood Urban VillageADVERTISEMENTWant community? Move to cohousing.“Cohousing is the nextwave: people want toshare amenities, growthings, and have amore social, meaningful,efficient life.”—Bill McKechnieallow our own seeing to be refined, refocused;Susan Telfer exhorts us to “Roll down thewindows of your eyes. Now see.” And I can’thelp but perceive a perhaps unintentional butapt description of poetry in Zachariah Wells’line “Such a slim barrow into which to stuff/alife” or in Daniela Elza’s poem about buyinga painting in Chinatown: “along such simplelines fire burns.”So while each sip of poem is unique, theanthology—gathered carefully for you byBlomer and Kerkham—pours forth the transience,terror yet heart-warming beautyand, yes, fun of life in the whole. As PatrickLane observes in his introduction, “all of usin our untold, unimaginable selves are onebeautiful thing…our story one story.” That’sthe poetry of planet earth.Amy Reiswig is a writer, editorand former college literatureteacher with fond memoriesof long academic summer vacationsspent in the company ofmany voices in favouriteanthologies.Fernwood Urban Village cohousing members, from left: Allan Bruce, Amrita Bruce, and Bill McKechnie.If the “village life” appeals, there’s some scienceto back you up. Google “Roseto Effect” and you'llsee what the research confirms: A life full of meaningfuland supportiveinteraction within a closeknitcommunity optimizesmental and physical health.That’s right: sharing themeal with others is at leastas important as whatyou’re eating—perhapsmore so. Yet trying to synchronize schedules to bothbreak bread and rub elbows can be a herculean task...unless you live in a cohousing community.Cohousing is a modern concept of densely arranged,strata-title individual homes, positioned around acentral “common house.” Everyone lives separately,but social interaction is encouraged by sharing weeklycommon dinners, common gardens and amenitiesincluding workshop, art studio, dining/meeting hall,guest rooms, and recreation/yoga room.An increasingly popular alternative for those whowant both the company of others and to live moregently on the earth, cohousing has its roots in Denmarkand is blossoming worldwide. Victoria now has anideally located, ecologically-conscious cohousing development:Fernwood Urban Village. The group is currentlywelcoming new members who are ready to enjoy homeownership, village-style.Salt Spring Island residents Allan and Amrita Brucehave shifted gears and begun to put their focus, resources,and energy into co-creating Fernwood Urban Village.Allan has been a successful real estate agent for overtwo decades; they own their own home with spectacularviews, several outbuildings, and, as Allan describes,“100 percent privacy” on nearly four acres.The Bruces are making the move to cohousing notsimply to “downsize,” like so many others whose kidshave launched from the nest, but to launch themselvesinto a whole new way of living, reaping a bounty ofbenefits in a community of like-minded, growth-orientedpeople of all ages and stages of life.“The growth part ofliving intentionally is soimportant to me,” saysAmrita. “Living this waywith others who want thesame, I know I will keepgrowing and learning.”Allan concurs. “It will enrichour lives, to spend less time taking care of physicalthings, and more time interacting with people.”Along with her husband Robert and their four youngchildren, Mollie Kaye intends to reside at FernwoodUrban Village cohousing. “I already enjoy so muchwarmth and support from the members of this group,and our kids now have a caring, extended cohousing‘family.’ I definitely see how living inter-generationallyis a gift to each of us, whatever our age.”Bill McKechnie, a Victoria developer since 1971, isan original founding member. “I plan to live there,because I can’t imagine a better way to live,” he explains.Thousands worldwide agree. “Cohousing is the nextwave: people want to share amenities, grow things,and have a more social, meaningful, efficient life.”Privacy is important, too, so each unit is a completehome unto itself. “Of course, for anyone, there aretimes when you need to shut the door and retreat,”he says, “but it sure is nice to know that communityis there when you want it.”To apply to become a member, visit the website:fernwoodurbanvillage.ca. You can visit our proposedbuilding site in the Fernwood area and look at thedrawings and plans which are currently being processedby Victoria City Hall. You can also find them on facebook,or via email: info@fernwoodurbanvillage.ca.www.fernwoodurbanvillage.cawww.focusonline.ca • July/August 2013 35

focusreporting from the frontlines of cultural change“Dinner and Yankee game with family.Talked about Paxil studies in children.”That note, written by a drug sales representativeabout his evening with a doctor andhis family, was one of many records that forcedGlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to pay a $3 billion fineto the U.S. government in 2012. According toPublic Citizen, since 1991, there have been 239legal settlements between U.S. regulators andpharmaceutical companies adding up to $30.2billion in penalties—a third of those in thepast two years. Over half related to the kinds ofactivities that drug sales reps were doing in theGSK case: Reps promoted drugs with misleadinginformation or for unapproved uses (the antidepressantPaxil carries government warningsagainst use in children), and gave doctors “expensivemeals, weekend boondoggles, and lavishentertainment,” “trips to Bermuda and Jamaica,spa treatments and hunting trips,” and “cashpayments” disguised as administrative reimbursementsor consulting fees, all “to induce“Bill”physicians to prescribe GSK’s drugs.”The sheer scale of these cases is overwhelming, collectively involvingdozens of multinationals, thousands of drug reps, and seemingly tensof thousands of doctors (although doctors have rarely been charged).And it shows no signs of abating, when such fines seem to be just thecost of doing business in a sector where profits rank with those of theoil and financial industries.Notably, these same multinational pharmaceutical companies spendbillions of dollars promoting the same drugs to Canadian doctors. Andsurveys show many Canadian doctors meet with reps monthly, weekly,or more often, regularly attend their educational events, and regardthem as a primary source for information about newer drugs. Yet there’snever been any similar lawsuits in Canada. Do drug companies playnicer here, or are we just bigger dupes?There are over 200 drug reps registered to visit Vancouver IslandHealth Authority facilities, and more visiting private doctors’ offices,but there’s no central tracking of what they’re doing. However, twoformer sales representatives who worked in Victoria and Vancouverfor four different pharmaceutical companies agreed to interviews withFocus, and they make the case that most Canadians are dangerously inthe dark. (Both men requested anonymity, which required removingidentifying details of companies, drugs, and doctors.)The “ethical” companyBill graduated in a health-related field, and worked in pharmaceuticalsales and promotion between 2002 and 2009 for two multinationalsin the lower mainland.Meet your doctor’s generous friendROB WIPONDPharmaceutical companies have paid billions of dollars in fines in the US for giving bribes and kickbacks to doctors.Are their drug sales representatives behaving any differently in Victoria?Bill says he chose to work at the first companyprecisely because its drug sales reps had agood ethical reputation among physicians,compared to other companies’ reps describedas “shills” and “hucksters.” His company followedthe conduct code of Rx&D, the Canadian selfregulatingindustry association whose voluntarymembers include many brand-name pharmaceuticalcompanies.“We had very tight restrictions on what wecould do,” says Bill. For example, that meantBill’s entertainment budget was $3000 annually—lowfor the industry. “Generally, the guyswould take the male doctors golfing or to hockeygames, and the women would take the femaledoctors to the spa,” he says. His performancewas measured partly based on how many suchoutings he did. Drug discussions were brief,Bill says, “so we could both get on with enjoyingthe game.”Bill felt this low-key “style” was effective.“You were trying to get [doctors] to feel goodabout you, so that they would use your product.In most cases, they didn’t see a lot of difference between the productsout there, so it did come down to personal relationships.”Most often Bill pitched drugs to doctors in their offices. Did he disclosenegative side effects? “I did pretty consistently,” answers Bill, “but oftenthey were given short-shrift, to be honest. Our job was to sell the productand to highlight the good points.” He says he always left doctors withthe drug’s “product monograph” with more detailed information. “Did[doctors] ever use it? Probably not. But I’d done what I was expected todo and what I felt was ethically responsible to do.”Did he promote drugs for unapproved uses? Bill admits he sometimesworked grey areas, like promoting a study which demonstrateda drug’s effectiveness, but which had been done on a specific patientgroup for which it wasn’t approved. “It wasn’t like we were saying,‘Go off and pour this into the water supply and use it for gout’,” saysBill. “But it was one of those little fuzzy areas.”Bill says he felt like a “pizza guy” with all the free drug sampleshe delivered. When doctors have free samples, explains Bill, they’llgive them to patients, and if patients like the drug, doctors startprescribing it. “Our job was to make sure that [doctors] had as manysamples as possible.”Though patients like free samples, critics point out that we end uppaying for them, personally and collectively, as more patients becomeattached to these typically newer, more expensive, less proven drugs.In fact, one drug which Bill was marketing especially effectively throughfree samples was eventually revealed to be potentially fatal. After helearned his company had been hiding the truth, Bill quit.36 July/August 2013 • FOCUS

“THEY TALKED A GOOD SHTICK about ethicalbehaviour, but my experience was that, really, the onlything that mattered was sales.” — BillAt the next company, things were worse. “They talked a good shtickabout ethical behaviour,” says Bill. “But my experience was that, really,the only thing that mattered was sales.”Once, Bill met with a physician who was heading an institute. Theydiscussed the drug company possibly funding research chairs in returnfor its drugs being prescribed by all the institute’s doctors. “It left mewith a really nasty feeling,” says Bill about the conflicts of interest. Tohis relief, the proposal fell apart, and Bill soon left for a job in hospitaladministration. “I think I’ve saved my soul, for whatever that’s worth.”Knowing he operated more ethically than many, Bill worries forpatients who know nothing about what’s going on between drug companies,reps, and doctors. “In all of this, the patient is the one who’s atthe most disadvantage.”Indeed, no one learned that better than Sam. For 17 years, Sam wasa committed, successful drug rep for successively less ethically “strict”companies. But Sam saw his profession differently after he became apatient himself.High blood pressure salesStarting in his twenties in 1989, Sam worked for two different companiesas a pharmaceutical sales rep based in Victoria until 2006.“It was wonderful,” says Sam. He was using his Bachelor of Science,and had a great salary and benefits, a company car, and an expenseaccount. “I was a blank slate. I wasn’t jaded, I wasn’t shaking withtremors, I wasn’t chronically depressed… None of these things hadhappened yet.”A big, charismatic man with an expressive voice and emotionallyengaging manner, Sam describes those early years as “like being a kidin a pill-filled candy store.” Success, he says, was all about delivering“the numbers” in sales volume, and he delivered.“Luckily, I was working for a company that had a really strong productline,” says Sam. “I had cardiology, neurology, endocrinology, psychiatry.The big classes of drugs.”Sam’s group targeted about 150 South Island doctors. “We dividedthem into ‘key’ and ‘super key’ physicians. The others we just didn’teven spend any time on at all. You just go for where the cash cowsare. They’re opinion leaders, people respect them, they have hugepractices…”Sam distributed gifts like pens and notepads, set up displays in hospitals,brought in meals or took doctors and clinic staff out for meals,and distributed samples of popular and expensive patented drugs. Forgetting doctors to listen to sales pitches, these freebies worked, saysSam. “[The doctors] knew that if they didn’t talk to me, there werecertain samples that they couldn’t get. And some of the samples that Ihad access to were gold.”Sam also organized luxurious weekend “medical education” eventsfeaturing drug company-paid speakers in beautiful BC locales likeWhistler. When key sales targets got met, the company sent the repsthemselves on five-star “incentive trips” to places like Brazil, Malaysia,LEAVE A LEGAC Y TMAd design donated by iD2.cawww.focusonline.ca • July/August 201337

Sensible conflict resolutionfor families, estates,and workplaces.• MEDIATION• ARBITRATION•PARENTING COORDINATIONPATRICIALANELL.B, C. Med., C. Arb., Cert. Fam. Arb.Lawyer*/Mediator250.598.3992*denotes Law CorporationO’Malley’sGreenscapesCertified HorticulturistGARDEN SERVICES• pruning• bed tending• lawn maintenance• what have youBryan O’Malley250.389.1783and the Bahamas. “With ice sculptures, dancers,the best hotels, the best cuisine,” describesSam. But this extravagance came with a price—ever-mounting pressures to increase sales. Andnot all the company’s drugs were winners.“You’re launching the tenth [drug in acommon class] in a market that’s alreadyflooded, and you have tremendous pressureto bring in the results, when the drugs are allvirtually the same,” says Sam. “Your parasympatheticnervous system is constantly on highalert…You’re only as good as your last quarter…Ifthere’s a trend that’s not upward, all of a suddenout come the magnifying glasses and there’smeetings and there’s questions…And whenyou’ve been extremely successful, the hamsterwheel just keeps going faster…”Sam took a buy-out during a merger, butsoon returned to work. After intense trainingwith a new company which Sam describes as“like being indoctrinated into a cult,” he accesseda whole new world, without Rx&D guidelines.Drug-fuelled rocket ride“At the beginning it was unbelievably amazing,”says Sam. “We had no rules.” Along with coffeemugs and golf balls, Sam delivered gift basketswith expensive bath soaps and confections,and sent doctors bags of popcorn with movietickets inside. Even TVs and golf clubs weren’tout of the question.“As far as continuing medical educationevents, you did whatever you wanted,” saysSam. “You just had to make sure the right[doctors] showed up.” Sam says he took doctorson horseback riding, mountain biking, andsalmon fishing trips, with flimsy “medicaleducation” add-ons.“It became a way of rewarding the peoplewho had been my health care partners forall of these years,” says Sam.The company offered an “uncapped bonus,”meaning that the more drugs the reps sold,the more money they made. “We just had ariot,” says Sam. “As long as we could prove areturn on investment, we could do whateverwe wanted, we could be as creative as wewanted…It was just this nosebleed upwardtrajectory at 10 G’s; you’re just pressed againstthe seat; you can’t believe it’s happening.”He didn’t lie in drug pitches but, like Bill,Sam says he downplayed negatives and occasionallyslipped in oblique mentions ofunapproved uses. And he’d always buttresshis pitches with gifts and trips to help buildpersonal bonds.Not every doctor accepted. “A lot of peoplewere turned off completely; a lot of peopleMOST DOCTORS believethat gifts from drug reps donot strongly influence them,while in fact gifts dramaticallyincrease what thescientific literature calls“nonrational” prescribing.just didn’t want to have anything to do withit,” says Sam. “But enough people did, andwere so tickled…Some people just thought itwas great, and were just like, ‘You guys are sorefreshing, a breath of fresh air.’”Sam also recruited doctors into surveillancestudies, another practice reported in US lawsuits.He’d pay doctors varying amounts to givepatients a particular drug and report clinicalobservations. But these “scientific studies”were a ruse to slip doctors money, and to getnew doctors and patients using the drug. Howoften was this happening? “We said ‘honorarium’like we said ‘hello’,” offers Sam.He also gave many South Island doctorsmoney “to help cover administrative costs,”he says, when they switched a patient from acompetitor’s drug to one of his company’ssimilar drugs. And this was done en masse—for example, Sam would get all the physiciansin a clinic to sign a letter instructing pharmaciesto automatically change their patients’drugs when their prescriptions needed renewing.“It seemed like I was breaking the rules,”says Sam of this scheming. “There was definitelyan ‘ick’ factor.”To his recollection, Sam says he usually gavethese participating doctors about $20 perpatient switched. The kickback seems smallfor highly paid doctors, but in a US case justlast year a drug company was giving $100 perpatient in a similar drug-switching system,where doctors simply generated lists of suitablepatients and then signed them over.I ask Bill if he’s surprised to hear doctorswere taking kickbacks in Victoria around thetime he was a rep. “Nothing surprises me,”Bill comments. “A cash kickback—it reallyisn’t that much different than a trip to PebbleBeach, except it’s a little more transferable.”Despite these achievements, Sam describesthe relentless “screw-tightening” pressure tocoerce doctors, “cannibalize the competition,”and maximize profits as “humiliating” and“soul destroying.”38 July/August 2013 • FOCUS

Focus presents: Triangle HealingADVERTISEMENT“After a while it became very apparent that the people who had moresociopathic tendencies tended to do really well,” he says.Sam’s company got mired in a financial scandal, and simultaneouslySam’s mental and physical health deteriorated to a point wherehe couldn’t go on. In retrospect, Sam says he struggled with “a deepsense of internal conflict” about the ethics of what he was doingfor years, and leaving the job precipitated a descent into regret,depression, anxiety, and health problems that have plagued himsince. And he’s learning “karmic” lessons, he says, taking drugshe previously promoted.“One doesn’t know, especially with psychiatric drugs, how horriblethey can be until you turn from [drug sales] rep to patient,” says Sam.“And getting the push from the psychiatrists [to take the drugs] as ifthey’d just been spoken to by a rep…that opened my eyes in a big way.”He’s suffered through benzodiazepine addiction, and side effects fromother drugs like enormous weight gain, crushing headaches, and hypertensivespikes. He also cared for an ailing relative and became concernedabout the over-use of antipsychotics as chemical restraints in long-termcare—an issue that, again, has been linked in US lawsuits to illegalpromoting of such uses by drug reps.“Have a lot of people benefited from these chemicals? Surely,” saysSam. But then he talks about how we often hear about widespread overmedicatingfor hypertension or cholesterol. “Have we been forced toconvince people to prescribe more than is perhaps necessary? Yeah. Anddid it bother me? Yes.” He lists hemorrhages, cancer, and other commonadverse drug effects people can suffer. “Did I contribute to any of those?”Increasing “nonrational” prescribingLater, Sam pitches a drug to me. I quickly realize that the gifts andmoney were probably his least powerful tools. He’s knowledgeable,well-versed, earnest, a caring listener, and a compelling speaker. Andhe displays a remarkable, subtle knack for putting me under pressureuntil I feel like the only reasonable response is for me to commit to savethese patients with this drug right now. Unless I independently investigatedevery fact he uttered or completely shut him out, I’d succumb.And that’s what studies consistently show. Most doctors believethat gifts from drug reps do not strongly influence them, while in factgifts dramatically increase what the scientific literature calls “nonrational”prescribing. But even without gifts, drug reps are extremelyeffective. A 2013 study, led by Barbara Mintzes of the University ofBC-based Therapeutics Initiative, interviewed doctors after they’dmet with drug reps in four cities, including Montreal and Vancouver.In only 1.7 percent of cases did the information that drug reps presentedmeet even a baseline, physician-defined standard of “minimallyadequate” safety information. Even for drugs that had the highestlevelwarnings about seriously adverse, often life-threatening effectslike heart attacks, extreme cancer risk, or liver failure, such warningswere mentioned only seven percent of the time. Nevertheless, nearlytwo-thirds of the time, the study authors wrote, physicians judgedthe quality of scientific information the reps provided to be “goodor excellent” and “expressed willingness to increase prescribing” thepromoted drugs.BC Medical Association president Dr. William Cunningham callsMintzes’ findings “very concerning and disappointing.” As an emergencyphysician at Cowichan District Hospital, Cunningham says he frequentlysees the negative impacts of improper prescribing. “In emergency, weactually see these side effects, and these [drug] interactions which havenot good outcomes. And a lot of them are really simple things.”www.focusonline.ca • July/August 2013Three healthy summer tipsMost importantly, stay hydrated. “Many people are dehydrated anddon’t even realize it—and holiday activities can exacerbate the situation,”comments Triangle Healing Products’ owner and health guru Diane Regan.“Because our bodies are 75-80 percent water, we deserve the best water possible.”Many believe that by changing our bodies to a more alkaline state we can aidin the removal of free radicals and thereby reduce our risk of disease. Diane, whohas been researching health products for 40 years, is excited about the new KenricoForever Alkaline Water Stick Purifier, a very simple and reasonably priced ($35)aid in moving towards a more alkaline state.But it does more than that, says Diane: “It also adds magnesium and purifiesthe water by reducing bacteria and other contaminants.” Scientific studies haveshown that many symptoms of chronic disorders (including allergies, fibromyalgia,migraines, and attention deficit disorder) are linked to the lack of magnesium.Besides the convenient water stick, Triangle also carries Kenrico’s Ion ShowerHead. Fortunately, notes Diane, both these Kenrico products are one-time purchasesas they last forever.Diane and her customers are also impressed by Natural Action Water units.These create “structured water”—softer, energized, with balanced pH—makingthe water more readily absorbed into our cells for optimum hydration. 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Nevertheless, Cunningham says, the BCMA doesn’t have authorityto control doctors’ interactions with drug reps. “We just hope thatthey’re following the guidelines of the Canadian Medical Association.”Canadian Medical Association guidelines for physician relationshipswith drug reps aren’t substantially different from Rx&D and variousBC health authority policies. None clearly define what constitutes accuracyin drug promotions, while gifts, free meals, remuneration forsurveillance studies, and trips to educational events are explained tobe generally acceptable, so long as they aren’t “extravagant” or of“significant” value.Such policies are “just silly,” says Dr. Warren Bell, a family physicianin Salmon Arm who frequently speaks out on medical ethics issues.“It’s like saying, as long as you rob the bank but you don’t steal a wholebunch of money, no problem. Just a little bit of money. Just oneteller. One teller, one drawer, that’s all.”Bell has “cleansed” his own practice of industry influences. “Thereare no logos, no freebies, no knick-knacks, no so-called free samples,”says Bell. “When a new [drug rep] arrives on the block, I just tellthem very nicely that they can go away.”But how many Canadian doctors are voluntarily doing that? Andit’s an important question, because none of these policies are beingvigorously monitored or enforced, anyway.Policing in the darkMintzes’ study notes that Health Canada could exercise legislativeauthority over drug rep practices, “but rarely does so in practice.”Rx&D investigated just 14 complaints about drug rep ethical violationsbetween 2008 and 2011, of which eight resulted in fines of $10,000to $25,000.In the drug industry, “a $25,000 fine is a night out with yourstaff,” comments Bill. “It’s inconsequential.”In 2010, the Vancouver Island Health Authority found its policieswere being ignored: Half of drug reps did not even send in requireddisclosure forms declaring gifts and money they’d given out that year.The review also stated that policy violations were probably “significantlyunder-reported.” Meanwhile, most VIHA doctors maintainprivate practices, where health authority policies wouldn’t apply, anyway.The BC College of Physicians has broad regulatory authority overdoctors. According to College Deputy Registrar Dr. Galt Wilson, though,their regulating is “complaints driven” and they’ve never received anycomplaint about any doctor’s relationship with drug reps.Wilson believes that drug reps like Sam with their gift giving,lavish meals, bogus studies, and conferences in exotic locales are of abygone era. “I think successive generations of doctors are more discerning.All of this has been tightened up,” says Wilson.“I think those practices have decreased somewhat,” concurs BCMAPresident Cunningham. “I couldn’t tell you for a fact that it doesn’t happenat all. But certainly you don’t hear about it the way you do in the US.”University of Victoria drug policy researcher Alan Cassels, authorof Selling Sickness, isn’t buying it. “It’s not as bad as it used to be,” heparrots. “I’ve been studying pharma policy for twenty years, and I’veheard that all the time for the last twenty years.” So does he believemany drug reps and doctors are still today as corrupt in Canada as inthe U.S.? “Absolutely,” answers Cassels.Who’s right? Some speculate that improved physician education andmore ubiquitous generic drugs have reduced Canada’s problems, whileAmerica’s free market creed and private insurers are worsening theirs.Others suggest U.S. whistleblower incentives bring more problems tolight, while Canadians are fogged by our deference to medical authorityand tendencies to politely characterize as “gifts” and “administrativeassistance” what Americans bluntly call bribes and kickbacks. “We don’tknow what’s going on,” says Bill. “I think that’s really the problem.”A Canadian antidoteWhat should we do? Many argue that industry self-monitoring andself-regulating are inadequate. “If you really want to know what’s goingon, you need to have a group of people dedicated to doing those typesof investigations,” says Bill. “Health Canada needs to take a bigger rolein regulating the promotional activities of pharmaceutical firms.”Cassels believes an additional solution is equally simple: supportindependent research. “People who make products should be allowedto market them,” he says. “But if you’re not also investing in independentevaluation of treatments, then all [doctors] are getting is marketing.”On that, everyone I interview agrees.“We feel very strongly that physicians should not rely solely on [drugcompany] information, and they should be consulting independentsources,” says BCMA President Cunningham. He points to medicaleducation courses run by the independent drug-analysis group, theTherapeutics Initiative. “Those were totally unbiased, evidence-based,and were probably the best courses in BC,” says Cunningham.The BC Liberals, however—who themselves have taken hundredsof thousands of dollars in pharmaceutical industry “donations”—recently controversially axed the Therapeutics Initiative’s $550,000annual budget. Medical experts have been calling for our governmentto resuscitate the TI before it’s too late, pointing to how some of TI’srecommendations have led to huge health care savings and hundredsof saved lives in BC alone. But considering that a TI meta-analysis ofa drug’s safety and effectiveness is often so widely respected that a drugcompany can lose tens of millions in annual revenues after a TI critique,one can surmise how many persuasive Bills and Sams have been sentinto BC government offices throwing “gifts” around and arguing theTI should die.“I think they need to be saved,” says Cunningham. “I think [theTherapeutics Initiative] is one of the most important institutions tohelp prescribe correctly in this very complex field.”“The solution is unbiased information,” says the BC College’s Wilson,also expressing support for the Therapeutics Initiative. “[The Collegeis] not allowed to be political because we’re a creature of the governmentof the day. But it’s tragic to my mind that there are untold amountsof money spent on commercial promotion of drugs, [while] a verysmall amount of money to counter that with objective information issomehow controversial.”Some also propose full disclosure from family physicians. Certainly,hearing our personal doctors list every drug rep they’ve lunched with,every gift they’ve accepted, and every drug company “educational”vacation they’ve taken could help us all make more informed healthcare decisions. Currently, we can only wonder why most aren’t providingsuch disclosures.Rob Wipond won this year’s Western Magazine Awardin Science, Technology and Medicine for his Focus article“The Case for Electoshocking Mia” (Nov 2012). Seearticle at www.focusonline.ca.40 July/August 2013 • FOCUS

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urbanitiesDown the drainGENE MILLERCan Victorians afford—literally—to let the CRD build a sewage treatment facility that’s based on outmoded thinking?Oh, do not wake the sleeping tempests; beneath them Chaosstirs!” wrote the Russian Romantic-era poet Fyodor Tyutchevin Silentium.You nailed it, tovarich.Planet Earth hosts two great governing systems: climate and platetectonics, however poetically disguised. We are careless interveners inthe first, helpless bystanders in the second; but they connect frequentlyin our imaginations, long cultural narratives and literature. Installedin us—call it Hell and be done with it—is the certain intuition that somesubterranean cataclysm-in-the-making has humanity’s name on it.Maybe our mineral skeleton (“I know it in my bones,” we say) transmitsthis sunken probability to our brains. It’s possible that this knowledgemakes us fatalistic, and it may explain why the shrug is both expressivebody language and code for “Whatever.”I wonder: Is majordomo Alfred thinking of global warming or thecauldron below, or both, when he says to Bruce (Batman) Wayne: “Somemen just want to see the world burn?”“THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY,” goes that quotable piece of environmentaldesiderata. Here in Victoria, the exemplar is Dockside Greenin Victoria West which thinks globally, acts locally and has attracted attentionfrom a sizeable world-wide community of green building advocatesand urbanists. To balance the ledger, we sin globally by flushing our sewageinto the wide ocean. “No more!” said the province a few years ago, deafto grumpy local claims that the ocean does a good job of dispersing thehuman mess (“the ocean’s natural flushing action” has been thephrase-of-choice of the no-treatment crowd); and since then the CRD,charged with responsibility for coming up with a wastewater treatmentplan, has been busy, uh, coming up with a wastewater treatment plan.In one of those exquisite and unplanned twists of counterpoise,Dockside Green’s unique approach to wastewater and the CRD’semerging wastewater treatment plan expose a gorgeous ideologicalcollision between fully conscious, world-nurturing ecological practiceand business-as-usual (in which liquid waste is a bother, not a renewable;an expense, not a process); or, if you will, between the past thatgot us here and the future we need. Rather than plough directly intothe heart of this story, I’d like to take you via the scenic route.Ponds at Dockside Green utilize water reclaimed from sewage treatmentON MAY 10TH OF THIS YEAR (a date we may all have reason toremember) The New York Times published a news story entitled “Heat-Trapping Gas Passes Milestone, Raising Fears.” Monitoring equipmentat Mauna Loa, Hawaii just recorded levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide(CO2) in excess of 400 parts per million. The Times piece notes:The best available evidence suggests the amount of the gas in the airhas not been this high for at least three million years, before humansevolved, and scientists believe the rise portends large changes in the climateand the level of the sea.“It symbolizes that so far we have failed miserably in tackling this problem,”said Pieter P. Tans, who runs the monitoring program at the NationalOceanic and Atmospheric Administration that reported the new reading.Ralph Keeling, who runs another monitoring program at the ScrippsInstitution of Oceanography in San Diego, said a continuing rise could becatastrophic. “It means we are quickly losing the possibility of keeping theclimate below what people thought were tolerable thresholds,” he said.NO DOUBT, YOU’RE FAMILIAR with the Einstein aphorism, visibleon just about everything except fortune cookie slips or embossed toiletpaper: “We can’t solve today’s problems with the same thinking weused to create them,” often reduced to “We can’t solve today’s problemswith yesterday’s ideas.” Wouldn’t it be even more revealing to say“We can’t solve today’s problems with today’s people?”We all dinosaur out. I can less understand or manage new technologyevery day. I don’t know what the hell the young people are talkingabout. More of my thinking seems fusty, brittle, dated. My parentswent through the same thing. They found novelty harder and harderto mediate and less able to pivot, did what we all do: they dug in, shrunktheir world and clung to what they knew—not just their habits andpractices but values, too.We become our ruts.Of course, things are jumping (just ask the weather scientists at MaunaLoa) and if the fizz of looming catastrophe is required to get us out ofour ruts and provoke fresh thinking and innovation, reality clearly isup to the task. Right on time, global warming, extreme weather, changesto ocean ecology and other emerging signs of human-induced stressare raising essential questions about our engineering-driven approachto the human project. Now, suspect practices in energy sourcing andresource use, styles of consumption, and even the waste of waste itself,have lengthening moral shadows.I HAD THE OPPORTUNITY to witness a remarkably speedy evolutionwithin the short span of the seven Gaining Ground urban sustainabilityconferences that I initiated in Victoria, Vancouver and Calgary between2005 and 2011. I saw the audience morph from a cohort of horrified,helpless handwringers who felt they were staring at the abyss intoempowered, ecologically informed practitioners—a promising marker,some of us thought, imagining that this new cadre would lose notime setting things right environmentally.Oops.I can recall former Premier Gordon Campbell rapt at a presentationby techno-futurist Stewart Brand (Whole Earth Catalog) at one of42 July/August 2013 • FOCUS

“IN ONE OF THOSE EXQUISITE and unplanned twists of counterpoise, Dockside Green’s unique approach towastewater and the CRD’s emerging wastewater treatment plan expose a gorgeous ideological collision betweenfully conscious, world-nurturing ecological practice and business-as-usual.”the Vancouver Gaining Ground conferences, as Brand laid out the casefor seeding the cloud canopy using sulphate aerosols to counter globalwarming with global dimming.Oops.You could be excused for catching in this a whiff of Plan B resignation.“Resilience” and “adaptation” are the brave, new words in thepolicy lexicon, possibly because nobody’s yet willing to scream, “Headfor the hills!” In a world now measuring 400 ppm of CO 2 , do you needa more tragic or ironic living image than Bill McKibben, heroic founderof 350.org? Just three short years ago I walked with him in Claremont,California. He was so hopeful. Now he must be wondering if he shouldbother pasting a 4 over the 3, or just wait for 5.IN THE REAL WORLD, politicians are technical subject matterneophytes, heavily dependent on (and swayed by) the recommendationsof their professional staff, and these engineering bureaucrats andtheir consultants are not proponents of audacious, disruptive thinking,but creatures of exigency and the status quo—pressure, that is, to comeup with a workable response in a fixed time-frame.In fact, an overlooked part of the equation is that engineers’ errorsand omissions liability itself makes the profession innovation-averseand dismissive of “starry-eyed” solutions…tomorrow’s thinking, inother words—a perfect prescription for yesterday’s tried-and-true, nottomorrow’s fix. Last word you’re ever going to hear from a municipalengineer: “Eureka!” Sorry, Einstein.WHEN DOCKSIDE GREEN—the now world-famous LEED (Leadershipin Environmental and Energy Design) Platinum development acrossthe Blue Bridge—was being undertaken in 2006, one of its bold environmentalfeatures was on-site wastewater treatment. If you’ve visitedDockside Green, those decorative ponds in front of the harbourfacingtownhouses are the final ‘polishing’ stage of the wastewatertreatment process.To win CRD engineering approval and to opt out of regional wastewaterfees, Dockside Green had to turn somersaults to prove that itson-site system was capable of treating wastewater to CRD standards.Lest you imagine that Dockside Green’s achievements have been acause for universal celebration, on August 14, 2012, fascinating correspondencepassed from Patrick Lucey, senior aquatic ecologist andpresident of Victoria-based Aqua-Tex Scientific Consulting, to JackHull, core area director of the CRD Wastewater Treatment Program.Referring to a meeting with senior CRD staff, provincial ministry officialsand others, Lucey notes to Hull: “You made a number of commentsregarding the efficacy of the Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) atwww.focusonline.ca • July/August 201343

Dockside Green; in particular that the WWTP was non-compliant forextended periods of time vis-à-vis its Operating Certificate, resultingin poor plant performance. You further expressed the opinion thatgiven the extended non-compliance periods of plant performance(months) this raised significant concerns within CRD staff regardingthe use of decentralized WWTP as a potential design consideration formanaging sewage within the Region.” [My italics.]Lucey’s letter goes on to note that, in fact, there was a single day ofnon-compliance, for administrative, not performance, reasons. He addsthat Dockside Green’s wastewater facility has met all water quality conditionsas per the Operating Certificate. It has failed to be compliant witha condition requiring daily water quality testing only because thelaboratory specified by the CRD itself in the Operating Certificate isclosed on the weekends; but that Dockside Green has passed all waterquality tests during its entire operating life (now about seven years)during weekday testing, and that it is reasonable to assume that weekendtests would have shown the same positive results. Why would it be soreflex for Hull to discredit rather than celebrate (and attempt to emulate)Dockside Green’s wastewater treatment accomplishments?WHEN CHRIS CORPS TALKS, he plays all the voices. He’s a naturalnon-fiction storyteller. Corps, a land economist and valuation consultant,brings formidable forensic skills to spreadsheet analysis, andcan turn “Total Stabilized Capital Cost Comparison” into a spellbinder.I haven’t met anyone better able to untangle and illuminate the ideathat capital investment choices have ecological impacts and consequencesfor the energy future...in fact, the future at-large.He has numerous questions about, and issues with, the proposedCRD wastewater treatment program, many of whose planning detailsand $782 million cost (Corps believes the true cost easily will be doublethat number) have become public lately as a result of the CRD’s clumsyand unpopular property acquisitions in Esquimalt.What jumps out in flashing neon from Corps’ math is that the currentaverage annual Dockside Green costs per door for wastewater servicesare $362.71. The CRD states that with its new plan, regional per-doorcosts will be $309.86—more proof, you think cynically, that green costsmore. But Corps points to a single fact: The CRD omits two-thirdsof the cost—63.3 percent, exactly—on the quiet premise that thisamount is being contributed by the province and the feds. Were regionaltaxpayers directly responsible for repaying true capital costs, they wouldquickly realize that the CRD wastewater system is $495 million—almosthalf a billion—more expensive than it appears, and that taxpayerswould be paying $682.98 a door on a full-cost basis.Corps summarizes the real math this way:Cost of proposed CRD treatment systemcompared to Dockside Green systemCost per doorCRD = $682.98Dockside = $362.71Dockside cost as a percentage of CRD cost: 53 percentCRD cost as a percentage of Dockside cost: 188 percentRegion-wide capital cost comparisonCRD system = $783 million Dockside-type system = $414 millionAvoidable/excess capital cost: $368 millionCRD taxpayers’ share of avoidable capital cost: $135 million44 July/August 2013 • FOCUS

Chris CorpsCorps shows me a video of a miniaturesystem at work, then World Bank policy andbest practices, then an engineering textbooknoting that the biological outputs are over2,000 times better than the CRD’s proposedapproach, and last a short video documentingchange of practice in Sweden. First thingSweden did was to fire the entire engineeringdepartment. As to the CRD, Corps finishes,“They don’t know how to do it, and theyhate counting or saving money. Confusesthem terribly.”CLIVE HAMILTON, author of the recentEarthmasters: The Dawn of the Age of ClimateEngineering, wrote an opinion piece entitled“Geoengineering: Our Last Hope, or a FalsePromise?” It ran in The New York Times onMay 26, two weeks after the news from MaunaLoa. Hamilton observes:Geoengineering—the deliberate, large-scaleintervention in the climate system to counterglobal warming or offset some of its effects—may enable humanity to mobilize its technologicalpower to seize control of the planet’s climatesystem, and regulate it in perpetuity.But is it wise to try to play God with the climate?For all its allure, a geoengineered Plan B maylead us into an impossible morass.Engineering the climate is intuitively appealingto a powerful strand of Western technologicalthought that sees no ethical or other obstacleto total domination of nature.In an emerging new condition of limits,everything’s become precious: arable land,potable water, fresh air, clean food. There’s akind of wisdom just bubbling to the surfacenow, struggling to make itself broadly, publiclyunderstood: that it’s not the last straw thatbreaks the camel’s back, but all the strawsbefore it, too. Care to wager on the locationand timing of the last flush?Whatever.There are 638 muscles in the human body Appease the spirits in your home with thisand bouncing on a Bellicon® rebounder elegant Thai spirit house—all Thai goodsengages all of them.now sale priced.Triangle Healing ProductsBest of Both Worlds Imports770 Spruce Avenue2713 Quadra Street • 250-386-8325www.trianglehealing.com • 250-370-1818 www.bestofbothworldsimports.comgreat finds for your homeGene Miller, founder of Open SpaceCultural Centre and MondayMagazine, is currently writing MassiveCollaboration: Stories That Divide Us,Stories That Bind Us and The Hundred-Mile Economy: Preparing For Local Life.www.focusonline.ca • July/August 2013Transform your property with the timelessbeauty of eco-friendly, BC-madeinterlocking brick—3 times the strengthof concrete, and lasts a lifetime.Rooster Interlocking Brick250-889-6655 • www.roosterbrick.comStowAway® in-wall ironing board. Includein your laundry or kitchen renovation.All Organized Storage Ltd3370 Tennyson Avenue (near UpTown)Tue - Fri 11-5 & Sat 11-3 (except long weekends)www.AllOrganizedStorage.ca • 250-590-632845

finding balanceThe bizzaro world of GNPTRUDY DUIVENVOORDEN MITICOur standard measurement of economic success is at odds with most things we truly cherish.Ah, the wily gross nationalproduct, the statistic thathas government andcommerce cheering each time itmoves brightly upward like thefundraising barometers often seenaround town. That’s the sign of arobust economy, and when theeconomy is healthy, so are weall, right?Well, consider this soberingperspective from 1968: “Our grossnational product is now over eighthundred billion dollars a year but[it] counts air pollution and cigaretteadvertising and ambulancesto clear our roads of carnage. Itcounts special locks for our doors,and the jails for the people whobreak them. It counts the destructionof the redwoods and the lossof our natural wonder in chaoticsprawl. It counts napalm andnuclear warheads, and armouredcars for the police who fight theriots in our cities. It counts thetelevision programs [that] glorifyviolence in order to sell toys toour children.”That was Robert Kennedy deliveringhis first major campaign speech 45 years ago. Finally, it seemed,here was an influential visionary who could grasp that many threadskeep a thriving society woven together, and that the snake-oil side ofuncontested economic growth can rend huge holes in our social tapestryand then flourish trying to sew them up. Kennedy was probably notthe first to warn against measuring ourselves by wealth alone, but hisadmonition was eloquent in its clarity and palpability. Surely societywould take some heed.But have we? Fast-forward to 2013 and the head office of Exxon-Mobil (easily the largest energy company in the world) where CEO RexTillerson addressed his shareholders just weeks ago. “What good is itto save the planet if humanity suffers?” he implored, dead earnest, justbefore they voted down a proposal that would have had the companytake measures to finally begin shrinking its behemoth carbon footprint.What he was really saying is that the current corporate economic modelis still—and ever more so—single-mindedly about business for maximumprofit. But that’s okay, he adds, as long as it creates jobs and stuff to keepus from suffering. Apparently jobs and stuff are what we’re living for.Apparently we’d rather choose death—by extinction—than a scaleddownversion of our jobs and stuff.So much for a philosophical overhaul of the GNP. Big governmentand business mostly still prefer to keep stimulating the economy theold-fashioned way, which, forExxon-Mobil, currently includesa mop-up operation in Arkansaswhere its 65-year-old Pegasuspipeline has ruptured and spilledan estimated 200,000 gallons ofAlberta crude. Environmental spillsare good for the economy. Theygenerate jobs and revenue and boostthe GNP.So do casinos, divorce, earthquakes,“smart” meters, replacementbridges (whether needed or not),political gridlocks and a loadedferry sinking in the dead of night.So does the flooding of 5550hectares of pristine northern wildernessto build a dam to generateelectricity to frack natural gas(ruining still more habitat) to pipeto the coast to sell offshore. Andso does the Northern Gatewayproject, temporarily simmering onthe back burner while PremierClark plays political hardball fora better share of royalties and profits.The premier has promised she’llbe busy generating jobs. Picturethem now, first to get all the newmega-projects off the ground andlater, to deal with inevitable ecological disaster(s). (Anyone who believesthere’ll never be a mishap is probably also easily convinced that we canbuild an accident-free highway.)In 2013 the GNP continues to be a frenzied accounting machine thattallies up every monetary transaction and assumes the total is directlycorrelated to a better life. Today, as in 1968, it favours the high cost ofstrife over the much lower cost of stability. As Kennedy said back then,it has yet to factor in “the health of our children, the quality of theireducation, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of ourpoetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our publicdebate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither ourwit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither ourcompassion nor our devotion to our country…”In other words, it measures little of what’s most important to us andkeeps us blind to crucial truths. Some updated math is long overdue.ILLUSTRATION: APRIL CAVERHILLIn September TDM will explore alternate instrumentsfor measuring quality of life, and invites youto check out the Canadian Index of Wellbeing athttps://uwaterloo.ca/canadian-index-wellbeing inthe meantime.46 July/August 2013 • FOCUS

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