A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

Doom-scrolling is real, and I know to try to avoid it for fear of entering that hyper-vigilant, chronically worried state that can set in when your adrenal system gets worked up. But these days it's hard to find a news feed of any kind that doesn't feel like doom-scrolling.  Historians hasten to put such gloomy thoughts about "these times" in perspective. They rightly note that in fact, many grand woes of the world are actually lessening. We have less poverty. Fewer nuclear warheads. Less global terrorism. We live longer, having invented cures, treatments and vaccines for many things that used to kill us. All of that is good news at the big-picture level. But it isn't actually of much comfort to those who are alive in this moment and living in this destabilized state, when flu-stricken birds are falling out of the sky and the Earth is splitting open and every season heralds a new round of record-smashing extreme weather somewhere in the world.   It's hard to a...

  This is me, age 66. The rock star Madonna is two years younger than me, and I am stunned to realize after her appearance at the Grammys on the weekend that I now prefer my face to hers, so altered has hers become from years of cosmetic surgery and treatments. This face of mine has been creamed, scrubbed, exfoliated, masked and otherwise fussed over for a very long time. I am as disappointed as any person who comprehends the social capital of physical attractiveness to be experiencing the unwanted changes that aging brings.  But having watched one beautiful celebrity after another succumb to the disaster of costly and invasive "anti-aging" procedures, I concluded many years ago that I will never do anything beyond the superficial to try to appear younger.  It's not out of any noble belief in being my "natural self." As you can see from my photo, my hair is coloured, and I am pretty sure it will be until the day I die. I wear eye makeup and have since age 12, an...

The BC government doubtlessly had to work very hard to get the OK from the federal government for a three-year test of illicit drug decriminalization.  It's a good thing to have fought for, even if the pilot is so hamstrung with exceptions and rules that it can't help but be of minimal impact. We are so lamentably, tragically overdue to move on this problem of poisoned street drugs killing thousands of British Columbians every year that virtually any glimpse of a different future must be welcomed with enthusiasm.  But just to be clear, the vast majority of people who use illegal drugs will not benefit from this pilot. Nor will it stop the endless tide of deaths. That's not to say that any move toward decriminalization isn't to be treasured. But we do need to go into this teeny, temporary change in our senseless and destructive drug policies with the understanding that it's a flea on a fly compared to the complex issues that are actually driving BC's illicit-dru...

It's hard to talk about Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond.  I fully believe that the right thing is happening to her as she is held up to the searing light that the CBC's Geoff Leo has shone on her fictions. Pretending to be someone you're not feels especially egregious when high-privilege people fake low-privilege backgrounds.  I am completely on the side of the betrayed Indigenous women who have had to experience a champion from within turning out to be nothing of the sort. All the worse that Turpel-Lafond purported to speak for them, and to have walked that same difficult road to success that Indigenous people so routinely have had to walk. But it's still hard to watch. For a settler like me, it's also hard to talk about with my settler acquaintances. I can feel the grand discomfort we feel at watching a person whose past work we still admire experiencing a profound public shaming.  We engage on the subject ever so carefully, tip-toeing around the astonishing betrayal a...

Extinction Rebellion UK says it will prioritize "relationships over roadblocks" this year and move away from public disruptions as a prime strategy for getting the world's attention on climate change.  That's a warm and fuzzy statement for a new year. But hopefully they aren't going to get too nice. Nobody's going to solve the climate crisis with niceness.  Of course, one does want to be strategic when in the business of disrupting. Throwing cans of soup at famous works of art - not the work of Extinction Rebellion;  that was Just Stop Oil  - and other poorly considered attention-grabbing antics may get your unknown organization headlines, but simply being offensive in a public space is not a strategic protest. (Put away the soup cans, go disrupt a fracking operation.)  That said, we sure as hell won't move this crisis with niceness. Co-operative behaviour is one component of an effective change strategy, just like acts of protest, but systemic change at ...

Francesco Villi was an angry man who settled his differences violently . The fights he got into with his Toronto strata council were obviously like fire to the powder keg for a man like him.  And then last Sunday he just knocked on their condo doors and shot three of them dead, along with two of their spouses. What an awful, crazy thing.  Whenever these kinds of unthinkable events happen, it seems a natural instinct to question what could have been done differently.  Why wasn't something done about Villi back when he was an abusive husband and father? Shouldn't somebody have done something about his mental health? Shouldn't somebody have stopped him from getting a gun? Could anything have been done to divert the rage he felt toward the strata council? Valid questions. Unfortunately, the shoulda/woulda/coulda questions don't mean much once the horrible deed is done and five innocent people are dead.  Short of a government initiative to attach a good Samaritan to watch...

The perfect is the enemy of the good, as Voltaire noted back in the 18th century. His wise words came to mind when I saw the Vancouver Sun's piece last week on the province's plan to fast-track 90 more modular homes in Vancouver for people living homeless. The article quotes Danya Fast, a research scientist at the B.C. Centre on Substance Use, cautioning that while it's urgent to act fast to create more housing, modular housing complexes can “actually deepen a sense of uncertainty in young people’s lives, especially when they’re temporary.” Point taken, as are Liberal housing critic Karin Kirkpatrick's comments that the construction of temporary and permanent housing have to go hand in hand or you're really just warehousing people. But for anyone toughing it out at a packed and noisy Downtown Eastside shelter or trying to survive in a tent on the street, a little warehousing through the worst of winter and beyond might sound pretty good right now. I still remember...