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Contents
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177
Out front 6
B.C.’s lifetime income-assistance ban for
people convicted of criminal welfare fraud
is lifted. Critics worry about the lack of public
awareness of the change. In Vancouver’s
historic Chinatown, a coalition of young
activists is working to protect low-income
housing for seniors.
Vendor of the Year 2015 8
Megaphone’s annual Vendor of the Year
award celebrates a vendor whose
extraordinary dedication is a bright light
in the community. This year, it’s Eric,
a beloved daily presence at Commercial
Drive and 1st Avenue in Vancouver.
MEGAPHONEMAGAZINE.COM
FACEBOOK.COM/MEGAPHONEMAGAZINE
@MEGAPHONEMAG
Dance dance revolution 10
Meet Lorelei Williams, the founder of
Butterflies in Spirit, a Vancouver-based
dance troupe comprising friends and family
members of the more than 1,200 missing
and murdered aboriginal women in Canada.
Dancing together, Lorelei says, provides an
opportunity to heal.
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Our goal is to provide a voice
and an economic opportunity to
homeless and low-income people
while building grassroots support
to end poverty.
THANK YOU SUPPORTERS & SPONSORS
Electronic arts 18
In a musical genre dominated by men,
Soledad Muñoz has founded a record label
exclusively for women-identified electronic
music artists. “Unlike other labels, this one
was created on the basis of feminist theory,”
she tells writer Aurora Tejeida.
Is blood thicker than water? 20
Like many Victoria residents, Quinn
MacDonald often jokes about the city’s
progressive community—polite and
inclusive to a fault. But the joke turned
sinister this summer when a trip “up island”
for a family wedding resulted in a broken
jaw, spurring MacDonald to question
whether blood truly runs thicker than
water, and whether it’s possible to bridge
political divides among family.
Kathryn Calder finds peace 22
She’s best known for her membership in
Vancouver indie-pop supergroup The New
Pornographers, but in the decade since she’s
joined the band, singer-songwriter Kathryn
Calder has walked a hard road. For years, she
was a caregiver for her mother, who battled
ALS until she died in 2009. Her solo work,
which has tracked the tangled experience of
loss and grief for years, marks bold new steps
forward in healing, happiness, and peace.
This changes everything 24
If climate-change science is failing to
move the people it needs to persuade,
what to do? Radically change the public
conversation, says author and journalist
Naomi Klein. “If we can tell another story
about who humans are and what we're
capable of,” she tells writer Michael Stewart,
“then maybe we can look at this issue from
which so many of us are averting our eyes.”
The Beast 28
Downtown Eastside poet and longtime
Megaphone friend Jim Ryder is no
stranger to the ravages of mental illness.
His poem, “The Beast,” tracks the
experience of hospitalization, of psychosis,
and of the beasts inside our heads.
Cover Photography
By Kourosh Keshiri
About the photo
Legendary Canadian journalist and author
Naomi Klein has worked tirelessly to change
public attitudes about consumer culture,
the environment, and how capitalism is the
chief architect of global inequality. She’s
pictured on this page in a still from This
Changes Everything, her latest documentary
about the fight for climate justice.
2 Change that Works
MegaphoneMagazine.com
3

Contributors
Director’s Corner
Executive Director
Sean Condon
Operations Manager
Jessica Hannon
Vendor Coordinator
Misha Golston
Vendor Field Managers
Allegra Costigan (Vancouver)
Savanna Bazuik (Victoria)
Andrea Warner
Writer
Andrea Warner was born and raised in Vancouver, B.C.,
where she spent childhood weeknights penning soapy teen
novels by the light of streetlamps when she should have
been sleeping. Today, she is a writer whose work appears
in such places as CBC Music, Pitchfork, Exclaim!, The
Georgia Straight, and other publications. Feminism, art and
pop culture make her happy. She can be found online at
TheAndreaWarner.com or or @_AndreaWarner.
Editor
Jackie Wong
Art Director
Harry Olson
Emi Sasagawa
Writer
Editorial Support
Geoff D’Auria
Photographers
Jackie Dives, Adam Gilmer,
Sarah Race
Project Coordinator
Jade Bacchus
Writing Workshop Facilitators
Surya Govender, Blythe Hutchcroft,
Julia Kochuk, Helen Polychronakos,
Shannon Rayne, Yvonne Robertson
Board of Directors
Nezihe Aquino, Bob Dennis,
David Lee, Kevin Hollett,
Michael Roberts, Jo Shin
Volunteers
Brit Bachmann, Katharine Bleinis,
Eliza Christie, Monique Dillon,
Hanna Fazio, Mawuena Mallett,
Jenn McDermid, Scott Neufeld,
Becky Price,Elizabeth Rostad,
Shane Sharma, Sarah Sheridan,
Caroline Wong
Editorial Contributors This Issue
Bob Dennis, Alex Hudson,
Katie Hyslop, Quinn MacDonald,
Jim Ryder, Emi Sasagawa,
Michael Stewart, Aurora Tejeida,
Andrea Warner
Megaphone is published
every month by Street Corner
Media Foundation.
121 Heatley Avenue
Vancouver, B.C.
V6A 3E9
info@megaphonemagazine.com
In 26 years Emi has lived in four continents and seven
countries from Tokyo to Amsterdam to Rio de Janeiro. Her
interests include social movements, environmental politics
and indigenous rights. She started writing short features for
Megaphone in 2014. She recently spent a year reporting on
mental heath initiatives in low resource regions around the
world. Emi is a Lego fanatic. Her favorite brick is #4618537.
Michael Stewart
Writer
Michael Stewart is a freelance writer and editor based
in Victoria, B.C., focusing on B.C. politics, housing and
culture. He is also the blogs and promotions coordinator
at Rabble.ca, Canada's largest independent news
publication, where most of his writing appears. Michael is
a bad editor, a PhD dropout, and a union thug who enjoys
fishing, gardening, and throwing his two kids up in the
air. Follow him on Twitter @m_r_stewart.
Michael Roberts
Board member
Michael is a human resources executive with extensive
experience leading and managing in the high-tech sector.
His particular expertise is in developing HR structure and
programs to support corporate goals, strategy, and growth.
Michael is currently the President of Caliessen Consulting
Inc., an HR consulting firm focused on providing strategic HR
guidance and advice to small- and medium-sized firms. He
is also a founder and partner at The Stratfour Group, which
provides comprehensive people management solutions to
companies undergoing transition.
Wrap up
Hope with
Megaphone
this
holiday
season
Sean Condon
Executive Director
Megaphone Magazine
m Carmen created one of the holiday wrapping
paper designs in this issue. Photo: Jackie Dives.
We have a special gift for you in the
November and December issues of
Megaphone. Inside you’ll find wrapping
paper designed by Megaphone vendors.
We hope you can use it to wrap this
season’s holiday gifts—or, even better,
a Hope in Shadows calendar.
The holiday season is intended to be
a time to celebrate what’s important to
us: our families, friends and community.
But amidst the pressure and stress of
the season, it’s easy to get swept up in
the bustle and forget why, and who,
we’re celebrating. And it can be hard to
convey our feelings in the gifts we give.
Megaphone’s wrapping paper is part
of our Wrap Up Hope campaign, which
gives people an opportunity to give gifts
with meaning this holiday season. When
you give someone a Hope in Shadows
calendar and use Megaphone’s wrapping
paper (for the calendar or for any present),
you’re directly supporting an individual
experiencing poverty or homelessness.
We got the idea to make holiday
wrapping paper for the magazine from our
sister paper in Nashville, The Contributor.
They ran the project last year and it was a
big hit with both vendors and customers.
Many customers loved the wrapping paper
so much that they bought multiple copies.
We kicked off Wrap Up Hope by holding
a contest this fall with Megaphone
vendors to submit holiday wrapping
paper designs. We chose the first two
designs submitted for the November
issue. Longtime Megaphone contributor
and designer Will Brown help prepare
them for printing. The next two winning
designs will be in the December issue.
The two wrapping paper designs you
see in this issue are from Carmen and
Stephen. Carmen, who designed wrapping
paper featuring a Dr. Seuss-style string
of Christmas tree baubles, says it was a
lot of fun getting into the holiday spirit.
Stephen, who illustrated candy canes
in heart shapes, was Megaphone’s 2014
Vendor of the Year and is one of the
cheeriest people you’ll ever meet.
Wrap Up Hope is also part of our
holiday fundraising campaign. This
winter we’re working to raise $20,000
so we can continue to support the
Megaphone and Hope in Shadows vendors
in Vancouver and Victoria and make
sure this employment opportunity is
available to more people experiencing
poverty and homelessness in our cities.
“Selling Megaphone has helped me
have a job and have something stable,”
says Carmen, who works at Main and
26th. “[It also means] I can afford better
food. You have the extra couple bucks to
go get whatever it is that will help you.”
When you make a donation to
Megaphone, you’re supporting vendors
like Carmen and ensuring that Megaphone
and Hope in Shadows are giving homeless
and low-income people in Vancouver and
Victoria an opportunity for hope.
Enjoy your holiday wrapping
paper and please go to page 31 and
make a donation today.
4 Change that Works
MegaphoneMagazine.com
5

Out Front
Out Front
A big change, but no bang
Province quietly drops income-assistance ban
By Katie Hyslop
Direct action gets intergenerational
Youth rally for Chinatown seniors
Story and photo by Katie Hyslop
Thirteen years ago, the provincial
government introduced, with great fanfare,
a lifetime income-assistance ban for people
convicted of criminal fraud. While geared
towards stopping crimes like welfare fraud,
research by the Canadian Centre for Policy
Alternatives (CCPA) suggests this approach
is misguided. The CCPA’s research indicates
that people living below the poverty line
(people on assistance are below the line in
B.C.) resort to crimes like theft and survival
sex work in their struggle to make ends
meet—welfare fraud is less common. The
government lifted the ban this summer with
the bureaucratic equivalent of a whimper.
“We were tipped off that there was
some proposed legislation to remove
it—we hadn’t heard anything about it,”
says Zoe MacMillan, federal disability
advocacy project coordinator with
Victoria’s Together Against Poverty Society
(TAPS), which has helped people under
the ban apply for hardship assistance
from government. Hardship assistance
is designed as a last resort for people
denied income assistance, and the amount
of money received is at government’s
discretion. Government isn’t legally
obliged to provide hardship, however,
and recipients must reapply monthly.
The ban, applicable to both people
receiving income and provincial disability
assistance, was introduced by the newly
elected BC Liberal government in 2002 as
a way to curb income-assistance fraud.
Anyone convicted of income-assistance
fraud would receive a lifetime ban. Those
convicted could apply for hardship
assistance from government, which requires
users to frequently reapply for assistance.
Seventy British Columbians were
receiving hardship assistance because
of welfare fraud convictions when the
ban was lifted on August 1, 2015.
The ban was lifted after government
received repeated requests to do so during
public consultations, according to a A
spokesperson for the Ministry of Social
Development in an email to Megaphone.
The Ministry held those consultations,
called Accessibility 2024, with people
with disabilities and disability advocacy
organizations in 2013 and 2014.
The ministry added the change was
originally announced in a Mar. 23,
2015, press release about Bill 23, the
Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act.
Frontline staff, agencies, and advocates
were told about the change over the
summer. Letters were also sent out to the
70 people receiving hardship assistance.
But there were 185 people convicted of
criminal fraud and banned from receiving
income assistance since 2002. That leaves
115 people potentially unaware they’re
eligible to receive income assistance again.
“We’re happy it’s been lifted because it
should never have been introduced in the
first place,” says MacMillan of TAPS, adding
they’d like government to make more of an
effort to let people know the ban is over.
In place of the ban, the ministry will
deduct $100 per month from individuals
caught with welfare fraud. Currently
the estimated amount fraudsters owe
the ministry has reached $4 million.
That's 0.02 per cent of the $1.68 billion
assistance budget in 2014/15.
On average, the Ministry has recorded
15 to 20 cases of income-assistance fraud
annually since 2002. That’s less than one
per cent of all people accessing income
assistance in B.C. each year. Last year,
175,000 people received income assistance
from the provincial government.
Last April the Downtown Eastside’s Carnegie Community
Action Project organized Chinese seniors against neighbourhood
condo developments and rezoning applications. They
protested the Keefer Block and proposals to build more condos
and commercial spaces as measures to defend Chinatown's
most vulnerable residents from getting priced out.
Today, Chinese youth are taking up the cause in an
effort to protect both Chinatown’s low-income residents
and their own connection to culture and heritage.
“What you’ll hear from a lot of [youth] is for them Chinatown
brings back memories of their grandparents,” says artist Kathryn
Gwun-Yeen Lennon. She moved to Vancouver from Edmonton two
years ago and immediately got involved in Chinatown advocacy
efforts following her work with youth in Edmonton’s Chinatown.
Her mother is from Hong Kong. “For me it’s more like a connection
to the grandparents that are on the other side of the world.”
A member of the Youth Collaborative for Chinatown, Lennon
is helping establish stronger intergenerational connections in
the neighbourhood through events like Mah Jong tournaments
held in public spaces during the summer and fall.
But the Collaborative and other organizations like the
Chinatown Action Group are also interested in helping
Chinatown’s largely low-income, Chinese-speaking
seniors population speak out against condo developments
threatening to push them out of the neighbourhood.
m Members of the Youth Collaborative for Chinatown, including local
visual artist Kathryn Gwun-Yeen Lennon, are working with Chinatown’s
low-income, Chinese-speaking seniors to speak out against Chinatown
development that threatens to push them out.
Last month, the Chinatown Action Group and the Chinatown
Youth Collaborative brought their concerns to the City of
Vancouver’s open house for Beedie Living’s 105 Keefer Street
rezoning application. Although Beedie’s proposal reserves 25
of the 137 housing units for low-income seniors, it still requires
a yet-to-be announced non-profit to run the housing.
The remaining 112 units will arguably bring in outside
residents with higher incomes, increasing the number
of higher priced businesses to serve them, pushing out
things like affordable groceries and pharmacies.
Lennon says 105 Keefer is a stand-in for larger
neighbourhood gentrification issues.
“I think the community and the city has the responsibility to
ensure that development is done in a way that doesn’t displace,”
she says. She isn’t personally against development, but adds condo
development should be treated like an application for a new mine
and require a social and environmental impact assessment.
“We need more oversight because it’s such a sensitive,
special, and unique neighbourhood,” she says.
6 Change that Works MegaphoneMagazine.com
7

Vendor Profile
Vendor Voicesces
MEGAPHONE
VENDOR OF
THE YEAR 2015
VANCOUVER
Bob looks back
on years of
change in the
Cambie Village
Eric finds community
on Commercial Drive
Editor’s note: This year for the second year
in a row, Megaphone is proud to celebrate a
hard-working vendor with its annual Vendor
of the Year award. The award, determined
through surveys from Megaphone customers,
board members, and staff, was unveiled at
the annual Megaphone breakfast fundraiser
on November 3. For 2015, we’re proud to
celebrate Eric as Vancouver’s Vendor of the
Year, and John as Victoria’s. Here’s what Eric
has to say about the distinction.
“I was extremely surprised to hear that I
had won the Vendor of the Year Award. It
was great hearing the news. I knew I was
on the final list, but it barely occurred to
me that I could actually win in this group
of accomplished vendors. It’s great to get
the recognition and to hear the kind words
from customers, staff, and other vendors.
“Thank you so much to all of my
customers and friends on the Drive. I look
forward every day to meeting up with you.
Making sales isn’t even the most important
thing. The conversations and the hellos
and smiles are what I enjoy the most.
Grandview is such a unique and vibrant
community. The residents and visitors
mean everything to me. Thank you.
“I’ve been selling Megaphone and
Hope in Shadows for about four years. I
started selling Megaphone after selling
the Hope in Shadows calendar. I’m
out there selling six days a week.
“Before I started as a vendor, I was down
here in the Downtown Eastside, it was
2010, and I was mostly picking empties
for deposits. That’s when I noticed the
Hope in Shadows ads go up in the fall
of 2010. I probably saw the first ad at
the Carnegie. The Carnegie Community
Centre is a special place in the Downtown
Eastside. I can’t say enough about how
important the meals and the facilities
are, and the practical hours that they’re
open. I go there just about every day.
“Starting work as a vendor was an
eye-opener. I’ve never been in sales.
I’ve done customer service work before,
but not selling anything, and certainly
not out on the street like that.
“I have many loyal customers. They mean
everything. Without them, it wouldn’t
work. I watch the world turn there on the
Drive. I see the whole spectrum; I sell
near a clinic so I often hear of people’s
medical concerns, including cancers
and tumours and people going through
serious health crises in their lives. I also
watch children growing up, teenagers
growing up, and young families growing.
“The income’s helped me tremendously.
It allows me to purchase good meals
and maintain my health. It helps me
keep myself going in the outdoors
with clothing, gear, and my bike for
all of my transportation needs.
“I was living outdoors until recently.
I’ve got a roof over my head now. I felt
better under my own roof, though.
“Sub-standard and unsafe housing
is a daily concern. It definitely adds
stress and worry every day and night,
whether I’m indoors or outdoors, just
because of uncertainties and dealing
with challenges on the city streets.
“Being a Megaphone vendor is a huge
improvement over what I was doing before,
binning and that sort of thing. It definitely
adds stability to my days. Emotionally, it’s a
lot more positive to be connecting with the
community. That makes a big difference.
“If I’m having a rough morning or the
weather’s wet, I always look forward to
getting up on the Drive. Sure enough,
there’s somebody that’s able to lift my
spirits, even just have a chat or get a ‘good
morning’ or a smile from somebody who’s
never acknowledged me there before. An
unexpected wave from a child or a cyclist is
always appreciated. It’s a good place to be.
“I hope people support Megaphone
because the street paper movement is so
important for vendors all over the world.
There’s so much opportunity for it to get
bigger and better and involve many more
vendors, especially in Vancouver and
Victoria. It needs to grow and involve even
more people, and to help more people.”
m Eric sells Megaphone on Commercial Drive
and 1st Avenue in Vancouver. Photo: Jackie
Wong.
The first thing I remember about Cambie
Village was its great number of grocery
stores in 1997, the year I started working as
a street paper vendor there. I sold papers
in front of Produce City—now condos and a
Shoppers Drug Mart. Where Choices Market
is now at 19th and Cambie (and where I sell
Megaphone) was another grocery store run
by a nice family. At the northwest corner
of 18th Avenue and Cambie was the Cambie
General Store, run by a nice guy called Gary
and his wife. His wife then went to manage
an A & W Restaurant on Broadway next to
the Bank of Montreal. They had two kids
who quickly grew up. Gary’s store is now the
JJ Bean Cofee Shop. The staff there are good
to me and I sometimes sell papers out front.
Produce City—at the time across
from the barber and a restaurant called
Tomato—closed in 2004. That’s where
I sold my papers part-time until that
year. I started at Choices Market in 2001.
Capers went up there, with condos,
in 2005. Capers closed in 2010. And
then Shoppers Drug Mart moved in.
Tomato restaurant closed due to the
Canada Line being constructed. I remember
the Canada Line construction. It was very
busy on the street with construction. As
some restaurants and clothing stores closed
due to the Canada Line construction, other
businesses suffered, like the bakery next to
Starbucks. I remember a 40 per cent drop
in my business as a Megaphone vendor.
I ended up doing light housekeeping
for a senior friend of mine to make ends
meet. A lot of businesses were forced to
close. Some of the young people renting
basement suites also moved away.
Canada Line construction marked the
end of what I think of as the grocery stores
temporary era. I stood outside Produce
City in 1997 to 2004 part-time. I’ve been
selling papers in front of Choices Market
since 2004. The Choices staff has been
good to me. They supported me on the
loss of my beloved father, James, in the
spring of 2012. I’ll never forget that.
A restaurant called Biercraft opened
where the old Tomato was. The people
were friendly. Some have passed away,
moved away with families. Many students
are now living in East Vancouver due
to cheaper rents. As for the people who
stay in Cambie Village, I think they
stay because they have friends in the
neighbourhood. I’ve been to a number of
block parties. Some have inherited their
elderly parents’ homes. People seem to
look out for each other in Douglas Park,
in Riley Park, and the Cambie Village.
Some families have stayed and I’ve
seen their little ones grow to respectable
teens. They respect me and a few buy
Megaphone. I get a lot of people giving me
donations—they care about me and they’ve
seen me around for years. When I worked
for the street paper back in 2003, I was
hospitalized. Every day around Choices
Market, people were asking about me. I
was very touched. Whenever I’m in Cambie
Village, I see familiar faces and I feel like
I belong. It’s nice to go down the street to
Kino Cafe, talk to the owner, talk to Katie
the bartender, and talk to patrons there.
Lately, there’s been an extension of
Choices Market; the grocery store is a lot
bigger. They knocked out the walls in UPS
and Flying Wedge Pizza and added on. It’s
much busier and it’s helped my business.
As good as it can be these days, I still miss
people from the old days. I miss Gary and
his Cambie General Store. He was always
very pleasant and very kind to people on
low incomes. He was a very understanding
man. I also miss the owners of a sushi
restaurant on the west side of the street
between 18th and 19th Avenue, and the
owner of a second-hand clothing store who
bought Megaphone and gave me deals on
clothing. I miss Ali, the hairdresser. He was
another one that was good to me; very nice,
a sense of humour. He was from Africa. He
was right next door and was forced to move
because Gary’s and his rent was jacked up.
I miss my many customers and people I
know who have moved away or passed on.
To my customers, thank you for your
support.
Bob sells Megaphone in front
of Choices Market at 19th and
Cambie. Photo: Jackie Wong.
8
Change that Works
MegaphoneMagazine.com 9

Heartbeats
Heartbeats
The
healing
“There are 1,200 missing and murdered
women. They’re human beings. Canada
can spend millions of dollars on Canada’s
birthday, for fireworks and all that stuff, but
they can’t put money into a national inquiry.”
-Lorelei Williams
dance
Lorelei Williams’
Butterflies in Spirit moves
through colonial trauma
Story and photos by Andrea Warner
Lorelei Williams was born into a
void and she grew into a ghost.
She was just a little kid when family
members began to say, “You look just like
your auntie Belinda.” Over and over she
heard this, a mixture of joy and pain in their
eyes. It was a hollow comfort to Belinda’s
siblings and parents: she’d vanished in
1977, just 12 years old. The picture on her
“missing” poster looks like a school picture
and shows a tiny figure with shy smile
and eyes glancing down as if too selfconscious
to meet the camera head-on. She’s
a child who has been missing for almost
40 years and there are still no answers.
The nightmare happened again when
Lorelei was just 16 and her cousin, 19-yearold
Tanya Holyk, disappeared. Williams had
looked up to the bright, beautiful older girl.
A few years later, Holyk’s DNA was found
on serial killer Robert Pickton’s farm.
The fate of Williams’ aunt and
cousin is part of the terribly invisible
violence inflicted daily upon indigenous
women across Canada. Pickton’s
crimes are part of a national tragedy,
an internationally recognized crisis,
and a recent election issue.
Yet murdered and missing indigenous
women (MMIW) are blamed for the violence
of men and the sickness of their attackers.
MMIW are targeted, taken, and preyed
upon, all of which are consequences of
colonialism, racism, misogyny, residential
schools, patriarchy, political inaction and
a litany of other factors. There are more
than 1,200 MMIW in Canada—research
suggests that number is likely much
higher—and there’s no sense of urgency
on the part of the federal government
to stop it. They don’t mourn and they
don’t seek justice, but Williams does.
In 2011, she founded Butterflies in
Spirit, a dance troupe of friends and
family members of murdered and
missing indigenous women. They dance
with big pictures of their loved ones on
t-shirts, raising awareness for MMIW
and, hopefully, getting some answers.
But there’s also a side benefit, Lorelei
says, something she never anticipated
when she came up with the concept of
Butterflies in Spirit: an opportunity to heal.
Lorelei spoke with Megaphone on a
gorgeous fall day at Crab Park in the
Downtown Eastside, sitting in front of the
memorial rock commemorating murdered
and missing women and girls. We talked
about loss, violence, abuse, her mother,
Beyonce, Stephen Harper, and the power
and beauty of Butterflies in Spirit.
Megaphone (MP): Your aunt Belinda
disappeared before you were born. I can’t
imagine the toll that took on your family.
Lorelei Williams (LW): “I was born into
this [MMIW]. I can’t imagine all the stresses
my mom was going through, even pregnant
with me. I see the pain. It’s still the same
as when it was when I first started realizing
what was going on with my family. When my
mom or my aunts talked or talk—my mom
passed away, that’s why I say talked—about
my missing aunt, their voices shake. They
want to know where their sister is.”
MP: Can you talk about how Canada got
to this point?
LW: “It starts with our history: colonization,
residential schools, our women and
men were thrown into residential
schools as children and that made
them vulnerable. We grew up like this,
trying to cope with all of that, we’ve just
become targets because of our history.
“Back then our government was trying
to take the Indian out of us, putting us
down as people, as human beings. We’ve
been fighting this for so long, just trying
to be a human being in this country, and
even to this day, we’re still fighting hard
with the government. Especially Stephen
Harper. Our history was so bad and that was
so traumatizing in itself. There’s a lot of
trauma in our people.”
MP: You have some answers with your
cousin Tanya, but still no answers about
Belinda.
LW: “This has happened to my family
twice, so I know this all too well. It destroys
families. It’s one thing when somebody
passes away, you don’t want to celebrate
Christmas, birthdays, anything like that.
When you have a person who’s gone
missing or been murdered, it’s that much
more painful. Especially when you don’t
know where this person is or especially
when they died a horrific death. The
circle is broken, the family is broken.
“I feel like I am healing. Ever since I
started Butterflies in Spirit, I feel like I
become stronger and stronger each year.
I have become close with other family
members of missing and murdered women.
Us coming together is healing itself. Us
coming together and raising awareness of
this issue is making us stronger, We don’t
want this to happen to any other families.”
MP: You’ve mentioned before that
Beyonce and her “Who Runs the
World” inspired Butterflies in Spirit’s
beginnings. Were you a dancer?
LW: “No, I don’t even know why [I dance]!
(laughs) I really wanted to catch people’s
attention and to get my missing aunt’s
picture out there. For some reason I
thought of dance. Beyonce’s song, ‘Who
Runs the World,’ was popular at the time.
I would watch the dance over and over.
That would get people’s attention! I put
my idea out there, I started speaking
at events, talking about my vision.
“Dancing is healing. I learned that. That
wasn’t a part of my plan, but the very
first performance that we did, my mom
MegaphoneMagazine.com
11

Heartbeats
Heartbeats
“Our government was trying to take
the Indian out of us, putting us down
as people, as human beings. We’ve
been fighting this for so long, just
trying to be a human being in this
country… there’s a lot of trauma in
our people.”
-Lorelei Williams
had passed away five days before. I was
debating if I even wanted to go on with the
performance. My mom passed away April
25, 2012, and we performed April 30.
“My mom was an alcoholic. Her liver was
damaged and that’s why she ended up in
the hospital. She escaped the hospital once.
She got out. I don’t know how she got out
(laughs) but the hospital called me and I was
like, Oh my god. My sister lived with her and
she went home and she was there, drinking.
“She was a residential school survivor,
this was her path, she was sexually abused,
physically abused, and she used drinking to
numb the pain. This is a part of our history.
When my mom escaped the hospital, we
were doing sneak peeks, we’d posted a few
on YouTube, to invite people to come to
our main performance. I told my sister,
‘Show mom the sneak peeks and my sister
was able to show her and she said she just
cried. All of the girls, at the time, we were
wearing my missing aunt’s picture only. I
think it was the only t-shirt we could get
really fast or something, so when my mom
passed away and we were due to perform, I
was like, I have to do this for her, too. I know
my mom wouldn’t want me to cancel this.
“When my mom passed away, I had
anxiety straight for two weeks. I didn’t
even know what that was, I never knew
what anxiety was. I’d had a brother who
passed away a few years before that, but
when my mom passed away, it was just this
anxiety I’d never felt. Then all of a sudden
I had this bad feeling and it was hard, but
when we performed, in that 15 minutes of
performing, it went away. It was all gone. As
soon as we were done, it came right back. So
I really believe dancing is healing.”
MP: The government has refused to
do a national inquiry on missing and
murdered indigenous women. [Editor’s
note: this interview took place before the Oct.
19 federal election. Prime Minster Justin
Trudeau has committed to a national inquiry
on MMIW.]
LW: “He [Stephen Harper] says it’s not
high on his radar, him and his government,
even though we have international bodies
saying this is an issue in Canada. He doesn’t
want to look at it because he doesn’t care.
I kind of get it. You see it in the news
and what you get in the news isn’t the
same as what you get from actual family
members talking about it. This is what
Butterflies in Spirit does, we put feeling
behind it. People see what it’s doing to us.
“In the media, Native women are
portrayed as ‘bad’ or there’s so many things.
They say they’re sex workers, they put
themselves there, they’re always drinking,
they’re putting themselves at risk, as if
we deserve this. So, okay, what if some
women drink? Don’t a lot of people drink?
Oh, then it’s okay they’re being murdered
or going missing. Somebody said, wallets
go missing, glasses go missing, women
don’t go missing. They’re taken. They’re
taken. This is a person. They’re stolen.
“I would like to meet Harper one day
and talk to him and ask him why. Ask him
why he doesn’t care for our women. Why
he doesn’t think this is a problem. These
are 1,200 missing and murdered women.
They’re human beings. Canada can spend
millions of dollars on Canada’s birthday, for
fireworks and all that stuff, but they can’t
put money into a national inquiry. We need
a national inquiry, but we also need action
now.”
MP: Were you in court for any of the
Pickton trial?
LW: “I wasn’t in court for any of it, I didn’t
attend the trial. I was in court for the
inquiry. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I’ve
never been to the farm, I couldn’t do that.
My auntie Dixie, the families they were on
the farm. When Pickton was arrested, the
families were gathering there. To this day,
I couldn’t go. I can’t. It’s just something I
can’t bring myself to do. It’s traumatic.
“We’re all coming together, it’s making
us stronger. This issue is coming out, it’s
being brought out, finally. There’s a lot of
attention about this issue, especially with
Mrs. Universe [Editor’s note: In August,
Ashley Burnam was crowned Mrs. Universe
2015. She was the first Canadian and first
aboriginal woman to win the title. Burnam
is a member of the Enoch Cree Nation in
Alberta. The theme of the pageant this
year: domestic violence and reflection over
children]. She did a fashion show for missing
and murdered women up in Kamloops and
she was the keynote speaker and we got to
perform right after her and I thanked her
for bringing this issue out. I had a
good talk with her, we have some
similarities in growing up, our past
with sexual abuse and physical
abuse. The more I talk about it, the
more I’m healing.”
MP: When people tell me they
feel ashamed that something
traumatic has happened to them,
I understand and it breaks my
heart, but I get so mad at the
culture that we live in wherein we
let people feel that shame instead
of putting the blame where it
belongs.
LW: “Yes, and that’s something I’ve
been recently dealing with. For my
job, at the Vancouver Aboriginal
Community Policing Centre, part
of my job is to go in and talk to
police cadets in training, and my
part is to speak about residential
school and the link between
murdered and missing women. I
talk about my history, my mom
being a residential school survivor,
how I grew up with sexual abuse
and physical abuse, my mom being
an alcoholic, I talk about that.
“I feel like I’m strong enough to
talk about it. But I did an interview
with CBC and I came out publicly
with it. It just came out, and I didn’t
really think anything of it, but when
I saw it online and I read it, I was
like, ‘Oh my god, what did I just do?’
The shame came back. I felt guilty,
I felt gross. Did I do the right thing?
And what are people going to think
of me now that they know this?
“But then Mrs. Universe came
out, Ashley Callingbull, when she
won the title, she came out with her
sexual abuse. I realized, no, I am
ok. We do need to talk about this.
It’s our history. This is what I had to
grow up with as an aboriginal girl.
People need to know what happened
to us and we need to heal.”
m Butterflies in
Spirit's (L-R) Lorelei
Williams, Maranda
Johnson, Billie
Jean Sinclair, and
choreographer
Madelaine McCallum
take five during a
recent music video
shoot in Vancouver.
12
MegaphoneMagazine.com
13

Theatre Preview
Theatre Preview
Death in a
Dumpster
New musical shows
what life is like for
homeless youth
By Emi Sasagawa
Sitting on the floor of a small room in
the Roundhouse Community Centre in
Yaletown, a group of young artists run
lines between mouthfuls of chips and
pop. “Let’s try that again,” says Trinity
Firth, the production’s youth director,
as the piano fades into the chatter.
They are rehearsing Death in a Dumpster,
a musical production about Danny, a
young man who becomes homeless after
hitchhiking through the Maritimes to find
his long-lost mother, eventually winding
up in B.C. The story follows Danny as he
befriends a colourful group on the streets of
Vancouver—Daisy, a woman battling mental
illness, Jack, a man with addiction problems
and Josie, a transgender sex worker.
The idea for the musical production
came to Firth when she met anti-poverty
activist Sheila Baxter at Directions Youth
Services, a non-profit organization that
offers a range of programs to support
homeless and at-risk youth. “She gave me
the script and told me that I should put
it on with some other youth. I thought it
would be a fun thing to do,” she adds.
Firth went to Colin Ford, the
organization’s programs coordinator, and
together they set out to recruit young people
for the production. “It started off as just
me and Colin sitting in the media room
with a bowl of chips and pop trying to bribe
people to come in and do a read-through.”
The production, which eventually
received the support of the Access to Music
Foundation, began with no intention of a big
audience. In fact, at the start it was difficult
to get traction, with many actors coming
and going. Eventually the core group gelled.
Now, Firth and Ford expect a full house
when the musical debuts on Nov. 7 at the
Waterfront Theatre on Granville Island.
A tale of many
Firth is especially proud of how much
the cast and crew, many of whom have
experienced life on the streets, have
invested in this production. From day one
Firth told the youth to take ownership of
their roles and speak up whenever they
felt the script didn’t reflect what life
is like for a homeless young person.
Through the production she hopes
to challenge misconceptions about
homelessness. “I've met a lot of people
who think it's just laziness that people
end up on the street. They don't
understand why you can't just get a
job. They don't understand all of the
reasons why people become homeless.”
“With all of the characters being
completely different, it helps the
audience understand how poverty and
homelessness can affect anybody—
people of different genders, races
and backgrounds,” Firth adds.
One of the production’s main goals
is to inform. “We want to make them
uncomfortable. This production is not
gentle. We're not holding any punches,”
says Ford, who sees the musical as a call
to action. “I hope the audience goes home
shocked and crying, wondering what
they can do to help organizations like
Directions Youth Services,” he adds.
Self-belief through art
Joe Hinks, who joined the team later
as a directional mentor, says projects
like this are very important for the
young people involved. “You're not just
teaching them how to sing, how to act,
how to dance. You're teaching them selfconfidence,
self-belief is such a huge
notion that they need—everyone needs
to be able to believe in themselves.”
Ford and Hinks attest to how much the
cast and crew have grown since the first
read-through, both in their ability and
attitude. Through arts-based programs
Directions Youth Services hopes to provide
the youth with tools to build confidence
and make positive choices in their lives.
Ford uses the example of the young
actor playing the role of the cop in the
production. Initially he was very skeptical
of the musical and resisted becoming a
part of the project. He reluctantly agreed,
only after he was promised his role would
be small. But without being pushed or
prodded, he eventually began to take on
more responsibility, making suggestions
and showing up to rehearsal early.
“There are life skills that you learn
with a production like this: how to engage
with other people, how to be part of a
collective, how to listen to other people's
ideas, how to respect choices that other
people are making,” Hinks says.
A model for future projects
Ford has spent the last 10 years working
at Directions, where he provides low-barrier
opportunities in the media arts for at-risk
or street-involved youth. The projects
he leads range from playing the guitar
to writing poetry to producing hip hop
videos. Any idea can be explored, he says.
“A byproduct of this type of offering
is exactly what happened with
Trinity. She walked in to the centre
with this script, and an idea turned
into the project that it is today.”
This is the first time the organization has
been involved in a production of this scale.
The model has been a success so far, with
many participants interested in making
this an annual project. Access to Music
Foundation and the current cast and crew
are already planning next year’s production.
Death in a Dumpster will debut on
Nov. 7 at 8:00 p.m. at the Waterfront
Theatre on Granville Island, with two
additional showings on November 11
and 14. For more information or to buy
tickets, visit DeathInADumpster.ca.
“I've met a lot of people
who think it's just
laziness that people end
up on the street. They
don't understand why
you can't just get a job.
They don't understand
all of the reasons why
people become homeless.”
-Trinity Firth
o The cast and
crew of Death in
a Dumpster have
spent months the
rewriting lines and
composing songs
for their big debut
at the Waterfront
Theatre. Photos
courtesy of Colin Ford
/ Directions Youth
Services Society.
14 Change that Works
MegaphoneMagazine.com
15

Breakfast fundraiser
Breakfast fundraiser
Celebrating
change
that works
Megaphone breakfast a
showcase of community
By Jackie Wong
Photos by Carlos Tello
3
4
We were up at the crack of dawn on Nov. 3 to host
Megaphone's second-annual breakfast fundraiser
at the Vancouver Public Library downtown.
As we watched Megaphone's amazing supporters,
vendors, partners, and volunteers fill the Alice
MacKay room, we were reminded how much this
event is worth getting up for. Over a meal prepared
by the Potluck Cafe, we celebrated and reflected upon
the power of solidarity, community, and what we
can achieve when we work together to give a direct
hand up to our city's most marginalized residents.
The morning, hosted by the wonderful Pat Kelly of
CBC's This is That, featured a special keynote by Judy
Graves, best known for her decades of work as the
City of Vancouver's former advocate for the homeless.
The breakfast also marked a special moment
to commemorate a vendor whose extraordinary
dedication and service earned him the annual
Vendor of the Year Award. This year we're so proud
to give the award to Eric, a beloved presence at
Commercial Drive and 1st Avenue, where he sells
Megaphone almost every day. Victoria’s Vendor of
the Year Award goes to John, a 14-year vendor who
sells in downtown Victoria at Douglas and Fort.
We exceeded our expectations for this
year's fundraiser and raised $30,760.
Thanks so much to Megaphone's event sponsors
and all the attendees. Your support will go a
long way in helping support Megaphone vendors
like Eric make positive change in their lives.
See a special Vendor of the Year video by
Colin Askey at www.vimeo.com/143319822.
1
5 6
Presenting sponsor
Leadership sponsors
Community sponsors
Media sponsor
1 Vendor of the Year Eric D. accepts his award.
2 City councillor Geoff Meggs (L) and friend Kurt Heinrich (R).
3 Executive director Sean Condon (L) interviews Judy Grave (R).
4 Vendor Peter Thompson celebrated his birthday that morning!
5 (L-R): Judy McFarlane, Jim McFarlane, and Ron Pearson.
6 The sold-out breakfast crowd packed the floor.
2
eclipse awards.com
HAPPINESS DELIVERED
16 Change that Works
MegaphoneMagazine.com
17

Arts feature
Local News
Arts feature
Challenging
the binary
Soledad Muñoz helms a new record
label for women
By Aurora Tejeida
When Soledad Muñoz was a kid growing
up in Chile, she was always the only girl
at skate parks. This only made her feel the
need to prove that she was better than the
boys. Doing so made her feel less invisible.
“At the time I just thought girls wouldn't
go because they weren't good at skating.
Because our bodies weren't built for it or
whatever,” she told me from across the table
at a Main Street Vietnamese restaurant.
Muñoz has dark curly hair, big brown eyes
and a big smile. The 29-year-old Chilean-
Canadian is a triple threat; she’s a visual
artist, a musician, and she’s well versed
in critical and feminist theory. On top of
that, she launched genero, an electronic
music label, a little over a year ago.
She started playing piano when she was
five, after her family moved back to Chile
— her parents originally came to Canada
as refugees escaping the coup and military
government of Pinochet. When she was
older, she moved back to Canada to study
fine art. She currently lives in Vancouver.
Seven years ago she started playing
electronic music. “One day I decided
I wanted to make one of my (visual
art) pieces make a sound, and from
there I started building circuits so that
vibrations would make things move.
And from there I started building
synthesizers. And then I stopped liking
keys, since synths are all about knobs.”
Electronic music is an art form for
Muñoz. She loves making new sounds
from machines. She started building her
own equipment, circuits and modular
synthesizers because she didn’t want to
create the same sounds as everybody else.
But when it came to joining the electronic
music scene, she realized it would be
just like the skate parks in Chile — male
dominated. Just like she did in Chile,
Muñoz started going to modular synthesizer
symposiums even though she would always
be the only woman there, and she was
often treated in a patronizing way. “I had
to change my name to a gender neutral
one, especially for online forums because
I would receive such terrible responses if I
posted anything as a woman,” she explains.
A feminist music label
“That's how it's always been. I don't
understand why, but society seems to
think that men like machinery and women
don't like to get their hands dirty. What
genero is doing is proving that's a lie,”
said Muñoz. The label’s name, genero,
has four meanings. It’s what people call
fabric in Chile (Muñoz used to work
as a knitter). It also has widespread
meanings in Spanish: “to generate
something,” “gender,” and “genre.”
“Unlike other labels, this one was created
on the basis of feminist theory. We're not
interested in having lots of DJs play our
music. We produce cassettes, not vinyls
— in part because it's cheaper. But mostly
because we're more interested in creating
as much music as possible,” says Muñoz. All
songs produced are also available online.
But what most sets genero apart from
other labels is that Muñoz only signs
female artists. And the women who are
in the label have to learn to produce their
own music. “We live in a society where
the pop music industry heavily objectifies
women's bodies,” Muñoz says, “so we need
more women who take a leadership role
and produce their own material.” Women
represent fewer than five per cent of music
producers and engineers. So while Muñoz
wants to make sure more women produce
music, she also wants to make sure she’s
not repeating the same power dynamic.
“It's not about telling women whether
they should show their bodies or not. I
want to create something new and empower
women. One of the big challenges is
(making it clear) that I'm not the boss. I
don't like ordering people around. I think
that falls under the patriarchal system.
I'd rather work communally so that it's
more of a collaboration,” she explains.
More than a music label
So far, she hasn’t had any issues signing
artists. “There are so many of them! And
they're not being listened to, so we need
to get together in order to be heard.”
Muñoz says that she had the advantage of
already having one foot in the electronic
music scene. So, even before starting the
label, she already had an artist to work
with. The second one came before she
was done with the first, and on and on.
The only thing Muñoz wants from the
artists she’s signing is a shared interest
in changing the world. And minimal
violence, a duo that describes their music
as something between house and techno,
understood the concept right away. I met
with Ashlee and Lida, two members of the
band (they chose not to share their last
names), at a coffee shop near Main Street
to talk about their experience with Muñoz.
“We tracked her down, just noticed
what she was doing,” says Lida. Muñoz
had already heard their music and
weirdly enough, she had met them
on the same table where we held our
interview that day. “Initially, just reading
the concept of the project looked really
cool. Once we met with her we were
sold on her. She had a lot of really good
ideas. It fit what we wanted to do.”
Ashlee and Lida have only been
making music together for under a
year but already feel things are shifting
in the electronic music scene. It’s
still an uphill battle that can still feel
intimidating, so it always helps to have
someone like Muñoz helping you out.
“Just being females that use hardware
to play electronic music gives us a sense
of empowerment. And having someone
like Sol (Muñoz) backing us and giving
us the opportunity to perform has been
very helpful in navigating the pathways
between critical theory, visual arts and
music,” Lida explains. “Genero is more
than a record label because it's trying to
accomplish something more than music.”
For Muñoz the entire pursuit is about
making a difference. She’s not even
making money from it, as all the money
invested into the label and used to produce
music has come from her pocket.
“I do what I do because I like it,
it's my ideology and I know I'm not
going to make money from it. But now
there are five women with records,
who didn't used to have that.”
mSoledad Muñoz is the founder of genero,
an electronic music label that celebrates the
work of women-identified artists working
in a genre dominated by men. Photo: Brit
Bachmann / VIVO Media Arts Centre.
“I don't understand why,
but society seems to think
that men like machinery
and women don't like
to get their hands dirty.
What genero is doing is
proving that's a lie.”
-Soledad Muñoz
18 Change that Works
MegaphoneMagazine.com
19

Viewpoints
Viewpoints
The politics of
shattered jaws
My partner left a family wedding with a
broken jaw. How can we bridge political
differences without injury?
By Quinn MacDonald
Illustrations by Heidi Nagtegaal
“We’re told not to give up on
family, and that blood is thicker
than water. But water’s a lot
easier to drink. Or at least that’s
how it seemed as I watched the
person I love the most puke up
the blood he swallowed in an
emergency room at 3 a.m.”
I didn’t plan on making Victoria my home;
it just kind of happened. I was going to move
to a bigger city once I was done school, but I
love the Island too much. The sea is always
close here, and I can walk everywhere.
Political candidates fight over who’s more
“green.” Whenever a bus pulls up to the
stop, there’s often a polite standoff; no
one wants to board first, and everyone
says “thank you” when they get off.
I often joke about how living in Victoria
is like living in a bubble. Anyone who
lives downtown, walks its streets, or
struggles to pay rent knows we have
problems, but citizens are engaged. We
speak extensively about civic issues and
try to work together to find solutions. The
joke that we live in a progressive political
bubble here in the capital city became
a little too serious for me in August.
I had taken my boyfriend Matt “up
island”—or, what people from Victoria
referred to everywhere north of the Malahat
as was when I was growing up—to meet my
extended family at a wedding. He tried to
get to know a couple of my relatives. But
a tense conversation went downhill, and
he came home with a jaw broken in four
places. He needed a two-hour surgery and
four metal plates to put it back together. As
we came out onto the open part of Highway
One that looks over View Royal and offers
the first glimpse of the Victoria harbour, I
heard myself say, “let’s never leave again.”
Nearly every person I told in Victoria
reacted with shock at the incident that led
to his injury. Nearly every health worker we
encountered through the three days in and
out of hospitals asked if we were going to
press charges. But where I’m from, fights
were a normal occurrence at school and
at parties. Mouth off and you might get
beat down. For his part, Matt is from an
increasingly rough part of the mainland,
and reactions from some of his family
members ran along the lines of, “well you
must have said something pretty stupid.”
Whether due to alcohol or shock, he
doesn’t remember what he said or anything
that happened. But it doesn’t matter:
there is nothing anyone could say that
would make beating him up an acceptable
response. He’s also not a fighter, while the
others have histories of violence that we’ve
always written off as “boys will be boys”
or something about having a temper.
There were three of them, and only
one of him. The fight only stopped
because I showed up and stopped it. One
of them seemed more upset about my
boyfriend exiting the situation with “his
cousin” (well, me) than he was about
severely injuring his cousin’s partner.
A stranger in my hometown
Growing up “up island,” I never felt
like I belonged. The scenery is beautiful,
but at times it feels like the mountain
walls surrounding the picturesque valleys
mirror those hemming in their residents’
worldviews. Trucks outnumber cars. Nearly
everyone has a friend or family member who
works, or worked, in oil and gas in Alberta.
Everyone plays or watches hockey. The
Tim Horton’s drive-thrus are always busy
with who some may refer to as “old stock
Canadians.” For 15 years my hometown
riding was represented by a Conservative
MP who denies both climate change and
evolution. Most people don’t talk about
politics much, except to offer some refrain
about how certain political parties pledge
to protect jobs, while more progressive
ones supposedly threaten their livelihood.
It used to be considered rude to talk
politics in polite company. But it’s clearly
something people are struggling with across
the province. Kai Nagata, the Dogwood
Initiative’s energy and democracy director,
penned a December 2013 article titled
“Six ways to keep the pipeline debate
on track,” about how to talk about the
contentious Northern Gateway Pipeline
over Christmas dinner. This fall, CBC
published an online “Tool kit for when
Thanksgiving dinner turns into election
talk.” The list goes on. What these articles
also make clear is that progressives are
often struggling to find a way to talk
with their stereotypically older and more
conservative relatives. But for many, it’s
just not worth it (see the wiki on “How to
Avoid Politics with Stubborn Relatives").
If we don’t learn how to have hard
conversations and challenge each other in
a respectful way, what’s at stake could be
much worse as things simmer below the
surface. I have had disagreements with
my relatives that hadn’t always gone well.
It’s hard not to think about how some
of the animosity and unresolved issues
arising from those conversations could
have contributed to Matt’s broken jaw.
Beyond devil’s advocate
It’s difficult to talk about these things
and not sound like you think you’re
better than people. But when it comes to
distancing yourself from sexism, racism,
and regressive politics, what’s wrong with
being better than that? I’ve learned a lot
in the almost 10 years since I left that my
hometown, but more important and more
difficult is all the unlearning I’ve had to
do, which has positively affected not only
the way I see the world and its problems,
but also how I see myself in the world.
(And this process is certainly ongoing.)
Equally, in the last several years
I have felt increasingly isolated at
family get-togethers. My efforts to
confront racism and problematic ways
of thinking have devolved into battles
with devil’s advocates and me in tears.
I’ve been told to shut up, and that me
“and my little Facebook politics aren’t
going to change anything,” whatever that
means. I cry when I get frustrated or angry,
so there have been a lot of tears. This
tends to make everything more awkward
and “embarrassing” for others. I don’t
want to paint myself as a victim, and I
haven’t always acted admirably, but it’s
frustrating, it’s exhausting, and in the
end it didn’t seem to have meant much.
But should we just swallow the world
whole, as-is? I am told to respect other
peoples’ opinions, but I think it shows more
respect to challenge them to refine their
position than immediately dismiss it as
flawed. And by this I do not mean playing
the classic devil’s advocate by discounting
someone’s personal experience or arguing
them into the ground—all of which usually
involves verbally abusive behaviour.
We’re entitled to our opinions. But when
your opinion comes from a sexist and racist
worldview that harms others, we need
to talk. When we retreat into entrenched
partisan positions and see challenges as
personal attacks, we all lose the opportunity
to grow personally and as a society.
Is blood thicker than water?
We’re told not to give up on family,
and that blood is thicker than water. But
water’s a lot easier to drink. Or at least
that’s how it seemed as I watched the
person I love the most puke up the blood
he swallowed in an emergency room at 3
a.m. Family is important, but it’s hard to
understand what that means when they
do harmful things that your friends would
never consider. Why do we have to stay
attached to people that cause us harm?
I don’t want to give up on people I grew
up with, but at the same time I don’t
know if I will ever even be able to look the
people who hurt Matt in the eye again.
My boyfriend’s face shouldn’t be
a stepping stone in their journey to
becoming a better person. A few drinks
and a fiery temper aren’t justifications
for losing control and becoming verbally
and physically abusive (something I
must remember as well). We are adults.
I was told that they are not evil people,
that they just did a bad thing. When
the action fits a pattern of behaviour
and worldview, however, it’s hard for
me to see them as necessarily good.
The idea of withdrawing from my
family isn’t an easy option for me; it’s
devastating. I had a pretty ideal childhood,
and now all those memories are tainted.
We spent so many family dinners and
camping trips together, and now that
will never happen again. They will never
know my children. I won’t know theirs.
In some ways, I wish I could return to
that time when we were kids camping,
sitting down to family dinners together.
Encouraging critical thinking and
respectful disagreement can begin when
we’re very young; I see this in the young
people I coach in roller derby and in some
of my friends who now have kids. People
who lash out usually feel trapped. Give
people the words to express themselves
and they often will. I’m still struggling to
help them and myself to see how larger
webs of oppression affect us all.
20
Change that Works
MegaphoneMagazine.com
21

Arts Feature
Arts Feature
Kathryn Calder
finds a home
Inside a New Pornographer’s hard-won peace
Story Alex Hudson
Photo by Tristan Shouldice
Throughout most of the decade
since Kathryn Calder joined Vancouver
supergroup the New Pornographers in
2005, the Victoria-born songwriter has
led a hectic, disjointed life. Spending
much of her time on the road or traversing
back and forth between Victoria and
Vancouver, she has often felt out of
touch with her local community.
“I started travelling a lot,” she
tells Megaphone over Skype while in
France on vacation. “I wasn’t playing
Vancouver as much or being there
as much, so I felt there was a period
of a few years where I was a little bit
disconnected from what was going on.”
Her personal life also went through
some major shakeups: she acted as a
caregiver when her mother battled the
motor neuron disease ALS before dying
in 2009, and she had a long-distance
relationship with Vancouver-based
producer Colin Stewart (Dan Mangan,
Yukon Blonde, Black Mountain), with
whom she tied the knot in 2011.
“I went on tour and I did all this stuff
and my mom died,” she remembers. “I
was really trying to fill a lot of space with
touring and being busy. I got exhausted
without realizing that’s what I was doing
to myself. I was trying to write and record
and trying to keep going and it just wasn’t
happening because I was too tired.”
These days, however, everything
has changed. Stewart closed up his
Vancouver recording facility the Hive
in 2013, and the couple now lives a
30-minute drive outside of Victoria.
“We’re in Saanich, so we’re in a rural,
forested nook on the Island,” Calder
explains. “Our house is a very peaceful
place. There’s lots of trees, there’s lots of
nature. I feel that I have space and time,
and I can be as loud as I want. That’s one
of the things I really prize about where we
live—if I want to yell, I feel like I can.”
From turbulence, quiet
It’s ironic, given her newfound freedom to
make a racket, that the songwriter’s latest
solo album is her softest, most delicately
pretty work to date. The self-titled Kathryn
Calder, which came out back in April, is
filled with sweetly atmospheric ballads
based largely around gossamer guitars,
twinkling electronic ambience and the
vocalist’s reverent, angelic singing. With
the exception of the hypnotic synth grooves
of “Take a Little Time” and “My Armour,”
it’s a record of lullaby-like softness.
“I was in a very contemplative mood
during the recording of a lot of this record,”
she reflects. “I was out in the woods in
my house, just hanging out there and
recording music. I’m naturally a brainy
person more than an active person — I’m
very much in my brain. Those things
made it a quiet, contemplative record.”
In addition to pressing forward with
her career and home life, Calder has been
using her public platform as a musician
to channel her tragic family experiences
into a positive cause. She spoke about
ALS at TEDxVictoria in 2013, and she
is the star of a new documentary about
the disease called A Matter of Time.
Directed by Casey Cohen and spearheaded
by the charitable organization Yellow
Bird Project, it offers an intimate glimpse
into the Calder family’s battle with the
illness that is known colloquially as Lou
Gehrig’s Disease. The film was funded
with a successful Kickstarter campaign
that raised $66,130, and it recently made
its premiere at a festival in Britain. More
worldwide screenings will follow.
“I feel compelled to do something,” the
singer says of her sudden status as an ALS
spokesperson. “If I am somebody who makes
music and has this voice in the world that
could do good, that could bring awareness
to this illness, then I have to do it.”
Facing grief directly
Even though it can be emotionally
draining to share her family’s most
private struggles with the world, she finds
it therapeutic to face her grief directly
and make a productive impact. “It’s this
helpful and healthy process,” she says
about her willingness to talk about her
mother’s illness. “It definitely was very
helpful and also pretty hard, because who
wants to be crying in public all the time?”
As heart-wrenching as this comment
is, Calder chuckles when she says it.
After so much grief, she now finally
seems to have achieved a sense of peace
and closure. This emotional journey can be
traced through her three albums: 2010’s Are
You My Mother? was a homemade maternal
tribute, 2011’s Bright and Vivid was colourful
and emotionally scattershot, while Kathryn
Calder offers level-headed resolution.
“This is the end of the healing process
of that whole period of time that spanned
those three records,” she reflects. “I’m still
writing about grief and coming to terms
with all this stuff and thinking about what’s
going on in this crazy world. How could
this cruel disease even exist? How is that
possible? How can I approach life so that I’m
not just drowning in this dark place? This
last record was the culmination of all of my
thoughts about what had gone on. I think
I’ve gotten to a place where I’ve processed—
now, five years or six years later—what
happened over the course of those years.”
“This is the end of the healing process of that
whole period of time that spanned…three
records…I’m still writing about grief…
How could this cruel disease even exist?
How can I approach life so that I’m not just
drowning in this dark place?”
22
Change that Works
MegaphoneMagazine.com
23

Cover story
Change the story,
change everything
Inside Naomi Klein’s fight for climate justice
By Michael Stewart
“This Changes Everything calls for nothing short of
a revolutionary upheaval of our energy sector, our
economy, our culture on such a scale it would make
Emma Goldman blush—and yet as a nation, our
conversation can't progress beyond whether or not
an elephant looks like a turtle.”
One thing that is becoming more and
more clear in the fight against climate
change is that the science doesn't
matter. Not in the sense that it isn't true
(it is) or its conclusions are debatable
(they aren't), but in the sense that the
science is not persuading the people
it needs to persuade to do the things
they need to be persuaded to do.
With almost all—97 per cent—of the
world’s climate experts agreeing that
humans are causing global warming,
we can't ask much more of science. We
know that surface warming beyond two
degrees centigrade of pre-industrial global
average temperatures will be catastrophic
and likely irreversible. And unless the
planet, collectively, agrees to wholesale
changes to our consumption habits and
economic system, we will exceed the
two-degree threshold within 30 years.
I know you've heard this before. It's one
of the reasons Naomi Klein confesses at the
beginning of her new film, This Changes
Everything, that she has “always kinda
hated films about climate change.” We get
it, it's bleak. And yet nothing has changed.
Climate ennui is the new climate denial.
Klein's film, co-created with Avi
Lewis and based on her 2014 book
of the same name, premiered at the
Toronto International Film Festival in
September. It's undeniably a climate
change film, but it attempts a different
tack. “What if the real problem,” Klein's
voiceover asks, “is a story? One we've
been telling ourselves for 400 years.”
That story, according to Klein's film, is
that climate change is inextricably tied to
human nature. We can't help ourselves,
goes the argument. Humans, as a species,
are individualist, present-oriented and
self-interested. But what if that's not
true? Or, to put it another way, what if
that story doesn't have to be true?
24
m In this still from Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything, a sugar cane field burns in El Salvador. Photo courtesy GAT PR.
25

Cover story
Cover story
mNaomi Klein at Chicheley Hall in the UK in a still from This
Changes Everything. Photo courtesy GAT PR.
“If we can tell another story about who
humans are and what we're capable of,”
Klein tells me over the phone, “then maybe
we can look at this issue from which so
many of us are averting our eyes right now.”
It's a compelling plan. Change the story,
change everything. But can it be that
simple? “Stories are wondrous things,”
Thomas King warned in his 2003 Massey
Lectures. “And they are dangerous.”
And stories are not easy to change.
Not inevitability, but tyranny
The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates recently
mused about the historical comparison
between the fossil fuel industry today
and the antebellum American slavebased
economy. He was making the case
of the virtual impossibility for white
people to disentangle ourselves from the
moral implications of the slave trade.
He's right, of course. But the other side
of the coin is equally true: fossil fuel and
extraction industries are destroying our
planet, displacing and impoverishing
hundreds of millions of vulnerable people.
This is an indisputable fact. And yet, no
matter who you are and where you live, you
cannot opt out. Fossil fuel will find you.
A favourite ploy of oil executives on the
talk radio circuit is to ask climate change
activists on the same panel if they took
a gas-powered bus to the station, then
chuckle at their own joke. It's always
struck me that this is not an argument
in the oil industry's favour: the carbon
economy is so pervasive and so coercive
that even those who are dedicating their
lives to stopping it cannot escape it.
That's not inevitability, that's tyranny.
It's hard to overstate the extent to which
climate change saturates our lives now. It’s
in our weather reports and our economic
coverage. Canada's economy might as well
be synonymous with its fossil fuel exports
and its reach can even be felt in our national
game. Brantford, Ontario—the home of
the Great One—no longer gets cold enough
to maintain a backyard ice rink like the
kind Walter Gretzky built for his son.
As This Changes Everything points out,
we are so addicted to the story of fossil
fuels that governments and industry
are willing to entertain Paul Crutzen's
geoengineering solution to global warming:
inject sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere
in the hopes it will reflect the sun's
rays and lower global temperatures.
“In other words,” Klein narrates in
This Changes Everything, “let's solve the
problem of pollution with more pollution.”
But that's only half the problem. During
our interminable election campaign, author
and NDP candidate for Toronto Centre Linda
McQuaig let slip on CBC's Power and Politics
the indisputable fact that if Canada were to
meet its emissions targets, “a lot of the oil
sands oil may have to stay in the ground.”
The usually levelheaded Rosemary
Barton was the first to pounce upon
her statement: “Are you suggesting
that's what should happen?” she
interrupted. McQuaig visibly winced.
But if Barton sensed a scoop, Conservative
MP Michelle Rempel smelled blood. She
could scarcely contain herself: “Listen to
what you just heard,” she crowed. “Instead
of standing up for the energy sector or
Canada's economy, you're hearing I want to
tax this or I want this oil left in the ground.”
McQuaig backpedalled immediately
and Mulcair's campaign team instantly
“As we transition to
a green economy,
as we transition to
renewable energy, we
[want to] do it in a way
that is most effective
and also solves
multiple problems
at once, including
income inequality.
Or begins to.”
distanced itself from her comments.
Never mind that the scientific consensus
estimates we can only afford to burn
one-fifth of the world's proven fossil fuel
reserves before global warming exceeds
two degrees Celsius. Never mind that the
Alberta tar sands comprise 13 per cent of
the world’s oil supply. Never mind that it is
physically impossible to squeeze every drop
of bitumen from the Athabasca basin. In the
national discourse of fossil fuel extraction,
no quarter will be asked—and none given.
This is the narrow space Klein's theory
of change needs to hipcheck its way into.
This Changes Everything calls for nothing
short of a revolutionary upheaval of our
energy sector, our economy, our culture
on such a scale it would make Emma
Goldman blush—and yet as a nation, our
conversation can't progress beyond whether
or not an elephant looks like a turtle.
You see how hard it is to change a story?
The C-word
There's a moment roughly halfway
through This Changes Everything where
Klein is interviewing a courageous young
Greek activist fighting a Canadianowned
copper and gold mine in her
community. Mary Christianou from the
Halkidiki Citizens Committee muses
about the scope of the task before her
and her allies: stopping Eldorado Gold
from clear-cutting old growth forest and
reengineering the local water systems
to build a giant open pit mine.
But she also worries that even if they
are successful at stopping the mine this
time, it won't be enough. She is unsure
whether it will address the “core problem.”
Sensing something more, Klein presses her.
“What's the core problem?” Klein asks.
“Do you want me to state it on
camera?” Christianou is almost
squirming in discomfort.
“Yeah, I would say it is the economic
system,” the activist says. A long
beat. Then: “Capitalism, I guess.”
It's the first time the word is uttered
in the film, and the effect is clear: we
all know that this is the story that needs
changing, but it is both obvious and
incredibly difficult to even say aloud.
“That was very deliberate on our part,”
Klein tells me. “Our hope is that by the
time the word ‘capitalism’ is said, people
have seen enough and felt enough and
come to their own conclusions.”
Klein's 2014 book was subtitled
“Capitalism vs. the Climate,” but the
majority of those readers would have
been bred on her earlier work in The
Shock Doctrine and No Logo, searing
indictments of an economic system that
seeks out disorder, rewards sociopathy and
turns human catastrophe into economic
opportunity. The film is likely to reach
a far broader and far different audience
not as primed for such an assessment.
American writer John Dos Passos
was asked if he believed that capitalism
would lead to inevitable failure and
collapse. “Sure,” he answered. “But
the question is when. We've got the
failure, at least from my point of view.
What I don't see is the collapse.”
Or, as Klein might say, failure isn't
a bug in the system; it's a feature. We
could look at the 2008 stock market
crash that ended up enriching those
responsible for the disaster. Or we could
look at the way the IMF first facilitated
the collapse of the Greek economy and
then exploited the crisis to humiliate a
left-wing government and privatize the
country's resources and institutions.
But capitalism's biggest failure is
also its greatest success: we're not
permitted to acknowledge that it exists.
“I thought it was really revealing
that something as powerful as the
economic system that dominates our
globe is seen as unsayable,” Klein
says. “That's just weird, right?”
“I think it really makes our jobs
harder when we can't even describe the
system we live under accurately.”
It's tempting to propose that Christianou's
hesitation stands in as a metaphor
for our own historical moment. After
decades of neoliberal dominance, popular
movements unafraid to specifically
name capitalism as the chief architect of
inequality are entering the mainstream.
“People are ready to talk about the
system,” Klein says. “And that's why it's
surprising the whole sort-of U.S political
pundit class that Bernie Sanders is surging
ahead of Hillary Clinton in the polls or that
Jeremy Corbyn just won the leadership
of the [British] Labour party. You know,
they get it wrong a lot, these so-called
experts on what the public is capable of.”
This Changes Everything shows that the
public is capable of quite a lot. It documents
a series of local movements on a global
scale. Communities, sometimes as small
as a single family, take on oil companies,
mining conglomerates and massive
BioTech firms in Alberta's Cold Lake,
Montana, Greece, India and elsewhere.
And these local struggles are collectively
pushing their governments to do more:
the stand-out example in the film is
Germany's renewable energy transition,
driven by communities converting local
power grids from carbon-based energy to
solar and wind. One-quarter of Germany's
electricity came from renewable energy
sources in 2013, much of it locally owned.
You could say that the public depicted
in the film is collectively gathering
the courage to join Christianou in
chorus: “Capitalism, I guess.”
“Transition is inevitable, justice is not”
Klein was born in Montreal but her
family in Vancouver and the Sunshine
Coast has kept her close to British
Columbia. Her son, Toma, was born
in B.C. in 2012. She spoke at a 2011
demonstration against the Pantages Theatre
demolition in the Downtown Eastside and
enjoys close ties with many Vancouver
activists and advocacy organizations.
During her Vancouver book launch
last year, Klein made special mention
of Vancouver's proud activist history
and cited the city’s perennial fight
against gentrification as a front-line
battle against climate change.
“When people in the Downtown
Eastside fight against gentrification that
pushes transit users out of downtown
and moves in people who drive their
BMWs everywhere,” she told an audience
at UBC's Chan Centre at the time, “they
are climate activists whether they are
talking about climate change or not.”
I asked her about these comments and
for Klein, the struggle for homes and
dignity in the Downtown Eastside remains
inextricable from the struggle against
climate change. Every green-focused
activist needs to keep one thing foremost
in their mind: put justice at the centre.
“That was something that I learned
from climate activists in the Bay area,”
Klein told me. “If you aren't fighting for
affordable housing, then you can build as
much transit as you want but the people
who use it are going to be forced out.”
And, she adds, in a colonial state like
Canada, climate change is frequently
responsible for forcing people off
their land in the first place. “A lot of
people in the Downtown Eastside are
Indigenous and come from places where
the land has become unlivable.”
This holistic, interconnected philosophy
is the driving force behind Klein's work—
when she says “everything,” she means it.
In September, Klein launched The Leap
Manifesto, an unabashed crie du coeur
calling for nothing less than a 100 per cent
clean economy by 2050, open borders and
an utterly transformed relationship with
Canada's First Nations. The document
was authored by 60 people over two days
in the spring and co-signed by activists,
scholars, artists, Indigenous leaders,
journalists and scientists across Canada.
The Leap Manifesto, like This
Changes Everything, aims not just to
reduce emissions or footprints, but to
tell a different story. One that “must
begin by respecting the inherent rights
and title of the original caretakers of
this land” and let local communities
“collectively control these new energy
systems” whenever possible.
“As we transition to a green economy,
as we transition to renewable energy,”
Klein tells me, “we [want to] do it in a
way that is most effective and also solves
multiple problems at once, including
income inequality. Or begins to.” She
cites the slogan from the Oaklandbased
collective Movement Generation:
“Transition is inevitable, justice is not.”
This is the key message of the film, of the
book and certainly of the Leap Manifesto—
and, arguably, of Klein's life's work. Her
book No Logo turned 15 years old last year,
a book almost synonymous with the antiglobalization
movement. And the shift in
strategy is evident in the titles of the two
groundbreaking works that bookend her
career: from resistance to revolution.
“The truth is, is that after eight years of
Harper, however long it's been— and even
before that, in the whole neoliberal era,
because it's not like things were wonderful
under the Liberals—this has been a period
of defensive action, by and large, saying
‘no’ to cutbacks of defending a largely
unacceptable status quo,” Klein says.
“And so what this vision statement
is about is the ‘yes.’ It's actually trying
to map an economy that is inspiring, a
society that is one we would fight for,
as opposed to just fighting against.”
Well, it's a lovely story. But
it has its work cut out.
26
Change that Works
MegaphoneMagazine.com
27

Writing Workshop
What’s on
November Arts Calendar
The Beast
By Jim Ryder
The Beast has me
I’m being dragged, backwards,
Down the street
By something that has ten times
A hundred times
A thousand times
My strength
Everything is rushing by
In a blur
And all I hear
Is a ringing in my ears
Sometimes the Beast tears
At its clothes and threatens
To kill people
Sometimes the Beast spews
The vilest, most offensive,
Profoundly disturbing,
Racist, sexist,
Homophobic, misogynistic
Hate imaginable
Sometimes the Beast is beaten
And tasered by police
But it’s me, alone
That resurfaces in a secure room
At V.G.H.
At St. Paul’s
At Riverview
Where they tell me:
“There is no beast!”
That I’m off my meds, again
That I’m psychotic, again
And even though I’m confused
Doped up on Loxapine
And breathing through
Cracked ribs
I am sure
Of one thing:
Where-ever it is,
The Beast is laughing.
Eight years ago, a bout of
pneumonia and a series of serious
health complications left Jim
Ryder in a coma. Following his
near-fatal stint in the hospital,
Jim became serious about pursuing
his passion for writing. Since he
started writing in 2008, Jim has
been published in Megaphone,
Voices of the Street, and Geist. He
also publishes his own chapbooks
including his most recent title,
Cygnet. Contact Megaphone to
purchase a chapbook through Jim:
info@megaphonemagazine.com.
Nirbhaya // To Nov. 14, 8pm; Nov. 8 matinee,
2pm // York Theatre (639 Commercial Dr.) //
Tickets from $30 // Vancouver
The Cultch and Diwali Fest co-present
Nirbhaya, a play based on real-life experiences
that shook Dehli and the world. Playwright and
director Yaël l Farber’s production is based on
the nightmarish day on December 16, 2012,
when 23-year-old Jyoti Singh Pandey boarded
a bus in Dehli bound for home. Six attackers
gang raped and tortured her so brutally that she
died only a few weeks later from her injuries.
Farber’s play, heralded by critics as one of the
most urgent pieces of human rights theatre
ever made, hits home for Heather Redfern,
executive director of The Cultch. “I am bringing
Nirbhaya to the York Theatre because I believe
we are all responsible for breaking the silence,”
she says. “Seeing this play together is one
action we can take to make change for girls and
women in our neighbourhoods and around the
world.” Photo (above): William Burdett-Coutts.
The Great Climate Race Vancouver // Sun.
Nov. 9 // Start times: 9am, (2.5k); 10am (10k)
// Stanley Park and Lost Lagoon (starts
at Second Beach) // Tickets from $28.30 //
Vancouver
Fight climate change one New Balance-clad
step at a time. The Great Climate Race is part
of a running series that enables participants to
crowdfund for local renewable energy projects.
A portion of the entry fee for every participant,
plus all money they crowdfund for the event,
goes to The Great Climate Race Renewable
Energy Fund, a non-profit. The family friendly
running event welcomes people of all ages,
althetic abilities, and walks of life. Costumes
encouraged!
Rodriguez // Tues. and Wed., Nov. 10 & 11,
8pm // The Vogue Theatre (918 Granville) //
Tickets $60 // Vancouver
The enigmatic folk musician from Detroit,
Michigan and subject of the acclaimed
documentary Searching for Sugar Man performs
two shows in Vancouver. Sixto Diaz Rodriguez
recorded two albums in the early 1970s and
embarked on two concert tours in Australia.
From there, he sunk into relative obscurity until
fans in South Africa resurrected his career in
the 1990s. Then, in 2012, he was the subject of
an Academy Award-winning documentary and,
the following year, he received an honorary
Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Wayne
State University, his alma mater.
Circle Craft Market // Nov. 11-15, Wed-Fri
10am-9pm; Sat 10am-7pm; Sun 10am-5pm //
Vancouver Convention Centre (1055 Canada
Place) // Tickets from $7-$12 // Vancouver
The 42nd annual Christmas Craft Market
showcases local artistans and their work. Meet
wood-turners, glassblowers, sculptors, potters,
jewelry designers, and textile artists, including
79-year-old Sola Fielder, whose outsized
tapestries of urban and natural landscapes have
gained her international acclaim and a nod in
Megaphone last summer. Sola will exhibit her
latest art piece at Circle Craft, a 15’ x 16’ tapestry
of three-dimensional flowers woven from
upcycled clothing and fabrics.
Ghostly Dinner at Camille’s // Fri. Nov. 13,
6-9pm // Camille’s (45 Bastion Square) //
Tickets $65 // Victoria
Noted historian and storyteller John Adams
shares legends and ghost stories from Victoria’s
Ghostly Walks Tour, the walking tour series
he founded that uncovers the spooky stories
underscoring Victoria’s old-world charm.
Adams’ tales of murder, hangings, heroism,
intrigue, eccentricity, and love are the product
of more than five hundred collected tales of
ghostly encounters in the capital city. They
tell the twisted truth behind many of Victoria’s
most gruesome events. Adams tells his stories
while audiences enjoy a locally sourced threecourse
meal from Camille’s, known for its
charming West Coast cuisine.
Dalannah and Owen in Concert // Sat. Nov.
14, 8:30pm // Djavad Mowafaghian World Art
Centre, Goldcorp Centre for the Arts (149 W.
Hastings) // Tickets $15 // Vancouver
Longtime Megaphone friend and powerhouse
performer Dalannah Gail Bowen is celebrating a
landmark year. Last month, she turned 70, and
after singing blues, jazz, and gospel for 49 years,
she was recently inducted in the Blues Hall of
Fame as a master blues artist. One of her most
recent collaborators, bassist Owen Owen Owen,
performs alongside her in an intimate night of
blues and jazz.
Single Speed Cyclocross World Championships
// Sun. Nov. 22, 12:30pm-5pm-ish, with events
Fri.-Sun., Nov. 20-22 // Western Speedway (2207
Millstream Rd.) // Victoria
A ridiculous event dedicated to cyclists insane
enough to tackle cross-country terrain on
single-speed bikes, the Single Speed Cyclocross
World Championships (SSCXWC to those in the
know) spans an entire weekend of debauchery
in Victoria, with the races themselves
culminating on Sunday afternoon. Participants
must abide by two rules: race a bike with only
one gear; they must get “the tattoo” if they win.
To sum up: the smell of burning rubber and
mini donuts will unite in a devilish matrimony
Sunday afternoon at the Western Speedway,
where spectators will gater on the bleachers to
watch the action play out on the cross track.
28 Change that Works
MegaphoneMagazine.com
29

Crossword
m Puzzle by New York Times contributor Patrick “Mac” McIntyre,
courtesy of Real Change, Seattle’s Street Newspaper.
CROSSWORD
Rinky Dink
ACROSS
1 Cast-of-thousands film
5 Grouch
9 Chow
13 Prefix with phobia
14 Tennis's Mandlikova
15 Ending words of a price range
sign (2 wds.)
16 It's typically a German Shepherd
(2 wds.)
18 Gaucho's accessory
19 Verdi aria that means "It was you"
(2 wds.)
20 Big Bird's street
22 Backboard attachment
23 Repairman's forte (2 wds.)
28 File folder feature
29 Smitten with (2 wds.)
30 Highlands negative
31 Nose-in-the-air type
33 Colony member
34 The "I" in IV
36 Place for the starting face-off...
or something found in 16-, 23-, 54-,
and 61-Across? (2 wds.)
40 Robert Devereux's earldom
43 Ewe's mate
44 ___ out (just barely manages)
48 Old French coin
49 Capital of Venezuela
53 Uganda's Amin
54 Chuck D. and Flavor Flav's hiphop
group (2 wds.)
56 Hat, slangily
57 For the time being: Lat. (2 wds.)
58 Actor Nick of "Cape Fear" and
"Warrior"
60 Make a successful shot on goal
61 It typically involves sitting at a
desk (2 wds.)
65 Performs certain eye surgery,
maybe
66 Lab container
67 Scale start (2 wds.)
68 "Chestnuts roasting ___ open fire"
(2 wds.)
69 And others, for short: Abbr.
(2 wds.)
70 Network: Abbr.
DOWN
1 Ones at the top of their fields
2 Typical American, supposedly
3 Neither here nor there (2 wds.)
4 Tower near the Golden Gate
5 Revolutionary Guevara
6 Highly desirable, in somewhat
dated slang
7 12 meses
8 Gives up on something, slangily
9 Early computer
10 Inflexible
11 Like a guardian
12 Health resort
15 Poisoner's powder
17 Utter profanities
21 Environmental prefix
24 Actor McGregor
25 It may be due on a duplex
26 November honoree
27 Meadow
32 Abbr. after a year
35 Born, in bios
37 Titillates
38 Dash or derby
39 Muslim leader
40 It's huge for a medium: Abbr.
41 Noted Warhol subject (2 wds.)
42 Secretly: Lat. (2 wds.)
45 Party pooper
46 Blue pencil wielders
47 Auxiliary wager (2 wds.)
50 King topper
51 Take off
52 In ___ (harmonious)
55 "Two Women" Oscar winner
Sophia
59 Ref. volumes: Abbr.
60 ___-mo replay
62 ____ as a fiddle
63 SeaTac A/P overseer: Abbr.
64 Not in the pink
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30 Change that Works
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Wrap up
hope
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MEGAPHONEMAGAZINE.COM
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