A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

Add one more homeless man to Victoria streets Sept. 14, 2007 For more than a year now, I’ve watched Roland Lapierre cobbling together at least some semblance of a normal life aboard his tidy little raft on the Gorge. Once homeless on Victoria’s streets, Lapierre had found a way out. I’d see him sitting in the sunshine on his patchwork raft –reading the paper sometimes, or having a nap – and would send good thoughts his way for having the creative mettle to come up with his own solution. I wondered how long he’d get away with it. The answer came this week. The City of Victoria has ordered Lapierre to leave the little bay where he anchors, off Banfield Park near the Selkirk Trestle. In a city that knows no end to people living homeless on its streets, add one more. The city is within its rights, of course, and I can already hear the “slippery slope” arguments taking shape in defence of rousting Lapierre. We can’t have people thinking they can just pull up a raft somewhere on the Gorge a...

No big-city jams - but now's the time to take on Victoria traffic Sept. 7, 2007 I noticed in this week’s Times-Colonist that the paper is planning a series on commuting in Greater Victoria. They’ve put out a request for commuter stories, so allow me to be among the first to weigh in. I’m one of those lucky folks who are able to pick their own start/stop times for work, at least to the extent of avoiding the worst of early-morning and late-afternoon traffic. So I won’t pretend to know what it feels like to be a frustrated commuter fighting her way through heavy stop-and-go traffic every day. But I do get caught in the crush fairly often anyway, because it’s hard not to if you’re driving anywhere near one of the region’s trouble spots at the wrong time of day. Civil engineers, physicists and flow experts have been trying for decades to figure out traffic jams, the reasons for which go well beyond the superficial explanation of too many cars crammed onto too few roads. The latest the...

More cuts to mental-health supports betray the lie of "community care" Aug. 31, 2007 These are the first words I’ve written about the closure of Laurel House. Given that it’s closing for good in three weeks, that’s pretty late to be taking up the cause. The problem was that I had a job in the non-profit sector up until very recently, which made it difficult to go shooting my mouth off about decisions being made by another non-profit. In fact, I caught an earful a couple months ago just for sending an unhappy e-mail to other non-profits letting them know that Laurel House was closing and our community would be losing yet another resource for people with chronic mental illness. I learned the hard way that I’d have to keep my own counsel on the subject for the time being. Me and my 800 words aren’t going to change a thing at this late date. But a lament for Laurel House is in order just the same. If you’ve read the flurry of letters in the paper these past few weeks, you have th...

Keep David Ramsay jailed Aug. 29, 2007 She died in April, having survived a scant 22 years. The only good that comes of it is that at least she won’t have to hear the news that the B.C. judge who helped ruin her life has had the gall to apply for day parole barely halfway into his jail sentence. The young Prince George woman had a hard life, as did the other three girls who David Ramsay was convicted of sexually exploiting and assaulting while a provincial court judge in Prince George and neighbouring communities. They were terrified of testifying against the former judge, and understandably reluctant to come forward. But when one of the girls learned in 2002 that Ramsay was the judge who would be deciding whether she got her kids back from foster care, she decided enough was enough. Ramsay must have seen the writing on the wall when the four girls came forward, because he quickly pleaded guilty in the opening days of his 2004 trial. Prosecutors had asked for a five-year jail sentenc...

Co-op brothel long overdue Aug. 24 2007 I’ve been trying to pin down the moment when I got so caught up in the issues of the sex trade. The kick in the butt that got me moving was an interview 10 years ago with former sex worker Cherry Kingsley, when I was working full-time at the Times-Colonist. She blew me away with stories from her tough, sad life. But even in my fledgling newspaper days I was prowling the streets of Kamloops trying to find sex workers to talk to. So maybe it’s just always been my particular fascination. In those days, I was adamantly against the sex trade, and for all the reasons you hear in any discussion of it – exploitation, victimization, terrible violence, suffering. A lifetime of movies, news stories and documentaries about desperate, drugged-out women eking out a mean living on the streets had left their mark on me. I’d heard countless stories from women whose abusive childhoods had primed them to fall into the trade as adolescents, and assumed that all sex ...