Nothing appealing about Victoria's Centennial Square
Feb. 9, 2007
What is it about a space that makes you want to stay in it? You and I might have differing theories on that, but I bet we could agree on at least one point: Centennial Square doesn’t have it.
I cut through the square on occasion, and find myself wondering each and every time what it is that makes the place so completely uninviting.
I don’t think I’m alone on this one, either, because the square is disturbingly empty most of the time. People just don’t seem to go there.
No disrespect to the square’s original planner, Rod Clack. I’m sure Centennial Square was a heck of an improvement over what was there 45 years ago when it was built. Victoria’s downtown was still very much in transition from its rough-and-tumble past in those years, and creating public space next to a renovated city hall was a terrific move.
But whatever it was about the square that worked in 1962, it stopped working quite some time ago. To walk through the square on any given day now is to be struck by its unloveliness, and the almost complete absence of people. That’s not what you want from your public spaces.
I’m not suggesting that’s reason enough to jump into a costly reno, or that the time is now just because the B.C. government has up to half a million bucks for communities wanting to build “spirit squares” in the runup to the Olympics. All I’m saying is that as it stands, Centennial Square is all wrong.
A letter in this week’s paper touched on one reason for the problem - the square is in shadow too much of the time. It feels cold. I don’t know if the wind really does blow harder through the square, but that’s my impression every time I pass through.
What’s an even more fundamental problem, however, is that there’s no reason for anyone to use the square. With the exception of a few special events each year, there’s no draw.
No little stores ringing the edges for your shopping pleasure. No food vendors. No guy selling bags of bird seed, or balloons. No artists. No crafts. No comfy gathering places in sunny corners.
In short, the things that make squares work in so many other cities of the world are nowhere to be found in Centennial Square. Other than a mid-block cut-through and a venue for a handful of city-sponsored events, what’s the point of it?
Public spaces can be appealing without commerce, of course. A wander through Beacon Hill Park is a reminder of that, as is a visit to any of our region’s many beautiful public gardens and oceanfront lookouts.
But Centennial Square isn’t anywhere nearly pretty enough at this point to draw people on that level. If that’s what we’re aiming for, we’re well-advised to tear up all the concrete and start from scratch, because there’s nothing about the square in its current state that lures people in just for the sheer pleasure of being there.
If you’re one of the tens of thousands of people who never use Centennial Square, maybe its future seems of little interest to you. But the fate of the square ought to matter to anyone who loves the downtown.
Fix Centennial Square, and you get a lively community space that’s a hub for new retail on the streets around the square. A “jewel” in the heart of Old Towne. Leave it as is, and it’s a concrete no-man’s-land that few shoppers bother to venture past.
Like most things in Victoria, we’ve been talking about doing something about Centennial Square for a very long time. A performing arts centre, a new library, an expanded conference centre - the revamp of Centennial Square is one of the many good ideas regularly floated in Victoria that never quite comes to fruition.
In the case of the square, we’ve been making plans to move the fountain for more than 10 years now. Bob Cross was still the mayor when we last got talking about holding a design contest to improve the square.
Many years on, we’re no farther ahead. Centennial Square continues on as public space that nobody wants to use.
Whatever the future may hold for the square, what it needs most is a reason to be. An unwelcoming and pointless community square is worse than none at all in many ways, as the “dead zones” created by such spaces go against every dictate of good urban planning.
When Centennial Square was first taking shape in the early 1960s, it must have seemed like a wonderful alternative to the ragtag collection of businesses torn down to make way for the square: a couple of brothels, a weary public market, a derelict theatre. It was a good fit for the city at that time.
But like the song says, that was yesterday. And yesterday’s gone.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Saturday, February 03, 2007
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. It scares me to contemplate a world without Jannit.
Not even a month ago, we were talking about me interviewing her to get her extraordinary life down on paper. We never got the chance. She was sick, I was busy, and one day she was gone. Such a lost opportunity.
Her many projects and good works guarantee her legacy. She built Sandy Merriman shelter with a crew of 12 homeless women, and willed into life no less than five organizations built on her unwavering belief that solving our social ills begins with empowering the people caught up in them. We won’t soon forget Jannit.
But will we be able to take up where she left off? If her 30-plus years of hard work is to have meaning, we will have to.
Jannit was 25 when she first stepped into the gap between those who create social services and those who the services are intended for. She was good at it, mostly because she worked hard enough to earn the respect of both the big wheels and the misunderstood people dangling on the edges of our society.
That first project involved youth with disabilities. Jannit had been hired by the B.C. government to manage a student employment program. The incentive for employers was a wage subsidy: 50 per cent for hiring a youth, and 100 per cent for hiring one with a disability.
Despite the offer of free labour, Jannit found that employers just weren’t interested in hiring a kid with a disability. Undeterred, she found a local non-profit interested in the program, and matched it with a school for youth with physical disabilities who were interested in putting out a provincial newsletter for other disabled youths.
Voila. Mission accomplished, in a way that benefited everyone involved.
That was how things went when Jannit was involved. She was a problem-solver, and a strategic thinker. She could figure things out in a way that turned out well for all concerned.
In 1991, while Jannit was working for the City of Victoria’s social planning department, she helped give birth to the Victoria Street Community Association after being tasked with “doing something” about the rising numbers of homeless men. Made up of people who’d personally experienced homelessness, the VSCA went on to develop and run the Medewiwin housing project.
In 1994, Jannit launched a series of conversations with homeless women to figure out their needs. That led to a construction project that saw Sandy Merriman House built by a hired crew of 20 homeless women.
Some of those women were sex workers. They asked Jannit to help them establish their own organization, built on the principle that the people best able to help sex workers are people who’d been there themselves. The Prostitutes Empowerment Education and Resource Society - PEERS - was incorporated as a non-profit the following year. Jannit remained a passionate PEERS board member right up until the cancer overwhelmed her.
In1998, Jannit helped stage a Victoria summit that brought together world policy makers and 55 sexually exploited youth from throughout the Americas. A few years later, she supported her dear friend Cherry Kingsley in the launch of the International Centre to Combat Exploitation of children. More recently, she helped bring to life the National Coalition of Experiential Women, an organization that I hope will one day rock our world around sex-trade issues in Canada.
But all of those achievements are just notes in history if Jannit’s life work ends here. She lived long enough to see the eventual collapse of some of the projects she’d started, and in her last months despaired that her efforts had been for naught.
Hardly. But it takes a lot of effort to give voice to the voiceless. Those who believe in the importance of that will need to pick up where Jannit left off, because there’s tough work ahead.
Jannit made a difference. We will honour her memory by doing the same.
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. It scares me to contemplate a world without Jannit.
Not even a month ago, we were talking about me interviewing her to get her extraordinary life down on paper. We never got the chance. She was sick, I was busy, and one day she was gone. Such a lost opportunity.
Her many projects and good works guarantee her legacy. She built Sandy Merriman shelter with a crew of 12 homeless women, and willed into life no less than five organizations built on her unwavering belief that solving our social ills begins with empowering the people caught up in them. We won’t soon forget Jannit.
But will we be able to take up where she left off? If her 30-plus years of hard work is to have meaning, we will have to.
Jannit was 25 when she first stepped into the gap between those who create social services and those who the services are intended for. She was good at it, mostly because she worked hard enough to earn the respect of both the big wheels and the misunderstood people dangling on the edges of our society.
That first project involved youth with disabilities. Jannit had been hired by the B.C. government to manage a student employment program. The incentive for employers was a wage subsidy: 50 per cent for hiring a youth, and 100 per cent for hiring one with a disability.
Despite the offer of free labour, Jannit found that employers just weren’t interested in hiring a kid with a disability. Undeterred, she found a local non-profit interested in the program, and matched it with a school for youth with physical disabilities who were interested in putting out a provincial newsletter for other disabled youths.
Voila. Mission accomplished, in a way that benefited everyone involved.
That was how things went when Jannit was involved. She was a problem-solver, and a strategic thinker. She could figure things out in a way that turned out well for all concerned.
In 1991, while Jannit was working for the City of Victoria’s social planning department, she helped give birth to the Victoria Street Community Association after being tasked with “doing something” about the rising numbers of homeless men. Made up of people who’d personally experienced homelessness, the VSCA went on to develop and run the Medewiwin housing project.
In 1994, Jannit launched a series of conversations with homeless women to figure out their needs. That led to a construction project that saw Sandy Merriman House built by a hired crew of 20 homeless women.
Some of those women were sex workers. They asked Jannit to help them establish their own organization, built on the principle that the people best able to help sex workers are people who’d been there themselves. The Prostitutes Empowerment Education and Resource Society - PEERS - was incorporated as a non-profit the following year. Jannit remained a passionate PEERS board member right up until the cancer overwhelmed her.
In1998, Jannit helped stage a Victoria summit that brought together world policy makers and 55 sexually exploited youth from throughout the Americas. A few years later, she supported her dear friend Cherry Kingsley in the launch of the International Centre to Combat Exploitation of children. More recently, she helped bring to life the National Coalition of Experiential Women, an organization that I hope will one day rock our world around sex-trade issues in Canada.
But all of those achievements are just notes in history if Jannit’s life work ends here. She lived long enough to see the eventual collapse of some of the projects she’d started, and in her last months despaired that her efforts had been for naught.
Hardly. But it takes a lot of effort to give voice to the voiceless. Those who believe in the importance of that will need to pick up where Jannit left off, because there’s tough work ahead.
Jannit made a difference. We will honour her memory by doing the same.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
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 many years that women are dying out there. It’s not like we can claim surprise.
They’ve been going missing in significant numbers since the 1980s. They’ve gone missing in Vancouver, in Prince George, in Edmonton and Victoria - in every city in Canada, no doubt.
Sure, we’ve wrung our hands about the situation. Our newspaper archives are laden with our outbursts of dismay and horror.
But we haven’t actually done anything. An extremely disadvantaged group of women and youth are still having to work the dark streets on the edges of our towns.
Violence is routine, whether robbery; rape or assault. Addiction is common. So are the many illnesses that result from combining heavy drug use, poor nutrition, and a hard, hard life.
The men who shop for sex among such disadvantaged people run the gamut. Many of them aren’t out to hurt anyone. But given the state of the modern-day Canadian outdoor prostitution stroll, a few killers are bound to find their way there.
The conditions on the stroll are such that murderous types are provided with anonymous access to a population that’s widely shunned by the mainstream.
That population works in the dark, and largely out of sight. The drugs are everywhere, so nobody’s eager to call in the police. The workers are often sick, desperate and out of options, making them easy pickings.
If you were looking for a woman or a kid who nobody was going to make too big a deal about if they went missing, where would you look?
So Sullivan’s bright-new-day comments are just a bit much, given our fairly horrifying lack of action to date.
We can’t just hope to “find a way.” We have to actively seek one out. If we don’t want a subclass of workers vanishing on the edges of our cities, what are we prepared to do about it?
Would we consider trying to house them, for instance? Would we actively help them find another way to make a living? Would we find a safer place for the ones who continue to work, and get them the health care they need to get a handle on their addictions?
I talked to the Canadian Labour Congress the other day about whether the organization would ever consider coming out in defence of a safer sex trade. The members are divided, I was told. No position has been taken.
With all due respect to the members - and to anyone who still thinks we will eliminate prostitution - people are dying out there. They were dying before the Pickton case ever made headlines and they’ll be dying long after if all we’re going to do is more dithering about whether we feel ready to deal with the bigger issues of prostitution.
The first thing to do is strengthen social services, because many of the thousands of women working on B.C.’s outdoor strolls would gladly be doing something else for a living if it was an option. They need a place to clean up and housing they can afford, and maybe three or four years of solid support to get their lives straightened out.
Next comes the workplace.
We wouldn’t tolerate the ridiculous conditions of work that sex workers endure for any other profession. We shouldn’t be tolerating them for the workers of the sex industry either. Whatever our feelings on prostitution, surely we can all agree that adults working in it deserve a safe, healthy and fair workplace.
Improving the situation for women on the outdoor stroll also requires a commitment to cracking down hard on the men who go there to hurt somebody. Nothing about the sale of sex has to involve violence. The killing of a sex worker is not about a “high risk lifestyle,” but about our willingness to apply that term as an excuse for doing nothing.
It doesn’t have to be that way. But if we can’t get beyond the talk, the Pickton trial is nothing more than a pause in the proceedings for B.C.’s most vulnerable 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 many years that women are dying out there. It’s not like we can claim surprise.
They’ve been going missing in significant numbers since the 1980s. They’ve gone missing in Vancouver, in Prince George, in Edmonton and Victoria - in every city in Canada, no doubt.
Sure, we’ve wrung our hands about the situation. Our newspaper archives are laden with our outbursts of dismay and horror.
But we haven’t actually done anything. An extremely disadvantaged group of women and youth are still having to work the dark streets on the edges of our towns.
Violence is routine, whether robbery; rape or assault. Addiction is common. So are the many illnesses that result from combining heavy drug use, poor nutrition, and a hard, hard life.
The men who shop for sex among such disadvantaged people run the gamut. Many of them aren’t out to hurt anyone. But given the state of the modern-day Canadian outdoor prostitution stroll, a few killers are bound to find their way there.
The conditions on the stroll are such that murderous types are provided with anonymous access to a population that’s widely shunned by the mainstream.
That population works in the dark, and largely out of sight. The drugs are everywhere, so nobody’s eager to call in the police. The workers are often sick, desperate and out of options, making them easy pickings.
If you were looking for a woman or a kid who nobody was going to make too big a deal about if they went missing, where would you look?
So Sullivan’s bright-new-day comments are just a bit much, given our fairly horrifying lack of action to date.
We can’t just hope to “find a way.” We have to actively seek one out. If we don’t want a subclass of workers vanishing on the edges of our cities, what are we prepared to do about it?
Would we consider trying to house them, for instance? Would we actively help them find another way to make a living? Would we find a safer place for the ones who continue to work, and get them the health care they need to get a handle on their addictions?
I talked to the Canadian Labour Congress the other day about whether the organization would ever consider coming out in defence of a safer sex trade. The members are divided, I was told. No position has been taken.
With all due respect to the members - and to anyone who still thinks we will eliminate prostitution - people are dying out there. They were dying before the Pickton case ever made headlines and they’ll be dying long after if all we’re going to do is more dithering about whether we feel ready to deal with the bigger issues of prostitution.
The first thing to do is strengthen social services, because many of the thousands of women working on B.C.’s outdoor strolls would gladly be doing something else for a living if it was an option. They need a place to clean up and housing they can afford, and maybe three or four years of solid support to get their lives straightened out.
Next comes the workplace.
We wouldn’t tolerate the ridiculous conditions of work that sex workers endure for any other profession. We shouldn’t be tolerating them for the workers of the sex industry either. Whatever our feelings on prostitution, surely we can all agree that adults working in it deserve a safe, healthy and fair workplace.
Improving the situation for women on the outdoor stroll also requires a commitment to cracking down hard on the men who go there to hurt somebody. Nothing about the sale of sex has to involve violence. The killing of a sex worker is not about a “high risk lifestyle,” but about our willingness to apply that term as an excuse for doing nothing.
It doesn’t have to be that way. But if we can’t get beyond the talk, the Pickton trial is nothing more than a pause in the proceedings for B.C.’s most vulnerable workers.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
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 benefit.
Yet we tolerate it for our country. We see the error of our ways, yet continue down the same path anyway. It turns out the road to hell really is paved with good intentions.
I can only hope for revolution.
No violence, of course - nothing truly good ever comes from that. But we’re way overdue for a peaceful uprising, something much bigger than just another election. Either that or go mad from all the senseless, short-sighted decision making that has accumulated to a point of crisis.
The issue of the moment is our national drug “strategy,” which has once more been revealed as being both tremendously expensive and completely ineffective at the same time.
This time it’s B.C.’s Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS pointing the finger, noting that the federal government’s promises three years ago to do better have yet to materialize. Meanwhile, the country’s drug problems set us back $2.5 billion and we didn’t even make a dent in them.
I suppose it comes down to a battle between those who believe we just need to crack down a little harder on drugs, and those who think that living through several miserable decades of that tired old strategy ought to be proof enough that it doesn’t work.
The most damning evidence that it doesn’t is the relentless climb in drug use. Ten years ago, 28.5 per cent of Canadians had consumed illicit drugs in their lifetime. Now, 45 per cent have. A survey two years ago found that almost 270,000 Canadians were currently injecting drugs.
The worst of the impact can be seen in the heart of our communities, where the homeless and the addicted pile up in disturbingly larger numbers. But the true toll of our adherence to flawed drug policy is much greater than that.
It encompasses lost income and family disaster. Rising infection rates. A growing health burden. A truly staggering annual bill for policing: $1.4 billion.
All that money spent, and not a damn thing accomplished.
How can that not be the stuff of revolution? Instead, we tolerate more of the same. We curse the waste, but do nothing more than to mark an “X” every four or five years beside the name of whatever local candidate tickled our fancy in the runup to the election.
Like so many issues that paralyze our nation, the drug debate comes down to strong differences in opinion among us. Nothing wrong with a difference in opinion. But when you’ve tried it one way and have all the stats to prove that it didn’t work, it’s time to put opinion in its place and get down to the business of fixing things.
In terms of drug policy, we are torn between those who still think we can “stamp out” drug use, and those who know we can’t. Once upon a time, we probably didn’t know which was the right course to take.
But decades on, we can’t say that anymore. We’ve given far more years and money than we should have to flawed strategies based on the criminalization of drug use.
I don’t have an Ipsos-Reid survey in my pocket to back me up, but I suspect a majority of Canadians would agree with that. I think they’re tired of everything to do with our failed drug strategies - from having their cars broken into, to seeing their income taxes frittered away on ineffective programs even while people howl for more services.
But will we revolt? That doesn’t seem to be the Canadian way.
Tremendous changes are occurring around us, from urban decay to climate change, from a rise in drug use to a drop in health and fitness. Still, our concern and indignation rarely develop past the level of mildly testy water-cooler conversation.
Surely the moment has to come soon - the one that finally sets a fire under us. Here’s hoping for an inferno.
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 benefit.
Yet we tolerate it for our country. We see the error of our ways, yet continue down the same path anyway. It turns out the road to hell really is paved with good intentions.
I can only hope for revolution.
No violence, of course - nothing truly good ever comes from that. But we’re way overdue for a peaceful uprising, something much bigger than just another election. Either that or go mad from all the senseless, short-sighted decision making that has accumulated to a point of crisis.
The issue of the moment is our national drug “strategy,” which has once more been revealed as being both tremendously expensive and completely ineffective at the same time.
This time it’s B.C.’s Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS pointing the finger, noting that the federal government’s promises three years ago to do better have yet to materialize. Meanwhile, the country’s drug problems set us back $2.5 billion and we didn’t even make a dent in them.
I suppose it comes down to a battle between those who believe we just need to crack down a little harder on drugs, and those who think that living through several miserable decades of that tired old strategy ought to be proof enough that it doesn’t work.
The most damning evidence that it doesn’t is the relentless climb in drug use. Ten years ago, 28.5 per cent of Canadians had consumed illicit drugs in their lifetime. Now, 45 per cent have. A survey two years ago found that almost 270,000 Canadians were currently injecting drugs.
The worst of the impact can be seen in the heart of our communities, where the homeless and the addicted pile up in disturbingly larger numbers. But the true toll of our adherence to flawed drug policy is much greater than that.
It encompasses lost income and family disaster. Rising infection rates. A growing health burden. A truly staggering annual bill for policing: $1.4 billion.
All that money spent, and not a damn thing accomplished.
How can that not be the stuff of revolution? Instead, we tolerate more of the same. We curse the waste, but do nothing more than to mark an “X” every four or five years beside the name of whatever local candidate tickled our fancy in the runup to the election.
Like so many issues that paralyze our nation, the drug debate comes down to strong differences in opinion among us. Nothing wrong with a difference in opinion. But when you’ve tried it one way and have all the stats to prove that it didn’t work, it’s time to put opinion in its place and get down to the business of fixing things.
In terms of drug policy, we are torn between those who still think we can “stamp out” drug use, and those who know we can’t. Once upon a time, we probably didn’t know which was the right course to take.
But decades on, we can’t say that anymore. We’ve given far more years and money than we should have to flawed strategies based on the criminalization of drug use.
I don’t have an Ipsos-Reid survey in my pocket to back me up, but I suspect a majority of Canadians would agree with that. I think they’re tired of everything to do with our failed drug strategies - from having their cars broken into, to seeing their income taxes frittered away on ineffective programs even while people howl for more services.
But will we revolt? That doesn’t seem to be the Canadian way.
Tremendous changes are occurring around us, from urban decay to climate change, from a rise in drug use to a drop in health and fitness. Still, our concern and indignation rarely develop past the level of mildly testy water-cooler conversation.
Surely the moment has to come soon - the one that finally sets a fire under us. Here’s hoping for an inferno.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Derik Lord's long wait
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 older woman’s Tsawwassen home.
Nobody who knew them could believe it at first. But prosecutors headed into trial with some significant evidence. Included were tapes of a flurry of phone calls between the boys after police told Muir they had a witness who could place the boy - then just 15 - in Tsawwassen at the time of the murders.
Prosecutors also had Huenemann’s young girlfriend, who had a damning story of picking the boys up at the Swartz Bay ferry terminal and hearing of the events of that night.
And then there was the story told by Muir. He told police that he and Lord had been hired by Huenemann to kill the teenager’s mother and grandmother. Huenemann stood to inherit $4 million from their deaths, and had promised to share his newfound fortune with his friends.
In Lord’s version, all three boys were at the Lord family home at 8:30 p.m. on the night of the murders, which meant they couldn’t have been in Tsawwassen. It’s an all-or-nothing story. To believe Lord, you have to believe that none of the boys were guilty - even though Muir confessed to everything.
Derik’s mother Elouise backs up her son. She says she was at home that night and saw all three boys in the basement. Derik’s father David, while not there that night, ferociously adheres to the same story, sometimes to the point of getting himself thrown in jail for protesting some aspect of his son’s incarceration.
Law-abiding before Derik’s conviction, David has turned into something of a chronic troublemaker in the intervening years. When I visited the family six years ago, David joked that his tombstone would read “Well-known to police.”
I had gone to Chilliwack to interview the family , where they’d moved from Saanich years earlier to be closer to Derik at Matsqui penitentiary. The parents were resolutely convinced of Derik’s innocence, and still are.
The irony is that their need to believe that Derik doesn’t deserve to be in prison ensures that he’ll never get out.
It also guarantees the worst kind of prison time. Any time somebody in charge grows weary of Derik’s ongoing refusal to admit his guilt, he’s dispatched to a tougher prison as punishment. The 33-year-old had worked his way into a healing-style aboriginal prison by the time of his last bid for parole. Now, he’s back behind bars in Matsqui.
How will it end for Lord? Possibly with a genuine lifetime in jail if he continues to deny the murders. The system may have grown more sensitive to allegations of wrongful conviction, but not in a case where only one of the three men convicted is continuing to deny the trio’s crime.
I got an anonymous e-mail the last time I wrote about Lord in 2001, declaring that Lord was very much guilty as charged no matter what he said.
I think he likely is. But it would be a tremendously hard confession for him to make now, given that his parents have spent the last 10 years and every nickel of their savings on asserting his innocence.
They believe in his innocence, and I sometimes think he has ended up convincing himself of that as well. But if you can’t admit guilt, you stay in jail. And so it goes for Derik Lord.
No one is well-served by keeping Lord in prison. Jails are expensive, and not known for their positive impacts. If Lord was a violent young man, he hasn’t stayed that way, and seems like the kind of guy who’d lead a quiet life far from the public eye if ever released.
But the stories a family tells itself sometimes take on lives of their own, and pretty soon there’s no turning back. The burden of the lie just may be Lord’s to bear for a lifetime.
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 older woman’s Tsawwassen home.
Nobody who knew them could believe it at first. But prosecutors headed into trial with some significant evidence. Included were tapes of a flurry of phone calls between the boys after police told Muir they had a witness who could place the boy - then just 15 - in Tsawwassen at the time of the murders.
Prosecutors also had Huenemann’s young girlfriend, who had a damning story of picking the boys up at the Swartz Bay ferry terminal and hearing of the events of that night.
And then there was the story told by Muir. He told police that he and Lord had been hired by Huenemann to kill the teenager’s mother and grandmother. Huenemann stood to inherit $4 million from their deaths, and had promised to share his newfound fortune with his friends.
In Lord’s version, all three boys were at the Lord family home at 8:30 p.m. on the night of the murders, which meant they couldn’t have been in Tsawwassen. It’s an all-or-nothing story. To believe Lord, you have to believe that none of the boys were guilty - even though Muir confessed to everything.
Derik’s mother Elouise backs up her son. She says she was at home that night and saw all three boys in the basement. Derik’s father David, while not there that night, ferociously adheres to the same story, sometimes to the point of getting himself thrown in jail for protesting some aspect of his son’s incarceration.
Law-abiding before Derik’s conviction, David has turned into something of a chronic troublemaker in the intervening years. When I visited the family six years ago, David joked that his tombstone would read “Well-known to police.”
I had gone to Chilliwack to interview the family , where they’d moved from Saanich years earlier to be closer to Derik at Matsqui penitentiary. The parents were resolutely convinced of Derik’s innocence, and still are.
The irony is that their need to believe that Derik doesn’t deserve to be in prison ensures that he’ll never get out.
It also guarantees the worst kind of prison time. Any time somebody in charge grows weary of Derik’s ongoing refusal to admit his guilt, he’s dispatched to a tougher prison as punishment. The 33-year-old had worked his way into a healing-style aboriginal prison by the time of his last bid for parole. Now, he’s back behind bars in Matsqui.
How will it end for Lord? Possibly with a genuine lifetime in jail if he continues to deny the murders. The system may have grown more sensitive to allegations of wrongful conviction, but not in a case where only one of the three men convicted is continuing to deny the trio’s crime.
I got an anonymous e-mail the last time I wrote about Lord in 2001, declaring that Lord was very much guilty as charged no matter what he said.
I think he likely is. But it would be a tremendously hard confession for him to make now, given that his parents have spent the last 10 years and every nickel of their savings on asserting his innocence.
They believe in his innocence, and I sometimes think he has ended up convincing himself of that as well. But if you can’t admit guilt, you stay in jail. And so it goes for Derik Lord.
No one is well-served by keeping Lord in prison. Jails are expensive, and not known for their positive impacts. If Lord was a violent young man, he hasn’t stayed that way, and seems like the kind of guy who’d lead a quiet life far from the public eye if ever released.
But the stories a family tells itself sometimes take on lives of their own, and pretty soon there’s no turning back. The burden of the lie just may be Lord’s to bear for a lifetime.
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