A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

Jannit Rabinovitch's death a call to action Feb. 2, 2007 My friend Jannit Rabinovitch is dead. The loss is huge, and not just to the throng of people who loved her in all her many roles: mother, mentor, lover, friend. She was that rarest of breeds - someone who set out to change the world and really did. Our communities will feel her loss for decades to come. The real shame of it is that Jannit had at least 20 more years of community work in her. She was only 57, and showing no signs of growing weary of the fight. Never mind that by that point she’d already built a women’s shelter, launched five grassroots community groups, gotten her PhD and co-parented two fabulous children. Jannit was nowhere near done. But then the cancer set in last summer. She died last Friday. She hated the weakness and vulnerability brought on by the disease and its debilitating treatment, and in a way I was glad t hear that she had been set free. But I really don’t know how we’ll create change without her...

Pickton trial no relief for outdoor sex workers Jan. 26, 2007 Today was going to be the day I didn’t write about social issues. Too much thinking about the frightening mistakes being made these days can really bum me out. But then Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan came out with his happily-ever-after take this week on how the trial of Robert Pickton will be the thing that changes everything for the troubled women the pig farmer allegedly preyed on. “There's no doubt that a very big, negative impression is going to be created by this," said Sullivan when asked about the impact of Pickton’s trial on Vancouver’s reputation. "But hopefully, out of this, we can turn it into a good-news story and find a way to ensure that no women will ever have to put themselves at risk again in this way." I just couldn’t let that go. If we actually planned on making a difference in the lives of the women who go missing on our streets, there’d have been some sign of it by now. We’ve known for...

Going nowhere fast, and spending a fortune to do it Jan. 19, 2007 If you’re the type to worry about where we’re headed in this world, these are bleak times. We’re at one of those points in history where things on any number of fronts are either going to get much better or a whole lot worse based on whatever we do next. Unfortunately, we’re showing few signs of being up for the challenge. I’ve often wondered at what point a community ignites. How did the small, brave acts of people in the U.S. finally explode into the civil rights movement? What finally elevated gay rights to being a legitimate issue that mattered? To know that would perhaps be the secret to unlocking this national stupor of ours, one that seems to render us incapable of addressing an array of really serious problems unfolding around us. We would not for a moment be so cavalier in our personal lives. We wouldn’t continue to do things that clearly weren’t working, or spend vast sums of money without ever questioning the ...

The tale of two foolish teenage boys hired to carry out a murder that was supposed to make them rich is a veritable Aesop’s fable in terms of the obvious moral of the story. One of the boys admitted his guilt from the outset, and did what the system required of him during 10 years in prison. In return for his good behaviour, David Muir was granted parole five years ago for the two murders he helped carry out in 1990. The other has steadfastly denied his guilt. He has refused to take required prison programs, and his father has developed into a notorious agitator who infuriates prison officials. So Derik Lord remains in jail, denied parole for a fourth time last month. The moral: Things go better for people who accept responsibility. Unfortunately for Lord, the opportunity to act accordingly just may have passed. Lord, Muir and pal Darren Huenemann were teen friends in Saanich when they were convicted in 1992 of carrying out the murders of Darren’s mother and grandmother at the old...

The entrenchment of MRSA Jan. 5, 2007 More than 1,000 people in our region will catch a terrible infection this year that no antibiotic will easily defeat. The worst cases will be fatal, but even the ones that aren’t will still be dangerous, unpleasant and extremely difficult to clear up. Once upon a time, an infection like the one taking root right now was a problem only for very specific populations. A few isolated tribes of Australian aborigines. People living on the streets. Athletes playing contact sports. Military recruits. Not anymore. The staph infections showing up in our community lately are occurring in people with no known risk factors. “We are the epicentre of the country,” local infection specialist Dr. Pamela Kibsey said this week. Human beings have been grappling with staphylococcus infections for millennia, of course. No small wonder penicillin was given a hero’s welcome upon its invention in the 1940s, considering how many people had been killed by infection up to tha...

Safe travels in Mexico Dec. 29, 2006 For the most part, I try not to crab about the opinions of other writers in these pages. It just doesn’t seem professional. But George Jonas’s scare piece last week on Mexico and Cuba was just too ridiculous to let slide. He contends he’s travelled a lot, but his comments read like somebody who never leaves home. The point of the piece was to lament those puzzling Canadians who continue to like holidaying in sunny destinations that Jonas has chosen to categorize as “impoverished and lawless countries.” He chastised such travellers for being tempted by cheap holidays when what they ought to be thinking about were the tremendous risks they were taking by visiting such places. “Get your tan in Arizona this year,” opined the Toronto writer. His remarks would have rubbed me the wrong way regardless of the countries he singled out, given that I’ve travelled enough to see that it’s never that simplistic. But his selection of Mexico got under my skin even m...

The upside of aging Dec. 22, 2006 There’s no avoiding the gravitus of a birthday ending in zero. I’ve just marked a big one, 50, but they’ve all been notable in their own way. When I turned 20, I felt the weight of no longer being a kid anymore. Like it or not, life was underway. At 30 - the only really tough one for me - I had to give up on a dearly held belief that I’d have everything sorted out by the time I was 30. Then came 40, and I was OK with it. I’d won and lost on a number of big life fronts by then, but was ultimately happy with where the fates had carried me. Ten years on, the feeling of personal peace is that much stronger, and I find myself grateful for the gifts of aging. I’ve been a restless soul for most of my life, always knowing I was looking for something but never too sure what it was. But somewhere in the last decade, I think I must have found it. It didn’t arrive with fury and splendour, and was more like a gradual unfolding. People’s opinions of me no longer mat...

Sex workers owed decent workplaces Dec. 15, 2006 In its own small way, the police raid on 18 Greater Vancouver massage parlours last week has a bit of the “weapons of mass destruction” scam about it. Like the invasion of Iraq, the raids were staged under what would turn out to be false pretenses. Raiding a business is, after all, fairly serious stuff in a democratic country. The justification in this case was that the businesses in question were involved in human trafficking, possibly brought into Canada against their will. The raids would in fact be helping people escape a desperate situation. “Previous experience dealing with human trafficking on a global level has shown the victims of human trafficking are often found working in establishments such as the ones searched last night,” RCMP Supt. Bill Ard said confidently the day after the Dec. 8 raids. Could be. But not this time. None of the 78 women found at the massage parlours were illegal immigrants. None were younger than 21, nor...

A recipe for creating homelessness Dec. 7, 2006 I don’t think the word “homelessness” was something that our communities ever thought of up until a few years ago. Sure, there were always a few homeless people. But nobody foresaw a time when homelessness would become more or less of a permanent condition for thousands of British Columbians. Signs of it sneaking up on us were evident in Times-Colonist stories of the early 1990s if we’d paid more attention. First came the warnings from the front lines that more and more people were struggling. Then the business community brought its concerns to the table, starting in 1996 when then-mayor Bob Cross and his council took a hard line against “aggressive” panhandlers. And here we are 10 years on. Entire homeless families now alternate between cheap motels in the winter and campsites in the summer, and at least twice as many broken people with nowhere else to go now live on downtown streets. For kids growing up on the edges of homelessness, it ...

Maybe it's the mirror: A reflection on body image Dec. 1, 2006 Nobody in our household is quite sure when the happy mirror first arrived. For the longest time, only my stepdaughter knew of its magical powers. The otherwise ordinary full-length mirror hung in her bedroom for years and I learned of its charms only after she moved away and left it behind. I’ve known about the existence of bad mirrors for many years, of course, being well familiar with those kind. I can’t count the number of store dressing rooms that have broken my heart over the years with their bright lights and bad mirrors. The happy mirror, on the other hand, tells a much different story to those who look into it. Wherever your body type and tendencies have taken you, it makes you look taller and thinner, and quite nicely proportioned. Your clothes look better. Your hair is neater. You look rested. At first, I resisted its allure. A mirror that made you look good just seemed like too guilty of a pleasure after a li...