A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

Fraser Institute findings ought to worry us May 25, 2007 The Fraser Institute’s annual ranking of B.C. schools is one of those things that sparks controversy every time among teachers, principals and parents. A bad ranking really spoils people’s day. Critics of the annual ritual say the good of a school simply isn’t evident solely on the basis of how its students perform on assessment tests. There’s much more to doing a good job than test scores can ever measure, they argue. Those are valid points. Schools are complex places, and tests are simplistic tools. But with all due respect to the many hard-working school teachers out there, the institute’s school-by-school analysis is still worth talking about. Uncomfortable as it may be, we have much to discuss in terms of the significant gaps the institute identifies between B.C.’s schools. In its most recent report, the institute rated the province’s elementary schools. The ratings are primarily about how well a school’s young students did ...

Peace in a kayak May 18, 2007 Being a woman of many enthusiasms, I was bound to stumble upon kayaking sooner or later. I’d been curious about it for years. How can you grow up on an island without feeling the pull of being out on the water? Boats had figured more prominently in my life in my younger years - the benefit of growing up in an era when Vancouver Island’s then-thriving logging and fishing industries put real money in people’s pockets. But except for a canoe or two, it had never been me who’d owned those boats. Eventually there came a time when the only boating I was regularly experiencing was aboard a BC ferry, on a routine journey so familiar to me that it barely felt like being on the water at all. Kayakers caught my eye throughout the Ferry Years, but I tended to write the sport off as something that would require more skill, knowledge and money than I was prepared to invest. I guess they just looked so sleek and expert out there in their beautiful boats that I assumed I ...

Beware the spin May 11, 2007 News flash: Vancouver’s safe-injection site causes more harm than good. So says the Drug Prevention Network of Canada, which last week reported “serious problems in the interpretation of findings” in a review of 10 studies about the site. Research on the three-year-old site has to this point mostly been positive. Among other things, there’s been a drop in social disorder in Vancouver’s downtown eastside, an increase in the number of drug users wanting treatment, and successful interventions in 400-plus potentially fatal overdoses. But prevention-network research director Colin Mangham contends the real picture is not nearly so rosy. He reviewed some of the studies and found that while they “give the impression the facility is successful. . . the research clearly shows a lack of progress, impact and success.” Mangham’s findings were reported straight up by Canadian Press last week. They also made their way unchallenged into the on-line edition of Maclean’s m...

Don't tear down the Kinsol Trestle May 5, 2007 People have been debating the future of the Kinsol Trestle for a year now. I admit to barely paying attention to a word of it. I guess it just didn’t seem like something I needed to care about. But then my partner and I went to see the trestle for ourselves last Sunday. It’s spectacular. Tearing it down would be a terrible thing. Count me an instant convert to the “save the Kinsol” movement. Perhaps it’s a recent trip to Europe that has me thinking about the importance of preserving history. Had our global ancestors been even a fraction as hasty as us in tearing down history, I’d have missed out on the amazing feeling of stepping into the past. Deep thanks to several millennia’s worth of taxpayers who have willingly borne the cost of history’s upkeep. The pyramids of Mexico and Egypt. Greek ruins. Ancient churches. England’s Roman baths. Nothing you can read about them, or watch on television, can ever come close to experiencing them ...

Change the system to get more women into politics Apr. 27, 2007 So the debate around how to get more women into politics is back in the news again. I have to admit, it’s much harder to feel enthusiasm for the fight this time around, having already seen how the story ended last time. I note that we’re currently at the point in the discussion where we’re trying to decide whether it’s worth it to infringe on the democratic election process in order to jump-start the number of women elected to government. I remember the previous discussion well - what was it, 10 or 15 years ago now? Oh, we had a good go at it, to the point that the federal Liberals did eventually bypass the nomination process to hand-pick female candidates in a few ridings. Don’t get me wrong - it’s a vital discussion to have. After all, what could be more vital to fair and democratic governance than political representation that mirrored the mix of the Canadian population? I’d love it if our politicians looked more like ...

Canadian sex workers deserve better April 20, 2007 It’s no surprise that federal Justice minister Rob Nicholson is against decriminalizing prostitution. A party with Alliance roots just isn’t going to see its way clear to taking action on the issues of the sex trade. But it’s still pretty galling to have to read Nicholson’s comments on the matter. Decriminalizing prostitution would lead to the exploitation of women, says Nicholson, and therefore can’t be tolerated. Nice theory. But what he’s actually saying is that he upholds the status quo. In other words, the tens of thousands of Canadian women and men who work in the sex trade will just have to figure a way out of it, because the government isn’t prepared to do a damn thing about their working conditions. The killings and disappearances of hundreds of sex workers will continue unabated, because nothing is going to change. I just don’t get it. The sex trade exists because the men of our communities buy sex. There’s a demand, therefor...

Letter from Prague April 13, 2007 His name is Alin. I’ll likely never know much more than that about him. I had come to Prague on holiday, initially without much thought of seeing how the other side lives in that beautiful city. But having heard news of a refitted barge Prague was testing as a shelter for homeless people, I grew curious to see it for myself during my visit to the city last week. My partner and I first spotted the barge while on a boat tour along the Vltava River, which winds through the centre of Prague. It matched the photo from an on-line Czech story about the project that I’d asked our bemused hotel clerk to print out for me, and bore the same name: Hermes. Docked in the river below a massive metronome the city had installed to replace a statue of Stalin, I figured the barge wouldn’t be too hard to find again on foot. The big ship had something of a foreboding look to it when I made my way there a couple days later, as did the man on deck who gestured at me to lea...