A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

Joys of exercise July 29, 2006 I’ve been sitting in front of the keyboard for more than half an hour now, trying to come up with a way to talk about physical activity that conveys - without sounding preachy - what a fine, fine thing it is to have in your life. It’s not easy. Exercise has had the misfortune of being linked in a beneficial way to so many health issues that it’s now one of those “healthy life choices” like quitting smoking, losing weight, and eating sufficient vegetables. Exercise is good for you - reason enough to deter anyone who has grown weary and resentful of the lengthening list of things to feel guilty for not doing. But forget all that health business for a moment, and consider exercise for the truly joyful thing that it is. Sure, it’s good for you, but it would be something I’d be hooked on even if it wasn’t. What bothers me most about the fact that millions of Canadians are inactive isn’t that they’re making an unhealthy lifestyle choice, but that they don’t kn...

Addiction July 22, 2006 The latest survey on the habits of street-level injection drug users in the Capital Region is a grim little reminder of all the things we don’t yet get about addiction. Since the last assessment in 2003, the only bright spot in the most recent survey is a two per cent decrease in the HIV rate. Virtually all other indicators - rates of hepatitis-C, amount of needle-sharing, condom use - have gone in the wrong direction. As is our wont, we’ve talked and talked for years about addiction and drug use. If words were all it took, we’d be living in a drug-free paradise by now. But we’re not. The Vancouver Island Health Authority’s newly released report on needle users in the downtown is most definitely proof of that. Almost three-quarters of the 250 needle users surveyed by VIHA at two downtown social agencies last year tested positive for hepatitis-C, an increase of more than five per cent from the 2003 survey. Forty-two per cent reported sharing needles, also a fiv...

The Stephen Hawking solution July 14, 2006 Deep thinker Stephen Hawking has gone looking for answers to how we will save our troubled world, and more than 22,000 people have weighed in so far. Their answers are at times sweet and at other times alarming, as you might expect from a random sampling of on-line opinion. “In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally,” asked Hawking last week on the Yahoo Answers Web site, “how can the human race sustain another 100 years?” (Yes, notes the site, this is the “real” Stephen Hawking, recruited by Yahoo to post the question after touching on the same topic recently in Hong Kong.) Hawking is something of a star recruit on a Web site that is striving to be seen as harvesting the collective wisdom of the world through its questions. He’s an astrophysicist and a mathematician with a decidedly philosophical bent, and maintains a global schedule of speech-making despite being almost fully paralyzed. Who wouldn’t be honoured to...

Women and the glass ceiling June 30, 2006 If the goal is to do what men do, then women still have a long way to go. We are creeping toward gender equality - at least the kind measured by big jobs and big money - at a glacial pace, and even losing ground on some fronts. Perhaps it’s not too surprising given the findings of an international survey on the subject this month. The study by Catalyst - a U.S. non-profit that keeps an eye on women’s progress in the corporate world - found that around the world, people believe that women are better at “taking care” and men at “taking charge.” Even countries approaching gender equity - socially minded places like Sweden and Finland - held that belief, Catalyst found. The findings provide at least one reason why women don’t make it to the top jobs: The world continues to think that men do those jobs better. We all know women who have done exceptionally well in business and politics, of course, and men who are community-minded and nurturing. But I...

Aboriginal realities June 26, 2006 Well, well. Aboriginal children are dying at higher rates than their non-aboriginal peers. I don’t suppose anyone could be surprised at that. What will we do about it? If past behavior is any indicator, not much. We’ve been telling each other stories of aboriginal disaster on any number of fronts for decades now, but doing very little. The result: Things just keep getting worse for Canada’s aboriginals. Being aboriginal in Canada is now very much like being black in the United States. Just belonging to either of those racial backgrounds is now a risk factor all on its own for things like youth suicide, drug addiction and diabetes, not to mention a predictor of future income and level of education. Our country’s aboriginals are three times more likely to be the victims of violent crime. Aboriginal youth are at higher risk of suicide, addiction and obesity. Diabetes is near-epidemic. HIV infections are rising sharply. The dropout rate for aboriginals ...

Impact of television June 24, 2006 Television’s power can be harnessed for great good, as the New Yorker magazine notes in an article about a socially minded style of Mexican soap opera that has been working its magic for three decades. More than 100 countries now air versions of Miguel Sabido’s soaps, which manage to be entertaining while also acting as agents for social change. The story lines are as intricate and dramatic as any soap, reflecting the drama in the lives of their real-world viewers: HIV, an abusive spouse, too many kids, a secret abortion, discrimination. The social messages are subtle, woven inobtrusively into a broader story. Still, the messages come across loud and clear, as evidenced by the things that happen after a particular show airs. Viewers not only like what they see in Sabido-style telenovelas, but take action based on watching them. From the very earliest days in the mid-1970s, Sabido’s soaps have underscored the awesome reach and potential of television a...

Gay marriage June 17, 2006 So let me get this straight. Iraq’s a disaster. Afghanistan’s going sideways. Terrorists are emerging with made-in-Canada credentials, and people are going hungry and homeless in virtually every town in North America. And our leaders have nothing better to do than try to stop people in love from getting married? Some people don’t like the idea of gays and lesbians getting married. Then again, some people didn’t like the idea of black Americans riding at the front of the bus, either. It’s all a question of civil rights. Equality under the law is one of the underpinnings of a just society. Personally, I don’t take that to mean that the law can be used arbitrarily to deny certain groups equality, but that’s how the Bush government, Canada’s Conservatives and 45 individual states interpret the concept in terms of gay marriage. They want marriage laws that deliberately create inequality. The hard-won right to marry regardless of sexual orientation has been law in ...

Sewage treatment June 2, 2006 Scientific evidence is anything but absolute, as we’ve learned the hard way over the decades. Science certainly got radiation wrong the first time out, and most recently has failed us utterly around the safety of prescription drugs. Only one thing is for certain: Nothing’s for certain. So when talk turns to sewage treatment - as it’s bound to every now and then in a community that pumps 47 billion litres of raw sewage into the surrounding ocean every year - you don’t want to be trusting everything to “science.” You just never know. Sewage treatment was a hot topic when I moved here in 1989. A study (oh, you don’t want to THINK about the studies we’ve paid for) was just wrapping up, and people were talking about whether it might be time to move forward on treatment. While there did seem to be something different about local waters in terms of their ability to rapidly whisk away sewage, public distaste for dumping raw sewage was growing. That was 17 years ag...

Mental health May 26, 2006 The executive summary alone is 112 pages, so you can imagine how much the authors of this week’s national mental-health report had to say in full about the state of Canada’s system of care. But the essence of the standing Senate committee’s tens of thousands of informed words on the subject can really be boiled down to just two key ones: Do something. Like so many other significant reports that have gone before it, the final report of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology is a heartfelt, wise read. After hearing from more than 2,000 people whose lives are directly affected by mental-health problems, the committee came to see the issue as one of the great travesties of our health system, and one in desperate need of transformation. The report’s authors - senators Michael Kirby and Wilbert Keon - clearly developed a passion for the subject in the course of their three years of study. Their recommendations ought to elicit rousi...

Looking on the sunny side May 19, 2006 One of the perks of working in the non-profit sector are regular gatherings where you get the chance to talk about how to improve our community. It’s a difficult discussion sometimes, and tough as hell to put into action. But at least people are talking. At one such gathering this week - this time at the request of the Victoria Foundation, a major funder in our community - I took to heart the central message of the day’s keynote speaker, Gordon Hogg. The former minister of children and families cited some mighty depressing statistics about the speed at which we’re disengaging as communities. But he noted that the challenge is to focus on what we’re doing right rather than only to lament what’s going wrong. Putting too much of a Pollyanna spin on the issue would be a disservice to everyone, because real hardship is going on out there. Still, things do indeed go mostly right in our communities day after day. Off the top of my head, then, an incomple...

Teen pregnancy May 10, 2006 When I think back to my own years as a teenage mom - pregnant at 16, and completely unprepared for the rigours of child-raising - I still can’t explain why it happened that way. I knew all about birth control, and had a mother who had no problem talking frankly about such matters. But I got pregnant all the same. We can count it as a victory that Canada’s teen pregnancy rate has dropped significantly since then. While I’ve never doubted the decision to give birth to my dear son, who’s coming 32 in June, I don’t recommend teenage pregnancy as a matter of course. In 1974 - the year my son was born - Stats Canada recorded a pregnancy rate of 58 per 1,000 in girls ages 15 to 19. By 1997, that had fallen to 43 per 1,000, and then to 31 as of 2004. Good on us for doing something right, because the U.S. rate of 100 per 1,000 in 1974 remains stubbornly the same more than three decades later, and in fact spiked all the way to 120 in the early 1990s. But there’s an un...

Do something May 5, 2006 Some of my family members think I write too much about street issues. Maybe. But somebody has to. One of these days, our children’s children will be struggling to get out from under the social disaster in their city centres, and they’ll order up a royal commission that will lead straight back to us, making one mistake after another in the final years of the 21st century. I just want to my part to get us thinking about that while there’s still hope of changing things. Were this a roadway falling apart beneath our feet, we would act quickly and decisively. We’d argue about the costs of the fixup and put off repairs as long as we could - that seems to be human nature - but we’d never let things deteriorate too far. Nobody likes a bumpy, dangerous road. But bad roads are easier to think about than people whose lives are falling apart. Even though both represent a major problem, the forward thinking and common wisdom that keeps our roads in good repair have yet to ...

It's not the milk April 29, 2006 Don’t get me wrong - I enjoy milk products as much as the next person. I’m very fond of cheese and butter, and cream in my morning coffee. But the dairy industry’s relentless drive to convince us that milk is essential to human life really does get to be a bit much sometimes. Like this week, when the news was full of stories that not drinking enough milk during pregnancy was tantamount to smoking in terms of its impact on birth weight. In fairness, CTV did mention that the study - published this week in the Canadian Medical Association Journal - was partially funded by the Dairy Farmers of Canada. But most news outlets didn’t note that detail. An average reader would likely conclude from the overall coverage that any pregnant woman who really cared about her child should be drinking plenty of milk. In fact, sufficient Vitamin D was actually what made the difference in birth weight in the study of 279 pregnant women. The study, however, looked only a...

Democracy April 25, 2006 We don’t devote too much time in our daily lives to caring for our democracy, in Canada or anywhere else in the world. Maybe we think we don’t have to. But with the news this month that only a third of Canadians believe they’re being governed by “the will of the people” - well, that’s a pretty strong sign that we do. And it’s not just Canada. The figures weren’t much different in several other long-time democracies elsewhere in the world whose citizens were asked the same questions. All over the world, people are feeling disconnected from their governments. The questions about democracy were part of a much larger global poll that Gallup International conducted a year ago in 68 countries, news of which broke this month with the release of a book on the findings: Voices of the People 2006. Almost 54,000 citizens took part in the poll - the largest in history. Around the world, almost 80 per cent of those polled said democracy is the best governance system. In Can...

Measuring schools April 14, 2006 The Fraser Institute and I often differ in our views, but I can’t argue with the think tank’s comments this week that the institute’s annual “best of show” ranking measures only academic performance at B.C. secondary schools, not overall school success. “The rankings certainly don’t tell the whole story of a school, no question,” said Peter Cowley, who helped put together this week’s report and is director of school performance studies at the Fraser Institute. The academic performance of a school’s students is obviously an important measure of a successful school, said Cowley, but just one part. And it’s even less of a meaningful measure in terms of knowing whether we’re teaching our students to be good citizens. Scoring well on tests is all well and good, but it takes a lot more than that to build a healthy community. Are our students growing into good human beings? Are they voting? Healthy? Earning a decent income and sharing their good fortune throug...

Sex trade March 10, 2006 These days, I drive along Rock Bay Avenue more often than I used to. I think it has something to do with my job as executive director of a non-profit that supports sex workers, PEERS. When your work life is tied to whatever’s going on in the city’s sex trade, detouring along the outdoor prostitution stroll just becomes kind of a habit. The street is gentrifying: a new brick facade for one building, a paint job for another. Were it not for my PEERS-altered perspective, I would applaud the improvements as a positive change for our community. Everybody likes a street refit. But when it’s Rock Bay, I drive past thinking about what the changes mean for the outdoor sex trade. In that world, a street’s gentrification signals the beginning of the end. Once a street looks good, it’s a matter of months before businesses and residents start thinking about how much nicer things could be if they could also dump the commercial sex scene going on outside their doors. So what ...

Drugs March 3, 2006 Godspeed to the Victoria Crystal Meth Society, and to any other community group trying to do their part to shake us awake before things get any worse. We need it. But I do sometimes fear that yet again, we risk losing the opportunity to talk about addiction overall by getting distracted by the latest “most terrible” drug. As awful as crystal meth may be, we’ll never get around to tackling the larger problems of a truly terrible health disaster if we keep up this flavour-of-the-month approach. Those of you who are old enough to remember the 1960s film Reefer Madness will know what I mean. After that came LSD as the worst drug ever, and later PCP. Crack cocaine had a good run throughout the 1990s. These days, it’s crystal meth. If only it really was as simple as wiping out a certain drug. Put some really heavy enforcement into something like that and it might even be possible to squelch a particular drug right out of existence. But for someone who was addicted, it wou...

Children in care Feb. 23, 2006 Few things focus a government’s attention better than the death of a child in its care, so it’s not surprising that Finance Minister Carole Taylor this week described the coming year’s budget as being about “the little ones.” The tragic circumstances of two-year-old Sherry Charlie’s death have been almost as exhaustively chronicled as those of Matthew Vaudreuil, the little boy whose killing 14 years sparked similar angst in the government of the day Taylor came bearing gifts for the Ministry of Children and Family Development in Tuesday’s budget. More social workers, more money for supporting families. That’s along the lines of what the New Democrats promised back in 1995, not long after the unbearably sad inquiry into Matthew’s death, suffocated at age five by his abusive mother. Ten years earlier, the Socreds made similar promises after three-year-old Michael Jack was killed by his father. All three children were deeply enmeshed in the child-welfare sys...

David Emerson Feb. 17, 2006 The funny thing is, I’m feeling a bit sorry for David Emerson. Not that I wouldn’t be spitting furious at the man had I been a Liberal voter in his Vancouver riding. But his genuinely shell-shocked response in the days since he crossed the floor to become a Conservative cabinet minister has nonetheless been painful to watch. Sometimes, political parties are so similar in their platforms that a defection from one to the other is be news. But there are significant differences between Canada’s Liberal and Conservative parties these days. If you voted for the guy whose party was supportive of gay marriage and social programs and then watched him morph into exactly the political rep you didn’t want - if you heard him promise to be “Stephen Harper’s worst nightmare” if elected - you’d have every right to be apoplectic right about now, especially with it all playing out just two weeks after you voted for the guy. And imagine how angry Conservative voters must be. ...

Offensive cartoons Feb. 9, 2006 Nobody deserves to die over an editorial cartoon. However disturbing a cartoon may be, the fallout should never include riots, police killings and self-immolation. Still, it’s just as outrageous to categorize the disastrous turn of events this month unleashed by a Danish newspaper as being about freedom of expression. Such an important right requires an equal measure of responsibility. Any newspaper that thinks it’s OK in this day and age to run a spread of humiliating editorial cartoons about the Muslim prophet Muhammad has clearly forgotten how to strike the balance. There’s the finest of lines separating freedom of expression from hatred, and a civil society ought to always be paying mind to it. Restrict freedom of expression and a country loses its ability to challenge its own systems and values. Loosen the reins completely and some really offensive stuff gets through under the guise of free speech. My partner and I have agreed to disagree on this po...

Inaction Jan. 28, 2006 It would take much more than a mere 800 words to muse on what causes a person to look at the world a certain way, while another looks at it completely differently. Wars are fought over just such a thing, and human history is littered with the debris of the various solitudes bashing into one another. But it’s certainly the great tragedy of the human condition. Our differences are always getting in the way. Whatever size the stage - a neighbourhood zoning dispute, a global crisis - each of us sees the world so differently as to find it inexplicable that others might see it otherwise. Even when we agree long enough to actually solve problems, we seek reasons to disagree over the answers. Case in point: the news this week that British Columbians’ measurable health is the best in Canada, even while many of us believe that our health system is serving us poorly. Is the problem a disconnect between those who set health-care policy and their subjects? Or is it merely jus...