A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

Restaurant calorie counts a weighty subject March 2, 2007 In this time of angst over how fat we’re all getting, the only real villain to this point has been our own gluttonous selves. Nobody’s out there making us eat too much. And for the most part, that’s true. If people are putting on weight to the point that it’s having an impact on their health, then it’s up to them to do something about that. We have the right to good health care no matter what bad choices we make, but we still need to take personal responsibility for staying healthy. That said, the astounding figures in a U.S. health organization’s newsletter this month certainly underline the restaurant industry’s significant role in helping North Americans lard on the pounds. We may be eating the stuff, but it’s the industry that has cranked up the calorie count to truly obscene levels. The restaurants listed in the March newsletter of the Centre for Science in the Public Interest were all American, but I don’t imagine the resu...

Hard to stay positive when faced with our inability to act Feb. 23, 2007 Life on the front lines of a load of social issues these past three years has underlined for me the problems of a community that can’t come to grips with what’s going on in its streets. It’s been something of a grim awakening. Not the issues so much - 23 years in journalism had already introduced me to things like drug addiction, the sex trade and people living on the streets before I started working in the not-for-profit sector in 2004. No, it’s my newfound knowledge - that we’re paralyzed with indecision about what to do about any of it - that has proved the most unsettling. I sometimes fear I’m drifting into cynicism, which was certainly a risk even in my previous job as a journalist. On that front, I remain haunted by the ghost of the Victoria Health Project of the late 1980s. I was a relatively new reporter in those days, and loved the strategy for its common sense. Tasked with finding a way to keep aging peo...

If exotic dancers' money not good enough, don't count on mine Feb . 17, 2007 When I first heard about a national breast cancer charity turning down a donation from exotic dancers in Vancouver, I got mad. I fired off a furious e-mail to the Breast Cancer Society of Canada, and suspect a lot of other people did too. Being an exotic dancer is, after all, a legal profession. Up until 2004, Canada even had a special fast-track immigration category for exotic dancers to ensure the country never ran short of them. Do we want our charities getting sniffy about taking donations from hard-working, fully legal dancers just because somebody disapproves of how they make a living? That’s what happened in this instance, when the cancer society rejected the proceeds of a fundraiser being put on by Vancouver’s Exotic Dancers For Canada next month. But while I was poking around on the Web in search of insight into what could have possibly possessed the society to refuse the donation, what became...

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 thro...

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...