tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-307103872024-03-17T19:10:15.040-07:00A Closer Look: Jody PatersonI'm a communications strategist and writer with a journalism background, a drifter's spirit, and a growing sense of alarm at where this world is going. I am happiest when writing pieces that identify, contextualize and background societal problems big and small in hopes of helping us at least slow our deepening crises. Jody Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18038299584414910712noreply@blogger.comBlogger791125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30710387.post-85519151808504287822024-03-16T10:40:00.000-07:002024-03-16T10:40:46.558-07:00Life sentence for victims of intimate partner violence<p>Sharing an opinion piece I wrote this week that was <a href="https://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/comment-when-victims-of-violence-are-injured-for-life-8453872" target="_blank">published today in the Times Colonist</a>, sparked by the sentencing of a serial assaulter of women. </p><p><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Tyler Mark Denniston is going to jail. And on the one hand,
that’s a win in the world of intimate partner violence, where 80 per cent of
the crimes aren’t even reported to police and a conviction is far from certain.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">But the impact of the Greater Victoria man’s beatings will be
felt by the women he attacked for so much longer than he’ll be in jail. That’s
not just about having to live with the trauma - <a href="https://boardvoice.ca/advocacy-on-brain-injury-caused-by-intimate-partner-violence/" target="_blank">it’s about brain injury</a>. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">People experiencing intimate partner violence end up with a
brain injury (IPV-BI) from that violence as frequently as 90 per cent of the
time. A majority of them, in fact, end
up with multiple brain injuries, because intimate partner violence is rarely
something that only happens once.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Denniston was given a four-year jail term this week for
attacking his then-girlfriend in 2018 and 2019. But he has a history of major
assaults of previous girlfriends before that, all of a type most associated
with brain injury. He strangles his intimate partners. Hits them in the head.
Smashes their heads into furniture. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">One of his victims said in an impact statement at
Denniston’s trial that since her abuse, she has become someone she doesn’t
recognize. She has trouble falling asleep, has terrible nightmares when she
does, and is experiencing periods of explosive anger, panic and suicidal
thoughts.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Whether she knows it or not, that could be because she is
now living with a brain injury on top of all the trauma she has endured. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">But if she’s like the vast majority of victims of intimate
partner violence, her brain injury will go undiagnosed and unsupported. IPV-BI
is such a newly emerging concept that even victims themselves don’t think about
whether they’ve incurred a brain injury. The impact of their untreated brain
injury can put them at risk of losing their job, their housing, their kids and
so much more, and they won’t even know why.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">It seems unbelievable that a woman who is beaten by her
partner violently enough to incur a brain injury could suddenly find herself on
the precipice of profound poverty, homelessness, child-protection involvement
and social isolation as a result of the assault. Surely services are there to
support her, or she could move to the head of the line for housing and supports
to keep her safe?<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Unfortunately, there are no designated services at any level
– in BC or Canada – specifically for people experiencing IPV-BI. While some
bright spots are emerging within Island Health around piloting occupational
therapy assessments as a means of helping victims get past diagnosis barriers, that
work is in its earliest days.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">More broadly, there are no guidelines for health
professionals to follow to ascertain IPV-BI-caused injury. No overarching plan.
No targeted funding. No consensus as to what should be done, or data being
collected.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">And if work on all of that got going tomorrow, there are
other hurdles. Start with the fact that only one in five women beaten by their
partners even report the assault to police, rendering most victims of IPV-BI completely
invisible in our systems.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Add in the stigma, lack of witnesses and fear factor for the
victim around doing anything that might spark a whole other assault, and it’s
not surprising that the majority of women aren’t even going to visit the doctor
about that hit to the head they took, or after they’ve regained consciousness
from being strangled. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">And even when they do seek medical attention, there are no
provincially funded community services for them unless their concussion shows
up on an MRI scan. Which is not often the case, because it’s an injury that
doesn’t show up well on an MRI, and is much better diagnosed through its impact
on a woman’s ability to function. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">At any rate, unless a woman can pay for that assessment of
her functioning, and the services she needs as a result of what’s discovered, she’s
never going to get that support anyway. It was nice to see IPV-BI get some
solid mentions last fall in the BC government’s <i>Safe and Supported </i>action plan against gender-based violence, but
we are so badly overdue for some genuine action on this appalling state of
affairs.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">So yes, Tyler Mark Denniston is going to jail. But he’ll be
out in not much more than a couple of years if he behaves himself, and his life
will carry on pretty much the way it always has. His victims, on the other
hand, have been handed a life sentence. <o:p></o:p></p><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><i>Jody Paterson is a
lobbyist and advocate on the issue of intimate partner violence and brain
injury on behalf of The Cridge Centre for the Family and the Board Voice
Society of BC.<o:p></o:p></i></p><p><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Jody Paterson has been observing the world through writing since 1982.</div>Jody Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509892768463393937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30710387.post-80989356349179012262024-03-15T13:21:00.000-07:002024-03-15T13:21:35.508-07:00How racist are our roots? So racist<p>My new hobby of diving into ancestry information brings me many treasurers, including these four 1924 Chinese Immigration Act documents of my uncles and aunt back when they were little kids. They all just showed up recently in my Ancestry.com "hints," so I'm guessing it was a release triggered by 100 years having passed.</p><p>My Romanian grandmother had married a Chinese man in 1910 Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, which must have been some kind of crazy act at the time. Their children were thus half-Chinese, and presumably had to be documented via these forms once the Act took effect in 1923.</p><p>Canada had ended the Head Tax that year and replaced it with the Chinese Immigration Act, which would block virtually all immigrants from China from coming to Canada for the next 24 years. From <a href="https://pier21.ca/research/immigration-history/chinese-immigration-act-1923#:~:text=Summary,acceptable%20categories%20of%20Chinese%20immigrants.">the Canadian Museum of Immigration</a> website:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><i>The Chinese Immigration Act of 1923 virtually restricted all Chinese immigration to Canada by narrowly defining the acceptable categories of Chinese immigrants. While the entrance duty requirement was repealed, admissible Chinese immigrants were limited to diplomats and government representatives, merchants, children born in Canada who had left for educational or other purposes, and students while attending university or college. Between 1923 and 1946, it is estimated that only 15 Chinese immigrants gained entry into Canada.</i></blockquote><p>But hey, my people sure did make up for lost time. In the 2021 Canadian census, more than 1.7 million people reported being of Chinese origin. Take that, racists.<br /></p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGEwjvJ2OjvIKK_AJQTeJm0eP-u8iDp4cqzAg_CC4rUGMU27uOuleBBLSllzYTH06QbPCjcrOKgKkJCWwUHIDL4vTaNefE8T9zf2Asd18rZIMqzycS0nvP_9OfCmEmbqjdEzyOUqG06dN9MNj_VLRq1u1BlpJXJvFcMlWDaaWDRox2P-FOSrCo9w/s1005/David%20Edward%20Chow%20Chinese%20Immigration%20Act.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1005" data-original-width="758" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGEwjvJ2OjvIKK_AJQTeJm0eP-u8iDp4cqzAg_CC4rUGMU27uOuleBBLSllzYTH06QbPCjcrOKgKkJCWwUHIDL4vTaNefE8T9zf2Asd18rZIMqzycS0nvP_9OfCmEmbqjdEzyOUqG06dN9MNj_VLRq1u1BlpJXJvFcMlWDaaWDRox2P-FOSrCo9w/s320/David%20Edward%20Chow%20Chinese%20Immigration%20Act.jpg" width="241" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUix_m9cykji-SFtrn7zcdPhL3MlbkhmoFMknabFr8NNG8VeuVag9jMBBmUsyIuKyn4UTRq8KeCYEgRP7ukBJd9MJMDix-k6V0Q-fnWSIc8jfbd728Is0aA9XnyhCfZbr6qX7uN0uiGeIa16Ia45AqOJIsEWW7qZeils3lhBfjL6XCNX0aUvs4qA/s1002/Katherine%20Grace%20Chow%20Chinese%20Immigration%20Act.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1002" data-original-width="748" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUix_m9cykji-SFtrn7zcdPhL3MlbkhmoFMknabFr8NNG8VeuVag9jMBBmUsyIuKyn4UTRq8KeCYEgRP7ukBJd9MJMDix-k6V0Q-fnWSIc8jfbd728Is0aA9XnyhCfZbr6qX7uN0uiGeIa16Ia45AqOJIsEWW7qZeils3lhBfjL6XCNX0aUvs4qA/s320/Katherine%20Grace%20Chow%20Chinese%20Immigration%20Act.jpg" width="239" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9VmHEtuiYXVXLb1bp2rY4X-VXLS3FGQh0fK6UsgH9aL2X8ix5Y_l_OYUdM0v-p0eo95sg52jAf7DpoVXO3w-Tv-CKYl9Cfm5ZYsqp2Ot0GARIVB730RTpB8lIRzkAvFNZGi1NNYJRGvp54pWrrogGBb5FH7CNIMOlE5PMHBei_7161zUp8y86Xw/s1005/Peter%20Shaw%20Chow%20Chinese%20Immigration%20Act.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1005" data-original-width="735" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9VmHEtuiYXVXLb1bp2rY4X-VXLS3FGQh0fK6UsgH9aL2X8ix5Y_l_OYUdM0v-p0eo95sg52jAf7DpoVXO3w-Tv-CKYl9Cfm5ZYsqp2Ot0GARIVB730RTpB8lIRzkAvFNZGi1NNYJRGvp54pWrrogGBb5FH7CNIMOlE5PMHBei_7161zUp8y86Xw/s320/Peter%20Shaw%20Chow%20Chinese%20Immigration%20Act.jpg" width="234" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjNbefU76eW3EZmZ0KE0mM_8wPyAZFhbmtWwI93_ntQ1UBrZxdabeGfQ3JS_stNX4qIEt0l78WO7dbJjAab-3aAOj5Nlb7FLmLRd7w-rBsPBiauS5vX0rtxLbFX9CR8y9Q7MeJ8UI0V1rhsO0STyVhuT_FtQfe8kCd33URGLmk0gUSYKQv1XRAKA/s1003/William%20Solomon%20Chow%20Chinese%20Immigration%20Act.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1003" data-original-width="759" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjNbefU76eW3EZmZ0KE0mM_8wPyAZFhbmtWwI93_ntQ1UBrZxdabeGfQ3JS_stNX4qIEt0l78WO7dbJjAab-3aAOj5Nlb7FLmLRd7w-rBsPBiauS5vX0rtxLbFX9CR8y9Q7MeJ8UI0V1rhsO0STyVhuT_FtQfe8kCd33URGLmk0gUSYKQv1XRAKA/s320/William%20Solomon%20Chow%20Chinese%20Immigration%20Act.jpg" width="242" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Jody Paterson has been observing the world through writing since 1982.</div>Jody Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509892768463393937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30710387.post-87932317217778679872024-01-29T16:48:00.000-08:002024-01-30T06:51:05.976-08:00The icky truth about international students in Canada<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL6XZKl_yKm8Gwy7Q_AM-tjmbRYZbWsX0m-pk5hMQjqf8YH9TEanWpuPzU8MtS1SNuZB2rmadVTir84BnMb0Wj71qE18wx9PNFBkjurPgWKn0nqkuueg3IOeEGuH0ZYGL8206Iiv353KWTcp5QAlS_Kpa1TcZj60trwejU7wCN-K_jMlhndcrwWw/s1280/painting-4915684_1280.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="905" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL6XZKl_yKm8Gwy7Q_AM-tjmbRYZbWsX0m-pk5hMQjqf8YH9TEanWpuPzU8MtS1SNuZB2rmadVTir84BnMb0Wj71qE18wx9PNFBkjurPgWKn0nqkuueg3IOeEGuH0ZYGL8206Iiv353KWTcp5QAlS_Kpa1TcZj60trwejU7wCN-K_jMlhndcrwWw/w226-h320/painting-4915684_1280.jpg" width="226" /></a></div><br />Opportunistic Canadian training institutes that over-promise and under-deliver are no doubt a problem for international students in Canada. <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-blocks-new-post-secondaries-international-enrolment-1.7098044" target="_blank">The BC government's pledge this week</a> to get to the bottom of that could be helpful.<p></p><p>But if we're thinking it's just Bob's Shady Career College for Suckers that's the problem, take a look at the tuition fees that mainstream universities are charging for international students. </p><p>It helps explain why so many people seem to be freaking out at a shift in the political winds around international students.</p><p>It's not because anyone's got a big heart for shielding international students from a shoddy education, or keeping more spaces open for Canadian students. It's about post-secondaries and employers that have been dining out on foreign students for many years, and can't bear to give that up.</p><p>The Tyee had <a href="https://thetyee.ca/News/2024/01/15/Cash-Cows-Cheap-Labour-International-Students/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=editorial" target="_blank">a great read</a> on that earlier this month, appropriately headlined "Cash Cows and Cheap Labour." </p>Not only do post-secondaries bring in far more money from foreign students than domestic students, the high cost of living in Canada ensures that those students will have to look for work while studying here. That's great news for employers looking to fill low-end jobs. <div><br /></div><div>Langara College Prof. Jenny Francis told the Tyee that after studying the issues for foreign students in Canada, she'd concluded that they are "the new temporary foreign worker, basically."<div><p>And while the provincial and federal governments seem to want to point the finger for exploitive tuition fees at <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/provinces-cracking-down-on-private-institutions-1.7091194#:~:text=Federal%20Immigration%20Minister%20Marc%20Miller,diploma%20equivalent%20of%20puppy%20mills.%22" target="_blank">"the diploma equivalent of puppy mills,"</a> they'd be wise to take a look at what the higher-status universities are up to as well. <br /></p><p>Let's start with the University of BC, where the cost of completing an undergraduate program is typically more than eight times higher for an international student than a domestic one. The Medical Laboratory Science program, for instance, costs $7,500 for a Canadian student, while a foreign student will shell out $61,000. </p><p>Need an applied science degree in engineering? That'll be $15,000 if you're Canadian, and $60,000 if you're not. Same with a commerce degree. </p><p>Not surprisingly, the number of international students at UBC climbed from 8,685 in the 2012-13 fiscal year
to 17,040 in 2021-22. If one international student pays as much tuition as eight Canadians, who can say no?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p>At the University of Victoria, the per-credit cost is five times higher for international students than for domestic students - $1,981 compared to $411. At any point where there's an additional fee, international students pay much more for that as well: $990 to challenge a course as compared to $205; $1,500 to challenge a co-op work term versus $776. </p><p>Even the mandatory acceptance fee that has to be paid just to get started at UVic is three times higher for foreign students, coming in at $750.</p><p>Clearly, the primary responsibility for figuring out whether you can afford to study in Canada has to reside with the foreign student. It's up to them to do their research and make sure they're not signing up with Bob's Shady Career College. It's up to them to bring a healthy level of distrust for any recruiter who makes it sound like studying in Canada is a ticket to permanent residency. (In BC, less than a third of foreign undergraduates land permanent residency within five years of graduating.)</p><p>But if foreign students feel like they're doing their best on all of that yet still feeling like there's some plot afoot to take advantage of them, they're right. </p><p>Canada planned things to go exactly the way they're going. The use of foreign students as cash cows and cheap labour was all carefully laid out in the 2013 federal report, <a href="https://www.international.gc.ca/education/assets/pdfs/ies_report_rapport_sei-eng.pdf" target="_blank">"International Education: A Key Driver of Canada's Future Prosperity." </a></p><p>"We must recognize the immediate benefits of international education for Canada, which span economic
growth, job creation, and increased exports and investment," noted the report. "These benefits are distributed across all of Canada,
from coast to coast to coast."</p><p>And wow, did post-secondaries embrace the challenge. There were 239,000 international students in Canada at the time of that report, with a goal to double that by 2023. Instead, the number of students had quadrupled to a million by last year.</p><p>The Tyee notes a 2019 report to the BC government that highlighted the $3.5 billion in tuition fees that international students were bringing in that year. If they were an export commodity, said the report, they would be the third most valuable in the province, after fuel and timber.</p><p>Apparently a number of educators interviewed for the Tyee's story felt uncomfortable with that comparison. But that was exactly what our governments set out to do with the massive expansion in international students: Create cash cows and a new pool of cheap labour. </p><p>I haven't seen anyone try to put an international-development-and-global-goodwill spin on any of this, and at least that's a relief. The only foreign students who could possibly afford these tuition fees come from wealthy families. Nobody's even pretending this is about supporting citizens from challenged countries toward a better future for themselves and their homeland. </p><p>But trying to present this issue as being about "a few bad apples" is just plain wrong. We've been taking advantage of foreign students for at least a decade, and now we're a little embarrassed that we let it go this far. Just say it. </p><p><br /></p></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Jody Paterson has been observing the world through writing since 1982.</div>Jody Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509892768463393937noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30710387.post-3758013643593473672024-01-27T14:31:00.000-08:002024-01-28T13:58:30.168-08:00Grandmothers, I see you<br /><br /><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGBWhFGF0Rgw_kBDIBENVb3zFSUhvoXKFEXWEie2MI5wP4xZFHvKyIIjXZ6MKmRRwXKZH61QazYnDyIKiMHPFlmYsV9pLLO7SRqETA7iZxCMbpUKDZmWj-Iobhbp_ASBKGFl493j_Um5frY_d6-J54s2DTNCHwd89WYSbu65_QOeCpHfxaNtjmig/s1691/wedding%20photo.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1691" data-original-width="1073" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGBWhFGF0Rgw_kBDIBENVb3zFSUhvoXKFEXWEie2MI5wP4xZFHvKyIIjXZ6MKmRRwXKZH61QazYnDyIKiMHPFlmYsV9pLLO7SRqETA7iZxCMbpUKDZmWj-Iobhbp_ASBKGFl493j_Um5frY_d6-J54s2DTNCHwd89WYSbu65_QOeCpHfxaNtjmig/s320/wedding%20photo.JPG" width="203" /></a></div>I’ve been chasing my three grandmothers through history of late, awed by their resiliency.<br /><br />Their early adulthoods were in the 1910s. Then and now, it was a hard life for anyone without money. Young women in Canada in my grandmothers’ era had little choice but to attach themselves to a man for economic survival. <br /><br />I see that truth in my 17-year-old Romanian grandmother’s sad eyes in her wedding-day photo, married off rather scandalously to a Chinese man in Moose Jaw, Sask. while the rest of her family hived off to Alberta with one less mouth to feed. <br /><br />I feel it in my heart for my 27-year-old grandmother, leaving children and home country behind to travel to Canada for a better future with a man married to her sister just months before, only to be abruptly paired with her after sister and babe died in childbirth. </div><div><br /></div><div>I’m overwhelmed by it as I learn the tragic story of my third grandmother, whose intellectual disability left her like a lamb to the wolves. <br /><br />It’s still tough to be a woman, but it was brutal back in those years. Laws and processes weren’t just ineffective, they were actively discriminatory, with a particular emphasis on rendering women economically dependent and unable to prevent pregnancy. (Today, we call that “traditional values.”) <br /><br />No woman coming from an impoverished background in those years had a remote expectation of a good, safe or predictable life. My grandmothers had baby after baby, and for the most part lived hard in the poor parts of town with difficult men who scratched out a living.<br /><br />I see my young grandmothers emerging these days from the censuses and various documents that an Ancestry subscription can bring you – brief glimpses of people captured at a moment in time, with the amateur family sleuth's task to then knit those moments into something more substantial. <br /><br />I’ve got a newspaper archive subscription, too, but people like my grandmothers don't tend to make the newspapers. Canada’s community newspaper archives are treasure troves of local history, but women generally show up only at their weddings, when they’re dead, attending occasional society teas if they're a wealthier sort, or hidden under their husband’s names (“Mrs. Richard Booth”). <br /><br />Grandmothers can also end up neglected on the family-tree side of things, I’m finding. A lot of people tend to do trees following out the male line – the surname – while the other half of the genetic and social equation goes wanting. The tradition of women taking the man’s surname when they marry adds mud to the water.</div><div><br />But the story takes shape as you follow out the threads, and the tiny bits weave into bigger bits. And slowly, the haze lifts and there they are: the grandmothers. <br /><br />Mine emerge as children and young women, glimpsed in a moment of their regular life that was captured in the public record. Here they are living with their parents and siblings at this address or that; here they are being baptized, getting married, waiting at the border. <br /><br />I see two of them getting on boats that will bring them to Canada, but am left to imagine how they ever got to that boat in the first place. <br /><br />I see another one living what I can only hope was a sheltered, good life with her aging parents in Ontario, until one parent died and the other one moved away, and she was married off and moved to Saskatoon.<br /><br />All of my grandmothers ended up widows. Having lived for most of their lives as “housewives” raising long lines of children, they faced even more poverty in their final years unless family members stepped up. <br /><br />My one grandmother did fall in love again after her husband died, but she couldn’t marry a second time without losing the small veterans’ pension she received owing to her first husband's military service. Then her common-law husband died, too, and she was alone. <br /><br />She and another grandmother frequently lived for extended periods of time at our house, staying at the houses of their various children on an ever-changing schedule, packed off here or there when somebody grew weary of their presence. If only I had thought to ask all the questions that burn in my mind these days. Grandmother, how did you endure?</div><div><br />My third grandmother had the saddest of endings, institutionalized and surrounded by people in her last days who knew so little of her that her birthplace and mother’s name are listed as “unknowns” on her death certificate. She was buried without headstone or marker in a pauper’s grave in Toronto. <br /><br />(The search for her, so invisible and forgotten, has taught me that there are a lot of exciting ways to follow out an ancestral mystery these days. But be careful what you wish for.) <br /><br />I thank my grandmothers for giving their lives to generations of women who they will never know. I hope that they’d be happy to see us now, earning money and no longer at the mercy of our sex lives, at least for the most part. <br /><br />Men still rule the world, of course. But at least there’s public discourse now – and even an effective use of law from time to time - around women not being abused, exploited, underpaid, in harm’s way, alone, discriminated against, etc. There was none of that for my grandmothers. <br /><br /></div><div>Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been outraged on others’ behalf for all the grand unfairness in this world. I now see that my grandmothers have perhaps given me that fire. Their stories give me more energy for the fight.<br /><br />How much better would their lives be if my grandmothers were coming of age now? Well, that’s an interesting question to reflect on. <br /><br />Two of my grandmothers were from impoverished immigrant families desperate to find work in a strange new land. The other had an intellectual disability at a time when people like her either died on the street or were locked up. <br /><br />A hundred years have gone by since then, and the changes in society have been extraordinary. But life is still far from good for people like my grandmothers.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Jody Paterson has been observing the world through writing since 1982.</div>Jody Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509892768463393937noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30710387.post-57800404286269737622024-01-04T18:27:00.000-08:002024-01-04T19:02:21.993-08:00Jan. 5, 1974: A wedding story<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0J7mMkK6khgJ-1GE5i65o3NtUEsvOeH9m7PMxDn37hrBkIJZcUYa24cUQnCAN1bK9Dk9fSMCBqOGkhrTRZYnd8Aq_ntC4YInOtOF1vsu8xqdBs0f0sYW4Zk5dLeI8MhRYZCbDGv-eb73Lvvyh7E-aWmyAQWQmfzlx8cnEaLNq41UVw7s05AgReg/s1488/IMG_0014.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1488" data-original-width="1000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0J7mMkK6khgJ-1GE5i65o3NtUEsvOeH9m7PMxDn37hrBkIJZcUYa24cUQnCAN1bK9Dk9fSMCBqOGkhrTRZYnd8Aq_ntC4YInOtOF1vsu8xqdBs0f0sYW4Zk5dLeI8MhRYZCbDGv-eb73Lvvyh7E-aWmyAQWQmfzlx8cnEaLNq41UVw7s05AgReg/w269-h400/IMG_0014.JPG" width="269" /></a></div><p></p><br />On this night 50 years ago, I was preparing for my wedding the next day. I was barely two weeks past my 17th birthday.<br /><br />What was on my mind that evening? No recollection. I know I wasn’t scared or sad – then and now, I’ve always been up for an adventure, and I’d been eager to get out of my parents’ house for at least a couple of years by that point. (They were good people, but I so desperately wanted independence.)<br /><br />My memories of the weeks around the wedding are like snapshots more than anything. I remember a glimpse of this, a few seconds of that. It’s never big stuff I recall, just these quirky little bits that linger.<br /><br />Me enjoying the fuss of all the big community bridal showers that a girl got when she married a Cumberland boy in those years. Cakes shaped and iced like a Barbie doll's ball gown. Me in the mirror for the first time in my wedding dress, appreciating its low cut. The purple everything in the honeymoon suite of the Port Augusta Motel.<br /><br />Us splurging for two nights in the Bayshore Hotel in Vancouver for a honeymoon, strolling past the fur-coat stores and the fancy art and eating steak in Trader Vic’s. I’d never known such luxury. Me sitting topless at the little table in our oceanfront room, carefully colouring a new doodle art that my husband had gotten me. <br /><br />I smoked back then, and if I’m being honest, one of the things that excited me most about getting married was that I would now be free to smoke whenever I wanted. It’s that kind of memory that brings home to me what a kid I was. Not one clue about the actual realities of being a wife - and soon enough, a mom. I was just thinking yay, now I get to smoke. <br /><br />I suppose that marrying while still a child would seem like a hard start to adulthood to a lot of people. But was it? Looking back over the rich 50 years that I’ve had since then, what would I do differently? Who would I have been if I hadn’t been the girl making adult decisions at 17? How many of the amazing experiences that I’ve had were made possible because I <i>was</i> that girl? <br /><br />I didn’t get to do that young-person-backpacking thing, and I admit that I probably would have loved that experience. I also have a very poignant memory of observing the teen scene in Penticton on one long-ago summer holiday with a baby on my hip, and feeling such longing to have had the chance to be the girl in the cool car cruising with all the boys, good tunes on the radio. <br /><br />But 50 years on, I know that it all comes to you sooner or later anyway. Whatever you missed here, you’ll make up there. (OK, maybe not the Penticton teen scene. But you’ll get some version of being the cool, wild girl at some point in your life, if that’s what you want.) <br /><br />Spoiler alert: The marriage won't work out for those children standing up together in Courtenay’s United Church on Jan. 5, 1974, Rev. Ray Brandon presiding. There will be no special anniversary cake, no gold mylar balloon in the shape of 50. <br /><br />Though it’s not like divorce is the end of the story. We had children, and then they grew up and had children of their own. We are attached for a lifetime and beyond by those dear creatures who we both love without measure. My ex-husband is literally the only person in the world who loves my children with as much passion as I do. That is an unbreakable bond. <br /><br />Tonight, 50 years ago. Did I have butterflies? Did I hang out with my besties, all of whom were in the wedding? Did I play 45s on the stereo in my room and celebrate my last night in the family home? If my mom were still alive, she’d recall every detail of it. “Oh, Jody, how can you not remember?” she’d scold. <br /><br />Just two days ago, I remembered the sparkly blue dress that my mother wore to my wedding. Three years later, I’d wear it myself to a New Year’s Eve dance at the CRI Hall, when I was really pregnant. I danced so much that our daughter was born three weeks early. <br /><br />Tomorrow, 50 years ago. The bridesmaids will wear royal blue, and the groomsmen will be in rented matching tuxes with that kind of flocked pattern that was popular in a wedding tux back then. There will be candles in the church, and my dad will have to work hard to hide his stricken look, though it shows up in some of the photos. <br /><br />And just like that, I will be an adult. And it will all turn out OK.<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Jody Paterson has been observing the world through writing since 1982.</div>Jody Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509892768463393937noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30710387.post-69248056017667773312023-12-12T17:22:00.000-08:002023-12-13T08:02:18.622-08:00In case you were wondering: A surfeit of social realities to explain (a bit) about how we got here<p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8mETlbUUJqceOs9CxhgtGUv7RdN92vwJInVSKwQ8qgyYzLCrSsJgUsNrB5euvlj9Gg_aiDolJudVyGUB2zu4kW5agWsDuCcFTJGVq9qHSG_RQU-goxfrAm97pxGzEsjyHidxmkMKpfU-DmfKrmtWE8P9-p21Xj4epkUI6rO_fLVIbVfbBAAiKxQ/s640/classic-car-574869_640.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="427" data-original-width="640" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8mETlbUUJqceOs9CxhgtGUv7RdN92vwJInVSKwQ8qgyYzLCrSsJgUsNrB5euvlj9Gg_aiDolJudVyGUB2zu4kW5agWsDuCcFTJGVq9qHSG_RQU-goxfrAm97pxGzEsjyHidxmkMKpfU-DmfKrmtWE8P9-p21Xj4epkUI6rO_fLVIbVfbBAAiKxQ/w339-h227/classic-car-574869_640.jpg" width="339" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span face=""Open Sans", system-ui" style="background-color: white; color: #191b26; text-align: start;">Image by </span><a href="https://pixabay.com/users/taken-336382/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=574869" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191b26; font-family: "Open Sans", system-ui; text-align: start;">Taken</a><span face=""Open Sans", system-ui" style="background-color: white; color: #191b26; text-align: start;"> from </span><a href="https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=574869" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191b26; font-family: "Open Sans", system-ui; text-align: start;">Pixabay</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br />I haven't worked as a full-time journalist for almost 20 years now, but people still pay me to go find things out. I have a habit of finding way more information than the person who hired me wanted, the curse of a curious nature. <p></p><p>Here's some of the surplus I've accumulated recently from some of that work, all of it related to the multiple layers of social crises we're seeing emerging in virtually every BC community. I drive along 900-block Pandora Street sometimes and am at a loss to grasp just what the hell is happening to us, but when I consider all the snippets of social tragedy below, it makes a very, very sad kind of sense. </p><p>For instance:</p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">We shut down institutions and never really replaced them with much<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Riverview Hospital used to be BC’s largest mental institution,
housing 4,300 people at its peak in the 1950s. But by the early 1990s, locking up people deemed "mentally disordered" for indefinite periods of time, with or without their consent, had fallen from favour. Riverview had been scaled back to 1,000 beds, and plans to replace institutional care with community care were
in their final stages. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But from the start, the political motivations for closing
Riverview were as much about cost savings as they were about philosophical
shifts in how best to support people with mental illness. Between 1994 and
1998, spending on in-hospital psychiatric units was cut almost in half, and spending on community services for mental health was reduced as well, despite years of political promises to the contrary. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Riverview was permanently closed in 2012. The long-abandoned promise of community services to replace what Riverview once provided isn't even talked about anymore. We are not going to return to the days of huge institutions, and that's a good thing, but there must be some middle ground between that and the modern-day reality of abandoning people with lifelong psychiatric health issues to figure out a hard life on their own. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As for BC hospitals' psychiatric units, people pass through them so quickly nowadays that their mental health crisis doesn't even have a chance to stabilize. People used to stay an average 36 days in BC psych units before being discharged, but that fell to 15 days a number of years ago, and 14 days now. Psychiatric admissions between 2005 and 2017 increased 29 per cent, with no
increase in beds<a href="file:///C:/Users/jodyp/Documents/Contract%20work%202023/Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023/DRAFT%20-%20Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023%20report.docx#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[3]</span></span></span></a>.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">People with developmental disabilities used to have to live in large institutions in BC as well back in the day. But deinstitutionalization happened for them around the same time as Riverview was being phased out. </p><p class="MsoNormal">That population did seem to get better community care for a number of years after institutions like Tranquille, Glendale and Woodlands closed. But over time, the safety net has frayed substantially for them, too. It's not uncommon now to see people with developmental disabilities among the homeless. </p><p class="MsoNormal">That is such a devastating ending for all the families who fought so hard in the 1960s-70s for the right for their children not to be locked away in institutions. Be careful what you wish for.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">We are drowning in poisoned drugs<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">BC has always had lots and lots of illicit drugs. But what we've got going on in 2023 looks nothing like the
relatively straight-forward drug scene of years past. With fentanyl, carfentanil, benzodiazapines and all kinds of other weird additives stirred into the mix now, people are getting sick in entirely new ways, and the death toll from toxic drugs is staggering. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Since BC declared a public emergency in 2016, there have been 13,000 deaths from toxic drugs in the province, and no end in sight. Annual toxic drug deaths
have increased almost ten-fold in the decade from 2012 to 2022, from 270 to
2,342. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">For those who overdose on an opiate, prescription drugs like naloxone can save lives when injected immediately after an otherwise-fatal overdose. But people
revived after an overdose are at high risk of having incurred a brain injury
during the minutes when their brain was not receiving oxygen, and suddenly, a crisis of brain injury among people brought back to life after an overdose is emerging as a new (and almost completely unserved) concern.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Our governments quit building affordable housing</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We all know there's a housing crisis going on. The increasing use of housing as an investment is often cited as a primary driver. But as stats from BC's rental scene make clear, an equally big issue is that nobody has kept up with population growth. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">BC's population grew 34 per cent in the last 30 years. But in that same period, we've added exactly 6,000 more rental units. Our population grew by a third, while the number of rental units increased by a mere five per cent (from 114,129 units to 120,472<a href="file:///C:/Users/jodyp/Documents/Contract%20work%202023/Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023/DRAFT%20-%20Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023%20report.docx#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 15.6933px;">[4]</span></span></span></a>.)</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Equally problematic: Rents that are just so far beyond so many people's ability to afford. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Average rents have increased 250 per cent in the last three decades. But the shelter allowance for those on income assistance was frozen at
$375/month for the last 15 years up until this year’s increase to $500 (which still gets you nothing in any urban area). </p><p class="MsoNormal">Given all of that, it's no surprise that the Lower Mainland's 2023 homeless count noted a 32 per cent rise in homelessness since 2020, with almost 70 per cent homeless for more than a year. We have created a permanent homeless class. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">We do jail differently now, mostly by accident<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Even 15 years ago when the social crisis wasn't quite so obvious, people with mental illness or substance use disorders made up the majority of BC inmates, at 61 per cent. But now, it's almost like jail is the new psych hospital. Three-quarters of inmates now have a diagnosis of mental illness, substance use disorder or both. </p><p class="MsoNormal">They and their fellow inmates churn through the system with unprecedented speed. The median length of stay in a provincial jail these days is 12 days. Almost a third of inmates across Canada <a href="https://www.placetocallhome.ca/stories/083-from-prison-to-homelessness-ending-a-perilous-trajectory" target="_blank">are released from jail into homelessness</a>. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Provincial jail is where you do your time if your sentence is "two years less a day." But the majority of inmates in BC jails don't even have a sentence yet - they're in remand, where a person is held while awaiting trial if bail doesn't work out. People in remand units now account for 67 per cent of inmates in BC jails<a href="file:///C:/Users/jodyp/Documents/Contract%20work%202023/Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023/DRAFT%20-%20Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023%20report.docx#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 15.6933px;">[7]</span></span></span></a>, up 15 per cent from a decade ago and slowly on the rise since the 1980s.</p><p class="MsoNormal">So we have recreated the institution part of Riverview by turning our jails into <i>de facto</i> psych units, but minus the psychiatric services and supports. Things that make you go hmmm.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">We're still so far from doing right by Indigenous people<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Indigenous people are over-represented in virtually every measure that matters for social wellness,
health, safety and well-being. This is particularly true in terms of our jails.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Indigenous
people account for six per cent of BC’s population, but make up more than a
third of people in custody in the province<a href="file:///C:/Users/jodyp/Documents/Contract%20work%202023/Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023/DRAFT%20-%20Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023%20report.docx#_ftn8" name="_ftnref8" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn8;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>.
In 2020-21, the incarceration rate for Indigenous people in BC was 22 in
100,000, compared to 2.3 for non-Indigenous British Columbians. </p><p class="MsoNormal">A staggering 90 per cent of Indigenous people in provincial custody have been diagnosed with a <o:p></o:p>mental health or substance use disorder<a href="file:///C:/Users/jodyp/Documents/Contract%20work%202023/Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023/DRAFT%20-%20Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023%20report.docx#_ftn9" name="_ftnref9" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 15.6933px;">[9]</span></span></span></a>. Grimmer still: A Statistics Canada study released this year found
that in the years 2019-21, almost one in 10 Indigenous men in Canada between the ages of 25-34
experienced incarceration<a href="file:///C:/Users/jodyp/Documents/Contract%20work%202023/Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023/DRAFT%20-%20Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023%20report.docx#_ftn10" name="_ftnref10" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[10]</span></span></span></a>. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">We're returning to the days of poverty for some seniors, only this time they're homeless too</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">More than a fifth of people identified as living homeless in the 2023 Greater Vancouver Homeless Count are ages 55 and up. Nearly half of them became unhoused for the first time after turning 55. People age hard once homeless; those who are chronically homeless have life spans 20 years shorter than the rest of us.</p><p class="MsoNormal">Even comparatively comfortable BC seniors are struggling. BC Seniors Advocate Isobel Mackenzie noted in her 2023 "It's Time To Act" report that seniors in privately run, publicly subsidized assisted-living units are having a hard time keeping up with the array of additional costs that housing operators now charge for every little service, not to mention rent increases of up to 15 per cent a year at some facilities. </p><p class="MsoNormal">And here's a strange trend: Even though BC's senior population is expected to increase to 25 per cent from 19 per cent over the next 15 years, the number of assisted living units per 1,000 population has fallen 15 per cent in the last five years in the province.</p><p class="MsoNormal">Is that because people don't want to live like that and they're finding other options, or because somebody has quit building that type of housing because they can make more money doing other things? Tune in 15 years from now to find out.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">***</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">Ah, feels so much better to get those unused stats off my chest. I should wrap this up with some pithy conclusion, or a ringing call to action to fix this by doing a, b and c. But seriously, is it even possible to wish for a fix anymore? We are so profoundly late to the game. </p>
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<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/jodyp/Documents/Contract%20work%202023/Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023/DRAFT%20-%20Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023%20report.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/lbrr/archives/cnmcs-plcng/cn28441-eng.pdf<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/jodyp/Documents/Contract%20work%202023/Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023/DRAFT%20-%20Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023%20report.docx#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> BC
Ombudsperson report <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Committed to Change<o:p></o:p></i></p>
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<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/jodyp/Documents/Contract%20work%202023/Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023/DRAFT%20-%20Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023%20report.docx#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> BC
Schizophrenia Society and BC Psychiatric Association joint report<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/jodyp/Documents/Contract%20work%202023/Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023/DRAFT%20-%20Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023%20report.docx#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <span style="font-size: 9pt;">https://www03.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/hmip-pimh/en/TableMapChart/Table?TableId=2.1.31.3&GeographyId=2410&GeographyTypeId=3&DisplayAs=Table&GeograghyName=Vancouver</span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/jodyp/Documents/Contract%20work%202023/Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023/DRAFT%20-%20Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023%20report.docx#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <span style="font-size: 9pt;">https://globalnews.ca/news/10030845/vancouver-homeless-seniors/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CWe're%20already%20in%20crisis,32%20per%20cent%20from%202020</span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/jodyp/Documents/Contract%20work%202023/Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023/DRAFT%20-%20Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023%20report.docx#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/prison-mental-health-sfu-study-1.6271915<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/jodyp/Documents/Contract%20work%202023/Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023/DRAFT%20-%20Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023%20report.docx#_ftnref7" name="_ftn7" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn7;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2017001/article/14691-eng.htm">https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2017001/article/14691-eng.htm</a></span></span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/jodyp/Documents/Contract%20work%202023/Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023/DRAFT%20-%20Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023%20report.docx#_ftnref8" name="_ftn8" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn8;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/justice/criminal-justice/corrections/reducing-reoffending/indigenous#:~:text=Indigenous%20people%20are%20nearly%206,and%2027%25%20in%20the%20community.<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/jodyp/Documents/Contract%20work%202023/Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023/DRAFT%20-%20Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023%20report.docx#_ftnref9" name="_ftn9" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn9;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> https://www.oag.bc.ca/sites/default/files/publications/reports/BCOAG-Mental-Health-Substance-Use-Services-Corrections-Report-February-2023.pdf<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/jodyp/Documents/Contract%20work%202023/Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023/DRAFT%20-%20Connective%20Leadership%20Gathering%202023%20report.docx#_ftnref10" name="_ftn10" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn10;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[10]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <span class="MsoHyperlink"><a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2023001/article/00004-eng.htm">https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2023001/article/00004-eng.htm</a></span><o:p></o:p></p>
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</div><br /><p></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Jody Paterson has been observing the world through writing since 1982.</div>Jody Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509892768463393937noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30710387.post-21984220323495153742023-10-11T16:04:00.002-07:002023-10-25T08:21:21.449-07:00I wish you a Central American <p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4oMdD2hZkLxj3M-ZvYpbfvPDEaX_dx834nYUivarP2z-Bdrejtgj6Ek71B3sBLC0gYIY6_BcfgIpQ3Uvzf5oaTn0BFlHjtPoqZ4n5DOPz2Pd6y_WnOCDRuuFWBgsIfNyBdC-n0hzAmfjk3eMLskdgXjYzJrJTXm1JR7HEWMeONsNXu8NQS0WbHg/s1600/IMG_4767.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4oMdD2hZkLxj3M-ZvYpbfvPDEaX_dx834nYUivarP2z-Bdrejtgj6Ek71B3sBLC0gYIY6_BcfgIpQ3Uvzf5oaTn0BFlHjtPoqZ4n5DOPz2Pd6y_WnOCDRuuFWBgsIfNyBdC-n0hzAmfjk3eMLskdgXjYzJrJTXm1JR7HEWMeONsNXu8NQS0WbHg/w400-h300/IMG_4767.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br />My partner and I lived in Honduras and Nicaragua for almost five
years doing Cuso International development work in the 2010s. I concluded
very quickly that if ever there was an apocalypse, I’d want to go through it
with a small-town Central American at my side.<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I’m feeling that more than ever in these eye-opening days of
global reckoning.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Time and again during the period we lived there, I saw people
in those countries come through with a quick fix for whatever unexpected weird thing
had just happened. It was an ingenuity borne of centuries of certainty that
nobody was coming to fix their problems. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">They stepped up with little hesitation to help random
strangers with their problems, too, because they knew a time would come soon
enough when they’d need strangers to step up for them. It’s not just a nice
thing to do down there, it’s smart and strategic. You need to be ready for
anything, and living in a permanent state of pay-it-forward.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">One day, the car we were in broke down on a quiet road past
Leon, Nicaragua. Within 15 minutes, we were repaired and on our way after two
strangers on a motorcycle pulled up and began scrounging up scraps of this and
that from the roadside, and then used them to do something inexplicable but
effective to the car engine to get it running again. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Such anecdotes are coming to mind more often these days as events
play out around the world to remind me that nobody’s really got our backs. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">How must the citizens of Israel feel to realize that their
much-touted security systems were easily compromised? How do Libyans feel about
all those decades of government ignoring dam maintenance? What do Americans make
of the hard lessons first from Hurricane Katrina, and more recently in the Maui
wildfires – that their emergency preparedness systems are in no way prepared?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">How do we feel here in Canada, where successive governments were
so wrongly presumed to be managing the work of making sure we’d always have enough
housing? They weren’t even counting the number of new Canadians right. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">How come we can’t access basic medical care anymore? How are
13,000 British Columbians dead from toxic-drug overdoses in the last seven
years and we’re still bickering about public drug use? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How can governments be allowed to “step back”
on fossil fuel use and the development of greener alternatives after the entire
planet just spent a horrifying year seeing where climate change is taking us?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">If I’d been born a small-town Honduran, I suspect I’d have
known better than to believe that the big things of life were being taken care
of by government. Honduras has no social safety net, minimal public health
care, lousy schools, and wages so low that most people need two jobs and a side
hustle just to get by. It’s a country where you learn early to take care of
your own business.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But I was born a comparatively privileged Boomer in a
peaceful, liberal democracy with a social and legal commitment to human rights
and a better life for all. I just always figured everything was going to be OK,
at least in Canada.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Ah, but there’s far less Canada in Canada these days. Free
trade ties us to some of the world’s most fraught countries. With minor
exceptions, we don’t make our own clothing, household goods, vehicles or parts.
Ninety per cent of our medicines are made with ingredients imported from China
or India.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We’re dependent on other countries’ supply chains, food
production, human resources. When their wildfires burn, we breathe the smoke. When
their people don’t come to fill our workforce, it’s our services that suffer. We're frighteningly dependent, yet still so blissfully unaware of that reality. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">For better and worse, the world has tied its fortunes
together through intricate trade deals and border-crossing corporate entities outside
the management of any government. No war, climate disaster, or economic
collapse anywhere on Earth is far enough away to avoid a direct impact everywhere
else.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And even though virtually everything tripping us up these
days requires a long-term plan to fix, there is no long-term plan for any of
it. Even when some government starts on a plan, it rarely lasts beyond the four-year
election cycles that doom progress on the complex issues of the modern world.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 340.5pt;">This is the world we live in now. This
is the world my grandkids will have to find their way through. If I hear that
they ran away in search of cheap land where they could grow a simple diet, generate their own electricity and count
on a handful of good neighbours who knew how to fix things, I will understand
completely and cheer them on. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 340.5pt;">Develop your inner Honduran, kids.
Things are going to get rough.<o:p></o:p></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Jody Paterson has been observing the world through writing since 1982.</div>Jody Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509892768463393937noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30710387.post-54346869441687308612023-09-20T12:56:00.004-07:002023-09-20T13:02:52.739-07:00Can we talk? No, really - can we?<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJGdAXJRKWJsu0eez42wE51LeS-61ttPBhEdFa4PKv5YCbcXFIlbQKHwFrd75MMlxPnpU5WWPwO-JhMHprs1_xr0pfxzEVRAGw88MQ7TpQXc9fqjw-qRXMJ-ckO94hxb15o-4sPb1m1YI3RpFdLEUj-aQBZQB1oHUDr0IDPZLcCXjufiT23jCdVg/s1280/polarization-1201698_1280.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="989" data-original-width="1280" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJGdAXJRKWJsu0eez42wE51LeS-61ttPBhEdFa4PKv5YCbcXFIlbQKHwFrd75MMlxPnpU5WWPwO-JhMHprs1_xr0pfxzEVRAGw88MQ7TpQXc9fqjw-qRXMJ-ckO94hxb15o-4sPb1m1YI3RpFdLEUj-aQBZQB1oHUDr0IDPZLcCXjufiT23jCdVg/s320/polarization-1201698_1280.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #191b26; font-family: "Open Sans", system-ui; text-align: start;">Image by </span><a href="https://pixabay.com/users/johnhain-352999/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=1201698" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191b26; font-family: "Open Sans", system-ui; text-align: start;">John Hain</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #191b26; font-family: "Open Sans", system-ui; text-align: start;"> from </span><a href="https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=1201698" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191b26; font-family: "Open Sans", system-ui; text-align: start;">Pixabay</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Virtually every day, I go out on a dog walk and start putting together the start of a blog post in my head. But I never get them written.<br /><br />It’s not so much writer’s block getting in my way as a feeling of pointlessness. <br /><br />My schtick is persuasive writing, which I had the great pleasure of doing for almost a decade in Victoria’s daily newspaper as a columnist and editorial writer back before I gave it all up for a chance to get closer to the action on social-justice issues. Now I do communications work and lots of writing for non-profits with noble visions of a better world, because I want to be doing that, too. <br /><br />The draw of persuasive writing as a tool for social change, however, is the presumption that there are people out there open to being persuaded. It’s a means of bringing important things to people’s attention and maybe shifting their thinking a little. <br /><br />It did used to feel like that was possible in years past. Yes, people who hated what I had to say would phone (and later email) from time to time to bury me in a stream of horrible invectives, but we’d often work around to finding some shared views on the issue at hand. As much as I disliked being yelled at, I came to love the challenge of seeking even a bit of common ground with the people who most disagreed with whatever I’d written about. And sometimes, they shifted my thinking as well.<br /><br />But that was then. We all seem so far apart now. At this point, it feels like anything I write will get read only by people who already think like I do. That’s not just because we’ve entered into a worrying new state of polarized opinion on every single damn issue, but the reality of algorithms that push us ever deeper into our corners and make us even less likely to interact with – or understand - anyone who doesn’t think like us. <br /><br />How will we ever build bridges across the cavernous divides in opinion these days? We’re like the human manifestation of climate change, full of extreme developments and dramatic overstatement. When some issue of the day needs a little rain to cool things down, we bring a hurricane. <br /><br />Those of us who found their greatest writing happiness in trying to convince people to think a little differently are crushed about this. Where is the motivation now in writing about the critical issues of our times when the only readers are people on the same side of the “war” as me? <br /><br />I embrace them as brethren in a frightening new world, of course. But we’re already singing from the same songbook. They don’t need convincing. And it’s pretty clear by now that preaching to the choir is not a successful strategy for social change, because otherwise we’d be there by now, right? <br /><br />A kind fellow I ran into on a dog walk this week remembered me from my columnist days, and told me I’d had a knack for putting things a certain way that got people reflecting even if they didn’t share my views. Nice of him to say, but neither here nor there when applied to this very different period of time. <br /><br />The people who I liked to aim my writing at 20 years ago in the hope of influencing their thinking ever so slightly wouldn’t even see my words nowadays. The newspaper industry was in serious decline even then, but the Victoria Times Colonist was still the media outlet that a lot of locals counted on for their news. Every column I wrote put my thoughts in front of a potential 70,000 readers. <br /><br />Sure, untold thousands would choose not to read me. But there was at least the chance that any of them might. Their eyes might have drifted across the headline, or the first few words. They might have read a paragraph or two, called me up to yell, and ended up in a brief conversation with me that left them thinking. <br /><br />Today? Even if I was still writing for a newspaper, everything has changed. The years when the daily paper was a person’s primary news vehicle is long, long gone. We’ve splintered into a thousand online news sources, some of them still striving for journalistic neutrality and others so opinionated and cross-eyed that the content is largely fiction. <br /><br />I don’t know what to do about it. There are still so many things I want to bring to people’s attention, but it’s hard to motivate myself when it’s almost like talking to myself. I used to be able to post a link to a blog post on Facebook and get a fair jump in readership out of it, including a few people who wanted to yell at me like in days gone by. <div><br /></div><div>But things have changed there as well, and the almost complete absence of interaction that now occurs just reminds me of the pointlessness again. <br /><br />Dear reader, I tell you all of this partly because I’m sad to be trapped in this state of mulling big and important issues over in my head on every dog walk, still looking up all the history and stats as if I was going to write something but never getting it written. For me, writing never feels better than when I can put it to use as a tool for social change, and I don’t like it that the tool is failing me. <br /><br />Ultimately, however, this issue is so much bigger than one person’s whine about feelings of writerly pointlessness. <br /><br />It’s about all of us now listening only to the people whose views we know won’t challenge our own. It’s about people going down rabbit holes and not even noticing how narrow the view has become. It’s about algorithms trying to make us happy by surrounding us with like minds in all our social media interactions, but in actual fact destroying any chance we might have had of talking things through long enough to find common ground. <div><br /></div><div>It’s really about an end to civil discourse, and it leaves me wondering how social change will come about in a world where we can’t tolerate each other’s views enough to try to find compromise on the points we disagree on. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Jody Paterson has been observing the world through writing since 1982.</div>Jody Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509892768463393937noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30710387.post-62283297822278217522023-06-26T11:56:00.006-07:002023-06-27T15:35:38.267-07:00BC leads pack by a long shot when it comes to Canada's missing persons <p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7PoQCQu6Vo647bNMsxjPpHDm3rySIx81m3cM9kcAs17TwUG3XpQpt-Bl12M8ryItPg2hq2PPTAs1BXIiwuCftqoh2kNib2lu5WBZz6LBZNACr3oS296wMYRtSCgwofNHiZBNRlRKVj73C60UCvuLh0E8pvNMVXqoQN0VJsg597UTWUAew4n9w2w/s1280/painting-4826065_1280.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="720" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7PoQCQu6Vo647bNMsxjPpHDm3rySIx81m3cM9kcAs17TwUG3XpQpt-Bl12M8ryItPg2hq2PPTAs1BXIiwuCftqoh2kNib2lu5WBZz6LBZNACr3oS296wMYRtSCgwofNHiZBNRlRKVj73C60UCvuLh0E8pvNMVXqoQN0VJsg597UTWUAew4n9w2w/w225-h400/painting-4826065_1280.jpg" width="225" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span face=""Open Sans", system-ui" style="background-color: white; color: #191b26; text-align: start;">Image by </span><a href="https://pixabay.com/users/cdd20-1193381/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=4826065" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191b26; font-family: "Open Sans", system-ui; text-align: start;">愚木混株 Cdd20</a><span face=""Open Sans", system-ui" style="background-color: white; color: #191b26; text-align: start;"> from </span><a href="https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=4826065" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191b26; font-family: "Open Sans", system-ui; text-align: start;">Pixabay</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">My news feeds have been bringing me so many reports of
missing persons in BC recently that I finally went looking for stats this month to clarify what was going
on. Was there actually more people going missing, or was I merely trapped in a
bad Google algorithm?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The truth turned out to be astonishing. Not only has BC been
leading by a long shot the missing-person stats in Canada for adults age 18 and
up every year since 2015, when the Missing Persons Act took effect, but <a href="https://www.canadasmissing.ca/pubs/index-eng.htm" target="_blank">the number of adults reported missing</a> in BC has grown by more than 48 per cent since
then. (Our population has increased by 10.2 per cent in the same period.) <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In 2022, <a href="https://www.canadasmissing.ca/pubs/2022/index-eng.htm" target="_blank">BC police filed 14,751 missing-person reports involving adults</a> to the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC). The province with the
next-highest number of reports was Ontario, at 7,298. While various provinces
have been No. 2 over the years—all with roughly the same notable gulf between
BC’s numbers and theirs—BC has always come in at No. 1. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Looking at per-capita rates, BC has been a consistent leader
there, too. In 2022, British Columbia had the highest number of missing-adult
reports per capita, with 273 reports per 100,000 people. The next highest was
Saskatchewan, with 146 reports per 100,000 people.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In fact, 42 per cent of Canada’s 33,913 adult missing-person
reports in 2022 originated in BC. That number is on the rise as well, up two
per cent since 2020. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Equally worrying is the growing number of adults who aren’t
being found quickly, in BC and across the country. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In past years, 60 per cent of CPIC reports on missing Canadian
adults were taken out of the system within 24 hours, and 90 per cent were
removed within a week. But in 2022, for the first time since stats have been
kept, those numbers dropped to 34 per cent removed within 24 hours, and 73 per
cent within a week. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I mentioned some of the startling BC-specific stats to an
acquaintance with decades of experience in high-level provincial government
positions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said any dramatic gap
between the provinces for virtually any stat almost always comes down to some
reporting difference. “Nothing is ever that different from one province to
another,” he said.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So I looked into that. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The stats are based on missing-persons reports filed by
Canadian police departments into the CPIC database. <a href="https://www.canadasmissing.ca/report-signale/index-eng.htm" target="_blank">Missing-person reports can be filed immediately</a> (forget all those cop shows you’ve seen where people are
always having to wait 24 or 48 hours before reporting a missing person), and
you could certainly speculate that different departments or regions could have
different cultural practices around how quickly they file a report to CPIC.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Perhaps there’s a Robert Pickton effect, too. BC police
departments looked bad when the details came out about the 1990s-era serial
killer, what with so many of his victims missing for years but ignored by
police because they were survival sex workers living in poverty and addiction.
Maybe BC police ended up being more devoted than most to filing missing-person
reports from that point on. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So I tracked down media relations at the RCMP’s national
communications headquarters, the spokespeople for missing-persons information,
and asked them if they could help me understand why BC seemed to have so many
more missing persons. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">They noted “many caveats,” from not assuming that the stats
are actually complete (many cases are resolved before they get to CPIC), to
being very cautious when considering the 11 categories of probable cause that
missing-persons cases are slotted into at the time of reporting. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“You cannot be assured that every single person categorized
in each category indeed belongs there,” wrote RCMP media relations rep Robin
Percival in her email to me.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">They agree that the stats are almost certainly affected by
“differences in reporting procedures, as well as geography, urban/rural mix,
demographics, culture mix and other factors.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But taking all that into account, I still see no way to
explain away BC’s huge lead on the number of adult missing persons as just
being about reporting differences. We just seem to have a whole lot more people
who go missing. <o:p></o:p>(<a href="https://bc-cb.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=464&languageId=1&contentId=-1" target="_blank">Click here</a> for the list of active missing persons investigations in BC RCMP jurisdictions.)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“BC has its own peculiar mix of factors, including an ocean,” wrote Percival, adding that many fishermen go missing. “It is also an area where people
drift to and then go missing.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">On the upside, our rate of missing children seems much more
in line with the rest of the country, though we’re still consistently among the
top three. In 2022, we placed second behind Ontario with more than 5,500
children missing, after Manitoba managed to bring down some high missing-child
numbers from years past and fell into third spot. Per capita, Saskatchewan and
Manitoba have the highest rates.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Nationally, 33,394 children under age 18 went missing in
2022. Three-quarters of them were deemed “runaways,” and more than half were
female. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Among Indigenous children, the percentage of missing girls
is even higher. Girls account for two-thirds of the 8,300 Indigenous children
reported missing last year. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Things that make you go “Hmmm…” Whatever the reason for BC
to be lapping the pack when it comes to missing adults, it doesn’t feel good.
Hope somebody other than a random blogger like me is taking a look at these
numbers. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">***<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><b>But also...</b>I happened to be in my Google News settings recently for other reasons, and discovered that Google had singled me out for having a big interest in "missing persons" and had been sending all the stories of missing people everywhere to my news feed. So while it did turn out to be true that more people are going missing, I was also getting a tailored feed that was bringing this to my attention by feeding me way more sad news stories than a person could possibly handle on people gone missing. </p><br /><p></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Jody Paterson has been observing the world through writing since 1982.</div>Jody Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509892768463393937noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30710387.post-5536307500565966192023-06-02T21:21:00.000-07:002023-06-02T21:21:23.829-07:00Curbs on social-media sharing will only intensify the divide<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3eArtdelbrreWChDN3FWJ28zaObxPOPsqnqQA127DChGCp6YHf4dTUDnZDmGN7fpmziy4i_DpTUZeyQHIdypyFcC2pbyhyzhbXD74ads5UFU1j1aPAI75f6lyx9YQ6NvTfTcEI30uAeCC6UaPY3lmE94Ab21lfnm2l02DE3ChMYzyIhM8iW0/s1280/private-g60a20361c_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="713" data-original-width="1280" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3eArtdelbrreWChDN3FWJ28zaObxPOPsqnqQA127DChGCp6YHf4dTUDnZDmGN7fpmziy4i_DpTUZeyQHIdypyFcC2pbyhyzhbXD74ads5UFU1j1aPAI75f6lyx9YQ6NvTfTcEI30uAeCC6UaPY3lmE94Ab21lfnm2l02DE3ChMYzyIhM8iW0/w419-h233/private-g60a20361c_1280.jpg" width="419" /></a></div><br />What will happen <a href="https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2023/06/01/facebook-and-instagram-are-about-to-start-blocking-news-for-random-canadians-heres-what-it-will-look-like-if-youre-targeted.html#:~:text=Canada's%20bill%20is%20based%20on,allow%20misinformation%20to%20spread%20unchecked." target="_blank">once social media cuts us off from sharing news stories</a> with our connections? That strange development has the potential of sending us even deeper into our respective echo chambers, where no complex problems can ever be addressed. <p></p><p>We have been heavily manipulated into our interest groups by social media for a number of years now, and it's becoming very obvious that it hasn't been a good thing. So on the one hand, so long, social media, and thanks for nothing for getting us all weird and angry at each other about every damn thing. But on the other, what now?</p><p>If you are reading good journalism from totally trusted sources and generally living life with your eyes open, you will be well aware that the world is in a kind of Black Mirror moment. It's like one of those movies where a bunch of chimpanzees or a flock of birds suddenly start doing something super-odd, and every viewer knows to interpret that as code for some very big which-what-everywhere weirdness to come. </p><p>Those are the times we're in. And now, having been shoved into our corners by social media's marketing algorithms for many years, we face being blocked from sharing news items with our networks because of a game of chicken between social media corporations and government, which is taking up arms on behalf of media companies unhappy that advertisers like social media best.</p><p>This is all taking place just as we are facing some of the biggest issues the human race has ever confronted. </p><p>Climate change, artificial intelligence, book burning, the threat of nuclear warfare, one wild precedent-setting storm or fire or flood after another, people being killed on subways because their mental illness is annoying other passengers, communities running out of water. There's some intense stuff going on.</p><p>We're either going to start talking to each other reasonably about how to find solutions that are as fair as possible to all concerned, or we're setting the stage for human annihilation. (Not to be overly dramatic, but don't you think so?) </p><p>We are wasting precious time, people. Whatever side you're on, whatever the issue, you know in your heart it's not possible to yell the other side into submission. We're going to need to talk. </p><p>I'm not going all unicorns-and-rainbows here and imagining the lions lying with the lambs, peace and love among humankind. I know that's not going to happen. But we can find ways to identify common cause, and start there. Right, left or straight down the centre, none of us wants the water to run out on our kids and grandkids or to lose what a healthy environment gives us. </p><p>Social media certainly has the potential to help. I still remember how excited I was at the thought of people from all around the world and a million perspectives suddenly able to talk to each other freely about all the big things on their minds. (Ha. Silly me.)</p><p>But we were never able to share information freely, as we all know now. Our feeds are curated, using criteria that is pulled from all the bits of information that we offer up about ourselves when we use social media. Advertisers like it that way.</p><p>I've noticed in my own page that my posts are no longer being seen by people who don't think like me, as judging by the very long time it has been since anyone contrary posted anything on my feed. I guess I'm supposed to be happy about an algorithmic defence against trolls provided to me by Facebook whether I wanted it or not, but I can't see how we ever solve problems if we all stay in our boxes surrounded by people just like us.</p><p>Meanwhile, a tiny fraction of the people in each of our social media networks even see what we share. If you're sharing a link these days, that seems to send your post into purgatory as well. I can tell that Facebook's algorithms like it best when I offer up a cheery here's-my-day kind of thing, or a photo of my dog. If only the world's problems could be solved with photos of my dog.</p><p>So yes, this whole social media business was fraught from the outset. There's a lot that's wrong with it. But eliminating the sharing of legitimate news articles is just about the last thing we need as we try to fight through all the hot air out here.</p><p>Modern media has much on its mind, including having to figure out new revenue streams and get more readers. But give me a well-researched <i>Guardian</i> or <i>New York Times</i> article any time over a bunch of random people's opinions about stuff they know nothing about.</p><p>The difficult conversations are stacking up. We're down to a talk-or-die situation on a number of fronts. We were never going to settle it all on Facebook, true enough. But it sure isn't going to be settled by making it even harder for people to get to information from a source they can hold accountable.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Jody Paterson has been observing the world through writing since 1982.</div>Jody Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509892768463393937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30710387.post-62536553119607089512023-05-07T21:05:00.004-07:002023-05-08T10:07:33.004-07:00The civility of silence<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrLGcjC0wYb4LNrSf31teGnxYTFmMcB_c8Si3TGseGlSur-Y-R74Nd_fmFfX2oCNm4k7EThTc1p8qBZJmCFW4VuPwHvKnvZGx6rOimda1BHJTlDSucl-9n2q6vAjen3Bv7r3Wkvo9B4AjOhd4GlV-z5Qh8KLqHmBa-v4Apbc2pOMRWvTt2xYU/s4213/IMG_20230419_153309__01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3074" data-original-width="4213" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrLGcjC0wYb4LNrSf31teGnxYTFmMcB_c8Si3TGseGlSur-Y-R74Nd_fmFfX2oCNm4k7EThTc1p8qBZJmCFW4VuPwHvKnvZGx6rOimda1BHJTlDSucl-9n2q6vAjen3Bv7r3Wkvo9B4AjOhd4GlV-z5Qh8KLqHmBa-v4Apbc2pOMRWvTt2xYU/w400-h291/IMG_20230419_153309__01.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />"Don't talk about Trump/guns/abortion/covid/climate change," friends and family variously cautioned me as I prepared for a three-week road trip in the US last month.<p></p><p>No worries. I rarely talk about those things even with people I know well. I love a great conversation about big issues when the time and the scene is right, but I'm also just fine with talking about what kind of bird that is over there, or what the price of gas was in the last town each of us passed through. </p><p>The 22-day trip through five states was such a welcome reminder for me that Americans are still good people, their country is freaking gorgeous, and the US is exceptional for road-tripping. I was glad for the chance to have mundane little conversations with random fellow campers and service people along my route about our lives at that moment, with no straying into anyone's beliefs on this or that polarizing issue. </p><p>The world has had to talk so much about big, heavy issues for the last three years. I had no idea what any of my friends' views on vaccination were prior to the pandemic, but I sure do now. Once that issue started dividing everyone, all the other simmering divisive points between us boiled over.</p><p>I guess it's been a kind of war, all of us taking sides and forming camps of like-minded people where opinions have hardened. And now it's like a habit, and we struggle to fathom how we could ever have anything in common with these people who are so Not Like Us. </p><p>And then you go on a road trip, and meet many nice people. You talk about the things you have in common - the stress of a snowy mountain pass; whether the showers in the public washroom are fixed; how to blow air through a chunk of metal tubing to liven up a lagging campfire. </p><p>All conversations are conducted knowing that you may or may not be across the divide on so many issues. Maybe they vote Republican. Maybe you're a socialist. Maybe they have a gun in their trailer. Maybe you're "woke." Maybe they support book bans and criminalizing abortion. Maybe you can be ranty on climate change, and downright depressing on the likely fate of the Great Salt Lake.</p><p>But in this moment, we're all choosing not to talk about any of that, here at Tumalo State Park or wherever that night's road has ended. </p><p>We do need to find ways to have difficult conversations on big issues, because that's a real thing in these polarized times. But I am grateful for the road-trip reminder that we have a lot more in common as human beings than we do dividing us. </p><p>Get a job, raise the kids, stay well, enjoy your spare time - whatever our differences, most of us want a version of that. There's a lot to talk about right there. And once we all remember how we all ultimately want the same thing, it might be a little easier to talk about the hard stuff. </p><p>I had a moment at the aquarium in Boise where a bunch of us were all gathered around trying to lure swimming manta rays up to give them a little pet. (It is an exquisite experience if you have yet to try it.) </p><p>Looking around at the all-ages faces and cultural influences on display around the ray pool, it struck me that we would probably get into an ugly, protracted argument on any number of the big issues. But at that moment, we were just a bunch of dazzled strangers smiling goofily at each other at the feeling of a manta ray choosing to swim to our hands.</p><p>We are different, but we are so much the same. Thank you, Roadtrip 2023. I needed that.</p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p>Curious about the trip itself? <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jodyleepaterson" target="_blank">Find me on Facebook</a> - I documented my trip there and my postings are all public.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Jody Paterson has been observing the world through writing since 1982.</div>Jody Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509892768463393937noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30710387.post-76670129877993281092023-02-18T09:13:00.001-08:002023-02-18T09:13:02.918-08:00When the end-of-days feelings get you down, choose up<p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdgCKpT6UH9sq3xlkbDnh69o9jIiYqkSGQKTX-D4GbT0gy8D63e3MR276HdVFKjuYPOwdhGrmIyKZsBNsJYpMDtuep3jZ5__Efu7IMTTmfog9PC-brGniR_qpf4zEyynmvfqofbzIArX_SN_qM5ouRRGd46zZOb1puti_YZcg_vd9x6ln1ZYA/s1920/drakor-7006456_1920.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1920" data-original-width="1170" height="390" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdgCKpT6UH9sq3xlkbDnh69o9jIiYqkSGQKTX-D4GbT0gy8D63e3MR276HdVFKjuYPOwdhGrmIyKZsBNsJYpMDtuep3jZ5__Efu7IMTTmfog9PC-brGniR_qpf4zEyynmvfqofbzIArX_SN_qM5ouRRGd46zZOb1puti_YZcg_vd9x6ln1ZYA/w237-h390/drakor-7006456_1920.jpg" width="237" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://pixabay.com/users/mworagoo_-25415461/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=7006456" target="_blank">Indri Robyy, Pixabay</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Doom-scrolling is real, and I know to try to avoid it for fear of entering that hyper-vigilant, chronically worried state that can set in when your adrenal system gets worked up. But these days it's hard to find a news feed of any kind that doesn't feel like doom-scrolling. </p><p>Historians hasten to put such gloomy thoughts about "these times" in perspective. They rightly note that in fact, many grand woes of the world are actually lessening. We have less poverty. Fewer nuclear warheads. Less global terrorism. We live longer, having invented cures, treatments and vaccines for many things that used to kill us.</p><p>All of that is good news at the big-picture level. But it isn't actually of much comfort to those who are alive in this moment and living in this destabilized state, when flu-stricken birds are falling out of the sky and the Earth is splitting open and every season heralds a new round of record-smashing extreme weather somewhere in the world. </p><p>It's hard to appreciate your moment in time in the Big Picture when your Small Picture is scaring the hell out of you. </p><p>Some of us are living in hellish situations of war and natural disaster while others are just stressed from reading about it, and I don't mean to compare the experiences. But I'd venture that all eight billion of us are feeling the heaviness of these times in one way or another. </p><p>We all need to find our own ways of coping. Some people "check out" and simply don't take in the news, a tempting thought if only our collective alarm wasn't urgently needed to drive change. Nothing gets fixed when people check out. </p><p>Others focus on the here and now. There's no earthquake in Victoria right now, is there? There's no balloon waiting to be shot down in our skies. No sabre-rattling super power getting jacked up about Canada. There's just you and the calm seas and the pretty paper whites, on a mild winter day on a coveted West Coast island.</p><p>I like "being present" myself, though I did discover on a road trip last year through California's drought-slammed former nut orchards that it also means bearing witness to whatever is playing out in front of you. </p><p>Driving south through lands I once dreamed of living in only to be confronted with the realities of modern-day California - so, so different from my shiny young-person memories of thriving agriculture as far as the eye could seen and a full-to-the-brim Lake Shasta packed with happy house boaters - was an eye-opener that I haven't been able to shake.</p><p>Nor will being present lower stress levels when it involves passing through the pockets of poverty and human suffering that have developed in all of our communities. But it couldn't be more important to be present in those moments, because this hand-wringing state we've been in about social decline for pretty much 30 years now will end only when we shake ourselves awake and act. </p><p>Another reaction to these unsettling times is to go all in, spiralling into an increasing state of rage and paranoia over whatever subject a person has ended up fixated on. </p><p>With so much to fixate on, there are many ways to rage these days. I'm sure we all know someone who has fallen into obsession (and whose company we want less and less of as a result). I know a COVID rager, an anti-vax rager, several Trudeau ragers, and even a few pro-Trump ragers who ignited a few years back and can't seem to cool down.</p><p>Unfortunately, there's no problem-fixing going on when people are in a state of rage. That's just a time when we want to break things and yell at people. If you're stuck in a rage state, best to get some help with that. It's costing you friends and your personal health, and not changing a damn thing about whatever has you riled.</p><p>How does one go about feeling better in gloomy times? Personally, I seek out news stories about things that are making a difference on the issues facing us. <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/misinformation-climate-crisis-ozone-scientists-1.6729005" target="_blank">A recent read</a> reminding me that the world did successfully address acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer through collective action was heartening, and important to hold onto in times when all the doom threatens to paralyze us. </p><p>Also good: Buy a copy of The Economist every now and again and get caught up on world news presented with careful balance, research and thoughtfulness. So different than the hyped-up headlines that a Google News search pulls up.</p><p>Speaking of news, I highly recommend severely limiting your intake of that which calls itself "news" in these over-saturated times. </p><p>Back in the day when newspapers were still a thing, I read two a day, mostly limited to goings-on in Victoria, BC and Canada. Now, every bit of bad news going on anywhere in the world is as close as a right-hand swipe on my phone. </p><p>It's so easy to do that swipe in a distracted moment, just like I once used to mindlessly light up a cigarette to pass the time in between this and that. But just like those cigarettes, it's so bad for me. I can feel the worry and the outrage building in me almost immediately, even if I was having a perfectly OK time just minutes before. </p><p>Of course, each of us as citizens of the world also need to be stepping up right now. Avoiding the bad news overload is one thing, but taking action where you can must never be avoided. If you've got anyone you care about who is still going to carry on living after you're dead, surely that's motivation enough to do your part right now to actually address problems where you can rather than just worry about them.</p><p>Find the news you can use, and use it. May the rest of it roll off you.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Jody Paterson has been observing the world through writing since 1982.</div>Jody Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509892768463393937noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30710387.post-39057886003300538642023-02-08T13:04:00.003-08:002023-02-08T13:28:23.682-08:00Don't let them mess up your face<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR-1As-tDHkpaUMHnb1NraaM92xpGJP9dAxUKrl8KrRUaJi7xFi_4g6wnJENZ6NhaPMC1B1n-Fp-4acnvYRfj8It6LOoiTj5-Mu71jHDchiTXHVXwJJ1JD9pxtpEBFVd7FXq0n_DFn8G3uqtdB0pWCsGUR5aLKlPbdV5V-sY0rzns120gcpkk/s3503/IMG_20230128_120440__01.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3503" data-original-width="3456" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR-1As-tDHkpaUMHnb1NraaM92xpGJP9dAxUKrl8KrRUaJi7xFi_4g6wnJENZ6NhaPMC1B1n-Fp-4acnvYRfj8It6LOoiTj5-Mu71jHDchiTXHVXwJJ1JD9pxtpEBFVd7FXq0n_DFn8G3uqtdB0pWCsGUR5aLKlPbdV5V-sY0rzns120gcpkk/s320/IMG_20230128_120440__01.jpg" width="316" /></a></div>This is me, age 66. The rock star Madonna is two years younger than me, and I am stunned to realize after her appearance at the Grammys on the weekend that I now prefer my face to hers, so altered has hers become from years of cosmetic surgery and treatments.<p></p><p>This face of mine has been creamed, scrubbed, exfoliated, masked and otherwise fussed over for a very long time. I am as disappointed as any person who comprehends the social capital of physical attractiveness to be experiencing the unwanted changes that aging brings. </p><p>But having watched one beautiful celebrity after another succumb to the disaster of costly and invasive "anti-aging" procedures, I concluded many years ago that I will never do anything beyond the superficial to try to appear younger. </p><p>It's not out of any noble belief in being my "natural self." As you can see from my photo, my hair is coloured, and I am pretty sure it will be until the day I die. I wear eye makeup and have since age 12, and don't even leave the house for the morning dog walk without it on. I got my eyebrows tattooed in 2009 and love them. You'll never catch me singing the praises of a natural look. </p><p>Nor is it out of a determination to grow old gracefully. If I could take a magic pill guaranteed to firm up my neck, jawline and eyelids with no side-effects, I would be seriously tempted, and admit to moments in front of the mirror in which I pull my face skin tighter and lament out loud about how much younger I look.</p><p>But here's the thing about invasive cosmetic procedures, as Madonna's 2023 face so tragically reminds us: It's a pact with the Devil. You're going to trade off your future old face for an "improved" face now, and you're going to do that repeatedly as the relentless aging process drags your skin lower to the ground no matter how many procedures you throw at it.</p><p>And then one day, you cross some line of having had way too many procedures, and there's no way back. Alas, you still don't look young, you just look like an aging woman who has had way too many cosmetic procedures. </p><p>I get that celebrities must feel the pressure to keep up their beauty, though I would have thought more of them would have noticed by now that the work really dries up once your face starts looking altered (Melanie Griffith, I'm talking to you.)</p><p>But why I am seeing so many non-celebrities - and so many young women - getting sucked in? Don't they have eyes to see all the wealthy celebrities with their ruined faces? If famous, rich people with access to top-of-the-line surgeons still end up looking like unrecognizably bizarre cat-people with painfully distorted lips, isn't that a pretty blatant warning to any of us to just stay away from this crap?</p><p>We fight very hard to look younger than our age, as evidenced by a global anti-aging market now valued at $62.6 billion US and a $67 billion cosmetic surgery market. There are many theories about why that is so, from evil marketing strategies and ruthless capitalists to the patriarchy.</p><p>I know from my own experience that an aging woman no longer draws the Male Gaze (a sad-happy loss for me), and that ageism in your work life is a real thing. The world does view you differently, and makes many strange assumptions once having registered you as "old." I clearly remember the grand insult I felt back in my 50s when some twerp salesman at the computer store leaned in close to ask if I knew what a flash drive was.</p><p>But to cut, inject and fill your face with weird chemicals and poisons in reaction to the social realities of aging? And all of it to end up with a face so obviously distorted that you're literally the poster child for aging really, really poorly? What theory explains that?</p><p>If you are a younger woman reading this, and I hope you are, I will tell you straight up that it's painful to experience your physical beauty fading. Not to brush off the years of catcalls, unwanted attention and outright sexual harassment as an easy time for women, but being attractive does have its privileges. As someone who for so many years counted on turning heads to get me feeling good about myself, I've found it hard to relinquish the dopamine rush of being checked out.</p><p>But all the cosmetic procedures in the world won't change any of that. In fact, they only make things worse, because soon enough you just look like a freaky-faced woman with too much disposable income who is desperate to not look as old as you are. Who wants to be that person?</p><p>So embrace yourself as those visible changes creep in and get over it. We don't expect an old dog to look like a puppy. Stay fit, don't smoke, keep the alcohol to a minimum and drink lots of water. Spend some time contemplating the old women all around you and you'll see that it's possible to look good AND old at the same time. </p><p>And let me assure you, there are a lot of perks to growing invisible. Count that one as a secret aging super-power.</p><p><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Jody Paterson has been observing the world through writing since 1982.</div>Jody Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509892768463393937noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30710387.post-80326701134314545462023-02-07T08:12:00.005-08:002023-11-15T15:22:19.268-08:00BC's decrim experiment: One giant step for governments, one really tiny step for fixing the problem<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRkkizPXWIww_vN506-X4YkpCA_WYvnUBo3pZkhaLsyoLhf6A_1tgZY6htnFl0WUmZKPLFCkRdpSiObPoo5XG6eHlR0hatsFjrccdNnb81KFjRJQBmxmszKC91KDZRbqZAPACLwVAxIffdjfwFL_NUy16VmkA8X0TTI-2sXFxKlXyMj0oouQ4/s1280/miniature-figure-1745718_1280.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="791" data-original-width="1280" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRkkizPXWIww_vN506-X4YkpCA_WYvnUBo3pZkhaLsyoLhf6A_1tgZY6htnFl0WUmZKPLFCkRdpSiObPoo5XG6eHlR0hatsFjrccdNnb81KFjRJQBmxmszKC91KDZRbqZAPACLwVAxIffdjfwFL_NUy16VmkA8X0TTI-2sXFxKlXyMj0oouQ4/s320/miniature-figure-1745718_1280.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://pixabay.com/users/noname_13-2364555/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=1745718" target="_blank">Credit: No Name 13, Pixabay</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p>The BC government doubtlessly had to work very hard to get the OK from the federal government for a three-year test of illicit drug decriminalization. </p><p>It's a good thing to have fought for, even if <a href="https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/overdose/decriminalization#:~:text=Adults%20in%20B.C.%20are%20not,2023%20until%20January%2031%2C%202026." target="_blank">the pilot</a> is so hamstrung with exceptions and rules that it can't help but be of minimal impact. We are so lamentably, tragically overdue to move on this problem of poisoned street drugs killing thousands of British Columbians every year that virtually any glimpse of a different future must be welcomed with enthusiasm. </p><p>But just to be clear, the vast majority of people who use illegal drugs will not benefit from this pilot. Nor will it stop the endless tide of deaths.</p><p>That's not to say that any move toward decriminalization isn't to be treasured. But we do need to go into this teeny, temporary change in our senseless and destructive drug policies with the understanding that it's a flea on a fly compared to the complex issues that are actually driving BC's illicit-drug miseries.</p><p>The pilot will have no impact, for instance, on the disturbing reality of some 2,300 British Columbians dying year after year due to a toxic drug supply, <a href="http://www.bccdc.ca/health-professionals/data-reports/substance-use-harm-reduction-dashboard" target="_blank">almost all of whom are men</a>. </p><p>What the pilot will do is instruct police not to charge people if they find them carrying small amounts of four specific drugs, none of which can have been cut with any other drug. (Alas, anywhere from 20 per cent to more than half of BC's confiscated illicit drugs in 2022 were <a href="https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/birth-adoption-death-marriage-and-divorce/deaths/coroners-service/statistical/illicit-drug.pdf" target="_blank">found to be cut with benzodiazepines</a>, so there's a rather major stumbling block right there.)</p><p>The toxic drug crisis, on the other hand, is about illegal drugs being cut by sellers with all kinds of other stuff because it's cheaper and more readily available, and people dying because virtually nobody knows what they're getting anymore. </p><p>Fixing that big issue is about figuring out how to ensure people know what they are purchasing and how to use a particular drug combo safely if it's that or nothing. It involves a full understanding of how drugs come into our province, and how and why they are altered once here. </p><p>That would require consultations with the importers and the sellers, as would have happened long ago were it any other product. But an opportunity has been missed again, with sellers dismissed in the usual way as "predators" in the government's latest messaging. </p><p>One of the most significant insights we've had into the workings of BC's bustling illicit-drug industry comes from a lone seller featured in <a href="https://bcmj.org/articles/inside-look-bcs-illicit-drug-market-during-covid-19-pandemic" target="_blank">a research paper published in the January 2021 BC Medical Journal</a>.</p>"When asked about selling a bad batch of drugs and people overdosing, he said, 'If it’s a bad batch, I’ll probably still sell it because I don’t want to waste it and lose profit. That’s just the truth and the reality,'" noted the researchers who interviewed the anonymous John Doe.<p>A small exemption on possession charges will have no effect on the illicit-drug industry. As John Doe points out in the paper, the industry is a masterful example of unfettered capitalism that can quickly turn any disadvantage into opportunity, including the supply-chain disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic.</p><p>Nor will the pilot do much to move people toward treatment who weren't already well along on the arduous journey of wanting treatment.</p><p>Being charged with drug possession is arguably pretty low on the long list of worries for British Columbians trying to access treatment, starting with how impossible it is to find it in the first place for anyone without major resources; the reality of having to wait months for a spot while magically staying "clean"; an absence of other problems like poor mental health; and the ability to put your life on hold with no support for weeks of residential care.</p><p>Even John Doe understands that people use drugs for complex reasons that are often rooted in trauma and pain. “It would be hard to treat someone with just their addiction and not treat their mental health," he told researchers. </p><p>Now there's the kind of guy whose insights would be useful if the day ever comes when we get serious about all of this.</p><p>I wouldn't even expect that the pilot will stop many people from being charged with possession. The small amount of drugs a person can possess under the pilot - 2.5 grams - and the requirement for those drugs to be pure, are pretty much impossible scenarios in the current drug scene. </p><p>But as Premier David Eby rightly notes, it's vital to do <i>something. </i></p><p>“When you talk to parents who have lost a kid who thought they were taking party drugs at an event, and end up taking fentanyl and dying, you understand how serious this issue is and how it crosses partisan lines and how we all need to work on solutions,” he told <a href="https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2023/02/01/eby-poilievre-ottawa-drug-decriminalization/" target="_blank">CityNews</a> last week after federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilevre called the Downtown Eastside a hell on earth and said all the usual uninformed stuff about drug use.</p><p>And if this pilot turns out to be the way to crack the door open on decriminalization overall, hurrah. Until then, it's just the smallest of stepping stones at the edge of a raging river.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Jody Paterson has been observing the world through writing since 1982.</div>Jody Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509892768463393937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30710387.post-87296263659448988852023-01-25T11:36:00.005-08:002023-01-27T13:37:47.629-08:00Sometimes a good shaming is all you've got<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga3oC7U5lCmuQyqtpC3NDuhFHiyjWVxj4QIoNaYAfM5f9WXmeOnroaOn5N4ndeVRhzAWjH5ziiVdREhwMVuMt_RqSx-9i1clsDO72ClUKmuNqmkO_KJq30qi0Gd6JVmwNnIWE8Wt1lK62FBJ-dkVfvQq2LGh9QWd4M55bc_LSkhcHs_0A0xC8/s1920/woman-3881133_1920.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1920" data-original-width="1280" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga3oC7U5lCmuQyqtpC3NDuhFHiyjWVxj4QIoNaYAfM5f9WXmeOnroaOn5N4ndeVRhzAWjH5ziiVdREhwMVuMt_RqSx-9i1clsDO72ClUKmuNqmkO_KJq30qi0Gd6JVmwNnIWE8Wt1lK62FBJ-dkVfvQq2LGh9QWd4M55bc_LSkhcHs_0A0xC8/s320/woman-3881133_1920.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><br />It's hard to talk about Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond. <p></p><p>I fully believe that the right thing is happening to her as she is held up to the searing light that the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/author/geoff-leo-1.1860902" target="_blank">CBC's Geoff Leo</a> has shone on her fictions. Pretending to be someone you're not feels especially egregious when high-privilege people fake low-privilege backgrounds. </p><p>I am completely on the side of <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/cindy-blackstock-birth-certificate-mary-ellen-turpel-lafond-1.6661752" target="_blank">the betrayed Indigenous women</a> who have had to experience a champion from within turning out to be nothing of the sort. All the worse that Turpel-Lafond purported to speak for them, and to have walked that same difficult road to success that Indigenous people so routinely have had to walk.</p><p>But it's still hard to watch. For a settler like me, it's also hard to talk about with my settler acquaintances. I can feel the grand discomfort we feel at watching a person whose past work we still admire experiencing a profound public shaming. </p><p>We engage on the subject ever so carefully, tip-toeing around the astonishing betrayal and in the end, not saying much at all. I have exactly one non-Indigenous friend who I can fully engage with on the shocking subject of Turpel-Lafond, and we put our heads down and talk in low voices as if to hide that we've got strong thoughts on the matter.</p><p>And yet, these modern versions of a public stoning are important things to bear witness to. We do need to publicly shame those who engage in such blatant frauds. We do need to talk about <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/turpel-lafond-honorary-degrees-1.6684340" target="_blank">the massive betrayal</a>, and to reflect on and share <a href="https://indiginews.com/first-person/our-identities-have-become-one-more-thing-for-canada-to-steal" target="_blank">the pieces that Indigenous women are writing</a> about how this has impacted them.</p><p>Humiliation is both the way we punish and the way we deter when it comes to faking. It's literally the only way to punish those who come from privilege and fake an underprivileged back story - surely one of the most offensive kinds of fakery, given that the faker lays claim to space, key positions, prestige, money and air time that are routinely denied to underprivileged groups. </p><p>And aren't there just a lot of fakers? That's what is really sinking in for me lately. Fake nurses, fake experts, fake college degrees, so many scammers. Grandparents scammed by fake grandsons. Whole police departments <a href="https://thetyee.ca/News/2023/01/23/Training-Calgary-Police-After-Scam-Warnings/" target="_blank">duped by modern-day snake-oil salesmen</a> selling fake post-traumatic stress credentials.</p><p>Not that I think of Turpel-Lafond as a scammer. Her fakery feels so bizarre and recklessly self-destructive that my thoughts go toward her mental health instead. I have met people in both my personal and professional lives who have told themselves a made-up story for so long that they somehow come to believe it. </p><p>I don't know if that's the case for her, but what else can explain the crazy risk she took by creating a persona and credentials that didn't belong to her? Did she think about this moment, when it all would fall apart and suddenly all would be revealed? </p><p>Now we are left to reconsider everything Turpel-Lafond accomplished in her many significant years in high-profile positions. None of it is work that should be discounted automatically now that the truth is out, but I can't help but wonder how all of that work might have turned out had a real Indigenous person done it.</p>It's obvious that Indigenous people are struggling to talk about this one as well. The Union of BC Indian Chiefs <a href="https://www.ubcic.bc.ca/ubcic_stands_with_aki_kwe_dr_mary_ellen_turpel_lafond" target="_blank">issued a statement last fall </a>confirming their support for Turpel-Lafond, who they described as a “fierce, ethical and groundbreaking advocate for Indigenous peoples for decades.” <br /><br />They contended that issues of First Nations identity are for Indigenous peoples, families and governments to sort through based on their laws, customs and traditions, and condemned the initial CBC stories as “digging into private matters.”<div><br /></div><div>But as other Indigenous people have repeatedly emphasized, she could have been that same fierce advocate without faking her background. Being a fierce advocate for Indigenous rights does not require that one pretends to be Indigenous.</div><div><br /></div><div>Which Indigenous people went uncelebrated for their own contributions while Turpel-Lafond was receiving 11 honorary degrees under false pretences? </div><div><br /></div><div>Who might have authored <a href="https://engage.gov.bc.ca/app/uploads/sites/613/2020/11/In-Plain-Sight-Summary-Report.pdf" target="_blank">the report into systemic racism</a> toward Indigenous people in BC's health care system had that prestigious and well-paid work not gone to Turpel-Lafond? </div><div><br /></div><div>Who might have been the genuinely Indigenous representative for BC children and youth in a province where Indigenous children continue to be vastly over-represented in child apprehensions? What might they have done with a decade of their own in that vital position? </div><div><br /></div><div>What important perspectives from lived experience have been missed entirely in all of her work? What depths of wisdom went untapped because privileged space was taken up by somebody who hadn't had the life she said she'd had?</div><div><br /></div><div>These things matter. In an era so fake that we can't even believe the things we see with our own eyes, authenticity of the person has never been more important. </div><div><br /></div><div>I feel for Turpel-Lafond in what must surely be an exquisitely painful time. But her deception has shaken the foundations of every good thing she did. We have all been hurt by her fakery, and Indigenous people most of all. </div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div><a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/new-independent-university-report-tackles-indigenous-identity-1.6639470?fbclid=IwAR0Suukx3lrKvp_j0lximAhEVEgMG0PbiMpc03weh9TbiACSkxVa4PGVNxE" target="_blank">Here's a November 2022 piece from the same CBC writer</a>, this one on the report from Metis lawyer Jean Teillet on another Indigenous faker, Carrie Bourassa. </div><div><br /></div><div>People who pretend to be Indigenous feed off the ignorance of the non-Indigenous population, notes Teillet. "The fraudsters enact stereotypes they know will be recognized by the non-Indigenous audience. There is often silent and resentful recognition by Indigenous people that the performance is a stereotyped image of themselves."</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Jody Paterson has been observing the world through writing since 1982.</div>Jody Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509892768463393937noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30710387.post-59479174172218424962023-01-02T17:24:00.001-08:002023-01-02T17:24:36.826-08:00We won't slow climate change with niceness<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih92PbSFVeX4qQEdqLMJFGjdYOE4mIo-NOwddZKIJpon0-5mADRe0MapQmcFOha2lUDIanq5PToDE41tjTX6p-azimG0QlpDlx_R8OejQDaSqoYf0tGStOKrLqLqsovsrJCP5bY9Hp9l8eZc6p8PfvWzcm26y1ecJK3gINEX-yhHhNuPYKatA/s1280/goats-gb44a070e7_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="855" data-original-width="1280" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih92PbSFVeX4qQEdqLMJFGjdYOE4mIo-NOwddZKIJpon0-5mADRe0MapQmcFOha2lUDIanq5PToDE41tjTX6p-azimG0QlpDlx_R8OejQDaSqoYf0tGStOKrLqLqsovsrJCP5bY9Hp9l8eZc6p8PfvWzcm26y1ecJK3gINEX-yhHhNuPYKatA/s320/goats-gb44a070e7_1280.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />Extinction Rebellion UK says <a href="https://extinctionrebellion.uk/2022/12/31/we-quit/" target="_blank">it will prioritize "relationships over roadblocks"</a> this year and move away from public disruptions as a prime strategy for getting the world's attention on climate change. <p></p><p>That's a warm and fuzzy statement for a new year. But hopefully they aren't going to get too nice. Nobody's going to solve the climate crisis with niceness. </p><p>Of course, one does want to be strategic when in the business of disrupting. Throwing cans of soup at famous works of art - not the work of Extinction Rebellion; <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/extinction-rebellion" target="_blank">that was Just Stop Oil</a> - and other poorly considered attention-grabbing antics may get your unknown organization headlines, but simply being offensive in a public space is not a strategic protest. (Put away the soup cans, go disrupt a fracking operation.) </p><p>That said, we sure as hell won't move this crisis with niceness. Co-operative behaviour is one component of an effective change strategy, just like acts of protest, but systemic change at this grand scale cannot be achieved without anger, shouting, threats, arrests, financial loss, deaths and a lot of other not-nice things.</p><p>In the case of the climate crisis, consider the long list of potential opponents who benefit from the current system, a number of them with deep pockets for dragging this out indefinitely.</p><p>First, there's the vastly wealthy fossil-fuel corporations, which have enjoyed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/21/revealed-oil-sectors-staggering-profits-last-50-years" target="_blank">almost $3 billion US in daily profits</a> for the last 50 years. Then there are the governments that are absolutely dependent on the revenue and jobs. International energy policies so friendly to industry that countries that sign on have to promise not to make energy policy changes without consulting Big Oil first. </p><p>There are the global investors clamouring for endless returns on investment. The billions of people completely reliant on fuel to heat their homes, operate their businesses, get to work, and wage war on real and imagined enemies. The travellers, the tourists, the legions of individualists who have never had a collective thought in their life and are just fine with riding Earth into oblivion as long as they can be "free."</p><p>There are mega agricultural operations spread across mega land holdings to serve a world that <a href="https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/consumption/foods-and-beverages/world-consumption-of-meat" target="_blank">eats 350 million tons of meat a year</a>. There are <a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20161128-what-its-like-to-sail-colossal-ships-on-earths-busiest-sea" target="_blank">more than 50,000 merchant ships</a> criss-crossing our oceans every day just to feed our hunger for stuff. There are trade agreements in all directions that bind our governments' hands even when they're willing to do better.</p><p>Every one of those things and so much more is going to have to change if the end of this global story we're living is going to be remotely happy. We need to have so many big, brave conversations. We need big, brave leadership at all political levels - leadership that gets past the typical political urge to pander and please and treats this issue like the global emergency that it is. </p><p>And while we can strive to be respectful in all of that, we can't expect that any of this is going to be nice. </p><p>Extinction Rebellion says part of its decision to shift tactics is because we live in times in which protest has been criminalized. "Thriving through bridge-building is a radical act," the group says.</p><p>But really, what big change has ever come about without arrests and conflict with the law? In the case of global emissions, we're talking about trying to stop activities that make people so much money. They're not going down that road without a really big fight. Read sociologist Frances Fox Piven's eye-opening <i><a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Poor-Peoples-Movements-They-Succeed/dp/0394726979" target="_blank">Poor People's Movements</a> </i>for more on that.</p><p>While it's certainly important to get your allies in order and build those relationships, there still has to be disruption in a crisis this big. If XR wants to play nicer, then somebody else needs to step up to be the disruptor. Climate change is a disruptor itself, and those of us who want better for our world are going to have to meet its chaos head-on.</p><p>Change this big will be very painful for those who benefit from the current system. That can't be sugar-coated. </p><p>For the sake of future generations, let's just go straight to being tough and skip the part where we all think we can settle this like friends. That's just going to drag out the bloody ending that's coming one way or the other. </p><p><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Jody Paterson has been observing the world through writing since 1982.</div>Jody Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509892768463393937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30710387.post-853938088722463452022-12-21T16:32:00.002-08:002022-12-21T16:32:38.336-08:00When a rock meets a hard place<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2MdIZFmaH5_Z42VJe10AtUwtOcbwCKX0726GDNOxlkn08Z3qh3s_171FPAVxszzUOgajOeyqdVPOIJlryRX022e36zCULa9FFmtrBQJj2MuRimA-nJSaFa9pUxKAWcPLBwU5uIwSw6OoF1ZWE7TcmW-B5YcBpl5ZpMLXvLYzMagERUE7G6kI/s1280/rock-ge53d2ebc8_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="851" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2MdIZFmaH5_Z42VJe10AtUwtOcbwCKX0726GDNOxlkn08Z3qh3s_171FPAVxszzUOgajOeyqdVPOIJlryRX022e36zCULa9FFmtrBQJj2MuRimA-nJSaFa9pUxKAWcPLBwU5uIwSw6OoF1ZWE7TcmW-B5YcBpl5ZpMLXvLYzMagERUE7G6kI/s320/rock-ge53d2ebc8_1280.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><br />Francesco Villi was <a href="https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/estranged-daughters-of-condo-gunman-say-he-was-abusive-husband-and-father-1.6203686" target="_blank">an angry man who settled his differences violently</a>. The fights he got into with his Toronto strata council were obviously like fire to the powder keg for a man like him. <p></p><p>And then last Sunday he just knocked on their condo doors and shot three of them dead, along with two of their spouses. What an awful, crazy thing. </p><p>Whenever these kinds of unthinkable events happen, it seems a natural instinct to question what could have been done differently. </p><p>Why wasn't something done about Villi back when he was an abusive husband and father? Shouldn't somebody have done something about his mental health? Shouldn't somebody have stopped him from getting a gun? Could anything have been done to divert the rage he felt toward the strata council?</p><p>Valid questions. Unfortunately, the shoulda/woulda/coulda questions don't mean much once the horrible deed is done and five innocent people are dead. </p><p>Short of a government initiative to attach a good Samaritan to watch over each of us for all of our lives in case we start to go off the rails, we'll rarely know until it's too late that somebody in our midst was on track to explode. </p><p>Media reports in coming days will doubtlessly carry news about the many warning signs from Villi's life. But who exactly do we expect should have even been adding up those warning signs, let alone acting on them? </p><p>The question of whether anything could have been done about Villi's escalating battles with his strata council, however - that one's got potential for reflection. In the event of a rock meeting a hard place, are there measures that could come into play before one or the other is smashed to bits?</p><p>Quasi-judicial system are exactly the kind of structures that attract, trap and ignite a person like Villi. I don't know how to characterize his kind of mental unwellness, but I saw so much of it in my journalism years related to courts, child custody, divorce, property disputes and bylaw breaches. </p><p>There is a type of Angry Man who absolutely loses his mind when caught up in disputes like that. The outcome can be horrific.</p><p>There is no excuse for Villi's actions. But in the interest of not having any more strata council volunteers gunned down by raging residents, this might be a good time to scrutinize the history of the fight between Villa and his strata council. Was there a point where it became excruciatingly clear that this was shaping up to be a battle to the death?</p><p>The people who sought me out as a journalist - the ones who turned to media as part of their escalation - had not yet reached the point of murder. But I could always hear the dangerous obsession in their voice as they related their stories. </p><p>They believed themselves to have been gravely wronged and repeatedly ignored (and in many cases, there were elements of that along the way). And now, they were pretty much on fire. </p><p>Our quasi-judicial systems don't do well with grey. They're designed to create winners and losers, and to shut people out entirely once they have run through the processes available to them. For a particular type of Angry Man, that point seems to mark where the escalation really begins. </p><p>Systems have to be fair, of course. Millions of Canadians co-exist peacefully with their strata councils. But any system in which one group's wishes dominates another runs the risk of a dispute moving into dangerous new territory. Having a red-alert clause and an alternative strategy before things get even uglier just seem like useful concepts.</p><p>Fathers killing their children; students killing their teachers; employees killing their bosses; tenants killing their landlords - virtually all of those terrible events generally have long back-stories of things going wrong between an increasingly angry person and systems where nobody ever steps back. They're often characterized as random acts of violence, but are rarely as random as they look.</p><p>Villi was clearly a disturbed man. He locked horns with systems that don't see their role as having to differentiate between the regular angry people and the seriously disturbed ones, and five people died. A person looking for a war met a system built to resist, and a terrible thing happened.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Jody Paterson has been observing the world through writing since 1982.</div>Jody Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509892768463393937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30710387.post-82684526011655813442022-12-18T13:37:00.002-08:002022-12-18T13:40:32.079-08:00The crisis is now<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXK4gfVbRt1tDXXzKvjKXgdDg2ijCEGDBSP4_R_8j6VJAWnZv4lFngBOvd0HAnKcMM4emvxOza2-3QCYpX__lwJ1If8gC0voyEaW4vhTzQHyxvaT1YRJClVdg2u-4Tn5eZkvOdkLWjNQHwI3OjPoFWJzr38tHFUKhmPJL6uNMQerV4rXbL9HI/s1280/homeless-g1f6504800_1280.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="853" data-original-width="1280" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXK4gfVbRt1tDXXzKvjKXgdDg2ijCEGDBSP4_R_8j6VJAWnZv4lFngBOvd0HAnKcMM4emvxOza2-3QCYpX__lwJ1If8gC0voyEaW4vhTzQHyxvaT1YRJClVdg2u-4Tn5eZkvOdkLWjNQHwI3OjPoFWJzr38tHFUKhmPJL6uNMQerV4rXbL9HI/s320/homeless-g1f6504800_1280.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>The perfect is the enemy of the good, as Voltaire noted back in the 18th century. His wise words came to mind when I saw <a href="https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/critics-say-modular-homes-for-b-c-s-unhoused-can-be-problematic" target="_blank">the Vancouver Sun's piece</a> last week on <a href="https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2022HOUS0069-001898" target="_blank">the province's plan to fast-track 90 more modular homes</a> in Vancouver for people living homeless.</p><p></p>The article quotes Danya Fast, a research scientist at the B.C. Centre on Substance Use, cautioning that while it's urgent to act fast to create more housing, modular housing complexes can “actually deepen a sense of uncertainty in young people’s lives, especially when they’re temporary.”<div><br /></div><div>Point taken, as are Liberal housing critic Karin Kirkpatrick's comments that the construction of temporary and permanent housing have to go hand in hand or you're really just warehousing people.</div><div><br /></div><div>But for anyone toughing it out at a packed and noisy Downtown Eastside shelter or trying to survive in a tent on the street, a little warehousing through the worst of winter and beyond might sound pretty good right now.</div><div><br /></div><div>I still remember one fellow's painfully insightful comments 13 or so years back when the City of Victoria was putting on one of its first big pushes for tackling homelessness.</div><div><br /></div><div>We were all congratulating ourselves for a newly announced strategy that would see a certain number of units brought on each year with a focus on the hardest to house - until one of the people with lived experience who had been part of the work noted that he'd be on the street for at least another four years under the plan, if he ever qualified at all.</div><div><br /></div><div>That stuck with me. Easy for us in our comfortable, warm homes to insist that good things take time and it's important to do things right, but what about all the people who need help tonight?</div><div><br /></div><div>Homelessness is a crisis. We have become frightenly comfortable with the sight of people living homeless in our communities because it's been like a time-release crisis, growing and intensifying slowly over many years. But at this point, it's a full-blown, in your face crisis for virtually every BC community.</div><div><br /></div><div>We talk about it all the time, but we also hate talking about it. We make plans to do something, but then we forget, or the government changes, or somebody says wait, I think we need to talk about this more so we don't make a mistake.</div><div><br /></div><div>Compare those kinds of reactions to the one we'd have if 500 or 1,000 people suddenly materialized homeless and sick in our downtowns tomorrow. </div><div><br /></div><div>If the homelessness on our streets right now was from a natural disaster - hurricane, earthquake, big fire - we'd have jumped to it like community keeners to ensure everybody was indoors within 24 hours. </div><div><br /></div><div>We'd have done our best to not make mistakes but forgiven ourselves when we did, because this was an emergency and the most important thing was to get people to shelter. We'd have been creative and innovative, with stops in the system temporarily lifted so that we could get things done in a hurry.</div><div><br /></div><div>And then we'd move to Stage 2, where we would carefully do things right. (That includes stopping the endless flow of people into first-time homelessness, which is the elephant in the room that will wipe out even the most brilliant housing strategy if we continue to ignore it.) </div><div><br /></div><div>After that would come Stage 3, 4, 5 or however many stages it will take to fix this daunting, multi-layered disaster of people with insecure or non-existent housing that bad policy decisions, changing times, complex societal factors and stigma have helped to create.</div><div><br /></div><div>But for the purposes of this metaphor, we're at Stage 1 right now. We're imagining that we've just had an earthquake and it has left thousands of people all over BC needing housing tonight and for the foreseeable future. The fact that the housing won't be perfect right off is not something we'd be worrying about at this moment.</div><div><br /></div><div>None of which is to criticize the UBC researcher for her comments. It makes total sense that feeling like you've got permanent housing is a major factor in anyone's well-being. But 90 modular homes in short order is way better news right now for the people who end up living in them than would be 90 permanent homes ready two years from now.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is a crisis. We must act like first responders and address the most immediate problem: No place for people to live. Though just as an ambulance doesn't provide life-saving first aid only to dump a person at the roadside, we certainly can't stop there. </div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Postscript: Voltaire apparently said "the best is the enemy of the good," and cited an old Italian proverb as his source. But a long-ago translation changed best into perfect in its common use.</i></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Jody Paterson has been observing the world through writing since 1982.</div>Jody Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509892768463393937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30710387.post-47033517141509019342022-12-12T15:53:00.000-08:002022-12-12T15:53:19.119-08:00Haters gonna hate - so don't give them the microphone<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrOEwdxCLOC23v3AzgTtBCg8nd-nIktiZj_kpsBtaU6ZHHz08Xeq_V8U_pmT_2wp3TFJUIFLz63DHZV012tA0-FJyyWGhniYTlai_0ZWZc2IltmMnrGuMaAsvnoCFDeiNv5ZYyu_1PCwxa9ahfliX8JvEvtnuUjFTSVY-ZU2aRXAfmPeiX6yM/s1280/caricature-gb06251e2c_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1280" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrOEwdxCLOC23v3AzgTtBCg8nd-nIktiZj_kpsBtaU6ZHHz08Xeq_V8U_pmT_2wp3TFJUIFLz63DHZV012tA0-FJyyWGhniYTlai_0ZWZc2IltmMnrGuMaAsvnoCFDeiNv5ZYyu_1PCwxa9ahfliX8JvEvtnuUjFTSVY-ZU2aRXAfmPeiX6yM/s320/caricature-gb06251e2c_1280.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />If Pierre Poilievre was just some random dude with a Twitter account and an uninformed opinion, we could just leave him to it and shrug off <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/9335720/safe-supply-opioid-crisis-canada/" target="_blank">his ridiculous view</a> that providing safe consumption sites and non-poisoned drugs for people "will only lead to their ultimate deaths."<p></p><p>Alas, he's not some random dude, he's a man who could actually end up being Canada's prime minister someday. </p><p>So even when he tweets something stupid and wrong, the media pick it up and send it across the country. And the fact of that pickup gives his foolish musings weight among those who already hate any sensible conversation around drugs.</p><p>That particular group of people have controlled the illicit drug conversation for almost 70 years, if we want to start the clock at BC's landmark 1956 study of heroin use that largely concluded that harm reduction made a lot more sense than criminalizing users. At what point do the rest of us get to say hey, shuddup already?</p><p>BC's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2-YSwOaVrM" target="_blank">poisoned drug supply has killed 10,000 people</a> in the last seven years. That's almost three times the number of deaths from motor vehicle accidents, homicides, suicides and fatal prescription drug overdoses combined. </p><p>Meanwhile, years of careful record-keeping at Canada's safer-consumption sites give us all the proof needed to conclude that such sites save lives and connect people to services. Between 2017-20, some 2.2 million people used the sites and nobody died. </p><p>As for whether a safer drug supply would save lives, of course it would. People are not dying by the thousands because they use drugs, they're dying because the drugs they use are poisoned. </p><p>So why should Poilievre get even a millisecond of media attention for his completely ludicrous assertion that safer-consumption sites and a safer drug supply lead only to people's "ultimate deaths"? Why do the media allow him to "reignite the debate around safe supply," as the Global TV story puts it, by giving his tweet public profile as if he was actually saying something of substance?</p><p>Granted, the media did find people to refute Poilievre as they covered the "story" of his disparaging tweet. But the damage is done when you give the guy the top third of a story to spout his harmful nonsense.</p><p>Once upon a time, I would have imagined that right-minded people would see through Poilievre's tweet in an instant and that it would have as much impact as the guy sounding off behind me in the grocery store lineup about how COVID-19 is a government conspiracy. </p><p>But in this post-Trump era, I know otherwise. Today's idiot statement can easily end up tomorrow's political policy, because now we are "populist" and prone to taking a shine to people who are as ill-prepared as any of us when it comes to effectively running a city, province or country. We like The Everyman, even when he's a dangerous liar from the privileged class playing the long con.</p><p>I relish some day in the distant future when Poilievre's words are seen as the hate speech that they really are, and when media reporting in garden-variety fashion on such blatant untruths is viewed as complicit in the spreading of that hate. </p><p>Many more people will die because the tweet of a man given status as a future political leader will dampen political and public enthusiasm even more for taking action on what is surely one of the most outrageous, preventable tragedies of our times. It doesn't get more hateful than that. </p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Jody Paterson has been observing the world through writing since 1982.</div>Jody Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509892768463393937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30710387.post-41930204265135438222022-11-30T07:52:00.002-08:002022-11-30T08:48:57.617-08:00Climate change: Somebody ought to do something about that<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBJYvGEoW5XvU_T3MSjxE0Tbco8ra6auWytVomZezvCjPJklXpitUi5xoDn5xhJSFlHrUxupui2H89_yQdlMAdFEhEUHpgggqfRNLRvtIabWkn7iEpy91e54wWyTyalmQ1RiCkuthhCClT5axpQcQSTZDzPyAS_b-TjUMLPu6fE47--Yntjlo/s1920/asteroid-gd43a23fb1_1920.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1920" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBJYvGEoW5XvU_T3MSjxE0Tbco8ra6auWytVomZezvCjPJklXpitUi5xoDn5xhJSFlHrUxupui2H89_yQdlMAdFEhEUHpgggqfRNLRvtIabWkn7iEpy91e54wWyTyalmQ1RiCkuthhCClT5axpQcQSTZDzPyAS_b-TjUMLPu6fE47--Yntjlo/s320/asteroid-gd43a23fb1_1920.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />For a while there, we could all write about climate change as
if it were still coming and might possibly be avoided if people were exhorted
sufficiently to do x, y and z to reduce their carbon footprint and governments
were urged to own up to their policy paralysis.<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I miss those days. Now it all feels just so much more
right-now, a black cloud of fear and dread carried on waves of intense media
coverage of weird weather events everywhere in the world. How does an average
writer contribute helpfully to the dialogue once things have reached this
state?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“What solutions would you propose?” a Facebook connection asked
me recently after <a href="http://closer-look.blogspot.com/2022/11/let-me-tell-ya-kid-back-in-my-day.html" target="_blank">a post I did on</a> the crappy legacy we Boomers are leaving
behind for coming generations. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Well, isn’t that just the million-dollar question? Who DOES
have the solutions for the gigantic issues of these times? And how will they
ever be enacted in a world that seems incapable of taking collective action
even as existential crisis looms?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We have wasted so much time already, first debating whether
climate change even existed and then splintering into our various belief camps as
to who was the most to blame and how they should be made to atone. As usual, we
have let politicians use our longing for solutions that don’t require anything
of us to take us down a number of garden paths during these years of
finger-pointing.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">The cost of inaction is staggering. <a href="https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2022/11/30/Staggering-Price-Climate-Inaction/?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=301122" target="_blank">Ben Parfitt and Marc Lee write</a> that in 2021 alone, heat, fire and floods cost the BC economy at least $10.6 billion, and possibly almost double that. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">At this point, does it even matter how we got here, other
than to give us context for prioritizing action? Sure, rich countries are
rightly going to have to be on the hook for more money into the communal pot
after enjoying decades of guilt-free emissions that fueled our economic
dominance, but let’s just presume that and get going. What we really need to
talk about is how we’re going to stop this train wreck. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I take heart from the scientists, because they’ve been studying
this one for years even while the rest of us were still arguing about whether
climate change even existed. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Devin Todd, Researcher in Residence at the Pacific Institute
for Climate Solutions at the University of Victoria, wrote in the Globe and
Mail recently of the need to keep the pressure on around reducing emissions
from fossil fuels while also figuring out a plan for emerging “negative
emission” technologies that can remove and neutralize greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://pics.uvic.ca/research/topics/negative-emissions">The technologies
are fascinating</a>: machines that suck carbon dioxide from the air with
chemical sponges; changing ocean chemistry so it draws down more C02;
direct-air capture with the C02 then stored deep underground.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I read about what the scientists are coming up with and feel
hope, sort of like you do at that part in the epic disaster movie where the
brave astronaut-physicist-miracle person is heading into space to stop the
asteroid from striking the Earth and destroying every living thing. Please save
us, heroic scientists.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But then I look at the glacial pace of climate action at the
hands of so many of the world’s governments and the deeply compromised agendas
of pretty much everyone, and wonder how the fraught and fragile democracies of
the 21<sup>st</sup> century will ever get it together to make any plan, let
alone execute it.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Not that it’s all on government. This historic period of
climate change is about us, the eight billion people who divide up into people
who buy stuff, people who make stuff, and people eagerly awaiting a day when
they can do either of those things if they can only get out of poverty. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Those of us with money and those of us with cheap labour have
entangled our needs and wants through unfettered trade. As Crawford Kilian
noted in <a href="https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2022/11/28/China-Serious-Trouble/">a
recent Tyee column</a>, Canada’s coal fuels China’s manufacturing, which then
comes back as imports of all the stuff that Canadians can’t stop buying. Think
of all the emissions that vicious circle of want costs the world.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So here we are, collectively entangled in the climate crisis,
hooked on economic growth, wishing with all our hearts that someone’s going to
pull a rabbit out of the hat and we’ll all get back to normal. Except when
everybody’s wishing and nobody’s acting, not much gets done. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Are we even capable of acting collectively? It’s not a
hopeful sign when our countries can’t even come out of a global climate meeting
with a few cheery accomplishments to lift our spirits. Perhaps poor countries think
it was a win to extract <a href="https://unfccc.int/news/cop27-reaches-breakthrough-agreement-on-new-loss-and-damage-fund-for-vulnerable-countries#:~:text=UN%20Climate%20Change%20News%2C%2020,hit%20hard%20by%20climate%20disasters.">a
vague promise from rich countries to give them more money</a> as climate change
tears everything apart, but that is hardly a climate-change solution.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">How do we come together as a world when so much sets us
apart? It’s the question for these times. But if we’re still thinking that
somebody else is prepping a hero for the big save and the rest of us are fine
to cruise along like always, best to give that one up. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The world will do what it does, and I guess we’ll see if
that’s anything at all. But what will YOU do?<o:p></o:p></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Jody Paterson has been observing the world through writing since 1982.</div>Jody Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509892768463393937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30710387.post-9067412057075528212022-11-21T08:49:00.004-08:002022-11-21T09:05:48.990-08:00Let me tell ya, kid, back in my day...<p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6OjWdh7S-Og2kVzM_KTNCPl3hCiwszg8XaAjm5NpdESD1mD-RNaJ9XuHf1u-RkFEENXR3c2J4L1Hny3XQl-nfgTdu6eVbaqDbgTp_eyK8OMjdof1mRL1ovo0jkECBvwXPmAOK_Z5fiyfX_WyiOHINup9g8NrkSNlwbpDUquvzMFW7KmqgpP8/s4624/IMG_20221119_100419.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3472" data-original-width="4624" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6OjWdh7S-Og2kVzM_KTNCPl3hCiwszg8XaAjm5NpdESD1mD-RNaJ9XuHf1u-RkFEENXR3c2J4L1Hny3XQl-nfgTdu6eVbaqDbgTp_eyK8OMjdof1mRL1ovo0jkECBvwXPmAOK_Z5fiyfX_WyiOHINup9g8NrkSNlwbpDUquvzMFW7KmqgpP8/w320-h240/IMG_20221119_100419.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>When I was a kid and got too whiny about some little difficulty in my life, I'd get shaken back to reality by a parent or grandparent with a version of one of those Walked Five Miles to School in a Blizzard stories from their own childhoods. </p><p>The examples varied, perhaps invoking a time when there was nothing but shrivelled potatoes to eat, or comparing my comfy bedroom to the mattress on the floor that they remembered sharing with some ridiculous amount of siblings. </p><p>But the moral was always the same: this parent/grandparent had known deprivation, and I should be so glad and eternally grateful for living in different times.</p><p>It struck me the other day that the Boomer generation that I'm part of just might be the first generation in Canada whose own stories will instead be of how good they had it compared to their grandkids. </p><p>Let me tell ya, kid, back in my day we had houses for people. We didn't even have a word for homelessness, and you camped for fun, not because it was that or nothing. We burned through natural resources like there was no tomorrow. (Turns out that last part was true.) </p><p>Back in my day, we made real money, and if we hit a bad spell, could fall back on employment insurance that actually covered most of a person's bills. We had doctors. Weather was just weather, not an ominous portent of end of days. </p><p>Sounds a bit like a tall tale at this point, doesn't it? In fairness, not everything has gotten worse in my lifetime. </p><p>Rights have improved significantly, at least on paper. We are woke, more or less, to the cruelties and inequities around race, gender, sexual preference and disability. We appear to be finally getting real about addressing the historic theft of Indigenous lands. </p><p><a href="https://johnhoward.ca/blog/crime-continues-to-decline-in-canada/" target="_blank">Crime in Canada</a> is half of what it was at its peak in the early 1990s, and <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/poverty#:~:text=There%20are%20more%20than%20a,today%2C%20however%2C%20remains%20vast." target="_blank">the number of people living in extreme poverty</a> around the world has declined by more than a billion people since 1990.</p><p>But while rights, personal safety and a little less global poverty are vital components to a good life, so is purchasing power and hope for the future in a world that at times feels dangerously close to losing it.</p><p> And on that front, my generation can only hang its head in shame.</p><p>I've told <a href="http://closer-look.blogspot.com/2008/09/long-ago-tax-return-proves-dollar.html" target="_blank">the story of my 17-year-old newlywed self</a> many times, so apologies for dragging it out again for this post. But it's just so perfect for summing up what has happened over my lifetime when it comes to the growing social decay we see around us and the deepening struggle to achieve the basics of a good life.</p><p>In the late 1970s in Courtenay, I was a stay-at-home teenage mom teaching a little piano on the side and my then-husband worked at the Campbell River paper mill. He made around $28,000 a year, which the <a href="https://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/related/inflation-calculator/" target="_blank">Bank of Canada inflation calculator</a> tells me is equivalent to $105,000 in 2022. Pretty decent pay for a couple of kids starting a life.</p><p>We bought a cabin on the water at Royston for $10,000 when we got married in 1974. We had two cars, and regularly holidayed with the kids to the Okanagan and Disneyland. We moved on to a bigger house a couple of years later and had a small, manageable mortgage and no appreciable credit card debt, possibly because it was hellishly hard to get a credit card in those days.</p><p>When there was a five-month strike at the mill that really hurt, we caught and ate so much salmon that I couldn't eat it again for years. Because our seas were full of salmon.</p><p>Fast forward 50 years and it's an entirely different life for a young couple with kids anywhere on Vancouver Island or the Lower Mainland. </p><p>Not only is the thought of ever being able to buy a home out of reach for many of them, they can't even count on staying put in a rental home if the property owner opts to "renovict." They certainly can't count on easily finding another place to rent at a price they can afford. </p><p>The <a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-630-x/11-630-x2016005-eng.htm" target="_blank">number of two-income families</a> in Canada has doubled since the 1970s, during which time purchasing power has fallen far below what it once was. Forget the dream of a two-income family able to participate more fully in the economy. What has actually happened is a flat-lining in wages that now requires two people to work just to earn the same amount that one person once earned. </p><p>The average hourly wage in Canada in 1975 was just over $10. Today, it's $20. Meanwhile, inflation has risen almost 470 per cent in the same period - which means that the hourly wage in 2022 ought to be $47 to have maintained the same purchasing power. </p><p>The rich get richer and the not-rich lose ground. Canada's wealthiest 20 per cent of households now hold two-thirds of all assets in the country, while the least wealthy 20 per cent hold just 2.8 per cent. That top 20 per cent is <a href="https://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/hot-topics/canInequality.aspx" target="_blank">the only quintile to have increased its share of national income over the years</a>; all the others have seen a loss. </p><p>It was my generation that inked the free-trade deals that have tied the world together so tightly for hungry global capitalists and consumers eager for cheap goods that now we're dependent on distant countries for everything. When a relentless drought grips California farms and the rivers get so dry in China that the freighters can't run, it's our store shelves that sit empty.</p><p>It's my generation that's sitting fat and happy on our investment portfolios, rooting for growth to continue unfettered every quarter so we can live in grand comfort. Those who come after us will live with the fallout - crashed pension plans, climate change, unattainable dreams of a home to call your own, weakening social benefits. "Populist" governments to come will worsen every crisis with their self-serving agendas, even while their meaningless rhetoric acts as a siren's call to the disaffected and disappointed.</p><p>Let me tell ya, kid, that is all so very wrong. Wish I could tell you that we're working on it, but I don't think we are. Think of it this way: You'll have some great stories of deprivation to tell your own grandkids.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Jody Paterson has been observing the world through writing since 1982.</div>Jody Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509892768463393937noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30710387.post-57745562257656934592022-11-15T13:01:00.002-08:002022-11-15T13:01:51.608-08:00Drugs don't kill people, poisoned drugs do<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinTJ8Vl2LNoq-WKiyp8EYv5YrF25Hh6qhr7Ox56cBMsTyf5VnyE84X5s_axb9QqZCveJenoQWoV19NkWCjufsGkDT1mgQdCa7FqThDL0331tYgPYEpivS9PZotAiNZZcWCHjCEtF2qx6FCC-BEA6QHzt8M9pnuEoFqlL_a5_LznT-xI_Dny8w/s1280/skeletons-1617539_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="904" data-original-width="1280" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinTJ8Vl2LNoq-WKiyp8EYv5YrF25Hh6qhr7Ox56cBMsTyf5VnyE84X5s_axb9QqZCveJenoQWoV19NkWCjufsGkDT1mgQdCa7FqThDL0331tYgPYEpivS9PZotAiNZZcWCHjCEtF2qx6FCC-BEA6QHzt8M9pnuEoFqlL_a5_LznT-xI_Dny8w/s320/skeletons-1617539_1280.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />BC's crisis of poisoned street drugs is hitting men in the prime of their working years the hardest. <a href="https://youtu.be/M2-YSwOaVrM" target="_blank">Three-quarters of the 10,000 deaths in BC</a> from poisoned illicit drugs since 2015 have been men ages 30-59.<div><br /></div><div>As <a href="https://thetyee.ca/News/2022/11/15/Drugs-Death-Denial-Job/?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_term=intro" target="_blank">this fact-filled story in The Tyee today</a> highlights, one in five of them was working in the trades or transportation when they died. But while this information matters, it's not where we're going to find solutions for BC's poisoned street drugs. </div><div><br /></div><div>There are many reasons for why tradespeople are dying from using drugs, as the piece explains. The manly-man culture of the trades, the chronic pain of injury, crazy shifts, intense working conditions, long stints isolated in work camps, reluctance to reach out for help and risk looking "weak."</div><div><br /></div><div>But BC is a resource province, and we've had manly men working in pain, isolation and wild working conditions throughout our history. They have used drugs to numb all that - or as a reward at the end of a hard day - for as long as rough jobs have existed. Those of us who grew up with our eyes open in any BC resource town can attest to that.</div><div><br /></div><div>Admittedly, such men have probably been dying at a much higher rate than the rest of for all this time; we just didn't think to measure those deaths in relation to the type of work the dead man was doing at the time. But they weren't dying like they're dying now.</div><div><br /></div><div>So what's different this time? The drugs. They're poisoned. How and why they have ended up poisoned is a story I'm still waiting to read, but it seems pretty obvious that we won't slow this crisis until we figure it out. </div><div><br /></div><div>The standard how-why responses for illicit drugs having become so toxic tend to focus on suppliers using cheaper substances to increase profits. Street drugs are being cut with fentanyl, benzodiazipines and other weird and deadly stuff because it allows a much greater profit for the supplier and seller.</div><div><br /></div><div>But cutting drugs with weird stuff to increase profits is also a time-honoured tradition in BC. The crisis in toxic drug deaths that we're seeing now is very specific to the last 10 years, and strangely specific to BC. </div><div><br /></div><div>The United States has its own drug crisis going on with opioid overdoses, <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-opioid-epidemic" target="_blank">now killing more than 1,500 Americans every week.</a> But an overdose is not the same as poisoned drugs. The people who are dying in BC aren't dying because they used more drugs than were safe, they're dying because the drug supply is toxic.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is an important distinction. You can't set about fixing a problem until you fully understand it, and it's important for us to let go of this wrong idea that people are dying just because they used drugs (a belief that lets us fall back on moralizing and dismiss this crisis as something that "good people" don't have to worry about). </div><div><br /></div><div>Were you ever a kid who gulped down street drugs without a second thought? Because I was. Happily, I grew up in the 1970s, when the drugs that a kid could access mostly weren't going to do anything worse than send you into a gas station bathroom to barf your guts out, or get you in trouble with your parents. </div><div><br /></div><div>Had I been a teen in today's world, I'm pretty sure I'd be dead. </div><div><br /></div><div>The Tyee's story notes that the employers of tradespeople have a lot to answer to, from inhumane shifts and their own culture of denying anything is wrong in their industry. But understanding why tradespeople need drugs to hang in at their jobs, while important, will not solve the toxic drug crisis. That won't be solved until we no longer have a poisoned drug supply.</div><div><br /></div><div>The judgment we feel about the use of any drug other than alcohol so quickly sends us off into pointless and meaningless conversations about why people use drugs. (We use drugs because they make us feel better.) But addressing this toxic-drug crisis has to focus on the poisoned drugs, not the users. </div><div><br /></div><div>Imagine for a moment that more and more infant formula coming into Canada was turning out to be poisoned, and babies were dying. </div><div><br /></div><div>We would not address that with a public awareness campaign about breastfeeding, would we? We would not call it a solution to distribute pharmaceuticals to new moms so they could inject their babies and stall off the effects of the poison long enough to get to the hospital. We'd just dig in to figure out why the formula was poisoned, and how we could ensure a safe supply.</div><div><br /></div><div>Where are the big drug importers in this conversation, and what could they tell us about how those imports, or their own practices, have changed? Where are the policy makers who can put aside political qualms and posturing to act bravely in the name of saving lives? </div><div><br /></div><div>We are stuck, and so many people are dying. This is so wrong. </div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Jody Paterson has been observing the world through writing since 1982.</div>Jody Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509892768463393937noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30710387.post-79100010321165231582022-11-11T09:11:00.004-08:002022-11-11T09:16:38.601-08:00I will remember<p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYaD7I4Et8NtTggv8FzMfULhHeZwIai24fNoGNYHsIdv8Mf8BKt9heEKUqicxiG84tDWOorZKJre3fZWFUq0YM569VyOEInqszJDVGLtEHuZOMi8NmnHF19uIBzojMnOHoEKVSuGxQBtzkhJUylaPm9IGCUaMSuh2ssVB2e8wYCya1-uD6Rng/s2000/Remembrance.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="2000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYaD7I4Et8NtTggv8FzMfULhHeZwIai24fNoGNYHsIdv8Mf8BKt9heEKUqicxiG84tDWOorZKJre3fZWFUq0YM569VyOEInqszJDVGLtEHuZOMi8NmnHF19uIBzojMnOHoEKVSuGxQBtzkhJUylaPm9IGCUaMSuh2ssVB2e8wYCya1-uD6Rng/w400-h320/Remembrance.png" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Clockwise from top left: My father David Paterson; my aunt Joan Hepburn, solo and with her mates; my grandmother's brother Jack Feica; my uncle George Chow and wife Fan from a newspaper clipping after George's dramatic escape from a Japanese internment camp; my uncle Bill Chow; my uncle Pete Chow; and my grandmother's brother Tom Feica.</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p>The benefit of being one of the people in your big extended family who hoards photos is that when struck by the thought of whether you could pull together a quick photo collage for Remembrance Day of relatives who served our country, there they all are.</p><p>This little collection certainly doesn't represent all of my relatives who have served, just the ones I have photos for. But even this handful reminds me of their bravery and commitment to a better world, putting their lives on the line for democracy and freedom. </p><p>For my mom's brothers in particular, serving in the Second World War couldn't have been an easy choice, what with Canada still rejecting Chinese-Canadians until things got so desperate that they had to shift racist policies. My mom and her siblings were mixed race - Romanian and Chinese - but that was not enough to shield them from brutally racist times. Chinese-Canadians didn't get the vote until after the war, and even then it was a fight.</p><p>A person can get weighed down by the headlines of today, when it feels like we spend far more time warring with our fellow citizens and savaging the political leaders of the day than we do standing up for what's good and right about Canada. </p><p>I am awed by my relatives' belief in this country as worthy enough to lay their lives down for. May we come together for the good fight again now that the enemy most capable of wreaking havoc is the contentious issues that divide us. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Jody Paterson has been observing the world through writing since 1982.</div>Jody Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509892768463393937noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30710387.post-61657634691871261502022-11-09T18:19:00.000-08:002022-11-09T18:19:08.584-08:00Falling B grades signal community decline<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGWGWI55UBuHzF62feSV1aXpofH3m-QBqZ341lGt80AhrGAXOX0WzfXjPU4LcuXGCoKdRTVCdN1yth4GgR59SwJN2r023FGI8TsxdNp3S-Gwu0hgWwz80QiG5Se-2EjKP67brKLl7XT2Y_spMuxyXCpZTcqaqqEGRCqaMR3DiY5ozl8haCUn0/s640/icon-5646465_640.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="640" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGWGWI55UBuHzF62feSV1aXpofH3m-QBqZ341lGt80AhrGAXOX0WzfXjPU4LcuXGCoKdRTVCdN1yth4GgR59SwJN2r023FGI8TsxdNp3S-Gwu0hgWwz80QiG5Se-2EjKP67brKLl7XT2Y_spMuxyXCpZTcqaqqEGRCqaMR3DiY5ozl8haCUn0/s320/icon-5646465_640.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />Few things visualize the impact of the pandemic and the sad slide of social wellness in Greater Victoria quite so pointedly as the <a href="https://victoriafoundation.bc.ca/vital-signs/" target="_blank">2022 Vital Signs survey results</a>.<p></p><p>Take a look at these charts highlighting findings from the Victoria Foundation report. </p><p>What caught my eye was the one that compared 10 years of survey data where participants grade a dozen "key areas" that together make up a healthy community - things like belonging, arts and culture, the economy, health and wellness, standard of living, etc.</p><p>Straight As are a lot to ask for, but a B grade ought to be achievable for a Canadian city of privilege and wealth in 2022. Respondents are asked to give a B grade if they think a particular key area is good but could use some improvement. In years past, a majority of Greater Victorians responding to the survey ranked most of the key areas at B or higher.</p><p>But that was before. Vital Signs 2022 compared B grades across 10 years' worth of surveys, and what is revealed is a community that fell hard in the pandemic and has yet to find its way back out. Scores for every one of the 12 indicators fell significantly in 2020, and most are still falling. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvQOxkYUxk2W7yEI89ut2OG_xxRwwqEKaIYNYW6X8ympNI1xGHtNW-1JDUos7RFNgNRpf7nCAyLQjjvRiprr7RIVHEuOgtVwSDAU15_iQ09KTpgYAfNUJLIhKOgWufms95G-fAp1NVkKFSN6r-_OXVVrEpvcwXdG64FHFSCn95UXqVpwmkgJY/s1979/Vital%20Signs%2010%20years%20of%20Bs.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1149" data-original-width="1979" height="333" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvQOxkYUxk2W7yEI89ut2OG_xxRwwqEKaIYNYW6X8ympNI1xGHtNW-1JDUos7RFNgNRpf7nCAyLQjjvRiprr7RIVHEuOgtVwSDAU15_iQ09KTpgYAfNUJLIhKOgWufms95G-fAp1NVkKFSN6r-_OXVVrEpvcwXdG64FHFSCn95UXqVpwmkgJY/w574-h333/Vital%20Signs%2010%20years%20of%20Bs.png" width="574" /></a></div><p>Sure, we're talking a global pandemic. Excuse us if we're not back to normal yet. But take a moment to mull over that decade of numbers and you'll notice how little improvement we were seeing in any of them since well before the pandemic got us. We've been "good but needs improvement" for years on key measures of community wellness, and now we're not even achieving that. </p><p>If you've lived in Greater Victoria for any length of time, your own eyes have probably been telling you that for some time now. Mine certainly have. It's disturbing to see that housing has consistently scored poorly at least back to 2013, and yet each new year comes and goes in worsening crisis.</p><p>So yeah, could be it's the pandemic messing with our community wellness and things will be good again soon. Or not.</p><p>I pulled out five key areas to highlight in this graph below. They've seen the most dramatic decline, and yet are such necessary components of a healthy community. Belonging, getting started in the community, health and wellness, housing, safety - those are the foundations of a good life. These falling indicators are telling us that all is decidedly not well. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQcMoyok05cuH97ghqSG7ad8EEB1HXYctBvo9swy-GVox_UXyaTeq8PVg_XREIx5aOAfu5s5_eCUARqj7Oa5EXO3wPgOEuh1RKC4CNe7_WJrmGNL95PmwpX06a3NnoRtdHpQTdcmH4jCv0NKd6wa51O3gb1dDptVIaM3QboR7rIS6V5EkzNZU/s1883/Vital%20Signs%20B%20grades%20as%20graph.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1282" data-original-width="1883" height="386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQcMoyok05cuH97ghqSG7ad8EEB1HXYctBvo9swy-GVox_UXyaTeq8PVg_XREIx5aOAfu5s5_eCUARqj7Oa5EXO3wPgOEuh1RKC4CNe7_WJrmGNL95PmwpX06a3NnoRtdHpQTdcmH4jCv0NKd6wa51O3gb1dDptVIaM3QboR7rIS6V5EkzNZU/w565-h386/Vital%20Signs%20B%20grades%20as%20graph.png" width="565" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">What can be done? A lot. But how it will get done is the burning question. On housing, I hear the same conversations now that were going on 15 years ago. They are getting us nowhere, even while the tents and the chaos and the poisoned people and the abandoned grocery carts keep piling up along Pandora Avenue.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">We are paralyzed by political cycles, shifting priorities, clashes in opinion and perspective, and a general feeling that "somebody ought to do something about that" without anyone actually thinking it's them. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">These are the crises of our times. If we are unable to figure out how to take action collectively across long-term, difficult issues that are really going to hurt to fix, our problems can only deepen. How many bad things in your own life have ever gotten better because you ignored them?</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Yes, our region is a beautiful place and life is pretty good for most of us. But it's quite awful for others of us, and it's getting worse. We either get on that for real or it gets worse for everyone.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Jody Paterson has been observing the world through writing since 1982.</div>Jody Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509892768463393937noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30710387.post-20268081408574865902022-11-08T14:51:00.004-08:002022-11-09T07:18:32.531-08:00Blog site, awaken!<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgq_P3cw9NX2XS0FuesCxX3kxh1dGtcNk6ALpf_otqCGAA08ny2xDj1KnoYnVaZhPS_M2TCSss9ie95XBQfc0Y2b53IkaKkUdLje2JKAnnsczQWeJWeEpBRuy2KyRlUd1JA_R_LUYO5NBXHnVymhqXUjqLi0IIseK7Y_4fQMf6vxFwcw2CYQ/s5184/IMG_5112.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="5184" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgq_P3cw9NX2XS0FuesCxX3kxh1dGtcNk6ALpf_otqCGAA08ny2xDj1KnoYnVaZhPS_M2TCSss9ie95XBQfc0Y2b53IkaKkUdLje2JKAnnsczQWeJWeEpBRuy2KyRlUd1JA_R_LUYO5NBXHnVymhqXUjqLi0IIseK7Y_4fQMf6vxFwcw2CYQ/s320/IMG_5112.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />I'm emerging from almost five years of largely ignoring this 15-year-old blog of mine with a plan to get back to more writing. Here's a photo of me and my partner on a bit of a crazy horseback trek this past summer, just to put me back in the minds of those who once read me.<p></p><p>I like writing about things that catch my attention with some element of weirdness, wrongness, out of syncness, or some other quality that can be broadly summed up as "Things that make you go, 'Hmm.'" </p><p>I am not a funny writer, so don't expect that. I did write <a href="http://closer-look.blogspot.com/2013/06/o-canada-youll-always-be-my-girl.html" target="_blank">one piece 10 years ago when we were living and working in Honduras</a> that I continue to find quite amusing, but that's pretty much it. I am also not a muser about things in the 'hood, people I know, foods I like/hate, or all that softish lifestyle stuff. </p><p>(An exception might be some unexpected opportunity to share eye makeup tips for aging women, because that is a long-standing interest of mine and I have exactly one friend who I can talk to about that. I wish I could write about my low-histamine diet as a wonder cure for <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/30710387/6722459171539088458" target="_blank">my allergies</a>, too, but I've already seen just how glazed people's eyes get when I try bring that subject up.)</p><p>I expect to be writing a lot about sex work and that we're way past time to decriminalize it in Canada. That issue is my No. 1 hobby horse. </p><p>To that end, here are a couple of pieces I wrote recently for the blog of a long-time friend who runs an escort agency here in Victoria, BC. These take a look at two men with significant disabilities who hire sex workers when their fixed incomes allow for a bit of a treat. Find <a href="https://pros.news/sex-after-spinal-injury/" target="_blank">Frankie's story here</a>, and <a href="https://pros.news/pros-compassionate-care/?fbclid=IwAR0Qbmw05-WN1zgsubPCRNZLaBoNqYndLINT4CSHFimNHKvRB0sIt_a80Pk" target="_blank">Vinnie's story here.</a> </p><p>Other hobby horses include climate change, the very obvious decay in BC's ability to support all the citizens who need help, and various hypocrisies that emerge in the headlines from time to time and drive a right-thinking person mad. </p><p>I do a little amateur video work on occasion because I find it an intriguing story-telling medium; to that end, I grabbed some charts from the BC Centre for Disease Control report on the impact of BC's poison drug supply and made up <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2-YSwOaVrM" target="_blank">this little two-minute video</a>, astounding for what it reveals about just how profoundly we are failing on this issue. </p><p>So sometimes I'll mix some of that issue in here, because the fact that 10,000 British Columbians have died since 2015 from taking poisoned drugs is pretty freaking astounding. I'm still waiting to read The Story that answers how the hell we got to this point and why we can't seem to fix it, so maybe I'll just go see what I can find out.</p><p>This is not my first rodeo with a blog, and I go into my site's revival with low expectations of readers, who will be scarce and likely still strangely obsessed with <a href="http://closer-look.blogspot.com/2013/01/what-to-make-of-david-suzuki.html" target="_blank">a long-ago post I did saying I didn't like David Suzuki much</a>, which has inexplicably been read by more than 22,000 people. </p><p>As for those who leave comments on my posts, they will mostly be spambots inserting links advertising Mumbai escorts and treks in Nepal. </p><p>Occasionally a real person will post a genuine comment, and some of them will say something really trollish and horrible. But I've been out there as a writer in the public eye since 1982 and have skin of a rhino after all the terrible things said to me over the years. (OK, I admit that I'm still stung by the random dude who saw me doing a newspaper promo on TV way back when while I was at the Victoria Times Colonist and called up to tell me I looked like "a blowsy biker chick.")</p><p>There's something to be said for just having a place where your thoughts can be thrown out into the world - a place that I can rely on as well to help me rediscover some past insight I remember having rather than realize that I put it on Facebook instead and it's now lost to time.</p><p> And so, dear blog, I bring you back to life. Let's go see where a closer look might lead us. </p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Jody Paterson has been observing the world through writing since 1982.</div>Jody Patersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18038299584414910712noreply@blogger.com7