Different country, same stores - well, almost

Went to the mall in Tegucigalpa today. And wouldn't you know, it looked just like every mall in every place  I've ever been to, right down to the Dunkin' Donuts kiosk just inside the entrance and all the pretty young girls in tight pants and high-heeled shoes browsing the stores. We had crepes for lunch.
Went to the bank, too, and that was a whole other story. I had to open a Honduran account to be able to access the stipend that Cuso International pays its volunteers, a long and complicated process for which I was very, very glad to have a Spanish-speaking Cuso staffer sitting beside me. The bank asks way more personal questions than any Canadian bank could get away with - like the names of your children, your marital status and your personal health.
Next stop, the local cellphone store for a $30 cellphone and 165 lempiras' worth of free calls. The good news: There's no long-distance charges for calling anywhere within Honduras. The bad news: I don't know anyone here to call and the bonus is only good for a week.
Head hurts from another day of straining to understand what people are saying. Somebody should invent a new-language-acquisition pill.

Hard times for Honduran capital

National Theatre, Tegucigalpa

Our Cuso International training continues, launched on this particular day with a heavy morning session with Honduran journalist Iris Mencia.
You have to be brave to be a boat-rocking journalist in Honduras, and she fit the bill. She gave us a frank and eye-opening introduction to the rough and tumble history of her country, especially since the 2009 coup that ousted former president Manuel Zelaya.
 But Iris also turned out to be lots of fun and a local celebrity to boot, bundling us into a taxi in the afternoon for a walking tour of downtown Tegucigalpa in which she seemed to know virtually everyone we passed. She even convinced the security guard at the 1912 National Theatre to let us wander around the place even though it was closed.
And she plays the melodica. How can you not take a shine to anyone who plays the melodica?
My partner and I have travelled a  lot in Mexico and had wondered whether Honduras would feel similar. But Tegucigalpa reminds me most of Havana, where I visited in the mid-1990s. Cuba was in a bleak period back then, having lost the vital support of the Soviet Union as that Communist stronghold fell apart. Havana was essentially a beautiful slum when I was there, its colonial architecture crumbling and impoverished Cubans squatting everywhere.
The Honduran capital isn't quite so desperate-looking as that. But the slow deterioration of everything that was once beautiful is certainly evident. One of the women we were with lives in Tegucigalpa but hadn't been to the centre of the city for years, and she seemed stunned by what had been lost.
We visited the Museum of National Identity and were the only people there for much of the time, although the streets bustled with people with no jobs to go to. The unemployment rate in Honduras is 28 per cent; apparently anyone over the age of 35 can pretty much forget ever finding another job. That's grim news in a country with no social supports.
The heartening thing about people is that they just keep on keeping on. When we walked past a group of fellows who appeared to be in the midst of a hard life, one of them overheard us speaking English and gave us a big smile, calling out "Welcome to Honduras!" as we passed. 

There's no preparing for a scary security briefing

We started our in-country training today at the Cuso International office here in Tegucigalpa. Other volunteers had warned me that what we would learn in the "security issues" portion of the day would be scary, and it was. Then again, I've been reading Honduran newspapers on-line for months now to get ready for coming here, and it had dawned on me quite some time ago that things would be a little different in my new land compared to good ol' Victoria.
As it turns out, the people who bear the brunt of the violence in Honduras are generally either participants of the drug trade or regular Hondurans trying to go about their daily lives. Attacks on foreigners like us are rare. Sadly, the reason for that is because it's known that foreigners might actually have connections somewhere who could help them or cause trouble for the perpetrators, while the Hondurans really don't have anybody.
In practice, what this means is that in the big cities at least, people who can afford it take taxis virtually everywhere (and even then, they first try to establish a relationship with a taxi driver they can trust). They avoid the yellow school-bus-style public transport, because that's courting trouble. They get very familiar with what parts of town you should just stay the heck out of.
When out walking, we were advised not to wear clothes or jewelry that draw attention, and to understand that carrying anything - a purse, a camera, a wallet, a laptop - potentially makes you a target. From this point on, we'll carry a small amount of Honduran currency - 10 or 20 lempiras, about a buck - in a front pocket to give to robbers. And you don't even think about resisting, because guns are commonplace.
It's not that violence happens all the time to everyone, of course. But it was quite clear from the presentation we had that it CAN happen to anyone at any time, and you just have to be prepared for that. Fortunately, I'm a plain dresser with not a whit of jewelry worth anything. But I do hope I never have to test whether I can stay calm during a robbery, and I certainly will take Cuso's advice about not making jokes at times like that.
There's nothing inherently violent about the Honduran people that has created this situation. So far, the ones we've met -  the ones we've passed on the streets and seen in the shops - have been universally friendly and welcoming. No, the problem is all about poverty, and a subsequent breakdown in civil society. (Well, that and a thriving cocaine trade originating in South America for markets in the U.S. and Canada.)
Almost half of Honduras's eight million residents live on less than $1.50 a day. Minimum wage is equivalent to $200 a month. Crimes of opportunity happen because people get hungry and desperate. Gangs - Honduras has the Mara - take hold.
The security situation in Honduras is a stark reminder that as the gap grows between a country's richest and poorest citizens, the impact is felt by everyone, regardless of economic status. The richer you are in Honduras, the bigger the razor-wire-topped wall you need around your home, and the higher the risk for your family every time you leave your fortress.
Remember that, Canada. OK, we're no Honduras, but the trends are all in the wrong direction when it comes to that gap.

Let the Honduran blogging begin!

Victoria to San Francisco, San Francisco to Houston, Houston to Tegucigalpa. It took a couple days to get here, but we have arrived in the capital of Honduras, to begin what will ultimately be at least a year and more likely two of living and working here.
We arrived a mere four hours ago, but already I feel huge relief just to see the place. Few things are worse than reading all the crazy news stories from afar about events in Honduras - it started to feel like we were on a suicide mission. Instead, we arrived at a perfectly nice airport in what appears to be a perfectly nice city, albeit one that even the locals warn us not to go wandering around at night.
But we did brave a short walk to the Mas Por Menos supermercado near our little Hotel Alsacia, a charming blink-and-you-miss-it guest house that Cuso International has put us up at while we take the "in-country" training to get ready for the work I'll be doing with the Comision de Social Accion de Menonita in Copan Ruinas.
We even went to a bank machine and nothing happened. People smiled, we all said friendly holas to each other, and I survived several tentative communications in Spanish, including asking the clerk at the Mas Por Menos whether we could buy a smaller piece of cheese.
We've already sampled the local beer (Barena, pretty good) and marvelled at the prices of packaged goods at the grocery store, many of which were comparable to home. Can't be too many Hondurans shopping at those prices - the minimum wage here is equivalent to $200 a month. There's certainly no escaping North American-style fast food just because you're deep in Central America - we walked past a Wendy's and a McDonald's on our way to the store. Is there no city those guys haven't colonized?
Later I pulled out the accordion - which has spent much of the last two days stuffed  into the carry-on bins of our various planes - and played a few tunes later this afternoon in the garden at the hotel. It made me feel like I'd arrived. But it gets dark here early, this close to the equator, so it looks like 6 p.m. will have to be my outdoor-accordion wrapup time in this new homeland.
Paul has found a Spanish version of "Bonanza" on TV. It gives Lorne Green more of an edge.

Three days from Honduras, neck-deep in stuff

Loads of fun at last night's farewell party, but the cold light of day brings a disastrous looking house and just three brief days to get things under control.
We have grown ruthless in our sorting. I took sleeping bags and blankets to Our Place today, and dropped off old bits and pieces of audio equipment and a dead Mac to the computer recycling place. I've lost track of how many bags of stuff I've hauled out of here, yet more just keep piling up. The ridiculous amount of coat hangers we bagged up this afternoon highlight just how ridiculous an amount of clothes hung in our closets.
A young fellow at the bottle depot when I dropped off the electronics rushed over to my little pile like I'd brought gold, and took virtually everything. These seem like hungry times - put anything at the curb, like my partner's mildering and badly neglected golf clubs in their spider-filled bag that's been outside in the shed for the last six years, and they're gone in an instant. Offer anything for free in the craigslist ads and expect at least a couple dozen responses, from people who seem genuinely delighted even if all you're giving away is a tippy little African-elephant floor lamp.
The next step in our preparation will require ruthlessness with the things we had planned to bring to Honduras, because it's becoming pretty clear that all of what we want will not fit into two 23-kilo allotments. I'm regretting the three bottles of mosquito repellent. In fact, I can't even remember why I was worried about mosquitoes; there seems like far bigger things to worry about now.
TV went today.  No lamps left, which has made the house incredibly dim. The better to hide the mess.

The downside of disappearing

Should you ever decide to pack it all in and move to a distant land, let me tell you, the final week of preparation is hell.
My partner and I are both tense and strained-looking. We're still talking, but in short, monosyllabic sentences that seem as stripped down as our house, which is somehow devoid of stuff yet more cluttered than it has ever been. All routines have been turned on their end,  and every day is full of a long list of tasks that never seems finished. ("Pots to Rachelle's house"; "Costco run"; "Notify bank so Mom can deposit my paycheque"; "Photos to SD card"; "Clean oven"; "Pick up malaria drugs" - you get the picture.)
Of course, my deadline personality hasn't helped. Why, for instance, did we wait until a few weeks before leaving for Honduras to decide to get our wills done? Why did I wait until Jan. 4 to make a video with a friend recovering from cancer, when we could have done it two or three months ago? Why am I only now lugging my sheet music into Staples to get it coiled? And why, why, did I think it would be a good idea to hold a Cuso/PEERS fundraiser as our farewell party just days before we leave?
I'm self-employed, so am also having to attend to things like paying my 2011 taxes and HST. The Canadian government doesn't care if you're off to live in a foreign land for a year or two and really, really busy - they want their money. And on top of everything, we are caught in a social whirl, as happens when all your friends and family want one last meal, glass of wine or coffee with you before you leave.
But so it goes. (I can see why Kurt Vonnegut liked that phrase so much - it works.) The one sure thing about a deadline as absolute as this one is that we're going to have to hit it. People are always asking me these days if I'm excited about what lies ahead, but all I can see at the moment is that day's to-do list.
Still, some prickles of excitement break through. Yesterday I pulled out my big ring of keys and thought: Five days from now, I won't need any of these.

Come say goodbye!

Thanks for some very nice comments, blog readers! It was great to hear from people. I hope you hang in with me as my writing shifts to a more Honduran flavour.
Somebody asked about getting in touch with me by email: Please use jodypatersonmobile@gmail.com, as the Shaw address will be gone by the end of next week. Comments on this blog are now coming through that email, so that works too.
Farewell party/fundraiser coming up next Wednesday, Jan. 11 - drop by if you can, 6-10 p.m. at the Garry Oak Room (1335 Thurlow Rd) of Fairfield Community Centre. A very talented, engaging trio of musicians - my daughter Rachelle Reath, her partner Aaron Watson and fabulous trumpet player Alfons Fear - will be providing the music at what I'm figuring will be a great big cocktail party full of people I know. How nice is that? My cousin and her husband Toni and Lee Burton will be tending bar.
We opted to raise a little money on our way out the door for PEERS Victoria and Cuso International (my past and my future!), so it's admission by donation and we're hoping people will throw $10-$15 in the pot if they can afford it. And if you can't, no problem - come on down! 

Readers have made all the difference

My final TC column! Weird. Come to our farewell party/fundraiser next week to say goodbye - Jan. 11, 6-10 p.m. at the Garry Oak Room of Fairfield Community Centre, 1335 Thurlow. 

Folks, it has been an amazing ride.

But 14 years have passed since I was first given the privilege of writing a regular column for the Times Colonist. I’ve written 1,800 or so columns, and logged 1.4 million words on a vast number of subjects.

And it’s time to go.

I bless my lucky stars for a series of bosses who let me write whatever the heck I wanted all these years. I’m grateful for the sheer luck of living in a time and place where our governments know they have to tolerate people like me nipping at them in the name of free speech.

But mostly I’m thankful to you, dear reader. Your willingness to share your opinions, criticisms, encouragement and life stories with me has made all the difference.

 Back when I was writing four times a week, readers’ tips accounted for at least half of my column topics. On my own, I couldn’t possibly have found even a fraction of the crazy, funny, tragic, inspiring and touching stories that my readers brought me over the years. I’m the medium - the story-teller - but they’re the real deal.

The great joy of journalism is that it bestows on curious people like me the right to ask nosy questions of virtually anyone. There’s nothing saying that people will answer your questions, but it’s striking how often they do.

And as they talked, I learned.

About the cruelties of the human condition. The limitations of our systems. The breaking points and vulnerabilities. The impact of unintended consequence.

But I also came to see that most people are good, and that virtually everyone can be brilliant if given the chance to shine. What a wonderful gift that has been, to know that.

From talking to so many disparate personalities in so many states of wealth, health, freedom, rage, humour, vulnerability and frustrated powerlessness, I came to be comfortable with anyone, and happy to hang out in all kinds of scenes. That’s been a whole other blessing.

And now my partner Paul Willcocks and I are off to Honduras, and to new stories yet to be told.

I know I’ll keep writing. Journalism soaks into your bones, and observing the world is now a passion of mine regardless of whether I’m getting paid for it. It won’t be easy to walk away from work I’ve been doing since I was 25. But truth be told, I’m ready.

I’ve been in the business long enough to have seen the way news cycles. A critical issue rises up in the public consciousness, lingers in limbo for a very long time while people argue about what to do about it, and with luck ends up “fixed” after much effort on the part of all concerned.  

But then budget cuts, public apathy and a heartbreaking lack of institutional memory eventually eat away at the gains. A decade or so later, the original problem re-emerges, and the cycle begins again.

It’s just not possible to muster the same energy for a fight when you know how the story ends. I find myself growing cynical and discouraged. But I’ll still miss my front-row seat on all the action, and the doors I’ve been able to nudge open in the name of people’s right to know.

I’ve loved being a journalist in a free country under six companies that all valued a free press.  It’s become fashionable to make a fuss about corporate media controlling the news, but that has not been my experience.

Even journalists sometimes forget the significance of that. Such freedoms are far from a guarantee in this world, including in the country where I’m headed. I feel our own governments’ growing reticence to stay open to scrutiny, but I trust Canadians will keep their feet to the fire on this one.

Regrets? I’ve had a few. Sometimes I’ve been too pushy and strident, other times naive. I thought my writing could play a role in changing things, but came to see that the readers you most need to attract when striving for change are the ones least likely to read you in the first place.

Nor do I get much feedback from readers anymore, perhaps a signal that I’ve overstayed my welcome. It has felt lonely tilting at windmills on my own.

But all in, it’s been a blast. Thank you for being the best part of that. Stay in touch.

Soaring CEO salaries are big trouble

Here I am, posting a Margaret Wente column. Her sheer contrariness, not to mention her privileged viewpoint that she rarely acknowledges, generally rub me the wrong way. But today she wrote on an issue that we obviously share indignation over: The soaring pay of Canada's CEOs.
As she notes in the column, a private company has the right to pay its boss whatever it wants. But tying salaries to stock options has screwed things up. It motivates CEOs to do things for all the wrong reasons. And with governments now tying their own managerial salaries to private-sector salaries, things are getting way out of hand.
And here's the TC's editorial from yesterday on the same subject: Both the editorial and Wente's column are based on a new report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. 

Rising inequality demands debate

 

 

TIMES COLONISTJANUARY 4, 2012

 

 

How much is too much? It's time to ask that question about income inequality in our society.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives cleverly frames the issue with an annual New Year's look at the compensation for 100 corporate CEOs compared with the average Canadian.

The CEOs, the centre reported, had earned as much as the average Canadian makes in a year by noon on Tuesday, the second working day of the year.

Their average compensation jumped 27 per cent in 2010, to $8.4 million. The average income for Canadians increased 1.1 per cent, to $44,366.

The increase might reflect improving corporate performance. But the gap has been growing steadily in recent decades. In 1995, for example, the average compensation for the 50 highest-paid Canadian CEOs was $2.66 million, 85 times the pay of the average worker.

By 2010, the average for the 50 was $11.3 million, 255 times the pay of the average worker.

Put another way, the average Canadian salary grew by about 2.4 per cent a year. The average for the 50 CEOs, through good times and bad, was 10.5 per cent a year.

Two arguments have been used to justify the increasing share of corporate revenues claimed by those at the top. The compensation reflects market forces, defenders argue. Just as Robert Luongo can command $6.7 million from the Canucks because he offers scarce and valuable skills, so can top executives demand big pay.

The second claim is that only shareholders should care care about executive compensation, as it's their money.

It's not that simple. Luongo's pay is determined by the market, but free agency rules, team salary caps and other factors all provide checks and balances. The process is, at least, transparent.

Compensation for top executives is supposedly set by market forces. But the market appears rigged. Those who determine pay - boards of directors - tend to benefit themselves as executives' pay increases, because corporations develop pay plans by surveying compensation at other companies. Many directors are in similar positions with other corporations, or directors on several boards. Rising compensation means increases for them as well.

And shareholders are rarely given the chance to protect their interests when it comes to compensation.

Of course, answering the first question - how much is too much - raises a second one. What is to be done if we decide this trend is damaging our society?

There are policy responses which would introduce market discipline without interfering with corporations' ability to set compensation levels. Shareholder rights, both to detailed information on compensation plans and to a direct say, could be strengthened. Shareholders, for example, could be required to approve any compensation plan that provides increases greater than a set percentage. Greater independence for directors could be mandated.

Alternatively, government could use its redistributive powers to level the playing field. The centre notes, for example, that CEOs increasingly take their payment in stock options, taxed at half the rate of income.

The growing inequality demands, at least, a public debate. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reported last month that income inequality continues to increase in Canada and around the world. Government policies have ensured that those with high incomes claim a larger share of the country's wealth, while reducing the share earned by the rest of Canadians.

The trickle-down approach hasn't worked, said OECD secretary-general Angel Gurría. "Without a comprehensive strategy for inclusive growth, inequality will continue to rise."

And without such a strategy, the OECD warned, "the social contract is starting to unravel in many countries."

Our ability to function as a society is based on that social contract, which assumes the game is not rigged to favour a fortunate few. When it starts to break down, serious trouble lies ahead.

New hospital policy not much of a fix

Well, this story from today's Victoria Times Colonist certainly does raise more questions than it answers. 

I can't decide which is my favourite outrageous fact - that VIHA thinks things will be fixed now just because its new policy establishes there will be at least two women in any mixed-gender hospital room (how does adding an extra woman prevent a patient from being assaulted by one of the two men who might also be in the same room?), or the revelation that the OLD policy had no provisions for ensuring "patients with known violent behaviour, mental health issues or known tendencies to inappropriate sexual behaviour" weren't being placed in mixed-gender rooms. 

Come to think of it, that last point is much bigger than gender. Is the hospital telling us they don't even consider big stuff like that before packing patients into a four-bed ward with strangers? 

I get that the mixed-gender wards are a more effective use of hospital space, and that there's no guarantee of safety anyway just because you're in a room where everyone is the same gender. But people are really vulnerable when they're sick enough to be in the hospital. They need to know that those in charge have thoughtful and realistic policies and practices for keeping them safe. 

Assault of 83-year-old woman in Island hospital prompts policy change

Mixed-gender rooms to be limited after elderly woman attacked in bed

BY JUDITH LAVOIE, TIMES COLONISTJANUARY 3, 2012 6:15 AM

Vancouver Island Health Authority has said it will limit mixed-gender rooms after an 83-year-old woman with dementia was sexually assaulted by another patient at Cowichan District Hospital.

The woman, who was taken to hospital Dec. 19 after a fall, was in a fourbed room with two men when she was assaulted.

"I can't say enough about how truly horrified we are that this happened," said VIHA spokeswoman Moira McLean.

"VIHA is doing a full review of the incident. We have no tolerance for any sort of violence and we are absolutely horrified this would happen in one of our facilities."

Staff at Cowichan District Hospital were alerted to the assault after a medication alarm was activated.

The RCMP special victims unit was called by staff and a 48-year-old man was placed under guard in another room. The suspect was released from hospital into police custody.

North Cowichan-Duncan RCMP could not be contacted Monday and it is not yet known if the man has been charged.

As a result of the incident, policies and procedures on mixed-gender rooms are now being formalized, McLean said.

The new rules will require patients in semiprivate rooms with two beds to be the same gender.

Every effort will be made to separate men and women in three-and fourbed rooms, but when mixed-gender rooms are necessary, there will be a minimum of two women per room, said the health authority.

"It will also be required that patients in mixed-gender rooms are alert, oriented, mentally competent and have the ability to appropriately vocalize concerns," McLean said.

Patients with known violent behaviour, mental health issues or known tendencies to inappropriate sexual behaviour will not be placed in mixed-gender rooms under the new policies.

The new rules would have prevented the woman who was assaulted from being placed in a mixed-gender room.

Even though the policies are not yet formalized, efforts are always made to place patients in genderappropriate rooms, McLean said. "But at times, if there is high volume, people are put in mixed-gender rooms. It's not uncommon and it happens in hospitals across the country," she said.

At the new Patient Care Centre at the Royal Jubilee Hospital, 85 per cent of beds are in single rooms and the remainder are twobed rooms.

"As we move to replace facilities, that's what's coming down the road, but when you have older facilities like Cowichan District Hospital, Nanaimo and Victoria General Hospital, some are three-and fourbed rooms and sometimes it's unavoidable to have mixed genders," McLean said.

Pack rats and ditchers: In search of common ground

A blog reader asked me if I had any advice for finding common ground between pack rat and ditcher, given that is exactly what is being attempted in our house at this moment as we fold the place up.
I'm the ditcher, the one who has no problem getting rid of things. Keep that in mind when reading this, because I fully acknowledge it's from a ditcher's perspective.
And let's presume I'm giving this advice for a pack rat-ditcher couple in which the pack rat does want the end result, even though it's going to be painful getting there.
I've got nothing against pack rats as as general rule, but if you want to fold up your house in order to be able to travel the world freely, then it's pretty clear that a ditcher ethos simply has to prevail. So a motivated pack rat is essential. I have no idea how you'd convince a pack rat to part with their stuff if they'd yet to buy into the concept.
OK, advice.
First, the ditcher has to recognize that it's going to be a struggle all the way, and that they need to prepare themselves mentally for the challenge ahead. If Paul and I had been a new couple going through this process of giving stuff up, I think we might have broken up by now.
But I've known Paul for long enough that I was really aware of how tough this was going to be for him. I knew I'd have to be very, very mellow and non-pushy - not my natural state - through this process.
Step two: Recognize that the ditcher does most of the work of the downsizing.  Maybe that's unfair, but it's just the way it is. If you want something more than the other person, you will have to be the one who makes the most effort.
Step three: Give your pack rat some options. There are a lot of different choices available when you're getting rid of stuff, and pack rats seem to feel better about giving away their things if they're not just going to get dumped, but are going on to new lives with family, acquaintances or people in need.
And finally, check your own expectations. Sometimes I catch myself getting heated up over an item too inconsequential to make a whit of difference in terms of the storage space it'll take up. Ditcher, don't sweat the small stuff.
Good luck. With two weeks to go in our household, we are on track to fit the stuff of our lives into a 6x8 storage locker. But I'd be lying if I said it has been easy.

Could be the end of the world as we know it (or not)

I find it kind of sweet that people still get caught up in a good old-fashioned doomsday prophecy once in a while.

It’s difficult to be certain of anything in this world, so I don’t mean to poke fun at those who believe the apocalypse is coming in 2012. It could be.

But what’s charming is that the belief has gained so much traction that even the well-regarded Guardian newspaper in London, England felt the need to run a rather serious story this month featuring a German scholar disputing rumours that the end is nigh.

I like that.  We seem all sophisticated and rational as a society, but just below the surface is a wide-eyed kid who still believes in things that go bump in the night. Prepare for a good year on that front regardless of what’s up with the apocalypse, seeing as the ancient Mayans aren’t the only ones predicting intense times in 2012.

It seems perverse to wish for disaster. But working ourselves up about a possible apocalypse is obviously something humans enjoy every now and then, and we do it well. Who can forget Y2K?

The 2012 doomsday prophesy revolves around a stone tablet carved by an ancient Mayan civilization from the Tortuguero region of Mexico. The tablet marks 2012 as the end of a 5,125-year cycle of the Mayan long-count calendar.

Some have taken that as indication that the world will cease to exist as of Dec. 21, 2012. Of course, you have to put a lot of faith in ancient Mayans to believe that. But that’s the thing about faith - it doesn’t need to make sense.

At any rate, the scholar quoted in the Dec. 1 Guardian article disputed that interpretation of the tablet writings.

Sven Gronemeyer contends the tablet is too damaged to make out some of the words written on it. He says the legible part in fact says what lies ahead is a return of the mysterious Mayan god Bolon Yokte. His arrival is said to mark the end of 13 consecutive periods in the Mayan calendar that each lasted 400 years.

Oddly enough, my partner and I will have a front-row seat for whatever action awaits when the fateful day - Dec. 21, 2012 - rolls around. We will have been in Honduras for almost a year by that point, on a placement with Cuso International in the very town that Honduran President Porfirio Lobo has singled out for a tourism happening tied into the Mayan prediction.

We’ll be in Copan Ruinas, the site of major Mayan ruins. Government hopes visitors pour into the town for the “countdown to the end of time,” giving the flagging Honduras tourism economy a boost along the way. Whatever awaits - Bolon Yokte, the end of days, or more likely just some big, wild party - we’re going to be smack-dab in the middle of it. 

A B.C. soothsayer warns of other shakeups closer to home in 2012. Georgia Nicholls, the Vancouver astrologist who writes a newspaper horoscope column, says “fiery Mars” will preside over all signs for most of the year. This is apparently a very unusual development.

She advises us to prepare for much more cosmic energy bouncing around next year. That’s neither good nor bad on its own, adds Nicholls, but the challenge is in managing all that extra energy.

Nicholls cautioned Sagittarians like me to ease up in 2012 on their tendency to resist authority. I am taking that to heart. It’s a reminder that I will soon be working in an unfamiliar culture, political structure and language, and will need to be the nicest, most easy-going version of myself.

There does seem to be agreement among the ancient Mayans, the astrologists and the Chinese that 2012 is shaping up to be a corker.

According to Chinese astrology, the 12-month period starting Feb. 4 is the year of the black water dragon. That heralds a year of uncertainty and unexpected developments.

“You can have either bad luck or good luck in 2012, and will have a chance to turn it into better or worse luck,” noted one Chinese horoscope site. Gulp.

But if it’s really all over next December, luck is the least of our worries anyway. Have a world-shaking year, and maybe Bolon Yokte and I will see you in Copan Ruinas.

It's all about the piles

I don't know what my new life will be like once we get to Honduras, but right now it seems to be about sorting. That and studying Spanish fill what I used to call "spare time" - the blocks of time in my life when I could do fun things like bird-watching or spend a leisurely couple of hours at the gym.
Now, there's only sorting and Spanish, although they have their own charms. Newly able to understand at least most of what I read in the Honduran on-line newspaper I've been checking out, I'm very happy to be finally making good on years of empty promises to myself that I would learn Spanish. But I've been hard at it for almost two months now and taking a two-hour private lesson every week as well, so no surprise that my birding time has suffered. So it goes.
The demands of sorting are multi-layered. First, you sort just to put like with like - tools over here, art materials over there, miscellaneous (and oh, there's so much miscellaneous) over by the wall.
Then you sort the newly sorted stuff into smaller piles: This one to store; this one to give away to family; this one for donation; this one to ditch. I'm an aggressive ditcher and my partner is right on the edge of being a hoarder, so you can imagine how pleasant that aspect of things has been.
The out-bound stuff then gets loaded into the back of my truck and off it goes to whatever the final destination, freeing up space in the basement for the next round of sorting. And on and on it goes. I feel the pressure of our Jan. 15 departure quite acutely at this point, but I've had to be careful not to be too efficient, or the next thing you know I've given away something we'll actually need between now and then.
The cabinet that housed our wine glasses and liquor went on its way today, up-Island to its new home in my son's house. The homeless liquor bottles are stacked on the floor in the dining room now, so much in our way that it's as if they're daring us to drink them up before we fly away. Well, if that's the way it has to be. 

It's Bad News Week

I'm reading Honduran newspapers on-line these days, trying to get a sense for the zeitgeist of the place before we land there Jan. 16. I must say, things feel a little gloomy based on the headlines. But I did a Google News search today to check in on what was going on in Canada, and the long list of bad-news stories reminded that gloom is just what media do all around the world.
Of the 16 "top stories" Google News had on offer at the time I searched, 14 were about bad things happening somewhere.
A guy dressed up as Santa kills a bunch of people. A Surrey man is shot dead on Christmas Day. Suspicious deaths, missing people, falling polls. Such catastrophic events just seem to be what we consider "news," although I often wonder what we're supposed to do with such news.
Do visitors interpret the nature of Canada based on what they see in our media, just as I'm trying to do with Honduras? If they do, we surely seem a much more dangerous country than we actually are. Maybe that's why those U.S. seniors tried to bust through the border at Aldergrove recently packing all those guns for surviving Canada's untamed wilderness and lawless culture.
For once, it pleases me to be reminded of the media's tendency to draw a country's sorrows into a tidy daily-news package, concentrating the feeling that everything is falling apart. Whether here or in Honduras, there's always more to the story. 

Times like this reveal what matters most

Merry Christmas, everyone! This is my antepenultimate column for the Times Colonist. I had to search that word out just to have something fancy to say about my third-to-last opinion piece. I've been writing a column for the paper since 1996, so these are momentous times...

I’m on the brink of big changes in my life. Just how much that’s rocking my world sunk in this week when I realized that for the first time ever, I wasn’t going to put up a Christmas tree.

My partner and I are moving to Honduras on Jan. 15 to do volunteer work with the Canadian non-profit Cuso International.

I’m so distracted by all the preparation for the move that the Christmas process has barely registered on me. Yet it’s also going to be one of my most meaningful Christmases, what with so many people to say goodbye to after 22 years here.

There’s nothing quite like change to shake up your life. The Honduras placement is for a year, possibly two - not very long in the grand scheme of things. But in fact it changes everything in practical terms, a revelation all on its own.

My ties to the Island are lifelong because I have so much family here. But we don’t own a home in Victoria. So this change basically comes down to my partner and I collapsing the stuff of our lives into 50 kilos of luggage between us and a small storage locker.

A person really has to get serious about what items constitute “home” at times like this. We could be on the move in exotic lands for several years with any luck. What’s precious enough to keep when you know you’ll either have to carry it with you or pay to store it for a very long time?

Not much, as it turns out.

Photos. Memorabilia from years past, like my journals or the sweet and funny notes my partner and I wrote to each other in the early years. Useless but sentimental keepsakes, like the tiny Day of the Dead diorama of Trotsky’s murder we picked up in Mexico City.

I’ve been pawning off pretty much everything else on anyone who expresses a speck of interest. Our children in particular have been under pressure to take things we don’t want but are resistant to giving up, like the painted bull’s skull we dragged back from Arizona or the comfy but otherwise worthless brown chair from Ikea.

The kids eventually drew the line, and I turned to advertising things for free in the on-line classifieds. It has been way more fun than I would have anticipated.

Sure, I could have held a garage sale and possibly sold the 1970s cabinet stereo and the outdated computer desk for a few bucks. But I can tell you there’s way more pleasure to be had from handing your stuff to happy strangers who show up at your door delighted to be getting what they want for free.

I like knowing that my stuff is going to a good home. There’s something magical about giving people you don’t even know the very thing they’re looking for.

The young guy who took the Nintendo 64 game was thrilled that it fell into his hands on the very day his old one had broken. The kid who stuffed the cabinet stereo into his Jeep said he’d wanted one for ages. The family who took the computer desk actually wrote us a thank-you note.

I took in a boxful of forgotten knick-knacks to the women at PEERS Victoria and they were all over them. My partner’s excess art supplies are going to artists from the mental-health community, who are grateful for the abundance.

As for having less stuff - well, that’s just plain freeing. It has required much sorting and more than a few squabbles, but we’ll be a lean, mean and mobile unit by the end of it.

Why are we doing this? Why not?

Our lives have brought us to a point where it’s possible. Our needs are met. We have skills that Cuso International can make use of in developing countries like Honduras. Our kids and grandkids are cheering us on. Life is short.

I’ve still got a couple TC columns left before I’m gone, but after that you’ll have to catch up with me on my blog or Facebook. We’re throwing a farewell and fundraiser on Jan. 11 with proceeds to PEERS and Cuso - come on by that evening if you can,  to the Garry Oak room at Fairfield Community Centre.

And if I can interest you in some mismatched dishware or an old love seat, let me know.

Busted in Orlando for feeding the homeless

This story out of Orlando could easily be a satire for The Onion - but no, it's real! I mean, you can't have people just going around feeding poor, hungry people whenever they want. 

I like the indignant response from the local police force about how the three people who got arrested had deliberately breached the ordinance. God spare us from the day when people refuse to breach petty ordinances and just leave their fellow citizens to go hungry.

The Mounties got their man - and he's got their number

Well, here's confirmation of what many of us have already figured out: Something's really wrong with the RCMP.
The new "top cop," RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson, was in this morning's Globe promising to take extreme action to end the culture of bullying and history of botched investigations inside the RCMP.
What the heck happened to these guys, anyway? When I was a kid, being accepted into the RCMP was like a statement that you were smarter, more ethical, in better shape and certainly more dedicated than the average Canadian.
I don't know if that was a myth all along that has now been stripped away by one too many media stories about some drunk, violent, misogynist or otherwise disturbed RCMP officer doing something horrible. Or did something bad happen to what was once a noble profession in the intervening years?
At any rate, good luck to the changemakers. The concept of a national, well-trained and highly professional police force still appeals.
But trying to change culture is an extremely difficult undertaking that requires years of consistent, focused leadership that never wavers. Very few organizations have the long-term vision and stability to be able to pull it off.
You need compelling leadership to make it happen, but it's still bottom-up stuff. There's no way to force a change in culture from the top down. Just ask the Ministry of Children and Family Development about that.
My sympathies to the many good RCMP officers who have been tarred by a rogue culture and a few bad apples. But there's no question that something is deeply off-kilter inside the force.

They say this is Christmas.....

I'm not a huge fan of the festive season at the best of times, what with the endless pressures to buy something for somebody. This year, it really just seems like an added complication to getting ready for our Honduras departure Jan. 15, as I run out to buy Gastrolyte or some other such specific medicinal product for our travels only to find myself at the far end of a long line of anxious holiday shoppers. (That said, I just had a very nice evening making shortbread and homemade Baileys with my youngest daughter Rachelle last night.)
My partner and I are going to Copan Ruinas, in the northeast of Honduras near the Guatemala border. We've never been there, but here's a Flickr stream from a kind stranger who heard about our travels and sent a few shots from her own travels. I've really appreciated getting a glimpse of where we're headed, and having some balance to what is mostly dire news coming out of the beleaguered country.
Here in Victoria, we are renters, so what this year (or two) in Honduras really means is folding up our lives. We looked around our house and realized that most of our furniture isn't worth keeping, so have farmed out some to our five kids, given some away to people who needed it, and become avid users of the "free"
 section on Craigslist to get rid of things like my parents' old cabinet stereo, a Nintendo 64, and a computer desk from another era.
It's interesting to see what things I value enough to keep. For the most part, it's photos and other memorabilia. Our remaining LPs, slimmed down from our last big move, have also made the cut, and will be stashed in what we hope will be a moderately sized storage locker that will await our eventual return.
I have many family ties to the Island, and know I'll be back this way often no matter what happens in the wake of this adventure. But what I hope is that we'll like this year or two so much that we'll keep doing this kind of work for a few years, in different countries.
The work with Cuso International is unpaid, but the organization aims to provide its volunteers with a "neutral" financial year - your housing costs covered, a small living allowance, a little money tucked into your account back home to ease your return. That model makes long-term volunteering much more possible.
And wouldn't that just be so cool - to be living in fascinating countries, sharing my skills with organizations that could really put them to use?

MacKay reveals massive disconnect from Canadians' reality

It's these kinds of stories that really make me think we're losing our way. When our own government reps don't get how completely offensive it is to Canadians enduring a recession to see their politicians spending like drunken sailors on luxury trips all over the world - well, what does that say?
At the very least, this latest spending revelation makes it clear that Peter MacKay has got to go. As the saying goes: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. 

One month to departure - yikes!

Honduras capital Tegucigalpa, where we'll first land.

Just back from an intense five-day training course with Cuso International as we get ready for our departure for Honduras in a month.
I admit, I thought I was pretty culturally aware, but it turns out I still had a ton to learn. It's going to be quite a challenge to be working in a new culture, a different language, different issues, much warmer climate (OK, I'm really looking forward to that part), and in a society where I'm definitely going to have to curb my tendencies to just shoot my mouth off about this or that.
Fortunately, my not-yet-terrific Spanish language skills should help keep that in check, at least initially. And I'm viewing it as a learning opportunity to feel out communications in a country where speaking up about government, politics, etc has to be done much more cautiously.
Part of the Cuso training was a three-hour meeting with a "country resource person,"  which in our case was a young entrepreneur by the name of Ricardo Juarez, who moved to Canada from Honduras in September. I'll be ever grateful to him for the straight-up information he had for us on life in Honduras, which I now recognize will involve a lot more sightings of guns than I'm used to.
He also filled me in on "Honduran time," in which I will be expected to be punctual but everybody else will arrive maybe 30-45 minutes later than planned. Some of the more seasoned volunteers we met on training suggest I just carry a book everywhere to be able to read while I wait.
We're not down there on a holiday, but Ricardo did give us a great tip about an amazing place to visit during our travels, Cayos Cochinos. Such an opportunity to get to know a part of the world that I have yet to visit! I appreciate connecting with anyone who has travelled in Central America, particularly Honduras, so please send me a note at jodypatersonmobile@gmail.com if you've got tips to share.
If you've ever wondered about folding up the tent and doing some long-term volunteering, I can tell you that our experience with Cuso International so far has been great.
But one point they emphasize regularly is the need to stay flexible and adaptable. So if you're one of those people who likes all the i's dotted and the t's crossed well in advance, you'll need to let that go. We found out at the training session that our visas likely won't be completed until a few days before we leave, and I've been cautioned repeatedly that my job description is likely to change - and possibly change again - once I'm in Honduras. We won't know where we'll be living until a week or two, possibly longer, after our arrival.
Hope you'll stay tuned for what promises to be an amazing adventure. Click on the link just above this post to get to our fundraising page. And I'll be setting up a Shutterfly Web site once we're there so I can share photos with you as well. 

Too much power in PM's office

This Ottawa Citizen story on the Harper government's increasing control over the federal bureaucracy applies equally in B.C. Our ruling political parties don't even make a pretence at keeping the workings of government at arm's length anymore - it's all just one big spin machine as far as they're concerned.
It's a frightening development. The bureaucracy has traditionally kept a steady hand on the wheel of government while the various political parties went about their crazy antics. As pointed out by the author of this report criticizing the centralizing of power in the Prime Minister's Office, corruption is not just a risk but a proven result when political parties treat government like their private resource. 

A painful, late truth for young Victoria woman

Are there some parents so awful that they deserve to never see their child again?
Probably. But we've got a process for that in Canada, and it doesn't include kidnapping your own child against court orders.
I have great sympathy for everyone connected to the saga of the 20-year-old Victoria woman who has just learned that much of what she thought to be true about her life was a lie.
She does not even have the name she thought she had; she hasn't heard her real name since she was taken from Toronto by her mother after a 1993 custody fight.
The courts will sort out the truth of this crime. There's little served by people like me speculating about the mother, Patricia O'Byrne, who has been accused of taking her little girl, or trying to second-guess an Ontario court decision from 18 years ago.
But whatever the details turn out to be, it must be said that a grave injustice has been done to this young woman. What must it feel like, to find out at 20 that the foundations of your life have been built on sand?
She is now learning she has a father. A brother. A whole other extended family in Ontario - one that has been looking all over the world for her for the better part of two decades.
She's got a name she didn't know about, and no doubt some pointed questions for friends and family in Victoria who presumably helped keep her mother's deep, dark secret.
She's got 18 years of catching up with another side of her family who she likely has no memory of, including a brother who is close to her age.
And how unfortunate that she has to experience all these mind-blowing revelations amid the glare of national media interest.
But her father, Joe Chisholm, is over the moon to have finally found his daughter, and the saga makes for one heck of a story.
What makes a parent kidnap their child? Mothers and fathers are equally likely to be the offending parent, says the support organization Victims of Violence.
Often it starts with anger over a court decision around custody. Sometimes it's about fear, or a concern that the child isn't getting good care when with the other parent. Fortunately, most of the 230 or so parental kidnappings in Canada every year are resolved within a week.
Not so in this case. The girl was taken from Toronto after an Ontario court awarded joint custody to O'Byrne and Chisholm in 1993.
Ontario RCMP have had an open file on the kidnapping ever since, but it took a tip to the Missing Children Society of Canada this summer to bring the investigation to Victoria.
Chisholm has maintained a poignant blog on MySpace. There are years of unread Christmas greetings and happy birthdays to his daughter on the site.
"Happy birthday," reads one from Sept. 20, when his daughter turned 20. "Wherever you are and whatever you are doing I am thinking about you and I wish you and your family well. I await the day that we can meet again. Love, Dad."
Chisholm has found his happy ending, it appears. O'Byrne has landed in a nightmare. Being charged with kidnapping might not even be the worst of it, considering how it must feel to be caught out on such a massive lie.
The case is a good reminder that whatever we think is "in place" in our systems to protect us from such crimes is a fiction in itself. The daughter, whose name is now covered by a publication ban, went to school under a false name and nobody noticed. Her mother worked for government for years under an alias, with no one the wiser.
Neither kept a low profile. The mother was an active member of the school community, and well thought of. Yet a desperate dad just four provinces away never caught a whisper of any of it. If it weren't for the tip to Missing Children, this crime might never have been solved.
Who called in that tip? I like to think it was someone who loved this young woman, and couldn't bear to deny her the truth of her life any longer. I'm sure it took a lot of courage to make that call.
"The truth is rarely pure and never simple," opined the playwright Oscar Wilde.
We can only hope it heals this shattered family.

How come I don't know what a meme is?

Gee, I've always had a soft spot for Facebook as a way to connect, but now that I see the list of the top status updates in the past year, I'm not so sure if me and my kind are really much of a presence on the social-media site.
Happily, I'm not completely out as a Facebook trendsetter - I did have a status update involving the death of Amy Winehouse. Other than that, the top-10 list isn't really resonating with me.
As for the listing of the top 10 most-visited fictional character sites, I'm glad to see Bob Esponja made the grade. I might have even visited that site if I'd known it existed. I first saw the Sponge Bob cartoon many years ago while holidaying in Mexico, where he's known as Bob Esponja, and I've never been able to shake my habit of referring to him as Bob the Sponge. My grandkids mock me mercilessly for this. Maybe now they'll think I'm cutting-edge.

Cuso adventure in Honduras coming up

My partner and I are heading off to Honduras next month (you heard it here first!) to spend a year or possibly longer on a Cuso International volunteer placement.
It's all very exciting, but also a little terrifying what with the abundance of grim statistics and media headlines about Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. But I read this Huffington Post piece  this morning with gratitude and relief. It finally adds some humanity to the country and reminds me of the importance of not listening solely to the naysayers.
We leave for the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, in mid-January, and will make our way shortly after that to Copan Ruinas, a small northern town where I'll spend the next year doing communications work for a Honduran agency that partners with Cuso, the Comision de Accion Social Menonita.
I'll be posting regularly to my blog during our travels, and am really looking forward to this experience - not to mention solidifying my Spanish language skills. I can't wait to take everything I've learned through decades of communications work and put it to work helping great organizations like CASM and Cuso International.
Stay tuned for more details as the date of departure draws nearer, and if you find yourself in Victoria on the evening of Jan. 11, please plan to come to our goodbye party/fundraiser at the Fairfield Community Centre! We'll be raising money for my past and my future - PEERS Victoria and Cuso International. 

Latest figures show income gap widening even more

I guess we're accepting that old saying about the rich getting richer as a fact of life, because they definitely are getting richer.
In Canada and around the world, the divide between those with money and those of lesser circumstance continues to grow - as this CBC story points out, the average income of the top 10 per cent of wealthy Canadians is now 10 times that of the bottom 10 per cent, up from 8:1 just a few years ago.
The trend is consistent throughout OECD countries - the gap is now 14:1 in the U.S. You need only go to a developing country to see where this trend leads: To dramatic increases in visible poverty; an even more fragile economy; higher costs for fewer public services; and a significant rise in security issues for the wealthy.
Even the rich lose out when the income gap gets too big, in other words. And yet we continue to bring in government policies (and governments) that worsen this trend, even while our morning newspapers bring us the news of all that is going wrong in countries being turned upside down by the revolts of angry have-nots.
I suspect we think such things can't happen in Canada. I fear we're wrong about that. 

If only science was a sure thing

Science is an uncertain science. That’s been brought home once more this past week with all the consternation over mammography.

“The Screening Mammography Program Saves Lives,” says the headline on the B.C. Cancer Agency’s on-line writeup about mammography, a type of x-ray of the breast that up until days ago was routinely promoted to Canadian women 40 and up as an annual must-have.

But the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care has rocked the boat big-time with new recommendations that reduce the use of mammography. 

The task force has toned down Canada’s 10-year-old guidelines around when to get mammograms. The revised guidelines suggest routine mammograms only for women ages 50 to 74 and even then no more than once every two or three years.

No big deal in the grand scheme of things. One less medical appointment to schedule.

But it’s disturbing when something that has been sold to us as an absolutely essential health measure suddenly reveals a dark side. The about-face on mammograms serves as an excellent reminder that health care can hurt.

In the case of mammograms, the issue is “false positives.” Mammograms are prone to turning up slow-growing lumps in the breast that look like cancer but in fact do no harm over a lifetime.

That means you can end up having surgery, radiation and chemotherapy you didn’t need - treatments that can damage your health permanently and waste precious health-care dollars to boot. False positives have been a major issue in prostate-cancer screening for years now for those very reasons.

Mammograms provide “a real benefit,” said task force chair Dr. Marcello Tonelli in media reports this week on the revised guidelines. “But compared with the risk of false positives, it’s relatively small. If you look at the numbers, you are much more likely to have a false positive result than you are to have your life saved with screening.”

New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell saw this one coming years ago. He wrote a brilliant article back in 2004, “The Picture Problem,” that detailed the challenges that even the most expert radiologist faces when trying to decipher a mammogram image.

“Looking at a mammogram is conceptually different from looking at images elsewhere in the body,” Memorial Sloan-Ketterer Cancer Centre radiologist Dr. David Dershaw told Gladwell in that piece. “Everything else has anatomy—anatomy that essentially looks the same from one person to the next. But we don’t have that kind of standardized information on the breast.

“The most difficult decision I think anybody needs to make when we’re confronted with a patient is: Is this person normal? And we have to decide that without a pattern that is reasonably stable from individual to individual, and sometimes even without a pattern that is the same from the left side to the right.”

The point of the article was that humans place too much trust in pictures as revealing “truth.” The picture that emerges from a mammogram is particularly open to interpretation.

Gladwell highlighted eye-opening findings from the University of Washington Harborview Medical Centre as to what happened when 10 radiologists were asked to interpret the same 150 mammograms.

One caught 85 per cent of cancers in the images right away. Another caught 37 per cent. Some saw many things to worry about, others saw none. In one case, three radiologists deemed a lump visible in the image to be normal, two others saw it as abnormal but probably benign, four weren’t sure, and one was certain it was cancerous.

Mammography does save lives. But not many, as it turns out. If 1,000 women who are age 60 right now have an annual (and let’s presume correctly interpreted) mammogram every year for the next decade - 10,000 mammograms, with all the expense that entails - breast cancer deaths among the group could be expected to drop from nine to six.

Nobody can blame us for wanting a fail-safe test that catches cancer early. Alas, the science isn’t there yet, and at any rate something new will likely be killing us by that point. Such is the nature of the human condition.

Preventing breast cancer remains important, of course. But so much of prevention comes down to personal responsibility - for what you eat; how often you exercise; how much you weigh; your alcohol consumption.

The world will rejoice when they come up with a screening program that corrects for bad habits. Until then, take care.

Why does the belt only tighten at one end?

You know, it's really striking how often political parties that shape themselves as being about "small government" in fact spend their time in office growing the business out of all proportions.
Here's the latest news on that front involving the Tories. Keep in mind that all this growth happened at a time when Stephen Harper's government was slashing public services. That's the thing that grates the most - that even while we're losing long-standing public programs due to "belt-tightening," our governments are growing larger, taking ever-bigger salaries, and even paying out bonuses to the senior managers who are most effective at cutting our services.
In ancient times, they would have called this kind of governance a kleptocracy - "rule by thieves." Whatever you want to call it, it's crazy-making. But hey, we keep electing them.

Free parking at our hospitals

Now here's an idea whose time has come - free parking at hospitals. Maybe now that the Canadian Medical Association Journal is saying it, it will have an impact. How crazy is it to stress people out just that little bit more  when they're going through an illness or something worse than by charging them to park?
And once we're offering it free, how about offering more of it, too? Can't believe they built that new parkade  at Royal Jubilee hospital at a capacity that was well below what's actually needed.

Occupy movement down but not out

Having to make way for Santa seems an ignominious end for the Occupy movement, but that’s how things tend to go in countries that aren’t yet angry enough to get genuinely uncivil.

Still, the public reaction to the Occupy protests over the last eight weeks has been surprisingly sympathetic. I take that as a hopeful sign that this movement will have legs.

People tolerated the protest camps for much longer than they usually do when tents appear in public spaces. I think a lot of them quietly related to the issues the movement has raised.

It’s pretty impressive that in just two short months, a mixed bag of disaffected citizens around the world took a small protest in New York City’s financial district and turned it into a global movement.

Whether it can last long enough to affect change, I guess we’ll see. But the Occupy protests got a lot more positive attention than most “occupations” get - an indicator that people have a certain sympathy for the cause.

The movement started with a single email that Canada’s Adbusters Foundation sent to people in July.

The foundation is known for publishing an ad-free magazine and holding strong opinions on corporate influence over democracy. But its suggestion of a peaceful occupation of Wall Street clearly struck a chord that resonated well beyond the magazine’s usual sphere of influence.

"The idea of Occupy Wall Street is to revive people's democracy," said Adbusters editor Micah White in an interview with the Huffington Post last month. "We are sick of the corporate political parties deciding the agenda of America."

That would have bordered on cuckoo talk a decade ago, when we were all so certain that our governments were leading us toward the light.

But we’ve learned some hard lessons since then. From the 2001 Enron scandal on through an outrageous series of global financial disasters and government ineptitude that severely shook public confidence, it has been a tough and discouraging 10 years.

Maybe the average people of the world were just ready for somebody to issue a call to action. At any rate, one group of sympathizers after another picked up Adbusters’ call for occupation and spread the word. A global movement was born virtually overnight, with Occupy protests eventually organized in more than 80 countries.

None of it will change the world, at least not yet. But let’s not discount the miracle of such a thing happening at all. Just the fact that a group of protesters kept their camp alive in Centennial Square for more than two months and city hall was still being nice about it is an astounding turn of events on its own.

The Occupy movement’s catchy slogan - “We are the 99 per cent” - is a reference to the growing income disparity in western countries, with wealth concentrating in the hands of the richest one per cent of the population.

In the last three decades, the top one per cent of income earners in the U.S. saw their incomes rise almost 300 per cent. That’s at least seven times more than any other income group saw in the same period.

Here in Canada - where the gap between rich and poor has been growing for the last 15 years - the richest 20 per cent now have nine times the income of the poorest 20 per cent. That’s the biggest gap we’ve seen since the 1970s.

Income disparity isn’t exactly a hot topic around the office water cooler. But even people who don’t often think about such things are by now well aware that crazy problems are manifesting out here in the world.

They didn’t all storm the streets with the Occupy forces. But they did make space in their communities for the protests to happen. It’s a bigger win than it might appear, and signals a real shift in the public mood.

Widespread tolerance for something as non-Canadian as public protest - in the Christmas season! Right in the heart of the downtown! - says a lot about how much the issues raised by the Occupy movement must be resonating. Protesters, you are not alone.

But Santa’s coming and it’s cold outside. Store owners near the protest camps are losing patience. Municipalities and their police departments are closing in.

It looks like the end. I suspect it’s just the beginning.