**October 2012 Focus - Focus Magazine

OCUS
Victoria’s monthly magazine of people, ideas and culture October 2012
PM 40051145 FOC

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2 October 2012 • FOCUS

contents
October 2012 VOL. 25 NO. 1
16 34 40
4 THE RIGHT TO KNOW
Victoria City Hall wants to limit your access to information.
Leslie Campbell
8 MORE ACCOLADES FOR ROB WIPOND
Longtime Focus journalist is a finalist for 3 Jack Webster Awards.
Leslie Campbell
10 VICTORIA CITY HALL’S DARK SECRET
Why was the City of Victoria willing to have a truckload of bad publicity
dumped on it over their attempt to censor Focus Magazine?
David Broadland
12 ARE BC POLICE CHIEFS EVADING THE LAW?
At the same time as their associations channel public resources
into private political lobbying, they claim immunity from BC’s
laws governing public access to their records.
Rob Wipond
16 BACK TO THE LAND
An upcoming exhibition displays the resourcefulness and innovation of
Vancouver Island-area potters of the 1970s and early ’80s.
John Luna
20 WHISPERS AND SHOUTS
Starting a conversation on eroticism in contemporary Kwakwaka’wakw art.
Aaren Madden
32 AN INDIGENOUS APPROACH TO GLOBAL CRISIS
In the Nuu-chah-nulth world view, life’s major purpose is the development
of harmonious relationships between and among all life forms.
Amy Reiswig
34 WILL A FLU SHOT KEEP YOU HEALTHY?
The Cochrane Collaboration’s examination of flu vaccines in
healthy adults, a body of literature spanning 25 studies and involving
59,566 people, finds an annual flu shot reduced
overall clinical influenza by about six percent.
Alan Cassels
40 CONSERVATIVES KILL THE MESSENGER
Even after losing his job measuring marine contaminants, Peter Ross
is more concerned about the country’s future than his own.
Aaren Madden
42 THE MONSTER’S BALL
Influenced by the adolescent fantasies of Ayn Rand, the extreme
right wing rejects any form of collectivism as evil socialism.
Gene Miller
44 CRUISING TO GALIANO
The restorative powers of nature help immigrants as well as
grandparents and their grandchildren.
Briony Penn
46 THE PARENTING PARADOX
Both mother and daughter survived the trip.
Trudy Duivenvoorden Mitic
October 2012 • www.focusonline.ca
editor’s letter 4
readers’ views 6
focus community 8
talk of the town 10
arts in october 16
coastlines 32
focus 34
island interview 40
urbanities 42
natural relations 44
finding balance 46
ON THE COVER
“Oh My God” by Rande Cook, 36
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The right to know
LESLIE CAMPBELL
editor’s letter
Victoria City Hall wants to limit your access to information.
How ironic was it that during “Right to Know Week” (Sept 24-
28) we learned how our own right to know—and thereby keep
readers informed—was being severely curtailed?
In August, the City applied to the BC Office of the Freedom of
Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) under Section 43 to
put restrictions on Focus publisher/writer David Broadland and myself
(as well as Ross Crockford of JohnsonStreetBridge.org). Section 43
appears to be a little-used clause reserved for extreme cases of abuse
of the provisions under the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act.
As far as we can tell, it has never before been used against journalists.
And until adjudicated by the OIPC, our Freedom of Information requests
with the City of Victoria have been “frozen.”
This is disturbing. And we can’t help wondering what triggered it.
See David’s story in this edition for more on that front.
Our demands on the City have been quite modest, especially considering
the issues and the interest. We submitted five FOIs to the City
in 2012. Most, but not all, were around the Johnson Street Bridge
replacement, which, as the most expensive project ever undertaken by
the City deserves careful scrutiny, not just by City staff, but by media,
councillors (who are sometimes in the dark it seems) and the general
public who pay the bills.
We do not make FOI requests lightly. They cost us money we can little
afford. They often take many months to be completed, and come to
us with many paragraphs and pages redacted. But we believe the information
we are seeking will serve the public interest by enabling more
informed engagement and decision-making. The public’s right to know
is, after all, a basic requirement of a well-functioning democracy.
One of the most important tools at our disposal for investigative journalism
is the province’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy
Act (FIPPA). Introduced in 1992, it recognizes that public bodies (government,
universities, hospitals, etc) have an obligation to share information
openly with citizens because it helps us hold those bodies accountable.
This Act has helped many journalists break important stories. In
Focus, both Rob Wipond and David Broadland have relied on it to
produce their reports. As you’ll read on page 8, Rob has earned professional
recognition because of stories on eldercare and policing that
depended in part on FOI requests. In this edition, his story on BC’s
police chief associations shows how public bodies are circumventing
access to information by setting themselves up as private entities not
subject to FOI regulations—a truly ominous trend.
David has relied on FIPPA to dig behind the City’s substantial public
relations machinery to find out what’s really going on with the Johnson
Street Bridge Replacement Project. In April, for instance, he reported
Editor: Leslie Campbell Publisher: David Broadland Sales: Bonnie Light
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4 October 2012 • FOCUS

UNTIL ADJUDICATED by the OIPC, our Freedom of
Information requests with the City of Victoria have
been “frozen.”
on how significant changes to the mechanical design of the bridge had
been shown to councillors in a PowerPoint presentation without City
staff actually telling councillors what they were looking at. Amongst
other changes not explained, a feature of the new bridge that had been
promised before the referendum was now gone.
His article last month, “City managers hide report for 20 months,”
provides a good illustration of how an FOI can make a healthy difference
to local governance. In March 2011, David filed for any seismic risk
assessments done on City-owned buildings. Various delays by the City
ensued. One stalling tactic included claiming these studies were going to
be made public in 60 days, which meant they didn’t need to release them
to David. After 60 days went by and no release took place, they used
other stalling tactics. Sixteen months later, in August, after David filed
a complaint with OIPC, the City produced the Reid Jones Christoffersen
Report. It showed that many City properties needed extensive—and
expensive—seismic retrofitting to be safe. Geoff Young, who was interviewed
for David’s article, suggested that had council known in a timely
fashion about the state and costs of retrofitting all of its buildings, it might
have chosen a different strategy for the Johnson Street Bridge.
The release of the seismic report led councillors Lisa Helps and Marianne
Alto to introduce a motion requiring all such third-party reports be
provided to council within 30 days of receipt by staff. At a September 20
meeting, the motion was amended to 60 days, with some qualifications,
including confidentiality, and passed. City staff, in recommending against
the original motion, had proposed eight alternate strategies for increasing
communication and accountability. Somewhat surprisingly, council also
passed a motion to implement all of those practices.
These positive steps towards transparency are great news. They will
result in a better-informed City council, who, as elected officials
must steward the public interest. On her Facebook page, Helps wrote:
“There seems to be a culture shift happening at City Hall and I’m thrilled
to be part of the process.” And so are we: Without David’s investigations
through the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy
Act, none of this would have happened.
Naturally we are fighting the City’s application to limit our use of
FOI. There are important principles at stake—and consequences. In
an era of multimillion-dollar infrastructure projects, it is especially
important to nurture an engaged, informed citizenry.
This month’s edition has other stories that highlight our right to know.
Alan Cassel’s feature on the increasingly controversial flu vaccine program
and Aaren Madden’s interview with federal marine mammal toxicologist
Peter Ross illustrate, in different ways, how a healthy democracy
depends on us all keeping well informed.
www.focusonline.ca • October 2012
Leslie Campbell is Focus’ founder and editor.
News flash: council videos for Victoria and
other local municipalities are now available
courtesy of citizen Jason Ross on Youtube—
search “modern democracy.” The people are
doing it for themselves!
Focus presents: Victoria Hospice
ADVERTISEMENT
The generosity, determination, and courage of Hospice Heroes
What do Thrifty Foods, a young girl named Lena and two athletic young
men named Graham and Sean have in common? Each of them has done
something significant to support the palliative care provided by Victoria
Hospice. In return,Victoria Hospice will honour these local heroes with a Hospice
Heroes Leadership Award at their annual Fall Donor Tea.
These awards recognize a Community Business, a Youth Philanthropist and a
Distinguished Advocate for their outstanding support.
“Hospice couldn’t function
without the support of community
dollars and without the over
300 active volunteers—on the
unit,in the community,the Thrift
Boutique, at events and with
fundraising efforts—that give of
their time to support Victoria
Hospice,”says Kathleen Burton,
Director of Development. “We
can never do enough to thank
them all. But we can recognize
those who go beyond what we
ask—who,in ever widening and
nurturing circles of caring,inspire
others to support the mandate
of Victoria Hospice.”
For nearly 20 years,Community
Business Award recipient Thrifty
Foods has partnered with Hospice
to promote awareness of the
palliative programs and to
support fundraisers such as the L-R: Sean Jacklin, Vivian Chenard (Thrifty
Swimathon, Hike for Hospice, Foods), Lena Babaei, and Graham Robertson
and Teeny Tiny Garden Tour.Thrifty
Foods is always a welcome presence at such community fund-raising events.
Lena Babaei is the recipient of the Youth Philanthropist Award. Even as she
was dealing with her own grief at the loss of her father, this courageous young girl
was willing to share her own story of how she was helped by Victoria Hospice’s
Touchstones Program (a bereavement program for young children), so that other
children in her situation would know they too could find help with their own grief.
The Distinguished Advocate Award recognizes an individual who gives above
and beyond what is required or expected of them to support Hospice.
This year’s award is shared by a pair who were willing to go the distance to
raise money for Hospice. Last year, Graham Robertson initiated the Cycle of
Life Tour as a Hospice fundraiser, cycling 3600 km from Anchorage, Alaska to
Victoria.This summer, Sean Jacklin rode more than 7500 km across Canada for
the Cycle of Life Tour.
What kept Sean going through those long rides? Sean says he thought about
everyone supporting him, and knew,“No way can I let them down.”
Ironically, he briefly interrupted his ride to return home when his grandfather
suddenly took ill, and after a short hospice stay, passed away. Sean returned to his
ride even more determined.He says,“I was on fire.I just hammered,at least 10 hours
a day.”Victoria Hospice definitely benefited from this young athlete’s determination.
“It has been said, those who can, do.Those who can do more, volunteer.Victoria
Hospice Heroes award recipients are definitely those who can and did do more,”
says Kathleen.
Victoria Hospice • 250-519-1744
Give online at www.VictoriaHospice.org
5

Born of the Elements, Living the Prophetic Life
with Mary Jane Wilson CND MA. On four Tuesdays:
Oct 9 - Oct 30, 10 am – noon. $75 or $20 drop in at
Friend’s Meeting House, 1831 Fern Street, Victoria
Film Screening: Journey of the Universe (Brian
Swimme & Mary Ellen Tucker) with Gertie
Jocksch SC DMin. Thurs Oct 18, 7 – 8:30 pm.
$15.00 at Royal Roads University, 2005 Sooke
Road, Victoria. Registration: RRU Continuing Studies
www.royalroads.ca/continuing-studies.
Imagining Sustainable and Just Future: a Call to
Action with Karen Hurley, PhD Fri Oct 26, 7 – 9pm
to Sat Oct 27, 9:30am – 4pm. $80.00 Please bring
lunch, refreshments provided. Location: Queen
Alexandra 2400 Arbutus Road, Victoria.
earthliteracies@gmail.com
250-220-4601 • www.earthliteracies.org
BC battles Northern Gateway
Thank you for your editorial on Enbridge
and its Northern Gateway project. Vocal opposition
is growing. It is grassroots and widespread,
despite Mr Harper’s claims that opponents
are just foreign extremists.
Enbridge is just one head of the hydra. If
Northern Gateway doesn’t fly, there are several
other pipelines—Kinder Morgan, Pembina,
etc.—waiting in the wings. They will, if
approved, carry bitumen from Alberta and
fracked un-natural gas from BC and Alberta
to service the ravening maw of the Chinese
market, which Harper seems determined to
feed. China is being given increasing and unexamined
control of the Canadian economy
with no real benefit for Canadians. We are
fast becoming a petrostate with all the lack of
democracy and environmental degradation
that involves, as we are swept backwards into
a role we should have outgrown—hewers
of wood and drawers of water.
On top of all that, Mr. Harper, the same man
who made his public apology to First Nations
a few years back, disregards crucial issues of
their health and well-being as the tar sands
poison their land and pipelines devastate it.
At base, this is about climate change and
corporatization. Our glaciers and our permafrost
are melting; the Arctic Ocean barely freezes.
We must connect the dots so that we understand
every pipeline as part of the mega-issue
that puts our future at risk. Times are hard now.
They will be a whole lot harder for our children
and grandchildren unless we get serious right
now and do everything we can to get Canada
onto the course of listening to our scientists and
caring for our fragile and miraculous planet.
Dorothy Field
Exporting opportunity
Congratulations to Focus and writer Katherine
Gordon for describing BC log exports as an
opportunity. This helps increase understanding
for solving this complex and controversial issue.
BC exports logs to other countries because
they produce more value from our timber
than we can. Offshore markets will pay $90/
per cubic metre for certain logs that in BC
sell for $50. Countries with strong forest products
economies import more logs than they
export. Sweden’s strong forest economy in
2008 imported 5.8 million cubic metres, and
exported 2.5 million.
In contrast, BC, in 2011, exported 6.9
million cubic metres, and imported less
than 100,000. Many BC sawmills and pulp
mills have permanently closed, while 2011
readers’ views
log exports increased to 10 percent of the total
logged. Increasing log exports are a symptom,
not the cause, of a weak forest products economy.
BC’s coordinated actions for building a strong
forest economy (and removing the incentive
to export) will include: growing high quality
wood to produce an increasing supply of valuable
timber to attract investment; selling domestic
logs at competitive prices so local mills have
access to the logs they really want in the desired
species, grades, and sizes—and predictable
quantities; and manufacturing high-quality
forest products the world wants, so BC can
compete successfully in global markets.
When this occurs, the evidence is that log
exports are a non-issue. If we do not control
our own destiny, someone else will.
Ray Travers, RPF
Great issue, especially the two stories by
Katherine Palmer Gordon. The log export one
really hit a chord as we see our beloved Vancouver
Island being raped and pillaged by the likes of
Rick Jefferies and Bill Dumont, whom I have
fought for years over forest protection and
management issues.
And Leslie Campbell’s editorial was great
too. We will beat Enbridge but then there are
the other proposed pipelines; no easy wins
there. An ongoing battle and absolutely no
thought of climate change.
Vicky Husband
Promontory
Sorry, I beg to disagree about the impression
made by a 21-story “bump” coming to
the horizon of Vic West. What distinctive
feature justifies the height of this building being
so far above that of others in the local environment?
Such a blimp on the horizon only
makes me wonder, sadly, about the community
price paid for the politics and backroom
manoeuvring of land rezoning.
Prudent buyers/renters in some countries,
with due regard to the increasingly severe
climate and political disturbances we all seem
headed for, consider five storeys the optimum
level for human habitation. Consider also
Arthur Erickson’s suggestion that mental health
is optimized if one can look out of their apartment
into Nature—not down on Nature.
Marilyn Leslie Kan
Is the Gorge actually safe for swimming?
Rob Wipond’s September article on stormwater
contamination in the Gorge is excellent!
The startling 2007 map of CRD stormwater
problem discharges [shows] how many storm-
6 October 2012 • FOCUS

water drains in the Gorge require action to
reduce public health and environmental risks.
Those who believe that the incredibly
expensive CRD sewage treatment plant will
reduce stormwater contamination risks will
be very disappointed to learn that the unnecessary
sewage plant doesn’t treat stormwater.
That’s another expensive infrastructure project,
albeit one that is more worthwhile than the
expensive, environmentally-insignificant sewage
treatment plant.
John Newcomb
Notes from subscribers
Thank you to all your wonderful investigative
reporters for keeping me informed about
the issues which matter so much to me. We
live in a very special part of the world and to
properly care for it, we need facts in order
to be advocates.
Carolyn Herbert
Congratulations on producing a most interesting
and thought-provoking magazine in
the capital city. We have been the beneficiaries
of free copies for many years. Please find
a subscription enclosed.
Christopher Causton
I meant to do this a long-time ago. Your
magazine is absolutely fantastic! Rob Wipond’s
article about Tom Swanky’s revelation of the
appalling genocide finally pushed me over the
edge to move my hand to the chequebook.
Rob, Katherine Palmer Gordon, Briony
Penn, Gene Miller, David Broadland and many
others—wow! What a great stable you have
of wonderful investigators, discoverers, troublemakers
and real shit disturbers!
Thank you so much. We desperately need
these intelligent, well-written articles to counteract
all the lies the “normal” media spews
out at us. Many of us are asleep and will never
even try to learn the truth of what’s happening
to us and how much and how deeply we are
all being brainwashed and hoodwinked.
With many wishes for more success and
information like this.
Gillian M. Sanderson
Please find my year’s subscription for your
magazine which I find the most cogent and
well-written monthly in Western Canada.
David Price
LETTERS
Send letters to: focusedit@shaw.ca
www.focusonline.ca • October 2012
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7

Each year, the Jack Webster Foundation sends out notification
by email to the three finalists in each of the 12 categories of
Jack Webster Awards. When I saw the first one announcing
Rob Wipond was a finalist in the Community Reporting category
for two pieces he wrote on the RCMP’s and VicPD’s Automatic
Licence Plate Recognition (ALPR) programs, I wasn’t surprised. The
stories, written earlier this year, garnered tremendous attention on
our website from all over the planet. And after Rob, Christopher
Parsons and Kevin McArthur took the research done for the story
and presented it as a brief to Information and Privacy Commissioner
Elizabeth Denham, she launched an investigation into the way the
program is operating here in Victoria. It was great that the Websters
had noticed.
But 20 minutes after that first email came in, a second one appeared.
Rob was also a finalist in the Science, Technology, Health and Environment
category for his feature-length story on the overuse of antipsychotics
in BC long-term care facilities. “Crisis Behind Closed Doors,” which
we published in our June 2011 edition, had also been a finalist for both
a National Magazine Award and a Western Magazine Award earlier
this year. By then I had a very big smile on my face for Rob.
That second email sent me looking through the lists of all the finalists
since 1987 when the Websters began. I noticed that the number of
times an individual had been a finalist for two different Websters in any
given year was a pretty rare event. And then “ping!” Another email.
Another announcement that Rob was once again a finalist, this time in
the Excellence in Legal Journalism category for his story, “Kathleen’s
Demise: A Cautionary Tale” from our July/August 2011 edition. I have
to say that this was one of the very best hours I’ve ever spent in the 24
years since I started Focus.
As far as I have been able to determine, Rob is the first person to be
a finalist for three different categories of journalism in a single year at
8
More accolades for Rob Wipond
LESLIE CAMPBELL
Longtime Focus journalist is a finalist for 3 Jack Webster Awards.
Rob Wipond
the Websters—a wonderful acknowledgment of his depth and skill as
a writer. He’s an inspiration to all of us at Focus.
He’s not the only Victoria journalist going to the Websters in
November. He’ll be joined by the Times Colonist’s Cindy E. Harnett
and Rob Shaw, who are finalists in the Best News Reporting
(Print) category for their co-created story “VIHA’s Secret Job.”
Good luck to all three of you!
Leslie Campbell is the founding editor of Focus Magazine.
Investigative reporting costs money
Please help send Rob Wipond to the 2013 Jack Webster Awards
by subscribing to Focus Magazine
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THIS MONTHS SUBCRIBERS to win our draw for $100 gift certificates
for dinner at Café Brio are Melody Villeneuve and Sheldon Nicholson.
Thanks very much to Greg and Sylvia at Brio for their sponsorship,
and congratulations to Melody and Sheldon! Watch here next month
for two more lucky subscribers destined to be delighted at Café Brio.
www.focusonline.ca • October 2012 9

talk
of the
town
Leslie, David and Goliath. That’s what
the City of Victoria’s application to
“Section 43” our magazine feels like to
us. A corporation 1000 times our size is trying
to throttle us because we had the nerve to
expose its mismanagement of a mega-project
for which only a dubious rationale was
ever produced. That project is now at the
edge of failure, and Goliath is angry.
That’s the metacontext of the City of
Victoria’s application for a Section 43 authorization
from the Office of the Information
and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) to freeze
my FOI requests. Section 43 is a provision of
the Freedom of Information and Protection of
Privacy Act (FIPPA) that allows a public body
like the City of Victoria to protect themselves
from the odd crank who wants to file an FOI
a day. What makes our case noteworthy is that
Section 43 has never before been applied to a
media source in BC.
What prompted the City’s dramatic move?
They claim they did it because the three people
named in the application, Leslie Campbell,
Ross Crockford and myself were overwhelming
them with work arising from our FOI requests.
I’m going to address the overwhelming- themwith-work
claim in detail because that’s the
fastest way to debunk what the City has been
saying. Then I’ll move on to what this is really
about: their dark secret.
The City of Victoria made their Section 43
application on August 7, 2012. In the previous
seven months, Focus filed five FOI requests.
That’s five, not fifty. And our requests had
declined dramatically in frequency since 2011.
All of these requests were very focused.
Which makes the City’s Communications
Director Katie Josephson’s characterization
of our requests on CBC Radio borderline
libel. Josephson told CBC, “In most cases
they are asking for every email or record
over the span of half a year, and you can
imagine the volume of work that does go
into collecting and compiling an enormous
amount of records...We have seen a
significant increase in the number of Freedom
of Information requests from this group
[Campbell, Crockford and Broadland],
however it really is due to the broad nature
Victoria City Hall’s dark secret
of those requests [that the City applied for
a Section 43 authorization].”
Let’s look at the facts Ms Josephson has
ignored. The largest of our requests was for
the emails between former Project Director
Mike Lai and MMM Group—the company
providing the City with project management—
from August 2011 to March 15, 2012. This
request was filed after the predicted cost of the
project had jumped from $77 million to $93
million last March. The City’s response to this
request ran to 677 pages, puffed up by hundreds
of pages of information that did not fit the
request criteria. The City charged us $1200.
I made two other requests on March 15,
one for the record of internal staff communications
relating to the escalating cost of the
new Johnson Street Bridge (52 pages) and the
other for the record of communications between
the City of Victoria and the Government of
Canada regarding the $16.5 million Gas
Tax grant announced March 3 (19 pages).
Then on March 27, I requested a ledger
record of the City’s costs for the bridge replacement
project between July 2011 and March
2012 (16 pages supplied in electronic format).
This is a record that the City would keep as
a natural course of tracking the project’s cost.
On July 9, I requested evidence that the City
was being overwhelmed with FOI requests, a
claim they had made to OIPC in support of
serial delays in producing the 677-page request.
This information was supplied by the City
as a single-page email. They clearly shouldn’t
have been overwhelmed.
One of the other people in Josephson’s
“group” is Focus editor Leslie Campbell. Campbell
has never made an FOI request to the City.
Ross Crockford, who is a director of
JohnsonStreetBridge.org, tells me that so far
in 2012, the City has provided him with a
response to only one request for information
(191 electronic pages). He abandoned one
other request after the City assessed what he
felt was an unreasonably high fee.
Josephson’s “enormous amount of records”
actually amounted to 956 pages over a period
of 7 months. Is this “enormous”?
No. A single FOI request by a journalist can
often run to thousands of pages of records.
David Broadland 10 Rob Wipond 12
DAVID BROADLAND
We debunk the City's claims about why it is trying to censor Focus and we provide a more likely motivation for its unwarranted attack.
Focus’ Rob Wipond tells me a recent request
he made to Public Works and Government
Services Canada will run to 5200 pages; another
with Health Canada, 3200 pages.
Speaking about the City’s Section 43 application
at the September 28 Sunshine Summit
in Victoria, former Information and Privacy
Commissioner Dr David Flaherty called the
City’s Section 43 request “absolutely outrageous,”
adding, “If you’re planning to spend
$100 million on something, you better fund
the FOI regime to be able to handle the access
requests, otherwise it’s undemocratic and inappropriate.”
He expressed a hope that the City
would be “whacked” by OIPC.
It isn’t too surprising that the same senior
City managers who forgot to include the $1.1
million cost of applying for permits, for example,
would also overlook the need to increase
funding for its FOI capacity by a few thousand
dollars. Meanwhile, the City happily
spends $600,000 a year on Josephson’s image
makeover department.
But the source of the City’s Section 43 attack
on this magazine isn’t just the short supply of
competency at City Hall. Its action demonstrates
a willingness to use FIPPA’s provisions
for cynical political purposes. According to
FOI experts assisting Focus, City of Victoria
has next to no chance of winning the authorization
it is seeking. That’s not even the City’s
game. Lawyer Michael Vonn, policy director
for the BC Civil Liberties Association, in discussion
about the City’s Section 43 maneuver,
compared it to a shell game and said, “Like
comedy, the only thing that counts in FOI is
timing. If you can stall it out past the line, it
almost doesn’t matter.”
The City is simply misusing a provision of
FIPPA to stall the release of information. It’s
hoping to play the clock out and get a contract
signed on a new bridge before its Section 43
request is declined by OIPC and it is ordered
to release information that could embarrass it
and threaten its already shaky project.
I believe the foundation for the City’s
stalling tactic was laid on July 5, 2012 when
I sent an email to the City outlining the public
interest involved in my 677-page request
mentioned above. Public bodies are required
10 October 2012 • FOCUS

y FIPPA to provide information at no cost
when the information is deemed to be in the
public interest. So I made my pitch.
My premise was simple. In the 52-page FOI
mentioned above, I had obtained a memo
written by the City’s Assistant Director of
Finance Susanne Thompson. That memo and
other documents showed senior City managers
definitely knew about significant design changes
and the bulk of the $16 million price increase
for the bridge project on November 21, 2011,
just a few days after the last civic election. It
seemed very likely, then, that the cost increase
was known by City Manager Gail Stephens
and former Project Director Mike Lai before
the election. But how much before?
This question matters. In my appeal for a
fee waiver, I wrote, “If the engineers knew of
the design change and anticipated cost increases
and did not relate this information to the city
manager or councillors, this raises the question
of whether they have breached their
professional code of ethics. If the city manager
knew of anticipated cost increases but did not
relate this information to the mayor or councillors,
this raises the question of whether the
city manager acted ethically by informing them
that the project was ‘on budget, on schedule.’
Whether civic officials have acted ethically
is always a matter of public interest.”
I was referring to an October 6, 2011 council
meeting at which City Manager Gail Stephens
had reassured councillors the project was “on
budget and within timelines.”
The City’s Director of Legislative Services
Robert Woodland rejected my request for a
fee waiver on July 19. He made it clear that
he was aware of my “theory,” as he put it, but
differed on whether such a concern was a
matter of public interest. What’s important
to note is that the City was aware of why I was
asking for the information.
Now I need to go back in time for a moment
to pick up a stray piece of the story. A document
obtained from the above-mentioned
52-page FOI request had noted that on September
12, 2011, the “JSB Steering Committee” had
met and discussed the “wheel design.” Don’t
laugh. This is much more unusual than it sounds.
In the 677-page response mentioned above,
the subject of the bridge’s design never appeared;
nor was there any mention of cost escalation.
It was clear these issues, and any other
problems they were having, were being discussed
in some other venue than the email communication
between Lai and MMM Group. The
Steering Committee consisted of all the top
officials working on the project, including
www.focusonline.ca • October 2012
Stephens, Lai, and Joost Meyboom of MMM
Group. Whenever the design changes and cost
increase had occurred, these would have been
the first people to know. We know from the
above document that Sherri Andrews, Stephen’s
personal assistant, attended all or some of these
meetings and made notes. We know from a
City Hall insider that Andrews takes shorthand
notes of transcript quality.
So on August 3, working along that same
line of inquiry, I requested from the City “the
personal notes and records made by City of
Victoria employee Sherri Andrews that covered
the proceedings of the JSB Steering Committee
between January 1, 2011 and August 3, 2012.”
My August 3 FOI touched a sensitive nerve
at City Hall. By August 7 the City had applied
to OIPC for authorization to ignore FOI requests
from me, Leslie Campbell and Ross Crockford,
both of whom were apparently guilty by association.
Merely by applying for the authorization,
any FOI requests I had made were automatically
frozen, including the August 3 request.
Is the dark secret that the cost increase was
known in September 2011? Or is it that and a
whole lot of other embarrassing facts about how
badly this project has been managed? A “Final
Project Definition Report,” which was wrestled
from the clutches of senior managers and into
public view after I informed councillors of its
existence back in early September, contains
sobering revelations. For example, the report
notes that as of July 31, the design for the bridge
was only at “30 percent.” MMM Group told
councillors in March the design would be at 60
percent before the procurement process started.
Here’s the bottom line. The date for receiving
bids for construction of a new bridge was to
be completed by August 17. After two postponements,
that date has been moved to October
18. The “design optimization” process, by
which the three construction companies rework
the design so they can keep within an overall
project cost of $93 million, may produce a
bridge very different from the one Victorians
approved in the 2010 referendum. When councillors
finally get to see what that looks like,
they’ll have to decide whether to proceed or
kill the project and look at other options. With
the project hanging by a political thread, any
bad news could sink it. So City managers chose
to knock the most likely source of embarrassing
news out of the game for as long as possible.
City managers could easily prove me wrong
by releasing the requested information without
further delay.
David Broadland is the publisher of Focus Magazine.
11

They’re the two most prominent and
influential policing organizations in
British Columbia, appearing frequently
in public promoting their strong positions on
criminal justice reform, use of tasers, drug
laws, or expanding police powers. But little
else is widely known about the BC Association
of Chiefs of Police (BCACP) and its smaller
sister, the BC Association of Municipal Chiefs
of Police (BCAMCP).
I became more aware of these associations
in July, after the BC Office of the Information
and Privacy Commissioner launched an investigation
into the Victoria Police Department’s
use of automatic licence plate recognition in
the wake of Focus’ investigations (see “Hidden
Surveillance” Feb 2012). Extensive media
coverage ensued, and the BC Ministry of Justice
issued a statement in which they assured the
public that they “recently wrote a letter to the
BC Association of Chiefs of Police” to re-emphasize
the program’s proper “terms of use.” I’d
been investigating the RCMP and VicPD’s licence plate tracking system
for 18 months, and had never come across this group—and now suddenly
I learn that they are the ones actually in charge of it?
Naturally, I wanted to find out more about them. What are their
mandates? Who funds them? What do they do? Both associations have
been meeting up to 10 times a year for at least 30 years, but they aren’t
incorporated non-profit organizations, they don’t have websites, and
little information about them is available anywhere. The BCAMCP is
using the Victoria Police Department as its contact address, while the
BCACP has a post office box.
Ironically—or perhaps appropriately—another person asking similar
questions is a local police constable, David Bratzer. Off-duty, Bratzer
volunteers for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), a group
of law enforcement professionals advocating for harm-reduction
approaches to illicit drugs, and it’s in this capacity that Bratzer first
started noticing the BCACP and BCAMCP, which support more prohibitionist
“drug war” approaches.
In his own political activities, Bratzer follows strict ethical guidelines.
“As a serving police officer, I’ve always been very careful with
how I participate in that public debate,” says Bratzer. “I always make
it clear that I’m speaking off-duty and my views do not represent those
of my employer. Any media interviews I give on the subject are always
done outside of my working hours.” And over the years, Bratzer and
his police department have gradually reached a working agreement
that these guidelines strike an appropriate balance between a police
officer’s on-duty responsibilities to impartially apply the law, and offduty
rights to freely express and advocate.
However, Bratzer has in recent years noticed that sometimes BCACP
and BCAMCP press releases are issued through police departments’
Are BC police chiefs evading the law?
ROB WIPOND
At the same time as their associations channel public resources into private political lobbying,
they claim immunity from BC’s laws governing public access to their records.
Not talking: BCAMCP President
(and VicPD chief) Jamie Graham
talk of the town
media relations units. LEAP isn’t allowed that
kind of access, he points out, so why are these
associations? Bratzer began trying to learn about
the ethical guidelines BC police chief associations
operate under when they do political
advocacy and, he says, “My concern began to
grow. Because what I’m seeing is that the police
leadership in British Columbia seems to be
following a different set of rules.”
Indeed, as I begin to investigate myself, it
soon becomes evident BC chiefs are not only
blurring the ethical lines between their public
roles and private politicking, they also seem to
be deliberately evading transparency and oversight
mechanisms.
Just a “private group”
Victoria Police Chief Jamie Graham is president
of the BCAMCP, which includes senior
officers from BC’s municipal police departments.
VicPD Public Affairs tells me Graham
isn’t available for an interview about the BCAMCP.
The current president of the BCACP is Chief Peter Lepine of the
West Vancouver Police Department. In a telephone conversation, Lepine
is amiable—but not forthcoming on some key issues.
“At this point in time, we’re a private group,” says Lepine. He acknowledges
the BCACP lags behind the “credibility” of other police chief
groups in Canada that have legally incorporated as non-profit societies.
He says BCACP incorporation is in the works, but for reasons Lepine
won’t elaborate much on, the process has taken a year and will require
another year.
So what does the BCACP do? “We get together a few times a year
[for two days] just to discuss issues around public safety and other things
such as pending legislation and how we can contribute to those kinds
of discussions,” says Lepine, making it clear that meeting with government,
helping craft legislation, and other activities which could be
regarded by some as political lobbying are also major BCACP undertakings.
For example, after a Charter challenge forced the BC government
to revise its legislation empowering police to suspend a driver’s licence
for a failed breathalyzer test which then could not be challenged in
court, Lepine says, “We were there working with the Superintendent
of Motor Vehicles to help them…”
And who’s involved in this “private” group? BCACP members, says
Lepine, include the BCAMCP municipal police chiefs plus senior representatives
from the RCMP, BC Coroners Service, and provincial Ministry
of Justice. (All apparently participate as part of their public service jobs.)
Anyone else? “I don’t think we could provide a list of sorts without
risking ourselves violating their privacy,” replies Lepine.
So who does the BCACP’s administrative work?
For many tasks, says Lepine, the BCACP “will lean internally
where we can.” Lepine explains that police department staff draft
12 October 2012 • FOCUS

MY EXPECTATION WOULD BE that they would be
bending over backwards to demonstrate all the good
work that they’re doing...Unless, in fact, they’re engaging
in secretive lobbying activity that’s opposed to the public
interest.” —David Ebey, BC Civil Liberties Association
BCACP press releases and do other communications work; police
department lawyers provide legal advice and assistance to the
BCACP; and other police department experts “provide us with
information and expertise that allow us to assist government in
creating their legislation.”
Perplexed, I ask if the BCACP has constituting documents, mandate,
mission, policies, or anything else showing how they operate as a “private
group” independent of police and government. Lepine replies, “We
don’t have a mandate.” And for the rest, he adds, the BCACP has “just
a general framework.”
Can I see anything at all that’s put into writing?
“I’ve talked to the executive around it and the lawyers in the group
around release and that, and it was suggested to me here that that’s
really not for public release,” answers Lepine.
What if I submitted a request under the BC Freedom of Information
and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA)?
Lepine says the BCACP as a “private group” isn’t subject to FIPPA.
I tell Lepine that the BCACP doesn’t seem like a “private group”;
they look like a “public body” as defined by FIPPA, consisting of public
servants performing their public duties on the public dime and time.
Lepine acknowledges my “frustration,” and assures me I can obtain
some information by submitting an FOI request to his police department
for documents relating to his own BCACP-related activities. “It’s
not like we’re trying to hide anything,” says Lepine. “There’s really
nothing to hide.”
Nothing to hide, except everything
Actually, BCACP leaders tell different stories depending on who
they’re talking to—sometimes portraying themselves as just chiefs
hanging out doing normal police work, and other times as long-standing,
official, independent organizations. For example, although Lepine
told me the BCACP has no distinct mandate, in a 2010 lobbying letter
to members of parliament, a previous BCACP president outlined what
he characterized as the BCACP’s “mandate.” Meanwhile, in recent
government-commissioned reports on justice issues, the BCAMCP
and BCACP let themselves be described to the public as mere “advisory
bodies” having “no authorized mandate, charter or constitution.”
But when the BCAMCP sought intervener status in a 2006 court case,
they submitted their seven-page constitution. And while Lepine told
me the BCACP is a tiny group, in the House of Commons in 2010,
Conservative MP John Weston read out a supportive letter from Lepine
describing the BCACP as “the voice of British Columbia’s 5,000+
sworn police officers.”
This last example particularly rankles Bratzer, because Lepine was
praising drug legislation that Bratzer, a police officer, opposes. “When
BCACP membership is only open to police chiefs and senior police
managers in BC, how could it possibly represent rank and file police
officers?” he says.
In pursuit of harder facts, I submit FOI requests to the BCACP and
BCAMCP, and to West Vancouver, Saanich, Victoria, and Central
Saanich Police.
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13

Lepine and VicPD Chief Graham each
write back providing no documents and
claiming the BCACP and BCAMCP respectively
are not subject to FIPPA because neither
is a “public body.”
It seems bizarre. But according to Vincent
Gogolek, executive director of the BC Freedom
of Information and Privacy Association, there’s
a trend amongst public agencies to create
pseudo “private” entities in order to hide from
accountability. For example, Gogolek says
public universities have been creating private
corporations to manage their affairs, and
recently battled (and won) in court to avoid
being subject to FIPPA.
Gogolek is surprised to learn the BCACP
and BCAMCP have no independent legal
status, but then says it’s understandable they
aren’t subject to FIPPA: “It would be pretty
hard to include them, because legally they
don’t exist.”
However, when I tell him how individual
police departments—which are subject to
FIPPA—responded, Gogolek is nonplussed.
My invisible friend has the documents
All four police departments acknowledge
having records pertaining to the BCACP and
BCAMCP, but refuse to provide any, except
records showing association membership dues
they’ve been paying.
Central Saanich Chief (and BCACP Treasurer)
Paul Hames provides no explanation for
refusing, but three police departments give
the exact same odd excuses: They didn’t “create”
the records, and it’s the associations that have
“custody” of them.
“Those records were not created by the
Victoria Police Department,” writes VicPD
Information and Privacy Manager Debra
Taylor, “nor are they in the custody or control
of the Department.”
“This is a lot more disturbing,” comments
Gogolek, “because [police departments] are
public bodies.” And their claims, Gogolek says,
are vacuous.
First, if the BCACP and BCAMCP don’t
legally exist, then they can’t be the ones legally
“in control” of those records. “You can’t have
it both ways,” says Gogolek. It’s as if the police
departments are pointing to an “invisible
friend” to avoid disclosing the records, explains
Gogolek. “‘Oh, I don’t have [the records], my
invisible friend over there does.’ Really? I don’t
think so.”
Gogolek describes their argument about
who “created” the records as “novel” and
spurious. Under FIPPA, public bodies must
disclose all manner of documents originating
from third parties. Portions might be withheld
for privacy or law enforcement concerns of a
third party, says Gogolek, but certainly not all
withheld in their entirety.
It’s perhaps telling, then, that BC police
chiefs have a record of priors when it comes
to trying to avoid FIPPA. During a 2004 legislative
review of FIPPA, BC Information and
Privacy Commissioner David Loukidelis
publicly released his rebuttal to a confidential
BCAMCP submission. So detailed is his
letter, it gives the impression Loukidelis
was trying to alert the public about the
BCAMCP’s attitudes. Loukidelis vehemently
criticized the BCAMCP for making numerous
factual errors and “unsubstantiated allegations”
in their (ultimately unsuccessful) efforts
to persuade legislators to exclude all municipal
police forces from freedom of information
laws. Loukidelis noted the BCAMCP had five
years earlier made the same proposal, and he
warned of the dangers of putting police forces
beyond “public scrutiny” and “accountability.”
Normal relations or secret lobbying?
“What’s the big secret? These are public
servants, chiefs of police, engaged in a public
duty of working with other chiefs of police in
terms of providing better policing services,”
suggests BC Civil Liberties Association director
David Eby. “My expectation would be that
they would be bending over backwards to
demonstrate all the good work that they’re
doing...Unless, in fact, they’re engaging in
secretive lobbying activity that’s opposed to
the public interest.”
And here lies the crux of the issue that
raises the most questions of ethics and legality.
Is everything the BCACP and BCAMCP do
a normal part of impartial police work in
the public interest, or are BC police chiefs
sometimes misusing their powers by channelling
public staff and resources into private
lobbying, to manipulate citizens, pressure
politicians and bureaucrats, and influence
political processes and legislation behind
closed doors?
There are provocative examples. This June,
VicPD sent out a BCACP press release in which
Chief Graham, with gushing phrases and questionable
statistics, applauded the provincial
government for its slightly amended, but still
enormously controversial “roadside prohibition”
legislation which bypasses courts by
empowering police and the Superintendent
of Motor Vehicles to give out lengthy driver’s
licence suspensions.
With an election approaching, is this appropriate
behaviour for an impartial police chief,
using public resources? And for all we can find
out, the BCACP may be getting funding from
Liberal Party supporters. It’s not so far-fetched:
The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police’s
support for tasers and the firearms registry
took hits amidst revelations they were taking
money from Taser International and a corporate
firearms registry contractor.
Eby sympathizes with police officers who
want to talk openly and lobby around important
issues—his organization has supported
Bratzer over the years. But the key word is
openly. “When it comes to the level of the
chiefs,” asks Eby, comparing their situation to
Bratzer’s, “what are the corresponding transparency
and accountability mechanisms that
should be in place when they speak from these
incredibly important public roles?”
Bratzer would like BC chief associations to
at least develop guidelines for separating
on-duty public service and off-duty lobbying,
and publicly release their funding sources,
proceedings and resolutions.
They should probably also register as lobbyists.
Under BC’s Lobbyists Registration Act,
any group collectively doing 100 hours of paid
work annually reaching out to public officials
for the purposes of influencing legislation must
register. The Ontario Association and Canadian
Association of Chiefs of Police are in their
respective lobbyist registries. Neither the
BCACP nor BCAMCP are registered as lobby
groups. Yet if BC chiefs believe they don’t have
to register because all their activities are normal
police work, Bratzer pointedly asks, “Why
have they also created a private group hiding
in a grey area behind a PO Box?”
At this time, the only answer seems to be
that BC police chiefs have created these “private
groups” precisely to put their activities outside
the reach of FIPPA. Meanwhile, they’re apparently
reluctant to legally formalize these private
groups, because then they couldn’t so easily
run them on paid time, freely utilize police
staff, and fund their activities from the public
trough. Formalizing their organizations as
private groups could also require them to
register as lobbyists and see their activities
tracked, rather than slipping under the radar
as quasi-public bodies.
And any notion that our police chiefs have
simply absently neglected rather than deliberately
avoided becoming legal entities is dispelled
by the BCAMCP Constitution itself, the second
line of which declares, “The Association is not
intended to be a registered society.”
14 October 2012 • FOCUS

A lobby group leading us?
All this becomes particularly alarming in
light of the fact that BC chiefs have recently
been pushing for unprecedented legislation
sanctioning mass surveillance, warrantless
internet wiretapping, and police assuming
powers of crown prosecutors, even as they’ve
been playing legal Twister to avoid revealing
anything about their discussions of these issues
amongst themselves.
More worrying, government is vesting this
enigmatic non-legal entity with increasing
powers. For example, at BCACP’s behest, in
his recent, final report to the provincial government,
BC Justice Reform Initiative Chair
Geoffrey Cowper recommended: “A provincewide
crime reduction plan should be developed
under the direction of the BC Association of
Chiefs of Police...”
“This recommendation is a big deal because
it would put a private lobby group in charge
of planning the future of policing in British
Columbia,” says Bratzer. “I hope it goes out
the window.”
BC Civil Liberties’ Eby is similarly concerned,
predicting the BCACP would follow the militarized,
police-driven US model and “fill up
prisons and jack up police budgets.” When
it comes to planning crime-prevention, “There
are lots of parties that would have lots to say,”
says Eby, “including our organization, psychologists,
social workers, youth workers and
First Nations.”
According to Cowper, his recommendation
is already being executed. Bratzer says transparency
is therefore all the more urgently
needed. “I would like to see clarification in
terms of what are the legal structure and responsibilities
of this organization. My perspective
is that it’s time for the BC Association of Chiefs
of Police to stop hiding in the shadows, and
this organization needs to come clear with citizens
regarding its true purpose, its finances
and its legal obligations.”
In hopes it might shed some light, I recently
submitted complaints about all these issues to
the Office of the Information and Privacy
Commissioner and Registrar of Lobbyists.
Rob Wipond has been
nominated this year for
a National Magazine
Award, two Western
Magazine Awards, and
three Jack Webster journalism
awards for his
writing in Focus.
www.focusonline.ca • October 2012
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15

Creative
Coast the arts in october16 coastlines 28
Back to the land
JOHN LUNA
An upcoming exhibition displays the resourcefulness and innovation of Vancouver Island-area potters of the 1970s and early ’80s.
Right: Hakeme teapot by Wayne Ngan (1974), stoneware,
bamboo handle, 5 inches high, Diane Carr collection
Below: Teapot by Gordon Hutchens (1984), stoneware,
wood-fired, 9.5 inches high by 8.5 inches in diameter, artist’s collection
Below right: Vessel by Robin Hopper (1978),
“Parabolic Mocha Diffusions”, artist’s collection
Next page: Platter by Walter Dexter (ca 1985), stoneware,
3 inches high by 15.75 inches in diameter, Sabiston collection
16 October 2012 • FOCUS

When she directed the Cartwright Street Gallery in Vancouver,
Diane Carr used to find herself thinking that if she could
take a box of Wayne Ngan tea bowls around to the heads
of local corporations, extracting a promise from each to use the bowl
every day for a month, the money would flow in. “I think ceramics are
very contemplative,” she says. The day-to-day encounters with a humble
tea bowl are part of a continuum that includes the artist’s movements,
the behaviours of clay and fire, and the domestic impressions that form
a rhythm over time; a texture carried in the hands, a contour brought
to the lips. As Carr confirms, “you have to use more than just your
visual sense.”
This October, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria will present the
work of 31 ceramic artists from Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands
made during the 1970s and ’80s. Guest-curated by Carr, Back to the
Land is the first group exhibition to focus on this unique period in the
island communities of the West Coast, who up until now have been
unacknowledged by official histories of West Coast ceramics. Carr,
who spent months rounding up key pieces from collections, notes in
her catalogue essay, “The pots exhibited here represent a short
period in which there was a remarkable explosion of ceramics activity
on Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands. It was a brief era in which
the modernist and Anglo-Asian influences that prevailed were beginning
to give way to the contemporary post-modern influences that
would revitalize ceramic practice in this region.”
Carr herself was a product of the moment. Though raised on Vancouver
Island, she had come under the spell of modern art while studying in
Portland, taking in a retrospective of Northwest Coast artist Mark Tobin.
His seminal abstract painting, such as the “white writing” series, fused
Asian-inspired calligraphic marks with a North American, “all-over”
composition. These connections between Asian and Western art also
inspired a love of ceramics, which Carr had collected from a tender age.
www.focusonline.ca • October 2012
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17

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Pottery classes for all levels
Earth & Fire Pottery Studio
1820 Government Street
250-380-7227
www.earthandfirepotterystudio.ca
Lidded pot by Heinz Laffin, stoneware, artist’s collection
In Vancouver during
the 1960s, Carr continued
to study art, and
also embraced activism,
working with the feminist
organization Voice
of Women which was
protesting the war in
Vietnam. This included
helping young men
from the United States
who had come over
the border to escape
compulsory military
service seek refuge, often in remote rural
areas. “We were…channelling these young
‘draft dodgers’ out of Vancouver and to [the
Kootenays and the Gulf Islands] as fast as we
could,” Carr recalls.
Often, the draft resisters were not only
escaping a moral dilemma, but pursuing a
dream—that of a different kind of life than
the one offered by Nixon’s supply-side
economics. Social movements rejecting urban,
industrialized existence in favour of simplicity
and self-sufficiency often resonate during
crisis. As Salt Spring Island potter Gary
Cherneff remarks, for his generation, “back
to the land” represented the search for “an
alternative way to live a life.” Artists in particular
were attracted by the promise of
off-the-grid, inexpensive acreages on which
to construct homes out of studios, communities
out of counterculture.
Carr had been looking for her own alternative
in the early 1970s when a friend asked
Lustre plate by Byron Johnstad, stoneware,
1980, Diane Carr collection
her to take over a
pottery studio in
Victoria. Carr kept the
studio’s name—the
Potter’s Wheel—but
reinvented the business
as a serious commercial
gallery, stocking the
more practical wares
on the storefront while
using the upper floor
as an exhibition space
where ceramic pieces
were arranged on plinths
and presented as fine art. “It was a shock to
me,” Carr says, “that nobody thought it was
art, because I never thought that it wasn’t…To
me they were sculpture.”
More than either a shop or a gallery, the
Potter’s Wheel became part of a rich milieu,
a meeting place for artists to exchange information
and study one another’s work. Some
two dozen potters supported themselves
primarily through sales of their work in the
years represented by the exhibition, a remarkable
statistic considering the materials, training
and accumulated knowledge required to go
from hobbyist to production potter.
It wasn’t easy. As Carr notes in her essay,
“equipment and materials from commercial
sources were [often] lacking or too expensive.”
Many potters, like Wayne Ngan of
Hornby Island, built their own kilns following
traditional models; others like Denman Island’s
Gordon Hutchens, developed new formulations
of glazes using local materials. Carr
18 October 2012 • FOCUS
PHOTO: STEPHEN TOPFER

describes Ngan’s first Hornby house, built by hand from the roughest
of raw materials as, like his ceramic work, “both in and of nature.”
But perhaps this tendency toward self-sufficiency is also part of the
potter’s temperament. Metchosin potter and ceramics writer Robin
Hopper’s first contact with clay came as a boy in the English countryside,
scooping fresh earth from craters left in the wake of aerial
bombardment; there is something elementally resourceful at the heart
of the medium.
Synthesis, the drawing together of different materials and fusing
them into a cohesive, transformed whole, is another feature of ceramics,
and also of Carr’s curatorial storytelling. As an art historian, she
identifies varied influences—from the “form follows function” ethos
of the Bauhaus technique inherited and perpetuated by Germanborn
potters Jan and Helga Grove (members of the Limners), and other
European émigrés, to the teachings of Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada,
themselves synthesizers of ancient traditions from across Asia and
Western Europe. Leach’s A Potter’s Book, first published in 1940, popularized
his technical methods, as well as his philosophy of a creative
life. In doing so, he inspired flocks of disciples from around the world.
In the postwar world into which the new pottery was born, artists
were often necessarily nomadic, their traditions fugitive; theirs was the
quintessential twentieth-century leap from tradition to fragmentation
to innovation. The spontaneous sensibility of North American Abstract
Expressionist painting, an approach popularized by American Peter
Voulkos and today practised by Metchosin’s Walter Dexter, fused
painting, sculpture and clay, complementing the rigour of the earlier
schools with a heady dose of experimentalism.
Perhaps then Back to the Land is a show about many lands, or many
islands, whose artists came from all over to find, quite literally, a
piece of earth. Carr herself travelled the world after selling the shop in
1975, but returned to the cause of craft with Vancouver’s Cartwright
Street Gallery, later the Canadian Craft Museum. Carr describes these
efforts as looking for a way in the “back door” of public galleries like
the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria; a
way to get critics and scholars to pay attention. Despite a hiatus from
curating, Carr’s conviction continues with Back to the Land: “Every
time they write the history of BC ceramics they don’t mention anything
about Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands…This is really important
and it needs to be done.”
Until relatively recently, it could be challenging for Canadian ceramic
artists to see their efforts taken seriously as cultural capital in their own
country. The daily experience of living with ceramics, experiencing
them as an extension of domestic routines or hospitable rituals, fosters
a different kind of appreciation than we usually associate with
objects in museums. If, as Carr suggests, we take time to contemplate
these vessels, perhaps also, reciprocally, everyday life is contemplated
more finely and thoroughly. Contemplated and venerated.
Back to the Land: Ceramics from Vancouver Island and the Gulf
Islands 1970-1985 runs from October 5 through February 3 at the
Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. An opening reception with many of the
artists in attendance will be held October 5, 8-10pm.
www.focusonline.ca • October 2012
John Luna is an artist, critic, and instructor based in Mill
Bay, BC. He teaches at the Vancouver Island School
of Art and Brentwood College School.
19

Whispers and shouts
AAREN MADDEN
Starting a conversation on eroticism in
contemporary Kwakwaka’wakw art.
Cultural anthropologist Wilson Duff
wrote in a 1976 essay, “sexual symbolism
is so important in the arts of the world
and elsewhere that I feel that its virtual absence
on the surface of Northwest Coast art permits
us to suspect that we might find it in metaphorical
forms below the surface.”
In what may be a first-of-its kind exhibit,
seven contemporary Kwakwaka’wakw artists
have embraced the task of exploring eroticism
in Northwest Coast art tradition. For the October
show at Alcheringa Gallery—called Lusa’nala
(The way we came into this world)—they have
created thoughtful, sometimes playful, two
and three-dimensional artworks on the theme.
The concept for the show initially bemused
some. When Rande Cook invited fellow artist
Francis Dick to take part in the exhibition, she
wondered, “What does that even mean? And
how are you going to depict that in Northwest
Coast form?” Elaine Monds, director of the
gallery, admits, “To be honest, when it was
first mentioned to me, I said I thought you’d
have to have a very vivid imagination to find
erotica in Northwest Coast art.”
Monds, however, became convinced of the
merits of the project when prominent
Kwakwaka’wakw carver Calvin Hunt talked
to her about both the idea and a historical
precedent for the theme. He had long been
intrigued by that Wilson Duff article, titled
“The World is as Sharp as a Knife.” In it, Duff
suggested that ancient stone hammers, for
instance, can be viewed as phallic or vulvic.
He and other scholars acknowledge layered
sexual imagery in the Sechelt Image as well
(an important prehistoric stone carving of a
human figure, so named because it was found
there in 1921). More recently, Haida argillite
panel pipes have shown creatures sharing the
same tongue, which Duff interpreted as metaphor
for sexual union. His point was that different
ways of looking at Northwest Coast artwork
overall might reveal layers of meaning that
have gone largely unconsidered.
Calvin Hunt understands the resistance.
“When the church came, people were afraid
to get involved in the art world and get involved
in those symbolisms; it seemed to be taboo,”
he says. Sexual imagery sometimes appeared
20 October 2012 • FOCUS

the arts in october
Above: Stone hammers by Calvin Hunt, female vulva 4.5 x 3 inches, phallus
5.75 x 3 inches
Opposite page: “Farewell” by Francis Dick, 48 x 24 inches, acrylic on canvas
in a shaming context, as illustrated by a 1901 carving of a woman
touching exaggerated genitalia. The piece was a potlatch gift from a
chief intended to ridicule a rival whose daughter had become a prostitute
in Victoria.
The intent of Lusa’nala is neither to be sensational nor iconoclastic,
but to offer new dialogue. “We just want to see where it goes and how
it’s handled with the public,” says Hunt. “We are not talking about
pornographic stuff; we are talking about traditional Northwest Coast
art based on a lot of the old pieces that are kicking around. We are sticking
to the boundaries of our art world—not trying to push it in a direction
it has never been before, just open up new interpretations.”
The audience can expect those interpretations to be varied and
compelling, given the wide range of ages and approaches to formline,
from traditional to contemporary, within the group.
That is seen in two artists’ different treatments of the same object, a
hammer. In a departure from his usual large-scale carvings, Calvin Hunt
reaches back to the ancient stone Duff refers to, an era and medium
largely unconsidered by most artists. He painstakingly ground, sanded
and polished two stones he found on the beach into two separate shapes
suggesting male and female genitalia. These simple objects celebrate
pure form and function, but the visual puns are there should one choose
to see them. “You are going to know what it is,” he says.
Mervyn Child also engages in that common idiom in Northwest
Coast art, in which many things are layered onto one image. Child says
his carved yew wood hammer refers to a historical piece that various
scholars interpreted differently. Some saw a child holding onto a parent;
some saw a man holding his penis. “I thought, well, that’s kind of
fun. Why don’t we just make it all of those things?” says Child. “It can
be anything you want it to be.”
www.focusonline.ca • October 2012
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21

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“T’lisalagi’lakw and Friends” lidded canoe bowl by Mervyn Child, 8 x 10.5 x 23 inches, alder and acrylic paint
A bowl he carved from alder also invites
various readings. A man and woman encircle
the bowl; the man grasps the woman by
the wrists. Their heads are thrown back and
their teeth gritted. “There is some aggression
there, some tension,” Child says. One can
read anger, agony, ecstasy, or anything in
between, all contained within the empty but
charged space of the bowl. A painted split
eagle surrounds the couple on the base of the
bowl and figures are intertwined in their hair.
Child refers to these as “ancestor spirit helpers,
helping those two people interact how they
will.” A human form is in the man’s hair, for
which Child suggests a warrior spirit, and
from the woman’s hair emerges, for this
writer, a frog image.
While describing the frog as an important
ancestor of the Hunt family to which he belongs,
Child allows the interpretation as but one
possibility. Instead, he offers a suggestion:
“Through my eyes I see a frog, and it entertains
my deep memory. Why don’t you use
words like that?” Others might see a horse,
a bear, a phoenix. “Whoever will view the
bowl can interpret it and own that interpretation
and feel good about it,” he says. The
bowl is imbued with intimacy when the viewer
engages in a personal conversation with it.
Francis Dick draws from the deeply personal
in her own practice, whether in performance,
jewellery, or painting. “A lot of my work has
always been about relationships and connection,”
she says. Her painting in ’Lusa’nala’ is
no exception. A nude woman looks over her
shoulder at a departing butterfly. Her hands
rest on that shoulder in a self-embrace. A
hummingbird sits on her sensually curved
upper hip. Beside her, two daisies impart melancholy
and a crisp contrast to otherwise muted
tones in the scene.
Titled “Farewell”, the painting is the last in
a series of five Dick painted as a way to work
through a brief yet intense relationship. “I
have embraced all of the light and the shadows
of this relationship, and I am done,” she shares.
That light and darkness reverberates in
traditional and personal symbolism. The
butterfly indicates transformation and departure.
The swirling forms in the arms show
pure energy, “just about beautiful movement”
unfettered by fear, longing or attachment.
The flowers offer a meditative silence, but a
single falling petal represents Dick herself.
“Having been a foster child, it was difficult…I
always felt alone,” she says (all of her paintings
have a similar, tiny element representative
of her self set apart). “The direction of the
hummingbird is very obvious,” she points
out. “This is about sensuality and expression
of love.”
This painting is particularly meaningful
to Dick, since it signifies letting go while
imparting the beauty of the woman she was
involved with. It aligns with her interpretation
of eroticism within Northwest Coast art
and provides a feminine counterpoint on an
otherwise male roster. “There is a strength
about it for me, and yet, there is a softness;
this contrast,” she says. “I find it erotic in a
22 October 2012 • FOCUS

Hammer by Mervyn Child, 3 x 15 inches, yew
beautiful, natural way… it’s subtle and it’s
beautiful and it’s honouring. It’s not loud at
all. Just this really clear whisper.”
In whispers and shouts, each artist’s interpretation
of this seldom-explored theme will
offer new ways of relating to Northwest
Coast art.
Lusa’nala runs October 4 through 29 at
Alcheringa Gallery. Besides those mentioned
above, artists include Trevor Hunt, Richard
Sumner and William Wasden Jr. Opening reception
October 4, 7-9 pm, with singing, drumming
and dancing led by Mervyn Child and William
Wasden; Victoria Poet Laureate Janet Rogers
will read from her recent book, Red Erotic.
Aaren Madden is a Victoriabased
writer with an interest
in First Nations art.
www.focusonline.ca • October 2012
www.theapartmentart.com
www.victoriaemergingart.com
1016 Fort Street
23
“But It Felt So Good” Ben Westergreen, 36 x 18 inches, acrylic on canvas

CERAMIC SCULPTURE BY SAMANTHA DICKIE
October 1-November 3
SAMANTHA DICKIE & MARIE NAGEL
Eclectic Gallery
Contemporary ceramic artist Samantha Dickie has been awarded prestigious project grants
and is represented by the renowned Jonathon Bancroft Snell Gallery in Ontario. In her sculptures
and installations, she explores the dynamic relationship between organic and earthly
beauty and the remnants of industrial decay. The rich history of ceramics, from the remnants of
ancient objects to modern conceptual installations, informs her practice. Also showing is painter
Marie Nagel’s Coastal Landscapes, many made “en plein air.” Opening reception with artists
Oct 4, 7-9pm. 2170 Oak Bay Ave, 250-590-8095, www.eclecticgallery.ca.
PORTRAIT OF KATHARINE MALTWOOD BY NICO JUNGMAN, 1905, 45.2 X 30.5 CM WATERCOLOUR ON PAPER
Continuing to November 24
THE COLLECTIONS AT 50
The Legacy Art Gallery
The University of Victoria is displaying a prime selection from its permanent collection of
27,000 artworks for its 50th anniversary celebrations. First Nations carvings by Henry and
Richard Hunt, as well as works by Emily Carr, William Morris, Eric Metcalfe and many others
trace the development of the collection in tandem with that of academic programs and research
interests at the university. Reception and talk by curator and former director Martin Segger on
Oct 17, 5-7pm at the Legacy Art Gallery, 630 Yates St, 250-721-6562, www.uvac.uvic.ca.
“NICOLA” PHILIP BUYTENDORP, 8 X 10 INCHES, OIL ON CANVAS
October 1-26
PHILIP BUYTENDORP
Peninsula Gallery
BC artist Philip Buytendorp was born in Brandon, Manitoba into a family of respected
artists. He cannot remember a time when he wasn’t painting or sketching. Adept with both
palette knife and brush, Buytendorp often makes a series of paintings using palette knives
followed by a series using brushes. He says “I find (oil) painting with a palette knife keeps my
brush work looser...” Buytendorp acknowledges the influence of the Group of Seven, especially
JEH MacDonald, as well as that of Carl Rungius. 100-2506 Beacon Ave, Sidney,
250-655-1722, www.pengal.com.
“LOOKING UP” LISA RIEHL, 30 X 24, ACRYLIC ON CANVAS
October 2-28
FEDERATION OF CANADIAN ARTISTS
Morris Gallery
Lisa Riehl is one of the artists from the Victoria chapter of the Federation of Canadian
Artists, whose Victoria chapter will present a fall juried show at Morris Gallery. Generally
only one-third of the paintings submitted for each show are selected. The result is a first
class exhibition, varied in style and media, featuring the best works of 30-40 of the region’s
top artists. Reception Oct 5, 7-9pm. On Alpha St at 428 Burnside Rd E. 250-388-6652,
www.morrisgallery.ca.
24 October 2012 • FOCUS

“Sun Worshippers”by Graham Forsythe,40 x 30 inches,oil on canvas
“Northern Light #6” by Patricia Johnston, 60 x 80 inches (diptych), oil on canvas
Graham Forsythe:Remembered
October 20 – November 3
Opening reception: October 20,1 - 4pm
606 View Street • 250.380.4660 • www.madronagallery.com
WEST END GALLERY
Patricia Johnston
Great Ocean Series
October 27 - November 8, 2012
Gallery Hours: Mon - Fri 10 - 5:30, Sat 10 - 5, Sun 11 - 4
1203 Broad Street • 250-388-0009 • www.westendgalleryltd.com
www.focusonline.ca • October 2012
“Jayne” Crystal Heath, 30 x 36 inches, acrylic on canvas
“while the party lasts” Angela Morgan, 36 x 36 inches, oil on canvas
Artistic Pairings
Angela Morgan & Crystal Heath
October 27 - November 2
Artists’ Reception October 27, 12 - 3
2184 OAK BAY AVENUE VICTORIA
www.theavenuegallery.com 250-598-2184
25

To October 14
RED
The Belfry Theatre
RED, THE SEASON OPENER AT THE BELFRY THEATRE, BEGINS
with a pensive examination. We see Mark Rothko (Oliver Becker), one
of the most famous Abstract Expressionist painters of the 20th century,
staring intently into the audience. He’s in his New York City studio circa
1958, examining his latest works in progress: a series of murals to hang
in The Four Seasons restaurant, a lucrative commission from the Seagrams
company. He is interrupted as his young new assistant, Ken (Jameson
Matthew Parker) arrives. As soon as Ken walks through the door, Rothko
launches into a heady tirade about his art—and invites Ken to join in.
It’s this verbal debate, not the quiet moments of deep thought, that
make up the majority of this two-hour performance. As Ken continues
to work as Rothko’s apprentice, he becomes more educated—and, in
turn, bolder when challenging Rothko’s rants and opinions, particularly
about up-and-coming artists and whether or not taking this hefty
commission is in line with Rothko’s values.
John Logan’s script is unapologetically intellectual; Rothko twists
even the most mundane observations into commentary (Ken: “The
Chinese place is closing.” Rothko: “Everything worthwhile ends.”).
It’s not done in a way that makes the audience feel stupid, however;
if anything, Red is empowering, inspiring us to learn more about
mid-20th century art and the context it was created in once we get
home from the theatre. And many of the observations made in the piece
about contemporary art are as true today as they were 50 years ago.
Actors Parker and Becker do justice to this thick script, keeping up with
the fierce pace of the dialogue and making it a believable conversation.
PHOTO: DAVID COOPER
Jameson Matthew Parker (Ken) and Oliver Becker (Mark Rothko)
Director Michael Shamata has these actors pulsing on stage like Rothko’s
paintings, taking breaks from the intense conversation to do their work.
He takes full advantage of the juxtaposition of the physical and the
intellectual, which mimics the re-occurring yin-and-yang themes frequently
brought up in conversation; during pauses in debates, canvasses are
stretched, paintings are primed, and pigments are mixed. Peter Hartwell’s
cluttered studio set, with its Rothko paintings scattered about, truly makes
us feel as if we are there, and Scott Henderson’s use of predominantly red
light in his design underlines much of the discussion in the show.
While some may find this verbose play to not be their shade of paint,
those interested in an intellectual show with a solid cast and great direction
will enjoy Red, even if they aren’t into contemporary art. Red is
a show you will leave the Belfry wanting to talk about—and, if you
happen to be attending the week of October 9-14, the Belfry is hosting
Afterplay, where the audience can stick around the theatre and do just
that in a facilitated discussion.
Go to www.belfry.bc.ca for times and ticket info, or call 250-
385-6815. —Amanda Farrell-Low
26 October 2012 • FOCUS

the arts in october
Continuing to October 27
CHICKENS
Chemainus Theatre
To escape money woes, a farmer raises exotic
chickens while his wife struggles to keep their
farm afloat. Out in the chicken coop, roosters
and hens mirror the couple’s life. 1-800-565-
7738 or www.chemainustheatrefestival.ca.
Continuing to October 31
GALLERY ARTISTS
View Art Gallery
New works by Amy Rice, Lara Scarr, Yuri
Arajs, Ronan Boyle, Luke Garrison, Cheryl
Taves and Michael Pittman. 104-860 View St,
250-213-1162, www.viewartgallery.ca.
October 2-3
OPEN WORD WITH MARC BELL
UVic Visual Arts/Open Space
Acclaimed Canadian cartoonist Marc Bell
(“The Broken Record Technique”,”The Man
Game”) reads from his new book “Pure Pajamas.”
Following the Oct 3 reading, he’ll be interviewed
by Lee Henderson. 2pm Oct 2 at rm
A150 of the UVic Visual Arts Building, 7:30pm
Oct 3 at 510 Fort St, by donation. 250-383-
8833, www.openspace.ca.
October 3
SYMPHONY OF THE SOIL
Victoria Event Centre
Open Cinema launches its 10th season
with this artistic documentary about the miraculous
substance of soil, followed by a
post-screening discussion. Doors 5:30pm,
screening at 7pm, $15. 250-882-7441,
www.opencinema.ca.
October 3-20
84, CHARING CROSS ROAD
Langham Court Theatre
Langham opens its 84th season with a
comedy of letters, wherein Helene and Frank
engage in a long-distance relationship between
1950 and 1970. Previews Oct 3, opens
Oct 4 at 905 Langham Ct, two for $20 on
the preview, two for $30 Tuesdays, all other
shows $19-$21. www.langhamtheatre.ca,
250-384-2142.
October 4-6
BLUE BRIDGE REPERTORY
THEATRE BENEFIT
Winchester Galleries, Oak Bay
For the fourth year, the gallery hosts this
sale in support of the theatre company and
featuring donated works of many of Victoria’s
and Canada’s leading visual artists. 2260 Oak
Bay Ave, 250-595-2777.
October 4-14
MACBETH
The Royal Theatre
Pacific Opera Victoria presents Guiseppe
Verdi’s operatic version of this Shakespeare
classic. At 805 Broughton St, $37.50-$130.
250-386-6121, www.pov.bc.ca.
www.focusonline.ca • October 2012
October 4-29
LUSA’NALA
(The Way We Came Into This World)
Alcheringa Gallery
A groundbreaking exhibition exploring erotica
in Northwest Coast art by Kwakwaka’wakw
artists. Opening reception Oct 4, 7-9 pm. See
story, page 20. www.alcheringa-gallery.com.
665 Fort St. 250-383-8224.
October 5
TABOO
The Superior
Fundraiser for Suddenly Dance Theatre’s
20th anniversary features music, dance, beverages,
silent auction and more. 6pm at 106
Superior St, $40. www.suddenlydance.ca,
250-380-9515.
October 5-7
BALLET OFF BROADWAY
McPherson Playhouse
Ballet Victoria’s explosive tale of two stars
colliding, plus other works. 7:30pm Oct 5-
6, 2pm Oct 7 at 3 Centennial Sq, $13.75-$65.
250-386-6121, www.balletvictoria.ca.
October 6-27
REBOUND
Winchester Modern
Works by James Gordaneer. Reception 2pm
Oct 6. 758 Humboldt St. www.winchestergalleriesltd.com.
October 6-28
MONSTERS
Metchosin Art Gallery
Frank Mitchell and Sylvia Bews-Wright
show their political cartoons and artwork.
Reception 1pm Oct 6 at 4495 Happy Valley
Rd, Metchosin. www.metchosingallery.ca,
250-298-8063.
October 5-February 3
BACK TO THE LAND
AGGV
Ceramic works from 31 Vancouver Island
and Gulf Island artists from the ’70s and ’80s.
See story page 16.
October 9-20
MYSTERY OF THE HUNGRY
HEART HOTEL
Phoenix Theatre
Physical comedy from UVic theatre alumni
Peter Carlone and Chris Wilson. Previews Oct
9-10, opens Oct 11 at 3800 Finnerty Rd,
preview $7, regular $13-$24. 250-721-8000,
www.finearts.uvic.ca/theatre/phoenix.
October 9-27
JOE COFFEY & NATHAN BIRCH
Winchester Galleries, Oak Bay
Reception with artists, 1pm Oct 13. 2260
Oak Bay Ave, www.winchestergalleriesltd.com.
October 10-13
DRACULA—THE BLOOD IS THE LIFE
Craigdarroch Castle
A site-specific adaptation of Bram Stoker’s
Dracula. $23/26, reservations required. 250-
592-5323, www.thecastle.ca.
27

“ONEFOOTER” RINGS AND “ONEMETER” BRACELETS, SILVER, 18K GOLD
Throughout October
DOROTHÉE ROSEN
The Avenue Gallery
Dorothée Rosen was born in Germany and immigrated to Canada in 1989 at the age of 19.
In 2005, she graduated from NSCAD University with a major in jewellery design and metalsmithing,
and a minor in art history. Recipient of various awards, and featured in several
international books on contemporary jewellery design, most of her pieces are one-of-a-kind
within several series, executed to the finest detail. Her iconic “Onefooter” rings in gold and
silver are sold in prestigious galleries across North America. 2184 Oak Bay Ave, 250-598-2184,
www.theavenuegallery.com.
“HUSH-UP” ASHA ROBERTSON,CERAMIC, METAL
Throughout October
INTRODUCING SCULPTOR ASHA ROBERTSON
The apARTment Gallery
Robertson’s formal education began with a four-year mentorship under professional artist
and sculptor Kathy Venter; followed by the Art Institute of Chicago, and then Alberta
College of Art and design where she majored in sculpture. Robertson works with wood, metal,
encaustics, and ceramics, in both two and three dimensions. Her paintings are landscapederived,
exploring texture and medium referring back to her sculptural training. Mon-Fri by
appointment only and Sat and Sun 12pm-4pm, 1016 Fort Street (upper). 778-430-5585,
www.theapartmentart.com, www.victoriaemergingart.com.
“SOLSTICE–WINTER” PATRICIA JOHNSTON, 36 X 48 INCHES, OIL ON CANVAS
October 27-November 8
PATRICIA JOHNSTON GREAT OCEAN SERIES
West End Gallery
Patricia Johnston’s simplified landscapes emit a radiant glow. Achieved by numerous layers
of fine oil paint, the colours seem to change throughout the day and in different light. Subjects
include the sun breaking through clouds, waves lapping at the beach, and colourful, dramatic
sunsets. “Colour is my fascination—the sea and the sky are my inspiration, and my
constant challenge is to suggest with paint the depth, intensity and luminosity, the ephemeral
nature of our coastal world.” Opening with artist October 27 from 1-4pm. 1203 Broad St,
250-388-0009, www.westendgalleryltd.com.
“HAIDA GWAII KAYAK” RICK BOND, 20 X 30 INCHES, ACRYLIC ON CANVAS
October 6-19
RICK BOND
Madrona Gallery
This collection was influenced by recent sailing trips through the west coast of British
Colombia, with the scenic beauty of Desolation Sound and Haida-Gwaii providing
endless inspiration and new subject matter. The artist’s further exploration into abstraction
is a major force in this show—he is minimizing form in many of the works to raise
the impact of colour and bring awareness to different techniques in the application
of paint. Artist will be in attendance, October 6, 1-4pm. 606 View St. 250-380-
4660, www.madronagallery.com.
28 October 2012 • FOCUS

“Tide Coming In” Marie Nagel, 18 x 24 inches, acrylic on canvas
Samantha Dickie & Marie Nagel
Ceramic Sculpture Installation & Coastal Landscapes
October 1 - November 3
Opening Reception Thursday October 4th, 7 - 9pm
www.eclecticgallery.ca • 2170 Oak Bay Avenue • 250.590.8095
www.focusonline.ca • October 2012
THE COLLECTIONS AT 50
“Coastal Shores 2” 40 x 30 inches, acrylic on canvas
Art Encounter
Saturday, October 20th, 1 - 4pm
2506 Beacon Avenue, Sidney
250.655.1722 www.pengal.com
Gail Johnson
Katharine Maltwood, Head of Canada, 1912
August 29 to November 24, 2012
THE LEGACY ART GALLERY
630 Yates St. | 250 721 6562
Wednesday to Saturday - 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. | www.uvac.uvic.ca
my art place
29

“Land Use Application”
nancy ruhl
Paintings of houses & urban landscapes
At Madrona Gallery (View St)
www.nancyruhl.ca • nancyruhl.blogspot.com
250-514-1524
the arts in october
October 20
DIEMAHLER CHAMBER MUSIC SERIES
St Mary the Virgin Church
VIOLINIST PABLO DIEMECKE HAS ENJOYED AN ECLECTIC
career that has seen him embrace the great masterworks of his instrument
and the Latin musical traditions of his native Mexico. His parents
are classically trained musicians who nurtured the nascent musical
abilities of their eight children with their expert instruction. Diemecke
in fact jokes that even now his mother “has not finished telling us how
much we still need to practise!” The Diemecke children began performing
together at a very early age. In fact, as soon as there were enough of
them to form a string quartet, their father began showing them off.
By age 26, Diemecke had achieved the pinnacle of musical success
in Mexico by securing the coveted position of concertmaster with the
National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico. It was surprisingly disheartening
for him. Says Diemecke,
“So now I’m the concertmaster
of the National Symphony, and
I thought ‘No no no!’ I want
something better. I want to go
other places!” So, he travelled
to Washington DC, where he
was the concertmaster of the
Washington Chamber Orchestra
and studied with Henryk
Szeryng, whom Diemecke
considers “one of the greatest
violinists in the world.”
Following this, Diemecke
Pablo Diemecke
auditioned and won the concertmaster
position with the Victoria Symphony Orchestra, where he served
for 20 years, retiring in 2006. He has won numerous awards and honours
over the years, including a nomination for a Latin Grammy Award for
a live recording with the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico,
conducted by his brother in 2002. The nomination carried with it a
certificate and a medallion, which was to be sent to Diemecke, who
couldn’t attend the ceremony. But, there was a snag. “It was lost for
ten years,” he explains, “I just got my medallion a year ago!”
He is now taking on the challenge of chamber work with his DieMahler
String Quartet, performing with the Macpherson Trio, and working
with his own orchestra, Orchestre des Concerts Diemecke, as well as
teaching and mentoring young musicians. One wonders how one man
can take on so much, but for Diemecke it’s all about the music:
“When I’m playing, I forget about technique. I think about the music
first. So if we risk and we are being emotional inside of ourselves, we
can project our music better. If we are thinking about being perfect…we’re
not thinking about sending a message to the public.”
On October 20, the DieMahler String Quartet (with Diemecke,
Martine DenBok, Elizabeth Massi, and Lawrence Skaggs) will include
present “Three B’s, Revolutionaries” with Brahm’s Hungarian Dances.
On November 17, the quartet will perform Mozart’s “Dissonance”
Quartet and Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” in a concert entitled
“The Spirit of the 18th Century.” December 8’s “Traditional Christmas
Favourites” will be the finale of this year’s series.
All concerts are at St Mary the Virgin, 1701 Elgin Road in Oak Bay.
$25/22.50 at 250-386-6121, Ivy’s Books, Cadboro Bay Books. See
www.diemahlerenterprises.com. —Lisa Szeker-Madden
30 October 2012 • FOCUS

October 11
ECO WARRIORS
University of Victoria
A documentary by Jennifer Pickford depicting
the harsh treatment of environmental protesters.
It follows the stories of Tre Arrow, Ruth Masters,
Tzeporah Berman, Alexandra Morton, Derrick
Jensen, Zoe Blunt and Ingmar Lee, who have
faced adversity and feel increasingly threatened
by the use of the term “eco-terrorist.”
7pm at the David Lam Auditorium, $10, 250-
382-8489.
October 12
MARK MCGREGOR
& BRIAN NESSELROAD
Open Space
Flutist and percussionist perform contemporary
west coast compositions. 8pm at
510 Fort St, $10/$15. www.openspace.ca,
250-383-8833.
October 12-13
VICTORIA WRITERS FESTIVAL
Camosun College
A festival of ideas and imagination, featuring
readings by such talents as Ronald Wright,
Esi Edugyan, Steven Price, Tim Lilburn, Susan
Musgrave, Madeline Sonik,Yasuko Thanh,
Patricia Young, David Leach, Elizabeth May,
Brian Brett, and more. $3-10 for most events.
Passes $30. See www.victoriawritersfestival.com.
October 12-20
ANTIMATTER FILM FESTIVAL
The Vic Theatre
Nightly screenings of short and feature
films from around the world, plus installations
and performances. 808 Douglas St,
www.antimatter.ws.
October 13
SARA MARREIROS IN CONCERT
Fairfield United Church
7-10pm. With an art exhibit and book
launch of Maria Miranda Lawrence’s “A
Janela–The Poetic Soul.” Tickets $25/20 at
door; $20/18 advance, at Munro's.
October 15-December 23
IRA HOFFECKER:
NEW PERSPECTIVES
Gallery at the Mac
One of the paintings in the show will be
“Berlin Alexanderplatz” which recently won
awards at both the Painting on the Edge
show in Vancouver and the Sooke Fine Art
Show 2012. Opening 7-9pm, Oct 15.
www.irahoffecker.com.
October 16
AT THE MIKE
Cadboro Bay Books
Authors Marlyn Horsdal, Mel Dagg and
Vanessa Winn. 7pm at 3840 Cadboro Bay Rd,
www.cadborobaybooks.com.
October 16, 23, 30
SIN CITY: BALTIC TOWERS
Victoria Event Centre
The serial improvised soap opera returns
with a new setting: a boutique hotel in a
fictional European country. With Wes Borg,
Morgan Cranny, Kristen Van Ritzen and many
others. Tuesdays starting Oct 16 until April 30
at 1415 Broad St, $12/$15. 250-590-6291,
www.sincityimprov.com.
www.focusonline.ca • October 2012
October 18-Nov 1
FAUNATOPIA
Polychrome Fine Art
Paintings by Roy Green. Opens 7pm Oct
18 at 977-A Fort St. 250-382-2787, www.polychromefinearts.com.
October 20
FRIENDS OF MUSIC SOCIETY
Pro Patria/Trafalgar Legion
Maureen Washington and Daniel Cook,
Crikeymor, Jukebox Jezebel and more, and
silent auction in support of music programs
for people with mental illness. 7pm, Oct 20,
411 Gorge Road East. Doors at 6:30pm, $10,
available at door or at Friends of Music (2328
Trent St, 250-592-5114). www.friendsofmusic.ca.
October 20-November 3
GRAHAM FORSYTHE:
REMEMBERED
Madrona Gallery
Forsythe, an award-winning painter who
died recently, did not start painting until 1991,
when his eyesight was restored by an operation.
His vibrant paintings display a palpable
sense of enthusiasm about life. Opening reception
Oct 20, 1-4pm. 606 View St. 250-380-4660,
www.madronagallery.com.
October 21
BUSTER WILLIAMS QUARTET
Hermann’s Jazz Club
Victoria Jazz Society presents legendary
bass player, who has played with Herbie
Hancock, Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis and
more. 7pm at 753 View St, $35/$39. 250-
386-6121, www.jazzvictoria.ca.
October 25
KUBA OMS & ALEX CUBA
McPherson Playhouse
Two great Victorian musicians band together
to raise funds for Community Living Victoria.
8pm at 3 Centennial Sq, $49. 250-386-6121,
www.rmts.bc.ca.
October 26-November 21
DIMENSIONS
Goward House
Landscape, wildlife, still life and abstract
works by Carron Berkes and Toni Micol. Opening
with artists Nov 4, 1:30pm. At 2495 Arbutus
Rd, 250-477-4401, www.gowardhouse.com.
October 28-December 1
P.K. (PAGE) IRWIN: VERVE
Winchester Modern
This exhibition of PK Page’s artwork will
also feature the launch of “A Journey with No
Maps: A Life of P.K. Page,” by Sandra Djwa at
2pm Oct 28. 250-386-2773, 758 Humboldt
St. www.winchestergalleriesltd.com.
October 30-November 10
A CLOSER WALK WITH PATSY CLINE
McPherson Playhouse
Sara-Jeanne Hosie plays the iconic country
and western singer as she goes from smalltown
Virginia girl to superstar. Previews Oct
30-31, Opens Nov 1 at 3 Centennial Sq, preview
$24.50, regular $49.25-$54.75. 250-386-
6121, www.bluebridgetheatre.ca.
31

An indigenous approach to global crisis
AMY REISWIG
In the Nuu-chah-nulth world view, life’s major purpose is the development of harmonious relationships between and among all life
To make. Seemingly such a simple verb, it encompasses everything
from the smallest humble action to the greatest work of genius.
It is also the most literal meaning, I am told, of Umeek, the Nuuchah-nulth
name of hereditary chief, UVic associate adjunct professor
and author E. Richard Atleo. “It is one of those words always lost in
translation,” he explains by phone from Winnipeg, adding, “In our
culture it is a chief’s name, so it means ‘chief’s work,’ which is to provide
for his community.”
In his newly-reissued book Principles of Tsawalk: An Indigenous
Approach to Global Crisis (UBC Press, November 2011, paperback
July 2012), Umeek humbly and with genius does just that: provides
wisdom and life strategy for his community, which is not just Nuuchah-nulth,
but all of us—humans, plants, animals—trying to live
together on Haw’ilume, Wealthy Mother Earth.
Born in Ahousaht, Umeek notes that his community’s then-remoteness
meant he grew up in the ancient ways of his people. However, he
also suffered the residential school system and went on into the world
of Western academia, earning a BA, MEd and EdD (he’s been labelled
the first aboriginal man to earn his doctorate in BC, a claim Umeek says
he cannot verify). Through a difficult journey of great unlearning
and relearning, Umeek managed to bring these two knowledge systems—
indigenous and Western—and their respective strengths together, first
in himself and then in his
work. In fact, the theme
of his work is interconnection,
interrelation, and
how apparent dichotomies
and divisions fit into unity.
Tsawalk means “one”
and expresses the idea that
all life is part of an integrated
whole. It is a central
concept of the Nuu-chahnulth
world view, and
Umeek believes it is key
to understanding and
addressing today’s world
in crisis. What crisis
exactly? Look around and
pick one. Environmental.
Economic. Political. Crises
of energy, education,
terrorism, nuclear threat.
“Today,” Umeek writes, “the experience of things falling apart has
become a global phenomenon,” and therefore “must, by definition,
be a shared responsibility.”
This global imbalance, Umeek surmises, is rooted in a crisis of perception
related to the stories that define our civilization. For example, the
book describes how tsawalk expressed in Nuu-chah-nulth origin stories
reveals “life’s major purpose, namely, the development of harmonious
relationships between and among all life forms.” However, it also
explores how the Western science-based world view, from the Big Bang
Umeek (E. Richard Atleo)
coastlines
through Darwinian evolution, fails us because it creates space for misunderstanding,
conflict and oppression, being “indifferent to the well-being
of human societies.” If it’s true that “beliefs about the nature of reality
translate into principles, teachings, laws, and what today we would
label policies,” then the crux of our difficulty—whether in our communities,
our environment or the basis of liberal democracy—is that we
can’t address global crises while operating from a story offering us
no purpose as human beings.
“The first book,” the gentle-voiced Umeek explains, referring to
Tsawalk: A Nuu-chah-nulth Worldview (UBC Press, 2004), “was essentially
based on my personal experience of racism at university. It was
therefore a defence of where I came from, of my family and my
experiences, which were said to be irrelevant.” The second book, he
says, follows, as it demonstrates the value of his people’s lifeway not
just inherently but for the lessons it offers the wider world, including
the Western-worldview generator: academia.
“It is not meant to attack,” he tells me, “but to expose.” In fact, the
book contains remarkably little emotionalism or bitterness. “A belief in
the mystery of creation,” he tells me, “prevents extreme reactions because
our stories teach us that we don’t understand enough to be definitive.
It’s like Einstein’s statement about how we do not know one thousandth
of one percent of what nature is. Aboriginals have the same point of
view about reality. What is significant is how little humans know.”
What’s also significant is how we know the little we do know. In
ancient Nuu-chah-nulth society, vision quest knowledge was experi-
32 October 2012 • FOCUS

ence-based, and myths were tested and proven
true. Such practice seems opposed to the empirical
research of the scientific method, but
Umeek says they are equally valid ways of
testing one’s cultural stories and, therefore,
one’s world view.
The book is therefore also a call to contemporary
Nuu-chah-nulth (and all of us) to
reconnect with the principles of their ancient
culture—principles of recognition, consent,
respect and continuity, principles that can
perhaps heal personal as well as political
and even environmental wounds.
Umeek has been involved in education
and environmental issues for a very long,
rich career. He has held posts in research
and teaching at UBC, Simon Fraser University,
Malaspina (now Vancouver Island
University), and University of Manitoba;
been co-chair of the Scientific Panel for
Sustainable Forest Practices in Clayquot
Sound; and board member at the Centre
for Indigenous Environmental Resources.
And there’s another book in the works.
(He can also take some credit for being the
father of Shawn Atleo, chief of the Assembly
of First Nations.)
When I ask what it is that drives him to such
accomplishments in the face of so many obstacles,
he laughs and says: “Leonard Cohen,
when asked where his inspiration came from,
said: ‘If I knew, I would go there more often.’
Not knowing makes him a great man to me.”
And when I ask if he’s hopeful about our
global future, he replies: “I can’t answer that
question by looking at contemporary society,
because the answers are hidden. But when I
look at our stories, they sway human beings
in the way of survival, even in the face of great
devastation. Good prevails over evil. Light
prevails over darkness. The stories don’t
say how it’s going to be done. Life doesn’t
hand anything to us on a plate. You’ve got to
work hard. Roll up your sleeves and talk to
your neighbour.”
Amy Reiswig is taking up
Umeek’s challenge to view
polarity as a benefit rather
than a threat: “a challenge to
grow rather than to destroy.”
www.focusonline.ca • October 2012
Focus presents: The Wellesley
Wellesley resident Sara Cook
Boomers bringing their parents to The Wellesley
for a tour, often remark,“I’d like to live here!”
And why not? The independent living apartments
are the roomiest in the city at 600 to 1400 square
feet, and feature full kitchens, walk in closets, nice
big bathrooms,and panoramic views from large windows.
There’s a gym, hair salon, library, billiard room, woodworking
shop,and small grocery store onsite—as well
as a lounge,a chapel and a rooftop garden.Gardeners
can have their own garden plot. Pet lovers can bring
their cat or dog.The airy, light-filled lounge is reminiscent
of a grand hotel’s lobby and invites dallying and
mingling, and hosts regular “happy hours.”
And then there’s the food. Residents prepare
their own breakfast, but suppers are included in the
monthly rent (lunches are optional).The Wellesley is
known for its high quality, varied menu. On any given
evening residents are faced with a choice between
two salads, and among three entrees—for instance:
pepper steak, grilled sole or lamb moussaka.There’s
always two vegetables, rice or potatoes, and dessert.
Flexibility is another reason for The Wellesley’s popularity.
Residents can wander into the dining room for
service anytime between 4:30 and 6:00.And if they
miss a dinner, they get a credit which they can apply
towards lunches or treating a guest for dinner.
The full kitchens in each unit also mean residents
who like to cook, can—before Christmas there was
lots of baking going on.Weekly bus trips to the grocery
store and all major shopping malls makes stocking up
convenient and easy.
The Wellesley is know for its high quality menu
So nice to come home to
ADVERTISEMENT
But probably the main key to the happiness of The
Wellesley’s residents is its sense of community. Says
marketing coordinator Margo McIntosh,“I see people
blossom here; I see relationships happen. It’s really
neat.”One long-time resident,Sara Cook,says,“The
atmosphere here is great! Both the residents and the
staff are all so happy here.”
Whereas originally The Wellesley only offered independent
living, it now has a separate building with
64 assisted living units for those who require a bit
more help.Each of these units have a full wheel chair
accessible bathroom with walk-in shower, as well
as a kitchenette. Residents’ packages include both
lunch and dinner in their own lovely dining room.An
emergency call system is included,and residents have
access to all Wellesley activities and services.
Onsite activities ranging from bridge to discussion
of current events,movies,fitness classes,educational
Margo McIntosh with residents Dorothea and Judy
presentations,and entertainers keep residents healthy
in body, mind and spirit. Laughter is a regular sound
here.And there’s a 16-seater bus that regularly whisks
residents to Chemainus Theatre,Imax,Butchart Gardens,
restaurants, Sunday drives and mystery trips. Margo
reports that many adult children say their parents are
now so busy it’s hard to get hold of them.
There are studios and one and two-bedroom suites—
18 floor plans in all.And secured underground parking
if needed.Residents can enjoy the privacy of their unit,
or head down the hall to join in their community.
And it’s all surprisingly affordable.When you compare
the approximate $2200/month with what a senior
might pay for rent or strata fees,utilities,maintenance,
food, transportation, activities, property taxes,
insurance and the like, you’ll be truly impressed.
Call Margo and ask about a personal tour and the
new three-night free trial.And everyone is invited to
the Open House on Saturday, October 13, 1-4 pm.
The Wellesley
2800 Blanshard Street
250-383-9099, ext 207
www.retirementconcepts.com
33

focus reporting from the frontlines of cultural change
How many diseases are important enough
to have their own season? Not many,
but we do have one, and it strikes every
year: the flu.
Arriving in the fall and exiting in the spring,
flu season strikes with the predictability of
clockwork. For some the flu might be a mild
inconvenience, perhaps embraced as a way to
stay home and get a few days couchside wrapped
in the unpleasantness of high fever, aches, sniffles,
and daytime reality TV. Yet for others,
usually the elderly or those with compromised
immune systems, the flu can be deadly. It can
lead to hospitalizations, pneumonia, and sometimes
death.
Victoria might be on an island but its residents
are not immune to viruses. So we prepare,
stockpiling flu vaccines and drugs, hectoring
the public to get an annual flu shot and, with
a new twist this season, giving an ultimatum
to health workers: either get a flu shot or wear
a mask while at work.
BC’s Provincial Health Officer Dr Perry
Kendall is betting that our province’s health
workers need such strong medicine to stop them passing on the flu to
their patients, and he’s launched the most aggressive flu policy in Canada,
one which could set the trend for the rest of the country.
But Dr Kendall and his public health colleagues around the world are
facing an uphill struggle as their anti-flu policies and public health
mandates are increasingly criticized because of the strong-armed ways
they are being enforced. Add to this the growing cynicism around the
fear-mongering of recent flu pandemics, and the overzealousness with
which vaccines are promoted, and you have a recipe for a cynical public.
But of most concern is the determination by some respected international
scientists and researchers that annual influenza campaigns are
likely an utter waste of time and money.
Half the story
“Don’t be like me, and be taken for a fool.” That’s the advice that
Dr Tom Jefferson offers when I ask him about his research around
flu vaccines and flu drugs. He has spent over a decade examining and
summarizing the evidence around one of the most stockpiled drugs in
the world, oseltamavir (also know as Tamiflu), and tells me over the
phone from his office in Rome: “I can only say that I have acted as an
unpaid salesperson for Roche [the maker of antiviral drug Tamiflu] for
the last ten years!”
Now a researcher with the Cochrane Collaboration, working on
acute respiratory infections and vaccines, Jefferson essentially confirmed
Will a flu shot keep you healthy?
ALAN CASSELS
The Cochrane Collaboration’s examination of flu vaccines in healthy adults, a body of literature spanning 25
studies and involving 59,566 people, finds an annual flu shot reduced overall clinical influenza by about six percent.
Dr Tom Jefferson
what I’d heard from other researchers: that
much of the published research on all kinds
of drugs and treatments found in peer-reviewed
medical journals is incomplete. It only gives
half the story.
In the case of Tamiflu, a drug that is supposed
to prevent the spread and the severity of the
flu, Jefferson and colleagues have proven that
the drug’s published dataset delivers a biased
and misleading picture of the drug because
the company has only released a portion of
it. If your job is to find, summarize and synthesize
what is in the published literature—as
it is for a meta-analyzer like Jefferson—incomplete
data sets are a major problem. Over the
past few years he and his colleagues have
frequently asked Roche to release Tamiflu’s
full data set, but so far the company offers up
mostly “the dog ate my homework”-type of
excuses for why they can’t cough it up.
The scourge of hidden data is not new in
medical research, but this just adds to the sense
of how shaky the global influenza apparatus
might be. When the companies that
study the drug stand to gain billions on how that research is presented,
we have a problem. Jefferson has written that poor science, coupled
with “media business, pharma business, pandemic business and
unaccountable decision-making,” are making a mockery of global policies
around the flu.
The problem starts with a semantic one, where “the flu” is equated
to “influenza,” a falsity which Jefferson writes “is now so ingrained in
the popular and sometimes professional mind that governments and
public fall prey to its greatest consequence: that of overestimating the
impact of influenza, which is usually a benign self-limiting infection.”
Beyond semantics, we need to consider the basic epidemiology of
the flu. There are over 200 viruses that cause influenza and influenzalike
illness and can produce symptoms similar to the everyday flu. It is
estimated that 80 percent of flu-like illness reported during the “flu
season” is not caused by influenza. As well, influenza viruses constantly
evolve and mutate and since it takes up to nine months to develop
the right vaccine, by the time flu season arrives, the flu shot may or may
not match strains circulating.
Which is to say, fighting the flu is largely a hit-and-miss affair.
Jefferson wants to make sure flu policies affecting millions of people
are based on proper, undeniable proof. Of the many health authorities
around the world who support mass flu vaccine campaigns—those he
irreverently refers to as “bioevangelists”—he claims the science shows
they are mostly wrong: “There is no reliable evidence that inacti-
34 October 2012 • FOCUS
PHOTO COURTESY DER SPIEGEL

“ DESIGN
INFLUENZA VACCINATION has become a dogma
and a political tool. It no longer resembles a public
health intervention.”
—Dr Tom Jefferson, Cochrane Collaboration
vated influenza vaccines [the standard types of vaccines of today] affect
either person-to-person spread of influenza or complications such as
death or pneumonia…and [this] relates both to healthcare workers,
community-dwellers and people in institutions.”
The flu vs. influenza-like illness
Jefferson didn’t intend to become a flu researcher. He spent the early
part of his medical career as a physician in the British Army, serving
tours in the Falklands, Bosnia and Croatia. A wide handlebar mustache
that some said made him a caricature of the Modern Major General
was perhaps a decoy, hiding the fact he was a rebel at heart.
In the spring of 1984, Jefferson was stationed in Germany with the
3rd Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment. He was ordered early one morning
to report to his commanding officer, who told him that the Army had
a terrible medical problem that needed his immediate assistance.
What was it? A new tropical disease needing investigation? A spate
of injuries due to hostilities? No, nothing as exciting as that. The CO
said that his unit had a terrible problem of acute respiratory disease,
with the kind of chills, wheezing and high temperatures associated with
garden-variety flu. He ordered Jefferson to “look into it.”
With access to decent surveillance data collected from the barracks
by the Army’s medical teams, Dr Jefferson was shocked at the numbers,
saying, “We had a system to calculate the working days lost, and it was
astronomical.”
That clearly stoked his interest: “Most other medical researchers
were interested in fancy stuff, exotic stuff, people killed in action and
so on, as that was the stuff that got into the newspapers. But something
as simple as colds and flu—which knocked out a brigade’s worth of
soldiers every year—now that was something worth looking into.”
What Jefferson saw that day at the base was a sudden and inexplicable
increase in ILI—influenza-like illness, and it left him scratching
his head.
“I couldn’t really understand what was happening. There was no
real activity outside the battalion—soldiers had it, the families had it,
the children had it—wives had it…and I thought, what is this?”
He recalls that at that time, a rumour was circulating that the battalion
was going to be deployed to Northern Ireland, a tour of duty they
completed several times in the 1970s and ’80s. The regiment had lost
18 soldiers during these previous deployments, a fact fresh in the minds
of the soldiers and their families. The upcoming deployment was understandably
causing a lot of stress on the base and Dr Jefferson surmised
that stress “perhaps explained why the battalion was hit with a high
incidence of ILI.”
Five years later, he was able to work alongside Dr David Tyrrell who
was tutored by some of the original discoverers of the influenza virus.
Jefferson says that one of the most vital things he learned from Dr Tyrrell
is the imprecision of the word “flu.” Tyrrell said that what people referred
to as “the flu” was a “dangerous colloquialism,” and he stressed it was
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more appropriate to call the collection of symptoms
“influenza-like illness.” As Jefferson says,
“the confusion between influenza and influenzalike
illness has led to an obsession with a single
agent [the influenza virus] which is not based
on any sound evidence.” With most of the extra
illness suffered during flu season not caused by
a verifiable flu virus, the situation, says Jefferson,
is “potentially dangerous and misleading”
because even if the best vaccine can prevent a
proven flu virus, you’re only able to help a small
portion of the people who become ill.
Jefferson served with the UN during the
Yugoslav crisis, and reports: “I also observed
the effects of ILI in terms of working days lost
on British and UN soldiers.” In his opinion,
“High rates of ILI were associated with stress,
overcrowding and, of course, combat.”
Just not enough evidence
Nearly two decades later, Jefferson worries
about the absence of quality research around
other potential causes of flu-like illness, including
the role of stress. Compared to the serious
global moneymakers—the vaccines and antivirals
which bring billions to the coffers of drug
companies every year—something as simple
as stress and its relation to the flu is simply not
studied. There are some efforts to study methods
to prevent virus transmission (masks and handwashing),
but compared to the huge annual
drug and vaccine enterprise focused on a virus,
these efforts seem pitifully small.
The fact that a physician steeped in military
tradition and respect for authority would turn
out to be one of biggest anti-authoritarians in
the influenza world is a delicious irony. Jefferson
admits it is “absolutely heresy” to even imply
that stress may play a role in causing the flu.
He adds, it “undermines the living of very
many people, and goes against the dogma of
people selling vaccines and pills.”
The best way to counter the dogma is to
find the most reliable evidence—preferably
from an overview of all relevant studies, known
as a meta-analysis. And that’s Jefferson’s game
as part of the Cochrane Collaboration
(www.cochrane.org), an international organization
of consumers, scientists and researchers,
gathering and systematically examining all the
studies ever conducted to see how well a treatment
works. Cochrane’s work is unique in at
least two ways: it won’t take money from the
drug or vaccine manufacturers to fund its
research, and it uses the highest gold-standard
methodologies when synthesizing research.
The Cochrane examination of flu vaccines
in healthy adults, a body of literature span-
ning 25 studies and involving 59,566 people,
finds an annual flu shot reduced overall clinical
influenza by about six percent. It would
reduce absenteeism by only 0.16 days (about
four hours) for each influenza episode, a small
effect given that the average flu bout lasts five
to seven days. What was most illuminating
was the authors’ conclusion: “There is not
enough evidence to recommend universal
vaccination against influenza in healthy adults.”
Jefferson and his colleagues found that most
influenza studies are poorly designed and fail
to prove the influenza vaccine is effective or
safe for certain groups, such as the elderly and
children under two. (In Canada, parents might
be surprised to hear that Canada’s National
Advisory Committee on Immunization recommends
flu shots for kids six to 23 months old.)
Canada isn’t the only country with recommendations
out of sync with the evidence.
Earlier this summer, the UK’s National Health
Service reported that they needed to find 1000
extra school nurses to give the flu vaccine to
healthy children for the upcoming flu season.
This was in response to government plans to
expand the vaccination program to all children
aged two to 17.
This decision was based on a series of
computer models estimating that if 30 percent
of the population were vaccinated for the flu,
then there could be a reduction of 2000 deaths
and 11,000 fewer hospital admissions. Expanding
the program to children, seniors, pregnant
women, and people who are considered at
“higher risk,” would cost about $150 million
per year, as reported in the UK’s Guardian
newspaper. But will all that money actually
deliver fewer deaths and hospitalizations?
The answer is “probably not.” Jefferson
and others contend that using a computer
model as the justification for an expanded flu
vaccine program is very problematic. Tweak
any of the assumptions in the model and you
get what you want. Such an expanded program
surely would please British-based pharmaceutical
giant GlaxoSmithKline, a big player
in the flu game—and should remind us of the
politics of money behind any large public
health program.
Immunizing BC’s healthcare workers
In late August, Provincial Health Officer
Dr Perry Kendall announced that BC’s health
care workers must either wear a mask or
get the flu shot this season. His stated rationale
was to improve the level of vaccination
amongst health workers, which currently
hovers around 40 percent.
36 October 2012 • FOCUS

When I asked why so many health care workers weren’t getting
the shot, Kendall referred to surveys showing they avoid the shot for
the same reasons as everyone else: they think they don’t need it, are
concerned about the side effects, or got vaccinated in the past and
still got the flu.
In the press release announcing the new policy he wrote the “influenza
vaccine is extremely safe and the most effective way to prevent illness
from the influenza virus, helping to prevent infection in healthy adults
by as much as 80 percent.”
Yet like most health statistics, that 80 percent is misleading. In
Jefferson’s opinion, “The best-conducted and largest trials in the healthiest
populations show that you need to vaccinate 33 to 100 healthy
people to avoid one set of symptoms of influenza (a ‘case’).” Peter Doshi,
a researcher whose graduate thesis from Johns Hopkins School of
Medicine focused on the politics of influenza policies, wrote in the
British Medical Journal: “If CDC [Center for Disease Control] viral
surveillance data is correct, then in recent years true influenza viruses
have only caused an average of 12 percent of influenza-like illness.”
Since influenza vaccines do not work against non-influenza viruses
or against all influenza strains, why do health departments around the
world claim that vaccines are the “best way to prevent seasonal flu”?
This is not a trivial, or inexpensive question. BC already buys 1.1
million doses of vaccines each year to provide to those in the province
who want one, at a cost of about $17.5 million. Moving to 95 percent
coverage of BC’s health workers (assuming about 110,000 health
workers) would cost in the neighbourhood of $1 million more per year.
So will immunizing health care workers prevent the spread of the
flu to patients and save their lives? Jefferson’s examination at the
Cochrane Collaboration of four cluster randomized trials and one
cohort trial of nearly 20,000 health care workers showed “no effect
on specific outcomes: laboratory-proven influenza, pneumonia or
deaths from pneumonia.” Another research study observed the same
phenomena as he did, but noted the vaccine was effective for ILI, hospitalizations
for ILI, and death from all causes.
Regarding the latter study, Jefferson and colleagues found the effects
on ILI and death such an unusual finding, they said that conclusion was
due to bias, poor study design and reporting, and not a true effect.
Claiming that the flu shot saved peoples’ lives from “all causes” strikes
Jefferson as absurd: “They would have us believe that to avoid granny
drowning in a pool (death from all causes) she should be vaccinated.”
BC’s Dr Kendall tends to agree that absurd findings often come out
of observational trials and is aware of the Cochrane work, but still
stands behind his recommendations for vaccinating health care workers,
saying, “Overall I would say the preponderance of evidence shows a
strong benefit in vaccination, particularly if you get a good match. I
would still say that immunization campaigns have an outstanding safety
record. I’d say they are a whole lot better than nothing.”
That sounds reassuring, but in those jurisdictions with high flu vaccination
rates among health care workers (some as high as 95 percent)—is
there a huge number of lives saved? The real answer: no one knows.
And outstanding safety? Maybe, but recent research shows things might
be a bit more complicated.
Just this September, Canadian researchers revealed a study showing
that at the start of the 2009 “pandemic,” those who got the seasonal
shot in the 2008-2009 flu season were more likely to get infected with
the pandemic virus than people who hadn’t received it. Because researchers
had noticed the phenomenon in the early weeks of the pandemic, Dr
Danuta Skowronski, an influenza expert at the BC Centre for Disease
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37

Control in Vancouver, and a strong supporter
of annual flu vaccine campaigns, more recently
conducted a blinded test using ferrets (a mammal
with human-like susceptibility to colds and
flus). She found that those ferrets who got the
seasonal flu shot got sicker when they were
exposed to the pandemic H1N1 virus. Such
research indicates there might be many potential
unknowns capable of playing havoc with
our immune systems.
Health authorities routinely tell us flu vaccines
are perfectly safe. But there is a problem with
the word “perfectly.” In Dr Jefferson’s words,
“The potential harms of inactivated influenza
vaccines have not been seriously studied and
their reporting in small formal studies is very
poor.” He reminds us that officials have cited
“rare neurological syndromes observed after
use of so-called pandemic vaccines.” When
you’re injecting yourself with something, there
is always the potential—even if very remote—
for harm. Since the vast majority of people
recover quite nicely on their own from a bout
with the flu, are the risks worth it?
And how will we know if BC’s new program
for healthcare workers is working? Kendall says
BC will collect data on how many wear masks,
how many workers are immunized and so
on, essentially the “easier to measure” stuff such
as compliance, coverage and absenteeism. But
we won’t be measuring to see if the policy translates
into fewer deaths and illness in patients,
because, as Kendall says: “To do that kind of
study you need a very large budget, you’d need
to be able to have a substantial sampling of
patients, you need to be culturing patients for
influenza-like illness on admission and discharge.
You could do it, but it would be a multimilliondollar
proposal.” In other words we won’t be
measuring those things because it’s too expensive
to find out if the vaccination policy does
what it’s intended to do.
Dr Jim Wright of UBC’s Therapeutics Initiative
is aware of the science around the flu vaccine.
He used to get his annual shot until he looked
a bit closer at the science and determined that
there was no proof such vaccinations reduced
deaths and hospitalizations. He concluded
that promoting annual flu shots is one of the
biggest uncontrolled trials of our time. He told
me he is willing to roll up his sleeve or recommend
his patients to do so, “but only as part
of a randomized placebo-controlled trial
designed to determine the benefits and harms
of flu vaccination.” And he disagrees with Dr
Kendall, saying, “A proper trial could be done
with minimal expense and is badly needed to
direct future flu vaccine policies.”
38
Follow the money
Let’s cast our minds back to June 11, 2009,
when the World Health Organization declared
the H1N1 flu outbreak a pandemic.
Governments everywhere ordered billions of
dollars worth of vaccines and antiviral drugs
as fear of an epidemic spread like a contagion
around the world. But critics accused the WHO
of crying wolf and scaring member governments
with predictions of a deadly pandemic.
Within a year the entire enterprise would be
revealed as fraudulent, with two studies charging
that the WHO inexplicably changed the definition
of a pandemic and that WHO’s
decision-making was rife with conflicts of
interest. We learned that the 2004 WHO
committee which ordered world governments
to set up immunization programs and stockpile
antiretroviral drugs in the event of a flu
pandemic, was stacked with scientists with
ties to drug companies.
Jefferson believes that there is just too
much money in, and reputations staked
on, flu vaccines for many involved to be objective
about them. He wrote “The main
proponents are decision makers who are
riddled with conflicts of interest: they make
policy, evaluate it, update it, commission
research and sometimes carry out—and in
extreme cases have a stake in—the production
of the pharmaceuticals.”
The key thought here is stunning: The push
from health departments around the world
to annually vaccinate their populations against
the flu are based on poor, incomplete, or
wildly-spun evidence. Scientific bodies such
as the Cochrane Collaboration that refuse to
take money from the pharmaceutical industry
produce reviews that challenge the grandiose
pronouncements of public health authorities
the world over. Unfortunately, the authorities
that drive global policies around the
influenza vaccine and antiviral drugs are
ignoring those challengers.
When I asked Kendall if he is possibly influenced
by the vaccine marketers hanging around
the Ministry of Health, and whether pharma
money is shaping the decisions, he denied
being influenced at all. I believe him, but unfortunately
too many in positions of medical
leadership avoid questioning vaccines for fear
of excommunication. Even though much of
the vaccine research is tainted, spun and unreliable,
and paid for and promoted by the very
companies that stand to profit, the reason
vaccines are embraced with such religious
fervour, in my view, is the belief system
proclaiming that since vaccines have saved
lives, and have caused us to turn the corner
on many childhood diseases, they must be
always good, for everyone, all the time. And
we need more of them.
You can’t tell vaccine proponents they are
wrong, or that maybe we need better and more
reliable research before we start sticking
everyone with a needle, because they’ve already
made up their minds. This harkens to that
saying of John Kenneth Galbraith: “Faced
with the choice between changing one’s mind
and proving that there is no need to do so,
almost everyone gets busy on the proof.”
So in BC we now have a flu vaccination
policy in place that affects every single health
care worker in BC, in the hopes that it will
save the lives of patients. We spend a lot of
money convincing people to get vaccinated,
and on the vaccine program itself. Yet the
science is controversial and contradictory.
Obviously, we need better science, but that’s
not likely to happen; BC’s new policy won’t
be evaluated thoroughly to see if it’s wasting
our time and money.
And we certainly won’t be any closer to
understanding if other factors might be
playing a role in who does or does not come
down with the flu this season. And that’s too
bad. After all, the average person just wants
to feel well, regardless of whether their aches,
chills and headaches are caused by a virus,
by stress, or by some other mechanism. As
Dr Jefferson maintains, “the unknown causes
and other organisms are far more frequent.
They are largely ignored probably because
of the fatal attraction represented by the
availability of pharmaceutical interventions
such as antivirals and vaccines.”
Alan Cassels is a drug policy researcher at the
University of Victoria and the author of the recently
released Seeking Sickness: Medical Screening and
the Misguided Hunt for Disease. As a former
Canadian naval officer and UN peacekeeper he
believes he has been vaccinated for every disease
under the sun. He currently refuses to get an
annual flu shot.
October 2012 • FOCUS

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this
place
Even after losing his job measuring marine contaminants, Peter Ross is more concerned about the country’s future than his own.
Peter Ross is Canada’s only marine mammal toxicologist. At the
Institute of Ocean Sciences in Sidney, he studies the levels of toxic
chemicals found in a wide range of creatures, including sea otters,
seals and whales. This determines effects on their health, the health of
their food sources, the oceans, and aboriginal food sources. “This is
knowledge that informs policies, regulations, and practices that enable
us to protect the ocean and its resources for today’s users and for future
generations,” he explains.
Until January, that is. That’s when his employment with the Department
of Fisheries and Oceans will be terminated, along with the nine other
employees in the department, due to last April’s federal budget cuts.
Ross expects the 120-day notice to arrive some time in September.
It’s pretty overwhelming for Ross, but not because he’ll be out of a
job. As a leader in his field, he’s had offers from the around the
globe. However, while the government doesn’t seem to, he feels a
responsibility to this place, and he’s hoping to find a way to continue
in another capacity. “We have got to do this work; we can’t just bail on
it completely,” he says. “I understand what’s been going on with pollution
in the ocean and I can help prioritize what the issues are, what the
threats are; I can work with others to apply technologies or regulations
to try to improve things. So to simply extricate myself from that and
move to New England or Australia, [it] seems to me I would be
failing the country that brought me up and educated me,” he worries.
While figuring out his next move, he’s racing against time. “We’ve got
data; we’ve got samples; we’ve got projects underway. I’ve got to write
these manuscripts and get them out there so the scientific world can
see them and the public and the policy makers can use them. Come
January, I won’t have finished everything. Do I just toss all my data into
the recycling bin?” he asks.
Maybe it’s his nature. When he was five years old, he watched the
moon landing on a news broadcast and, like millions of others, a chord
of awe was struck within. The segment directly following brought dissonance
to that chord: images of people walking around in masks due to
drastic levels of air pollution in Tokyo. “I became concerned we were
going to run out of clean air,” he says.
That concern, combined with a love of animals, led to a biology
degree at Trent University in Peterborough. Learning of the death of
20,000 harbour seals in northern Europe, he earned a Master’s at
Dalhousie University in Halifax studying the effects of toxins on
their immune systems. A pioneer in the field, he developed new
study techniques—working amongst the legendary beauty and wild
horses of Sable Island. After a PhD at Utrecht University and a few years
of post-doc here at the Institute for Ocean Sciences, he was hired full
time in 1999.
The learning hasn’t stopped since. “As we get older,” he reflects, “we
tend to think we are getting smarter, wiser. [But] as I get more advanced
in my career, I feel as though I know less and less. I realize how little
we know about the world around us. That realization comes from
working on countless research projects with different people, graduate
students, scientists, and aboriginal communities.”
island interview 40 urbanities 42 natural relations 44 finding balance 46
Conservatives kill the messenger
AAREN MADDEN
Marine mammal toxicologist Peter Ross
With genuine wonder, Ross says that a sea otter’s fur has over 100,000
hairs per square centimetre. He has felt its incredible softness, but explains
that it’s simply a unique adaptation to a harsh climate. He remembers
being off the rugged coast of Nuchatlitz Island for a study, “where [sea
otters] thrive. I wondered how they did it. I felt so fortunate to be able
to live-capture one of these creatures and spend an hour with it, and
then it goes off into that surf again. That surf has destroyed many ships.
It’s an incredible area to imagine surviving and reproducing.”
That study involved measuring the levels of stable isotopes in the creatures’
hair and whiskers, and hydrocarbon levels in their blood. “The
number one threat to sea otters in BC is oil spills,” he explains, “so we
are trying to get a baseline understanding of what hydrocarbons they
are getting exposed to from other sources.” Which, in turn, could have
implications for oil and gas shipping and exploration policy.
Speaking of hydrocarbons—and who isn’t these days?—Ross’ findings,
no matter how inspiring their source, are not always welcome by
the powers-that-be. “There is a real apprehension that if we uncover,
40 October 2012 • FOCUS
PHOTO: TONY BOUNSALL

“ ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of the staff working on
contaminants are being axed. That’s rather drastic costcutting,
when the government is trying to save between
five and eight percent.” —Peter Ross
measure and report on contaminants in marine mammals, it will tell
us something about fish, and it will have potential implications for
humans,” he says. Then someone will have to do something about it,
meaning there are political and economic ramifications. In short, he
opens cans of worms.
But they must be opened. “To me, it’s a no-brainer,” he says. He
notes multiple examples of how research (his own and others’) has been
beneficial. “We’ve seen a ten-fold decrease in PCBs in harbour seals in
BC since 1970. We’ve seen a four-fold decrease in PCBs in killer whales
in BC. We’ve seen a 95 percent reduction in dioxins being released from
pulp mills. PBDEs (flame retardant chemicals) were doubling every 3.5
years here in fish; they have been dropping since Canada implemented
its first of two sets of regulations on PBDEs in 2005. So, it’s absolutely
possible to do something about it,” he insists.
Ross argues that those were all cost-effective programs, yet cost
cutting was cited as the reason for his department’s termination. “One
hundred percent of the staff working on contaminants are being axed.
That’s rather drastic cost-cutting, when the government is trying to
save between five and eight percent,” he suggests, adding that his department’s
research budget was actually terminated six years ago (he gets
funding from a variety of sources, including municipalities, the US
government, the DFO and various foundations). It leads him to only
one conclusion: “It’s targeted.”
Considering the government’s replacement plan for Ross’ department,
it’s hard for him to think otherwise. The plan, he says, will see
five junior biologists scattered across the country (one in BC) and an
advisory group, with a research fund of $1.4 million dollars per year,
overseeing the entire marine pollution file for the Government of
Canada. “I don’t understand how it’s going to work,” he states. The
problems? Research credentials are not guaranteed, for one. For another,
Ross’ expertise and journal publications link him to a global community
that Canada may no longer benefit from, since he won’t be involved.
He can’t imagine how such specialized work can be duplicated, nor
how the government will be able to enact sound policy.
“Simply put, we will not know what the future holds because we
won’t really be doing the work,” Ross says. “Certainly there are different
ways to study pollution in the ocean: conservation groups, regional
governments, university professors. One could argue, collectively, that
will help to monitor our oceans. But I guess I am a little perplexed at
the notion that the federal government in Canada, a country surrounded
by three oceans, thinks that transferring this role out of the federal
government [is appropriate].” Pausing, he asks the ultimate question:
“Who’s going to take on responsibility for it?”
www.focusonline.ca • October 2012
Aaren Madden has been thinking about the lamentable
poetry of sea otters thriving amongst the shipwrecks
that belie a place so clearly inhospitable to humans,
their greatest threat.
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Wilhelmina Groot and Sandra Patterson of Cordova Bay Esthetics and
Electrolysis have remodelled their pristine home-based studio and are now
welcoming back their loyal clientele and inviting new clients to come and
see why some people have been their
clients for 20-plus years.
The mother-daughter partnership is
a unique one.As daughter Sandra says,
“We work well together and always
have.” Clients get the benefit of
Wilhelmina’s 27 years and Sandra’s 20
years of experience.
Long time client Eileen says,“Their
beautiful, sparkling studio and their
friendly,caring and professional manner
have made me a fan for many years!”
The ground-floor studio is accessed
through the landscaped back garden of
Wilhelmina’s home.The peaceful oasis,
complete with a backyard pond and
waterfall feature, helps clients shift
into relaxation mode as they enter. Of
course, the stress-free parking helps on
that score,as does the private setting—
clients feel very comfortable arriving for
a facial sans makeup.
Inside,Wilhelmina and Sandra have
created a welcoming professional envi- Wilhelmina Groot and Sandra Patterson
ronment.A fresh light fragrance apparent
throughout is a reflection of both the meticulousness of the studio as well as the exclusive
Spanish product line, Skeyndor.
Both women are certified for the full range of esthetic and electrolysis services,and
they emphasize the importance of the personal care they offer.Wilhelmina says,“It
is so important nowadays to stay rejuvenated, and stay younger looking. If you look
good you feel good.”She goes on
to explain,“We treat our clients
always one-on-one. Everything is
done personally for that particular
person, male or female.” Longtime
client Judith concurs:“I have
been a client of Cordova Bay Studio
for 20 years because Wilhelmina
and Sandra provide personalized,
professional, skin care services.
Each facial at Cordova Bay Studio
is designed by them for your individual
skin care needs.”
Specialized services include elec-
The studio has private treatment rooms
trolysis, electro-coagulation,
dermabrasion and nasal waxing.
Electro-coagulation is a process where the esthetician follows the blood vessel to the
broken capillaries, cauterizing it. Unsightly red lines (spider veins) disappear.And not
many studios offer nasal waxing.Afterwards, clients say,“I can breathe!”
Wilhelmina and Sandra are pleased to invite you for a free consultation.
Photo:Tony Bounsall
Cordova Bay Esthetics & Electrolysis Studio
4794 Cordova Bay Road • 250-658-2506
www.cordovabaystudio.com
41

The monster’s ball
urbanities
GENE MILLER
Influenced by the adolescent fantasies of Ayn Rand, the extreme right wing rejects any form of collectivism as evil socialism.
My friend Denton (remember his
Blue Bridge “rocket launcher”
on the back cover of Focus,
Rand elevated her political philosophy,
dubbed Objectivism, to its fictional apotheosis
in a couple of novels, The Fountainhead
months ago?) handled the Blessed Event
and Atlas Shrugged—essentially, a pair of
so right-mindedly that I thought it would
masturbation fantasies for late-blooming
be worth memorializing.
conservatives; which is to say, a cohort
Receiving his first post-65 government
heavily involved in adequacy issues. I read
pension cheque, he took it upon himself
both potboilers as a teenager (The
to find some local social-serving non-
Fountainhead to this day is on my shelf,
profit organization with whom he could
wedged between a now-spineless Alice in
volunteer. He was explicit about this: a
Wonderland and some well-thumbed Kurt
national culture able to do such a good
Vonnegut titles) and I recall them as adven-
job of looking after its citizens by providing
ture stories. I carry the memory of jutting
a reasonable pension deserved his contin-
breasts, thrilling sex and destiny-eyed male
uing services as a show of appreciation
leaders who declaimed heroic, stone-chis-
and as a way of keeping the account in
elled speeches (often for page after endless
balance. What a nice view of the human
Ayn Rand in 1947
page) and who, presumably, never said
community! What an unerring expres-
anything real-world like “Pass the potasion
of the relationship between the individual and the collective! toes, please,” or waited in a lineup, or experienced any of the other
Remember: it takes a village to raise an individual.
afflictions we “lice” and “looters” are prone to.
His actions rang a deep note because, with the US presidential Sam Anderson wrote in New York Magazine: “Rand built a glorious
election looming, I can’t turn away from the train wreck that currently imaginary empire...then devoted every ounce of her will and intelli-
defines US politics and social ideology. It feels now as if the entire gence to proving it was all pure reason.”
national identity is in play. I’m transfixed—okay, horrified—by the Not that building glorious imaginary empires is anything out of the
messaging and symbol-play of the Republican leadership and by the ordinary for the hard-breathing right-wing sociopaths at the Washington,
factional voices who, after Obama’s election in 2008, made a sharp DC-based Cato Institute, or the vast network of faith-based literalists
right turn at “weird” and just kept going. I’m concerned that Canadian who think Christ and the triceratops shared a young Earth and that
conservatives—notably, the crowd from the province next door that God is America’s cheerleader, or the Canadian whack-job moon-bayers
has turned nature’s accidental oil bounty into a belief system—may see at the Fraser Institute or the Manning Centre for Building Democracy.
the coalescing US idiotocracy as validation of their vision and a green If anything, the toxic franchise of these right-wing institutions and
light for their positions.
organizations is being energized by the Tea Party and Christian
I’m specifically twitchy learning that Republican vice-presidential values updraft in the US, and by a worrying tolerance of that natural-
candidate Paul (“Lying Bastard”) Ryan’s political contours have been born punisher, Stephen Harper, here in Canada. To either side of the
shaped in part by the ideas and values of Ayn Rand, novelist and polit- border you can’t miss the “it’s our time,” triumphalist notes from people
ical philosopher, who placed iconoclastic individualism on a pedestal who clearly believe they are winning a holy war.
and considered everyone else to be vermin.
Commenting on Ryan and Republicans (and, collaterally, Ayn Rand),
This is a woman who smoked two packs a day, disbelieved the medical comic Bill Maher accurately noted: “Republicans...believe in some-
alarmists (their warnings might lead to government regulation) and thing that both science and history have shown to be pure fantasy. The
died of lung cancer. She showed them.
symbol for their party shouldn’t be an elephant—it should be a unicorn.
Rand would be just a sad footnote in the human comedy, except this [Ryan] can just write, ‘I want a pony’ in a binder and call it the ‘Plan
nut job has exerted a significant influence over Ryan, and personifies For Restoring Vision For The Future Of America’s Greatness’ or some
the mentality of too many right-drifting conservatives: Un-fetter the shit, and then everyone has to refer to him as the serious one in Congress.”
Atlases of commerce so their visions of progress and bounty may come The irony would be laughable if it weren’t so painful: Rand has
true! Shrink government! Obliterate obstructive regulation and let the recrudesced in our own times as some fresh grotesque from the bottom
free market perform its miracles! Sanctify the individual; reject the of the well of nightmares. Recent history has provided the “perfect
collective! Free the “doers,” punish the “moochers.”
storm” of conditions and values, and now it’s a monster’s ball out there
Ayn Rand was born Alissa Rosenbaum, a Jew, in 1905 in St Petersburg, of blamers, fat-assed, tattooed Walmart Republicans, wacko values-
Russia. Everything you want to understand about her virulent anti-collecvoters, angry, flag-waving true believers, Freedom or Bust libertarians,
tivism is to be understood from her experience of the horrific early years nostalgia types who think they lost something and want it back. Quick
of the Russian Revolution in 1917. She brought her hatreds with her to to brand any and every government program socialism, creeping or
the States and headed for Hollywood—the dream-factory home of true otherwise, the right wing is conveniently tone deaf to the fact that
love, perfect endings, Munchkins and Gort, the robot.
the only “redistribution of wealth” recently has been in favour of the
42 October 2012 • FOCUS

IF YOU SHINE DAYLIGHT on the veiled moral architecture
of the right wing, you find a working kit of parts
for a galloping kleptocracy.
wealthy. But somehow, it’s government’s fault when criminal adventure
by the banking and financial industry brings the entire economy
to its knees.
If you shine daylight on the veiled moral architecture of the
right wing, you find a working kit of parts for a galloping kleptocracy.
And this goes straight to the heart of the issue: in essence, the
right very cleverly three-card-monte’s the idea of government as the
inhibitor of social freedoms, actually as a surrogate for its real opposition
to government as a regulator and, honestly, the last and only
force standing in the way of all-out financial rape.
Matt Taibbi’s lengthy piece about that grifter Romney and Bain Capital
in the August 29 issue of Rolling Stone is revelatory: “He’s trying for
something big,” writes Taibbi. “We’ve just been too slow to sort out
what it is, just as we’ve been slow to grasp the roots of the radical economic
changes that have swept the country in the last generation.”
Commentators have, in fact, been clear about the “roots of the radical
economic changes.” James Kunstler, in his blog, Clusterfuck Nation,
mordantly proposed the Reality Party, in an early September posting:
“A broad array of financial rackets [has] crippled the basic functions
of finance, namely: price discovery, currency as a reliable store of value,
and the allocation of surplus wealth for productive purpose.”
At the roots of this de facto nouvelle class warfare, deep in the
murk of the conservative psyche, far beneath mere disapproval or
antipathy toward the liberal agenda, there is hyper-fastidious, white
lab-coated, vibes-like-an-Aryan’s pathological hatred of people, the
mass of them, the human mob—their appetites, their expectations,
their perceived lack of structure or discipline, their bug-like “littleness.”
In spite of the rhetoric about the rights of the individual, the
conservative view believes people don’t have nobility or potential
until they’re earning six figures. Instead, they’re germs. Like Agent
Smith’s speech in The Matrix: “Human beings are a disease, a cancer.
You are a plague. We are the cure.” And in the movie, to whom does
he deliver this speech? A black man.
Guess how Agent Smith votes.
It’s hard to frame your own times in history’s long narrative, but the
ecological or civilizational cycle is always the same: tension, spasm,
collapse, regeneration. Beyond all the fist-pounding about endless
plenty is the reality of limits—ironically, a valid (if entirely abandoned)
conserve-ative position.
Neither political leader will say that, of course, as it’s political suicide
and poison to the American psyche. The New Yorker’s George Packer,
writing in the aftermath of the Republican Convention, notes:
“Ryan will be the Republican Party’s next leader because his style is
perfectly suited to its demands: purist, inflexible, combative, and untroubled
by any complicating fact.”
Tension, spasm, collapse, regeneration. Fasten your seatbelt.
www.focusonline.ca • October 2012
Gene Miller, founder of Open Space Cultural Centre,
Monday and the Gaining Ground Conferences, is
currently writing Massive Collaboration: Stories That
Divide Us, Stories That Bind Us and The Hundred-
Mile Economy: Preparing For Local Life.
Join us for our
Fall Speaker Series
Tinnitus
Join Tinnitus experts for presentations and discussion on the
latest research and treatment options for this common problem.
The Coast Hotel, October 2. Sessions at 10am and 6pm.
Invisible Hearing Aids
The Lyric2 is the latest technology in the new “invisible” hearing
aid style. Come learn about the new “disposable contact lens
of hearing aids” and see if this implantable option is for
you.The Coast Hotel, October 23. Sessions at 10am and 6pm.
Broadmead
hearing clinic
#104-4420 Chatterton Way
In the Broadmead Office Park
250-479-2969
www.broadmeadhearing.com
Oak Bay
hearing clinic
1932 Oak Bay Avenue
Near Oak Bay & Foul Bay
250-479-2921
Registered under the College of Speech and Hearing Health Professionals of B.C.
43

There’s a different type of grandparent
on the island these days—they play games,
but it’s unlikely golf or bridge, and instead
of Alaskan cruises with their peers, it will be
a ferry ride to Galiano for an overnight camp.
These are the grandparents-raising-grandchildren
and they are heading for the
newly-established Galiano Restorative Learning
Centre. According to Ken Millard, the driving
force behind the Centre, providing a place to
relax and play on beaches, lakes and in forests,
prepare home-grown food, and sleep out under
the stars with other families is one of the main
goals of the new Centre as a project of the
Galiano Conservancy Association.
The Conservancy, which has long been one
of the leading-edge organizations of the land
trust movement since its inception in 1989,
is taking restorative learning up a new notch
to reach out to people who aren’t the usual
crowd in the conservation community. Having
accumulated an extensive network of protected
lands, the Conservancy has been slowly
expanding their school and university programs
in ecological restoration, nature immersion
and community gardens to “troubled youth”
from the cities, new immigrants and now
grandparents-raising-grandchildren. With the
recent purchase of 76 hectares of old-growth
forest that connects their shoreline parcels of
land, the Conservancy is moving ahead to
establish its Restorative Learning Centre which
can offer more overnight opportunities for
these groups, researchers and local community
members. This summer, for the first time,
the Centre offered nights under the stars
for grandparents.
Sandy Halverson, who is the program coordinator
for the Parent Support Services Society
of BC, the non-profit that set up the Grandparent
program, had just got back from one of the
overnighters and was ecstatic: “The whole
experience was amazing. It was such a treat
to see people connecting not just with the beautiful
place, but with one another. They were
so delighted to find other families like them.”
Raising grandchildren, according to Halverson,
is very isolating. For the grandparents, their
peer group has fallen away, disinclined to
support them as they wade back into diapers
instead of the golf course. For the children,
they feel stigmatized for having grandparents
Cruising to Galiano
raising them. The costs of raising a second
family on just a retirement income also make
it a struggle. “For many of the families, it was
the only holiday of the year,” Halverson notes.
The program, offered for free, provides a place
where children can explore outside all day,
develop basic skills and get away from electronic
devices. Millard, a senior himself,
describes how these experiences are reminiscent
for the elder participants of growing up
two generations ago—heading outside in the
morning and coming back for a meal at night.
Halverson agrees: “The counsellors are fabulous
and really connect the families to the place
and community tasks of restoring the land,
gathering food and sharing it—even recycling
becomes very real and fun.”
These types of families are on the rise.
Census Canada reported around 10,000 kids
raised by grandparents in BC in 2006 when
long forms still captured that data. “No one
is collecting that information anymore but
we sure see increasing demand,” says
Halverson. “We have had waiting lists for
both trips this summer!”
The other new program with waiting lists
is for immigrants recently arrived in Victoria.
Haizia Liu, settlement counsellor for the Victoria
Immigrant and Refugee Centre Society, was
equally excited about the Galiano program.
“We had so much fun looking at all the sea
stars and ocean creatures. The seniors were
just like kids!” The first two trips ran this
summer: one group of parents with children
natural relations
BRIONY PENN
The restorative powers of nature help immigrants as well as grandparents and their grandchildren.
and another with seniors, mostly from mainland
China, Taiwan or Hong Kong. For many
of the immigrants, this was their first time
immersed in nature, as they had come from
big cities.
For Millard, the new programs have been
rewarding in a whole different way as cultural
traditions are shared. At the end of one long
happy day by the sea and in the forest, the
group expressed their thanks to him under
the old trees through traditional dances and
songs that demonstrated the ancient connections
of their own cultures to nature. Millard
says “providing access and opportunities in
nature lets people reconnect not just to forest
and the sea but to their culture and the best
part of themselves.”
The purchase of the new parcel for the
Centre was supported by funding from the
Nature Conservancy of Canada; Mountain
Equipment Co-op; a bequest from the Dr.
Betty Kleiman estate via the Land Conservancy
of BC; strong support from the Galiano
Conservancy membership; and a loan from
Vancity Credit Union. The project still has
to raise the last $200,000 in matching funds
from its original $2 million but Millard is confident
he’ll find it. “The benefits to Victorians
are too great to let this opportunity go.” To
support the acquisition project contact Ken
Millard at the address below. Small donations
are also gratefully received by the partner organizations
to help them provide the programs
to inner city youth, families and immigrants.
Contact information: Sandy Halverson at
Grandparents Raising Grandchildren, 250-468-
9658 or parent@telus.net; Haizia Liu at Victoria
Immigrant and Refugee Centre Society, 250-
361-9433 or haixia@vircs.bc.ca; Ken Millard
at Galiano Restorative Centre, 250-593-2424
or conservancy@galianoconservancy.ca. See
www.galianoconservancy.ca.
Briony Penn PhD is a naturalist,
journalist, artist and
award-winning environmental
educator. She is
the author of The Kids Book
of Geography (Kids Can
Press) and a A Year on the
Wild Side.
44 October 2012 • FOCUS

Focus presents: High Road Clothing
During Mary Desprez’ lengthy run as the general
manager of the Belfry Theatre, she often had
days that included overseeing renovations,
meeting with sponsors, and attending galas in the
evening.“I learned the art of multitasking,” she says,
“But my wardrobe could never keep up.”
“I was always looking for quality clothing that could
transition fast, feel great, look great, and highlight
individual style.”
Finding none, she started on the High Road. Not
only did Mary decide to design the perfect multitasking
garment—one you could wear on your bike and later
dress it up for going to the theatre—she wanted it to
be flattering for all body types.An ambitious goal.
High Road Clothing,her fledgling company,is now
attracting clients from near and far
who appreciate the simple
beauty,versatility and comfort
her designs offer.
After researching fabric possibilities,
Mary settled on 100
percent Merino wool.It’s virtually
the perfect fabric,says Mary.
It has none of the prickle often
associated with wool; in
fact its so soft even babies
can wear it.
Merino is also one
of the most flattering
and forgiving fabrics that
exist. Its ability to drape
the female form without
clinging is extraordinary,
creating the
perfect silhou-
www.focusonline.ca • October 2012
High performance, high style: wherever the road takes you
The many looks of Mary Desprez’ new line of clothing
ette—smoothing over muffintops,love
handles and other bits
we’d rather not accentuate.
Comfort is aided and
abetted by Merino’s
ability to wick moisture
away to prevent
clamminess (it is often
used in high-end athletic
wear because of its breathability)—yet
its complex structure
also repels water; if you are
caught in the rain you’ll keep
dry for awhile.
It’s warm in cool weather
and cooling in warm.And its
renowned antimicrobial properties
mean it is odour
resistant—so wearing the
same garment for long periods
Mary Desprez
isn’t a problem. Merino is also
stain resistant and doesn’t need
to be washed as often as other fabrics.When you
do want to clean it, just toss it into the washer or wash
it by hand in cold water, then hang or lie flat to dry.
This makes it a great travel companion.
“It’s the original ‘intelligent’ fibre,” says Mary,
noting it offers UV protection and is a naturally—in
fact annually—renewable product that biodegrades
at the end of its life.
Merino dyes into clear pure colour and doesn’t
fade. High Road’s basic tunic design now comes in
vibrant tones of red, steel, purple and black. It features
a flattering boat neckline, three-quarter sleeves, and
six-inch side vents for ease of motion.There’s a short
ADVERTISEMENT
sleeve version, as well as a “swing vest” that perfectly
complements the tunic.
“We’ve created the new classic ‘go-to’ piece”says
Mary proudly; “simply add your favourite accessories
and you’re good to go.”
The website makes it easy to shop online,and Hemp
and Company at 1102 Government Street now carries
High Road designs.
Enjoy the High Road!
www.highroadclothing.ca
250-590-0893
45

By the time this issue of
Focus is out I’ll be
counting down the last
two weeks of our eldest
daughter’s year-long adventure
in Southeast Asia (The emphasis
is mine: Who knew that time
could be such a trickster, crawling
through the endless hours of a
loved one’s absence while flying
through life’s usual rigours at
the same time?)
Parenting is such a paradox,
an intense, decades-long process
of both holding on and letting
go. From the start you are the
pillar, the clichéd candle in the
window, but also the one subtly
encouraging independence at
every turn. You watch approvingly
for signs of self-reliance
but are nonetheless rattled when
they tell you to back off so they
can do it their own way. It gets
more challenging during the
teen parade, when you find
yourself needed in two places
at once—up front providing
support and guidance, and at the rear with the proverbial dustpan,
sweeping up the inevitable emotional fallout.
In the end most children grow up to become thoughtful, capable
adults who rightly insist on seeing the world through their own eyes.
For my daughter, that meant stepping out of a well-established comfort
zone to experience life in a completely different setting. Fortunately,
she would be going with her boyfriend, and after months of meticulous
planning they left for the Philippines just after Thanksgiving.
“I shall not worry, I shall not dwell on catastrophe,” I vowed to
myself, even though worry has been a long-time companion,
having wormed its way into my bones at an early age when I lost two
young siblings to a rare cancer, and again in my early 20s when a
farming accident claimed my beloved older brother. Anxiety rises
easily in my throat when the emails dry up and I’m faced with a
raw awareness that I wouldn’t know where to begin searching for my
daughter if she really did vanish.
There were other worries too. One morning she phoned us before
sunrise from a remote Filipino island on a borrowed cell phone, in
pain and fearing that a bladder infection had worked its way into her
kidneys. “There’s no clinic here, no power, and the ferry isn’t coming
for another three days,” she said, her voice betraying a rising panic.
Fortunately we were able to rouse a physician friend on another phone
and he, by talking to her through us, confirmed the infection and
The paradox of parenting
TRUDY DUIVENVOORDEN MITIC
Both mother and daughter survived the trip.
finding balance
prescribed exactly the broadbase
antibiotic she happened
to be carrying in her medical
kit. She emailed hours later
to say that she was feeling
much better; by then my own
nerves had pretty much calmed
down as well.
They spent Christmas in
Singapore and in January arrived
in Cambodia where she spotted
a job in her own profession and
landed it, “just for the experience.”
They settled into a
Spartan apartment and plunged
wholeheartedly into total cultural
immersion. They travelled on
the weekends and made many
friends. They also shrugged off
the odd intestinal ailment and
hair-raising experience—what
I know about these is probably
the censored version.
Throughout their travels,
the photos and insightful
writing have reflected their
happiness and heightened
sense of humility and selflessness.
But lately trepidation has also crept in, about coming home and
dreading the anticipated struggle to find a revised niche in an old
landscape. I’m not surprised. I know she’s looking forward to
apple cider, knit sweaters, autumn colours, organic produce, clean
air, clean streets, her piano and her bike. But I also know she’ll
have trouble with the way we carelessly take our largesse for granted,
something that didn’t sit well with her even before she left.
For me it’s very straightforward: I’ve missed her more than I could
have imagined—the whole family has. I’m proud of her and can’t
wait to see her again.
I know the tectonics of my parenting role are about to shift again
to reflect our evolving history and story. Now she’ll be the sage, brimming
with new wisdom, and I’ll be the student, eager to learn every
lesson she offers. Still, my candle of support will remain on the window
sill. I expect she’ll be happy to see it there.
Writer Trudy Duivenvoorden Mitic would like (with
tongue in cheek) to assure all of her daughter's friends
that she’ll eventually get around to sharing her.
46 October 2012 • FOCUS
ILLUSTRATION: APRIL CAVERHILL

Focus presents: All Organized Storage
Are you having problems finding things when
you need them? Do you have limited storage
space? Maybe you have downsized and
are feeling your new space is too small? Are you
building or renovating? Or maybe you just want to
make the most efficient use of your current storage
space? Do you love being organized?
If you answered yes to any of these questions,
All Organized Storage on Tennyson Avenue is the
store for you.Offering a wide selection of solutions
for your storage challenges,from design and instal- Janet Young
lation of complete closet organizing systems to
do-it-yourself systems and organizing accessories for all areas of your home,
you’ll find unique ways to get organized.You will also be amazed at how beautiful
that can look and feel.
Since 1997, Janet Young, the owner of All Organized Storage, has established
herself as Victoria’s “organization authority.”She believes that adequate,functional
storage is the key to reducing clutter in the home.Her expertise as a Trained Professional
Organizer, along with the comprehensive product lines she carries, can help you
convert a kitchen, laundry, bathroom, bedroom or garage/workshop into an attractive,
high-functioning oasis of peace, order and efficiency.
“With smaller homes and downsizing, as well as the explosion of consumerism,
we need to maximize the storage capacity of the storage we have,” says Janet.
“Without proper storage you cannot be organized.”
Janet sees closets as the foundation of good organization,and over her 14 years
in business she has developed an extensive line of premium quality organizing
systems—including locally manufactured wood closets, a sleek modern adjustable
German-made modular organization system, and BC-made melamine systems, as
www.focusonline.ca • October 2012
Showroom and organizing store offers inspiration to get organized
Custom made cherry wood storage unit with fudge stain
Photo:Tony Bounsall
ADVERTISEMENT
Just a few of the organizing solutions available at All Organized Storage
well as slatted wood and chrome.The chrome shelving units are easy to set up and
come in a four-shelf pre-pack for the 48-inch wide units as well as individual components
to build your own units in a variety of widths (18, 24, 36, 48 inches).
Janet’s experience helps guide clients as to what works best in different situations
and how to blend them to custom design a closet that works for individual
needs. Many of Janet’s clients have started with one room and then relied on her
services for other projects, as well as referred their friends.
At her retail store you’ll find a full showroom of closet systems along with other
rooms chock-full of premium quality products and accessories, many not found
elsewhere in Western Canada.As a retail distributor for Richelieu Hardware, the
largest Canada wholesaler of hardware, she can also order custom hardware for
kitchens and closets previously only available to cabinet shops.
Among her many solutions to increase storage and accessibility for your kitchen
are different types of rollout shelving, utensil organizers, drawer trays, behind-thedoor
pantry organizers, and stacking shelves.
The mother of two young adults says,“I don’t see myself as selling but serving
and problem solving. I don’t have just one product line but rather I offer a large
range of quality products to solve a variety of storage problems to fit an individual’s
style and budget.I pride myself on offering unique solutions not found elsewhere.”
Visit her store to explore a wide range of organizing solutions as well as practical
gifts for those who have everything—but can’t find things!
And be sure to look for Janet and All Organized Storage at the Fall Home Expo
at Pearkes Community Centre Centre October 19-21.
All Organized Storage
3370 Tennyson Avenue (near UpTown)
Showroom hours: Mon–Fri, 11–5; Sat (except long weekends) 11–3 pm
See our website for the new online catalogue
250-590-6328 • www.AllOrganizedStorage.ca
47

On Friday night, she’ll present a program
of Bach, Brahms and Beethoven.
A lifelong music lover. Maria never missed a classical concert.
The works of the old masters made her heart soar. Other
hearts will soar because Maria included a bequest to the
symphony in her will.
Thanks to Maria, her beloved orchestra won’t miss a beat.
Include your favourite cause in your will or estate plan. Contact
a charitable organization, lawyer, financial advisor or local
LEAVE A LEGACY program to learn how.
Consider a gift in your will for your favourite charities.
Alan Rycroft, 250-414-4781 or Barbara Toller, 250-721-6207
WWW.LEAVE A LEGACY.CA/VI