Mad Pride brings redemption through art

WestEnder
May 21, 2009

Leef Evans’s warm smile and easy laugh are generously dispensed from the moment he begins to speak. Genial and bright, he is able to expound passionately for hours about culture and art — especially the portraits he has painted. But a certain heaviness beneath the surface of his self-deprecating jokes hints at darker days that he has only recently begun to reconcile as part of his identity. “I’ve suffered from mass bouts of depression for 30 years — so, basically, all my adult life,” he says. “It’s only in the last 10 years that I felt compelled to admit it to myself.”

Now in his forties, Evans, who grew up in Port Coquitlam and has worked as a writer and bartender, suffered a particularly severe bout of depression six years ago that resulted in hospitalization and the loss of his apartment, his car, and virtually all connection with friends and family. “I wasn’t talking to anybody,” he recalls. “I wound up in an SRO.”

It was during his time living in the Downtown Eastside that Evans started painting. He participated in an art program at Coast Mental Health Resource Centre, after which he started volunteering with Gallery Gachet, an artist-run gallery near Cordova and Carrall Streets that aims to provide opportunities for artists affected by mental-health issues. Since then, Evans has moved into supportive housing in Yaletown (a neighbourhood he laughs at himself for living in) and is now part of the Gallery Gachet collective. He has been making daily use of the Gachet studio space across from Oppenheimer Park for almost two years. During that time, he has completed 70 paintings.

For Evans, being part of the Gallery Gachet collective has meant more than just the opportunity to paint; the experience has forced him to come to terms with his lifelong struggle with depression. “I can’t hide from the fact that I actually have these problems,” he says. “I have to tell people, ‘Yes, I have this problem,’ and this is how I deal with it. And I think that’s a big part of it. The worst thing that happens out there is that there is this stigma attached to it.”

Negative cultural stigma around mental illness, Evans says, is promulgated by popular media like movies and television. “It’s detrimental — incredibly so — because it generates notions that a facial tick is symptomatic of a serial murderer. Of course I’m indulging a little hyperbole here, but no more so than popular fiction,” he says. “Everyone wants their information packaged in a 30-second sound bite. And any mental illness is a complicated issue; it isn’t compartmentalized... I’ve been like this for 30 years at least, and I still haven’t got a handle on it.”

One in five people in the developed world is likely to experience mental illness in their lifetime (usually depression or an anxiety disorder), but mental illness continues to fly under the radar as a human-rights issue. Evans and fellow Gallery Gachet collective members want to help turn that around with their participation in Mad Pride, a movement that aims to challenge mainstream perceptions of mental illness.

“Society has made great strides in regards to the rights of women, the LGBT community, and visible minorities, but when it come to the rights of the mentally ill, we still are living in the Dark Ages,” says Gachet collective member and mental-health advocate Kagan Goh, who is in the process of forming an advocacy group called the Mental Wealth Collective. “People have misconceptions... We tend to hear so many horror stories about poverty and addiction in the Downtown Eastside that we get sort of a slanted perspective, when the truth is a lot of people with mental illnesses actually live quite normal lives, whether they’re on medication or not.”

SFU sociology professor Robert Menzies worked with Gallery Gachet staff last summer to hold a conference called “Madness, Citizenship, and Social Justice,” which explored Mad Pride and mental health in a human-rights context. His academic work continues to investigate the social impact of mainstream approaches to mental health. “Mental health is one of the last frontiers in the human-rights movement,” he says. “The medical model, which lies at the core of biological psychiatry, is based on the unproven assumption that women, men and children with mental-health issues are somehow genetically or organically different from the rest of us... The idea of ‘psychiatric citizenship’ is based on the principle that human rights, social justice, and the potential for self-fulfillment should be equally available to all of us, whatever the state of our mentalities.”

Mad Pride, which originated in the 1960s, is currently experiencing an unprecedented surge of support. “Like never before, people around the world with psychiatric histories and mental-health involvements are mobilizing to contest the institutional and legal powers of the psychiatric professions, and to demand a voice in the decisions that affect their lives in often devastating ways,” Menzies says.

Gallery Gachet is currently seeking submissions for its Mad Pride 2009 exhibit, which runs July 3-August 2. Details are available at Gachet.org or by e-mailing madpride@gachet.org.

PHOTO: Leef Evans works on his art in the studio space of Vancouver’s Gallery Gachet. The gallery’s participation in the Mad Pride movement has given Evans and others affected by mental-health issues an important outlet for personal expression. By Doug Shanks.

Rent hikes threaten residents of housing complex

WestEnder
May 21, 2009

It’s not easy these days to raise a family in Vancouver on a modest income, but living in affordable rental housing should help to make the financial burden a little lighter. That’s why Arwen Brenneman and her husband, John, applied to live in the West End’s Mole Hill housing complex when they decided to have children. But a rent increase recently issued to them and other tenants who pay low market rates in the complex is forcing them to rethink their plans.

“If this goes through, we’ll probably [have to move] out to New Westminster,” says Brenneman, whose family has lived in Mole Hill for six years. “We made choices based on initiatives that were... to try to support middle-income people [who chose to live] downtown for all sorts of very good reasons,” she says, adding that she wants her children to grow up within the diversity of the West End. “But I feel like we’re a social experiment that’s been abandoned.”

Mole Hill, a collection of West End heritage homes behind St. Paul’s Hospital (between Pendrell and Comox Streets), was saved from demolition as the result of extensive community activism throughout the 1980s and ’90s that eventually led to the revitalization of the houses, as reflected by their current incarnation. Mole Hill housing units range in size from bachelor to three-bedroom suites, 60 per cent of which are subsidized (rents are determined by calculating 30 per cent of residents’ incomes), and 40 per cent of which are market housing at the low end of market rates, usually 10 to 15 per cent less than what the market charges.

Brenneman’s family now pays $1,068 per month for its two-bedroom, 850-square foot apartment, with no amenities such as laundry rooms in the building. Rent increases will see that rate rise to just below $1,400 in two years. Brenneman, a part-time web consultant, is the primary caregiver for her two young sons, while her husband works as a network technician (he was laid off twice in the past year as a result of the economic downturn). Like many young parents, Brenneman is saddled with lingering student-loan debt and prohibitive childcare fees. “Last year, I made about $25,000, but I spent about $10,000 on childcare,” she says. “And I’m working to go back to school... I’m not sure whether that will happen or not, but it does mean we are in sort of temporary poverty.”

Brenneman says one-bedroom apartments will be hardest hit, with 48-per-cent rent increases over the next two years, which tenants first heard about in December 2008. Affected tenants have filed for a joint arbitration (scheduled for July 17) at the Residential Tenancy Office to dispute the rent increases. In the meantime, Brenneman has seen her neighbours start making plans to move out of the community, which has long been known for its long-term tenants. “My next-door neighbour, he’s got three kids; he’s already given notice,” she says. “The stress is too much.”

Margot Beauchamp, executive director of the Mole Hill Housing Society, has dealt with the difficult task of liaising between BC Housing, the volunteer board of the Mole Hill Housing Society, and tenants. “We were between a rock and a hard place,” she says of the rent increases. “[BC Housing] suggested that they would not solve this problem for us, and we had to go to the Residential Tenancy Act and exercise the part of the Act that says a landlord can, in fact, exceed the allowable amount [of a rent increase] if they can prove that there are similar rents in the community that are charging more, and/or if they can prove that they’re in a financial deficit situation — which are both true, in our case.”

Beauchamp says the rent increases are a necessary course of action to resolve a deficit in Mole Hill’s operating agreement with BC Housing. “We’re not doing this in order to increase our profit,” Beauchamp says. “We’re doing this in order to have a balanced budget and continue to operate as a housing society, and that’s mandatory. It’s part of our operating agreement with BC Housing.”

Terry Lavender, a longtime West End renter who chairs the Mole Hill Housing Society, doesn’t predict a positive outcome from the rent increases at Mole Hill. “We certainly hope it doesn’t become a gentrification of Mole Hill,” he says. “None of the board members would want that... That’s not why we’re here. But we may be forced into that if we’re forced to raise rents.”

A spokesperson from BC Housing requested not to be quoted in WE.

PHOTO: Arwen Brenneman and fellow residents of the West End’s Mole Hill housing complex are facing substantial rent increases that may force them to move out. By Doug Shanks.

Support grows for UBC Farm

WestEnder
May 21, 2009

Saving the UBC Farm lands from being used for housing has been a nine-year battle that shows no sign of letting up, despite an overwhelming display of public support in recent weeks for its preservation, including last month’s Great Farm Trek, in which thousands of people marched from UBC’s central campus to the farm.

Mel Lehan, a longtime urban-agriculture advocate and farm supporter, was among the Great Trek marchers. At the time, he was running with the provincial NDP in the Vancouver-Point Grey riding against Premier Gordon Campbell. Saving the farm, which was controversially listed as a “future housing reserve” in the 2000 UBC Official Community Plan, was part of his campaign. Lehan put together a prospective core-funding model for the farm during his campaign, but after losing the election to the incumbent premier, he’s not sure what the provincial government might have in store for the farm’s future.

“The two things [the farm] needs the most are financial stability and land zoning that takes it out of the danger area,” Lehan says. “I always have hope that the incoming government will see this is such a popular issue, and they’ll say, ‘Let’s see if we can save it.’”

As residential development rapidly continues near the farm, on the south end of the UBC campus, Lehan hopes that development will only mean prosperity for the farm, and not the end to its existence as the only working farm in the city. “This is a wonderful opportunity to see how the urban and the rural can coexist together,” he says. “This could be the future of farmland.”

Andrew Rushmere, spokesperson for advocacy group Friends of UBC Farm, shares Lehan’s sentiments. “We have a real opportunity to look at how a farm can support a community, and how a community can support a farm,” he says.

Rushmere has been volunteering with Friends of UBC Farm, which boasts more than 700 members, for two years. In that time, he has not met anyone who has said they’re against the preservation of the farm. Even so, securing its future hinges on university administrators working with the provincial government to provide core funding to the facility, which is managed largely by unpaid volunteers. “The only resistance we’ve had has been from the university... Universities are very large organizations, and it’s hard to move quickly through that bureaucratic setup,” he says. “We won’t consider our work done until some kind of core funding comes to the farm.”

But increasing public awareness of, and support for, the farm is promising, says Rushmere — in terms of both the farm’s future and how we think about sustainable food systems. “We’re entering a really interesting time in human history... We’ve never had so many people so far removed from where their food comes from,” he says.

Meanwhile, a new Save-on-Foods grocery store is set to open on campus this summer. It will be the closest food outlet to the farm, which already sells its own food. “At this point, the specter of development is still the threat that we’re facing. UBC administrators have tried to tell us it’s no longer a threat,” says Rushmere. “Hopefully, in the coming years, we won’t be thinking of development as a threat. I would hope that we can come to think of the development that’s already in process on campus... as an opportunity for farm and community integration.”

Oil tankers pose threat to Inlet

WestEnder
May 14, 2009

Former Greenpeace activist Bill Gannon, 61, looked out the window of his Coal Harbour office one day in March and was shocked to see an oil tanker sailing through Burrard Inlet. The vessel, unmistakably identifiable as a tanker due to its oblong shape and low height, inspired Gannon to drive out to the Burnaby offices of Kinder Morgan Canada, the international petroleum transportation company that controls oil transport in and out of the Inlet. “The communications person... called me back and said, ‘Yes, we’ve been doing these shipments for a few years now. There’s no problem, they’re safe. There’s nothing to worry about,’” he recalls.

But Gannon, who worked with Greenpeace during its formative Vancouver years in the mid-1970s and now works as an independent public accountant, was skeptical of Kinder Morgan’s claims of safe shipping.

Further research indicated that crude-oil tankers bound for China leave Burrard Inlet every week, each of them carrying 500,000 barrels of unrefined petroleum from Alberta. The tankers, Gannon found, go around Stanley Park and English Bay, into the Georgia Strait, and out to the Pacific Ocean. “I always thought they were just refining oil and then taking gasoline and other fuels up to the rest of the islands, servicing our coast. That’s fine; that’s been going on for a long time,” Gannon says. “But now there are these big crude-oil tankers... That’s 500,000 barrels, 21 million gallons of dirty crude oil that Obama doesn’t want.”

In the months following his first sighting of the tanker in Burrard Inlet, and informal discussions that indicated disturbingly low public awareness of their presence, Gannon set to work producing a comprehensive Burrard Inlet crude-oil risk-assessment report (available for download at BCWaters.org). Last week, he delivered it to Vancouver Centre MP Hedy Fry, Mayor Gregor Robertson, and Vancouver-West End MLA Spencer Herbert. He also delivered copies to the surrounding municipalities of Burnaby and North and West Vancouver. The report outlines the high risk of a crude-oil spill in the Inlet, which would have disastrous consequences for surrounding marine life, beaches, and coastlines.

Gannon has yet to hear back from politicians about their thoughts on the report, but he had previously been in touch with Fry, who told him last June that the federal Liberals passed a policy resolution to ban tanker traffic in B.C., while the federal Conservatives have no such plan.

In February of this year, Don Davies, NDP MP for Vancouver Kingsway, drafted a private members bill to reinforce an oil-tanker moratorium on B.C.’s coast. “There has been... an unofficial moratorium on tankers in sensitive waters up the coast, and what my act would do would enshrine that unofficial moratorium into law,” Davies told WE. “My research has indicated that the question is not if there will be a spill, but when.”

An oil spill in Burrard Inlet, Davies says, would create damage that would be almost impossible to undo. “This isn’t dropping a quart of oil overboard; this is something where there will be millions and millions of litres of sticky crude oil... You’ve got extremely dangerous and toxic materials, and impossible-to-clean-up stuff that is being ferried across the ocean to China without any real plan to mitigate against [it].”

Like Gannon’s experience with Kinder Morgan Canada, Davies says oil companies will “mouth easy platitudes” that don’t get to the heart of the matter. “I don’t think that oil transportation is a smart long-term activity. It’s an activity that is inherently dangerous. If you take the long environmental view, it’s an activity that we ought to start controlling and minimizing as much as we can. My bill would start with protecting ecologically sensitive areas now by banning [the activity] outright, and then we can look at gradually expanding that moratorium so that we protect more and more of our coastline.”

Davies would rather see B.C.’s coastlines used for eco-tourism instead of oil shipping, and he hopes proactive measures on banning oil tankers from the coast will help us avoid an event as catastrophic as the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, which dumped 49 million litres of crude oil into Prince William Sound in Alaska, the effects of which have never been fully mitigated. “I don’t think anybody can really clean it up, despite what the oil industry will tell you,” he says. “My suspicion is that we are woefully unprepared.”
PHOTO: Bill Gannon at his office. By Doug Shanks.

Bike lane trial gives cyclists green light

WestEnder
May 14, 2009

The long-discussed — and fiercely debated — reallocation of a vehicle lane on the Burrard Bridge to cyclist traffic was approved by city council last week, and will begin as a trial in mid-June. The west curb lane of the bridge will be restricted to southbound cyclists, leaving the east sidewalk for the exclusive use of northbound cyclists and the west sidewalk to pedestrians. The estimated $1.4 million trial will include what City staff call a key “public engagement plan,” which they hope will better prepare the public for the reallocation than a similar trial in 1996. That trial was shut down during its first week due to an onslaught of phone calls to City Hall from angry motorists.

The single-lane reallocation marks the implementation of a 2008 campaign promise made by Vision Vancouver. But many cyclists who lobbied for the reallocation of two vehicle lanes consider the decision lacklustre, arguing that it fails to boldly move toward providing improved bike infrastructure in the city.

Cyclists who spoke at last week’s city council meetings largely came out in favour of a two-lane trial, which would restrict two vehicle lanes to north and southbound cyclists, leaving the sidewalks exclusively for pedestrian use. Presently, both the east- and west-side sidewalks are shared by cyclists and pedestrians. “For the 800 people that signed up on the Facebook group and were willing to put their names behind this, I think that council did them a real disservice,” says Chris Keam, a Vancouver cyclist who spoke at last week’s meetings. “I feel a bit burned by it... On the bright side, they [Vision Vancouver] kept their promise. They campaigned on this, and they kept it... It’s faint praise these days if the best you can ask for is they keep the promise.”

At the May 7 council meeting where councillors voted on the lane-reallocation trial, all Vision Vancouver councillors, including Mayor Gregor Robertson, voted for the one-lane bike trial, while COPE councillors Ellen Woodsworth and David Cadman voted against it, favouring a two-lane trial. NPA councillor Suzanne Anton had indicated concern about doing a lane trial at all in previous meetings, but was not at the meeting when the final vote took place.

“[Vision is] talking about being the greenest city, they’re talking about bicycle infrastructure, when a lot of their supporters feel let down by it,” says West End Residents Association president Brent Granby, whose nine- and 10-year-old daughters spoke at a May 5 council meeting in favour of a two-lane trial.

Late last month, Mayor Robertson released a report on quick-start recommendations for his Greenest City Action Team, which aims to make Vancouver the greenest city in the world.

In order to achieve that goal, says longtime cycling advocate Richard Campbell, Vancouver needs to quicken its progress. “We already have so far to go,” he says. “We need to pick up the pace in Vancouver, because a lot of other cities are making bolder moves. So if we’re not even keeping pace, I don’t know how we’re ever going to get to be the greenest city.”

Cycling advocate Rob Wynen notes that Copenhagen, Denmark, now has 40 per cent of its commuters travelling by bike, where Vancouver has been sitting at four per cent for years.

Aside from the public health benefits of creating the infrastructure for more sustainable transportation options, the issue of safety has been central to the Burrard Bridge debate. UBC population health professor Kay Teschke told council that her researchers documented eight injuries of adult cyclists on the Burrard Bridge between June and October 2008, the first five months of an ongoing study on cycling injuries in Vancouver. The cyclists involved ranged in age from 24 to 65, all were experienced cyclists, and some of the injuries, Teschke said, were extremely serious, involving severe head trauma from falling into traffic. Teschke supported the two-lane trial, and was worried that a one-lane reallocation would unfairly exclude pedestrians from using the east sidewalk. West End resident Kathryn Anderson also wrote to Vancouver city council in support of the two-lane trial after witnessing a brutal incident last summer in which a pedestrian, frustrated by the bike traffic on the bridge, pushed a young female cyclist into traffic. “The blood loss was tremendous, and equally unnerving was the fact that the woman’s partner had the grave misfortune of witnessing the entire incident as he was travelling behind her on the bridge,” Anderson wrote in her letter.

Retired urban planner Stephen Rees hopes the Burrard Bridge lane reallocation will move Vancouver in a much-needed direction of improving the quality of urban life in the city. “There are more important things in life than driving,” he says. “Places which have taken that attitude have greatly improved the urban environment as a result.”

PHOTO: Cyclists (from left) Brent Granby, Rob Wynen, Richard Campbell, and Chris Keam have been advocating for safer bike space on the Burrard Bridge for years. By Doug Shanks.

Study suggests bias in political-candidate selection

WestEnder
May 9, 2009

The second president of the United States famously said that a legislature should be “in miniature, an exact portrait of the people at large. It should think, feel, reason, and act like them.”

Not bad for 1763, John Adams, but chances are slim that the results of the 2009 provincial election will produce a truly representative portrait of B.C.’s population. And a new study suggests that diversity — or lack thereof — in the provincial legislature is not necessarily the fault of the electorate.

The study, called “Beauty is in the Eye of the Selector,” was released publicly last week, and is the result of a collaboration between Jeanette Ashe, a Douglas College political science lecturer, and Kennedy Stewart, a political scientist who teaches in SFU’s public policy program. The study examines the candidate selection process for the 2005 provincial election, and suggests that party selectors consistently chose an “ideal type” of candidate that tends to exclude women, single people, and people without university degrees from making it through the party nomination processes.

“We’re trying to understand, why are there so few women in the legislature? Why are there so few ethnic minorities in legislature? Why are there so few working-class people in the legislature?” says Ashe. She and Stewart surveyed 89 nominees from the 2005 election, and found that people who weren’t married were 23 times more likely to lose the nomination, women were five times more likely to lose, and people without university degrees were four times more likely to lose.

“What this tells us... party selectors prefer men who have partners and have university degrees,” Ashe says, adding that those who ran in the nomination process were more diverse than the end results would indicate. “What we found was there’s an oversupply of women, there’s an oversupply of ethnic minorities, there’s an oversupply of people without university degrees coming forward... They’re just not being selected by party selectors.”

This information, Ashe says, dispels the popular myths that the public doesn’t vote for minority candidates and that there aren’t enough minorities coming forward as nominees. As such, the study makes a strong case for a political quota system, similar to what was controversially adopted at the 2008 NDP convention.

Vancouver-Kensington was designated as a local constituency to implement the NDP’s quota system, and Mable Elmore was nominated as the candidate. She represents a Filipino-Canadian community egregiously underrepresented at all levels of government. A 10-year transit operator, Elmore is heavily involved in social justice issues such as the peace movement and advocating for GLBT communities. “It comes down to the facts: what are the numbers, who’s represented, who has been excluded,” she says. “It’s an opportunity to have a more diverse representation at the political level, and also an opportunity for the electorate and voters and the general public to be exposed to the expertise of folks from different backgrounds. That’s often a very powerful way to challenge and overcome myths, perceptions, and stereotypes.”

While Ashe and Stewart’s study suggests party selectors sometimes base their candidate selection on who they think will have the broadest public appeal, Elmore’s campaign demonstrates a public appetite for more minority voices in government. “Folks in the Filipino-Canadian community... [have been] very excited about the prospect of seeing someone at least sharing their background,” she says, adding that her campaign has attracted a number of first-timers who don’t usually involve themselves in politics.

“If people want to have a legislature that’s more reflective of the differences in society — gender differences, ethnic differences, or class differences — it’s useful to consider how people were selected,” says Ashe of her study, which is available for download from KennedyStewart.ca. “This will give you an idea of the kind of strategies that will increase the representation of people who are underrepresented.”

PHOTO: Mable Elmore in Vancouver-Kensington. By Doug Shanks.

Get ready, get set, before you go!

WestEnder
May 7, 2009

Despite Vancouver’s natural surroundings and close proximity to a wealth of provincial parks and campsites, the urban and urbane among us might nevertheless consider camping a recreational pursuit best enjoyed in theory, not in practice. But for the novice whose newfound interest in camping is backed only by semi-repressed childhood memories of a pup-tent disaster, where to begin?

The uninitiated should know that Vancouver’s better outdoor-sports stores employ dedicated camping experts whose chief objective is to educate the masses on what’s necessary for a safe, enjoyable experience in the woods.

Meika Kizen (pictured at right) worked in the outdoor industry in the U.K. and Australia for almost a decade before immigrating to Canada and putting down roots in Vancouver, where she now manages the Broadway location of Eco Outdoor Sports. She says novice and would-be backpackers and campers pop into the store all the time — many of whom believe gearing up for an authentic roughing-it adventure takes only a few minutes and, worse, a few dollars. “Every other day, people come in and say, ‘I leave tomorrow and I need a tent,’” she sighs, exasperated.

The most important thing for a successful camping trip, she says, is taking time to prepare for it. “Really consider what kind of gear you’re going to take... The biggest mistake people make when they’re setting out to gear up for a trip is not conversing with the [store] staff and not giving them information. The less you tell the staff, the less they can be helpful for you.”

Deciding on the kind of camping trip you want to take depends on who you’re going with, what equipment you already have, and how long the trip will be. Consider the purpose of the trip, and the facilities you and your fellow campers want close at hand, like potable water and washrooms. Investing in an appropriate tent, sleeping bags, sleeping mats, backpacks, and clothing are essential. In the case of necessities like tents, Kizen stresses the importance of all-weather resistance, especially given B.C.’s unpredictable climate.

Casey Groen agrees on the importance of good tent equipment. He has been the camping manager at Three Vets Ltd. for 22 years, and has been camping, he says, “my whole life.”

“If you look at a hotel room for $200, $300 a night, you can [justify the expense of] a decent [sleeping] mat, a decent sleeping bag, and, if you’re going to buy a tent, you can buy a half-decent tent that’s going to give you some room so you don’t have to be claustrophobic and you’re going to have a much better time,” he says. “Buy some good gear. Buy headlamps instead of flashlights so your hands are free to set up things; it just makes the experience much more worthwhile.”

Groen shares Kizen’s frustrations with beginner campers who walk into the store and expect to be outfitted for a full trip on the day they plan to leave. “Put some effort into it instead of saying, ‘Let’s go today,’” he says. But, as important as it is to invest in quality products, it’s just as crucial not to overbuy on unnecessary goods. “The biggest mistake people make is thinking they need more than what they actually need,” says Groen.

For maximum efficiency in the clothing department, Kizen recommends investing in rollable, breathable, all-weather fabrics such as Merino wool base layers. “It makes your whole trip viable — hot or cold — with the same three pieces of clothes,” she says. The Eco store features a large selection of women-specific outdoor clothing, one of the founding objectives of the store when it began in 1997. At the time, most outdoor apparel was only made in unisex sizes, but outdoor-apparel companies have since recognized that women comprise half of the camping population.

Adequate preparation goes a long way, says Kizen, both to protect campers against the obvious safety hazards of trekking out in the woods and to ensure that one trip leads to another. “If the government or the municipality can see that people are using [camping] space and need the space better maintained, that often drives a better support for the space,” she says. “Urban development won’t stretch out quite as far because people become protective over their spaces, and we need that. Urban sprawl, globally, let alone in B.C., is pretty crazy. The more people get out and use it... the more they can take ownership of it. That’s really important.”

PHOTO: Meika Kizen at Eco Outdoor Sports. By Doug Shanks.

Councillor stands up for the arts

WestEnder
May 7, 2009

The task of reforming Vancouver’s ‘No Fun City’ reputation has been taken on by city council in the past, but with little success to date. Councillor Heather Deal hopes to turn that around. This week, she will introduce to council a motion that calls for expanding and encouraging the growth of music-performance venues by reviewing bylaws that often block would-be business owners from getting their ideas off the ground. Deal’s motion follows a February 19 motion to extend liquor service hours in restaurants to 1 a.m., which was sent back to the drawing board for further review by City staff and has yet to reappear in council.

“The intent of this motion is to make it easier for people to open up spaces where people can perform live music,” Deal says. “I’ve been hearing quite a few stories, for several years now, about how challenging it is for new people to open up a space.”

Deal’s motion calls for City staff to start roundtable discussions addressing current barriers to the creation of venues, what can be changed through modifying liquor bylaws, and changing the way the City approaches non-traditional performance venues. “If we can find a way to get past those non-life-threatening issues quicker and easier... maybe we’ll have more places opening up, and we’ll have [a greater] variety of venues for performance art and for live performances,” she says.

Deal has been in touch with the owners of art and performance venues such as the Butcher Block, at 26th and Main; the Biltmore Cabaret, at Kingsway and 12th; and Gastown’s Aisle 45 Gallery. These venues operate as either visual-art galleries, music performance spaces, daytime gathering spaces, or a combination. Mixed use, in particular, can make proper licensing a challenge.

Zak Pashak, the 28-year-old owner of the successful Biltmore Cabaret (he also owns Calgary’s Broken City nightclub and directs that city’s annual Sled Island Music Festival), is no stranger to the challenges of abiding by Vancouver’s often confusing licensing rules. The Biltmore’s operating license was suspended temporarily last summer following a sold-out concert that raised concerns about fire regulations. After a flurry of public outcry and the raising of the issue with city councillors, the venue re-opened two weeks later. “It’s very hard — if not nearly impossible — to enter ‘the game’ via the legal route,” says Pashak. “Just getting a license is hugely expensive... What most people have been doing is sidestepping the established system and just opening a place without bothering to deal with the City and with licensing at all. There has been so much pent-up demand for relevant, culturally-involved, locally-minded spaces that people just started making their own bars.”

Pashak is hopeful that Deal’s motion will help turn the tide in favour of a more vibrant Vancouver music scene, which he believes will improve the overall cultural health of the city. “I think nightlife and a music scene is really important to a good community; it’s so sad to drive down Main Street at 11 p.m. and see it dead because the City has been afraid to allow new liquor licenses,” he says. “With a bit of thought, community development and encouragement, Main Street could be as cool as anything you find in Portland or Brooklyn.”

PHOTO: Councillor Heather Deal. By Doug Shanks.

City flunks out on tenant protection

WestEnder
April 30, 2009

Despite Vancouver City Council’s efforts to protect tenants from Olympics-related evictions, critics say council’s recent motion to curb unreasonable rent increases and involuntary displacement doesn’t go far enough. Am Johal, chair of Olympic watchdog group Impact on Communities Coalition (IOCC), expects thousands of mass evictions to take place between now and Games time.

“It won’t protect tenants,” Johal said of the motion that went before council April 9, part of which asks the provincial government to change the Residential Tenancy Act to prohibit evictions between September 1, 2009, and March 31, 2010. “There will still be hundreds of evictions — probably 1,000 or 2,000... It might create the conditions where in July and August mass evictions take place, so [landlords] can lease for a period of time and then have their places available during the Olympics.”

On April 19, the IOCC released its Olympic Oversight Interim Report Card, which suggests that VANOC and government partners have failed to live up to a number of social commitments that were originally part of the Olympic bid. The report card gave Olympic organizers a D-minus for their failure to adequately fulfill a number of civil liberties and social justice commitments laid out in the bid process, including tenant protection, ensuring freedom of expression during Games time, ensuring privacy rights among Vancouver residents, and the Olympic impact on homelessness.

“We do not have anything resembling a legacy of affordable housing,” says Pivot Legal Society housing campaign lawyer Laura Track, of the report. “This was part of Vancouver’s promise to the world when it bid on the Olympic Games, and that promise has been broken. It’s been broken to the citizens of Vancouver, of Canada, and to the international community who will come here and who will see the results of our failure to take care of our most vulnerable citizens here in Vancouver.”

Part of the problem with protecting renters during Games time lies with the individual experiences of Olympic organizers, says Kris Olds, a former Vancouver city planner who completed a master’s thesis on mass evictions related to Expo 86. Olds is now a geography professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Little is put into place to genuinely protect renters, as those in charge of the political process and the mega-event-development process are almost all home owners; they have no or little experience with the situation, given the infrequency of hosting such events...,” he told WE. “[And] they are typically part of the pro-growth urban redevelopment ‘machine,’ so they see much more value in facilitating urban change that benefits the wealthy, including themselves. It is no secret that the Olympics are a billion-dollar excuse for urban and regional redevelopment.”

Olds contends that individuals and political parties in power “do not take the evictions issue seriously” as they relate to the Olympics. Even so, he says, it’s a false argument to blame the Games for everything. “The Olympics play a contributory and acceleratory role in spurring on urban change, including generating turmoil in rental markets. The negative effects of this turmoil can be mediated if the host city’s elites really wanted to. But they tend not to... They prefer the inverse, as the displacement patterns show in Games after Games after Games.”

As it stands in Vancouver, little, if any, tracking mechanism for evictions is in place. The IOCC report card points out that the Residential Tenancy Branch and the City of Vancouver’s Social Planning Department do not adequately monitor rental evictions, so it is difficult to determine the extent and scope of the problem. Meanwhile, loopholes in the Residential Tenancy Act mean that landlords can issue exorbitant rent increases to tenants, which tenants’ rights advocates say is a means to evict tenants through indirect financial pressure.

Last week, tenants of the West End’s Seafield apartment building received a decision from their arbitration with the Residential Tenancy Branch: nine of the building’s 14 suites are facing rent hikes lower than the 73 per cent originally asked for by the building’s new landlords, but, following the decision, the building’s most senior tenants will now face a 38 per cent rent increase. “That means the end of rent control in B.C.,” says Renters at Risk co-founder Sharon Isaak. “We need accommodation for 350,000 people, supposedly, for the Olympics, and we’re going to see evictions because of that.”

Vancouver-West End candidates state their case

WestEnder
April 30, 2009

The provincial election race is heating up in the Vancouver-West End riding, with three candidates honing in on an area widely recognized as an NDP stronghold when it was part of Vancouver-Burrard (which also encompassed Coal Harbour, Yaletown, and parts of False Creek — areas known to garner more votes from BC Liberal supporters than NDP-ers). Vancouver-Burrard split into Vancouver-West End and Vancouver-False Creek following a standard electoral district review on April 14, which aims to ensure fair representation in ridings as populations change.
Now, former Vancouver Park Board colleagues Laura McDiarmid (BC Liberal candidate) and Spencer Herbert (the incumbent NDP MLA) will face off in the new riding against the Green Party’s Drina Read, a longtime West End resident. McDiarmid was the NPA chair of the park board for which Herbert served as a COPE commissioner until he ran for the Vancouver-Burrard provincial seat in the October 2008 by-election. Adding to their commonalities, all three candidates are part of the LGBT community that comprises large parts of the riding. But, true to any election, they will be working hard to distinguish themselves — and their parties — from one another as May 12 edges closer.

Vancouver-West End residents can watch the candidates in action at a free public debate hosted by the West End Residents Association this Sunday, May 3, in the ballroom of the Coast Plaza Hotel (1763 Comox), from 1-3 p.m.

Prior to the debate, WE caught up with Read, McDiarmid, and Herbert to seek their perspectives on what gives them the edge this election.

***

What can you offer to Vancouver-West End that the other candidates can’t?

Drina Read, Green Party: BC Greens have a guiding set of principles from the Global Green movement, including participatory democracy, sustainability, social justice, respect for diversity, ecological wisdom, and non-violence. The Green Party’s comprehensive, integrated policy is intended to transform our economy from one driven by consumption to one based on improved efficiencies and conservation. This is why I became involved, and why I believe that Westenders deserve better from our elected officials. I am committed to representing the local community, with the long-term outlook that future generations will have a healthy, safe, and prosperous life.

Spencer Herbert, NDP: My experience on the park board and my experience as the MLA representing the West End and Coal Harbour since the by-election last year have given me a proven track record as a strong advocate for our community. The connection and experience I’ve gained have helped me in raising the profile of the continuing challenges renters are facing with the massive rent hikes and evictions due to changes the BC Liberal government made to the Residential Tenancy Act. I have the proven skills and passion to stand up for the West End.

Laura McDiarmid, BC Liberals: I offer over 25 years of public service and experience working on the front lines dealing with issues facing the West End. I am a single parent of two adult children, and an out lesbian for over 30 years. I have demonstrated leadership in a number of initiatives while on the park board. I care about the issues and challenges facing Vancouver-West End residents who know that a strong economy is critical to maintaining essential services. I have a bachelor’s degree in business administration, and with my social services background I can offer a well-balanced approach to ensuring that the West End continues to prosper and grow through these difficult times. I will keep my eyes, my ears, and my office doors open for your input and participation, and I give you my word that I will never let you and your loved ones down when it comes to standing up for what is right for this neighbourhood and this riding.

***

Who is your toughest competition in this race? Why?

Read: The question is not who but what: voter apathy precipitated by the continually discouraging results of the ancient first-past-the-post voting system. I want to encourage everyone to get out and vote on May 12, and to vote yes for the BC-STV (Single Transferable Vote) fair-voting referendum. Brave voters will choose the candidate and the party that best represents their values, and who will follow through on common-sense policies — not based on political opportunism.

Herbert: The toughest competition in the race are my two competitors with the Greens and the BC Liberals: my Liberal opponent, as she has run for government many times before, recently for the park board with the NPA, and in the 2005 election on the east side in Vancouver-Hastings for the BC Liberals; and my Green opponent, as she too knows that the BC Liberals have hurt the West End by gutting the Residential Tenancy Act and making it easier to evict and massively increase rents. She also lives in the West End, as I do.

McDiarmid: I am more concerned with ensuring that the Vancouver-West End gets to know me and my commitment to their issues.

***

What, to you, are the three biggest issues facing constituents in this riding?

Read: The old status quo parties’ deliberate choice to support the gas-belching, farm-flattening Gateway Project is endangering Westenders’ ability to have housing, causing us to sink into poverty and to not be able to afford education. The billions of our tax dollars that are being wasted on this vanity pork-barrel should be put to much better use in the community, including affordable housing, improved public transit, social programs, education, and health care. BC Greens would cancel the Gateway Project and re-allocate the funds to these much-needed programs for our citizens.

Herbert: (1) Too many Westenders are under the threat of eviction or massive rent increases, as we recently saw at the Seafield [apartment building], with their nearly 40-per-cent rent increase announced last week... We need to reform the [Residential Tenancy Act] to provide better balance between renters and landlords, as they have done in Ontario and Quebec. (2) The BC Liberals continue to suggest they will close, downgrade, or take key programs — like Cardiac Care or the Renal Clinic — out of St. Paul’s Hospital. I believe we need to revitalize St. Paul’s Hospital in the West End, the densest downtown community in Canada. (3) Westenders continue to be concerned about the massive increase in homelessness, and the lack of supportive housing for folks living with mental illness and drug addiction. Homelessness has grown 373 per cent under Gordon Campbell’s government, and I believe we must demand better from our government.

McDiarmid: (1) The economy. A BC Liberal Government will put in place measures to keep our economy strong by providing additional tax relief for small business and families, to build confidence and keep B.C. moving forward during these difficult economic times. (2) Public Safety. All British Columbians deserve to feel safe and secure in their communities. Concern around public safety is high in Vancouver-West End, and a BC Liberal Government has added 168 more police, and implemented new innovations like the Community Court in Vancouver [that] are trying to address root causes of crime like homelessness and addiction. (3) Environment: The BC Liberal government has put into law a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 33 per cent by 2020. To support that goal, B.C. has undertaken one of the most comprehensive climate action strategies in North America. At the same time, we’ve invested millions to develop alternative energy technologies and support energy efficiency in schools, communities and other sectors.

***

What are the biggest misconceptions about you as a candidate?

Read: A few people have suggested that because I’m with the Green Party, I would have less ability to govern. Every elected official has to start from somewhere. I am passionate about the issues, and I have the confidence to represent our diverse constituency. When you look at how previous governments have mismanaged taxpayers’ money, sold off our resources, and destroyed the people’s trust, doesn’t it make more sense to vote for the candidate and party that has long-term policies to make the shift to a strong green economy, protect our resources, and bring pride back to B.C.?

Herbert: That my name is Herbert Spencer, and that I’m 12 years old. I’m 27.

McDiarmid: Sometimes people underestimate the depth of my variety of experience in the issues facing the West End.

***

What’s the best and worst thing about Vancouver-West End?

Read: The best part of being a Westender is knowing that we have a strong community. My pet peeve is people who think they can sanitize the neighbourhood from street people by locking the dumpsters. Everyone should be recycling, and these people are just trying to make a living.

Herbert: I think the best thing about the West End is its diversity of people — we have young folks, elders, a strong GLBT community, families with kids, recent immigrants, and those who’ve lived here a long time. The worst thing about the West End is that this vibrant culture is threatened by continuing evictions and massive rent increases, which are making this area unaffordable for many, and driving many longtime tenants out of their community.

McDiarmid: The best thing about Vancouver-West End is the diversity of the riding — the very nature of our West End demographics embraces this fact. We have a vibrant GLBT community, a host of small businesses and corporate representation, immigrants, seniors, and home owners/renters.

***

Share something about yourself that we haven’t heard in the news already.

Read: When I was younger, I went on a cross-country adventure, traveling from Mile 0 in Victoria on the Trans-Canada Highway to Mile 0 in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

Herbert: I have never owned a car, and I walk, bike, and bus to get everywhere. Oh, and I love the West End. Haven’t seen that in print before!

McDiarmid: I am a single mother of two adult children. I worked two jobs to ensure they had the things they needed to engage in extracurricular activities and sports such as soccer, baseball, equestrian riding, gymnastics, and acting. I now have a grandson who is six years old. As a strong advocate for lifelong learning, I went back to university three years ago and worked my way through university to obtain a bachelor’s degree in business administration.

B.C. minimum wage a wedge issue in campaigns

WestEnder
April 23, 2009


B.C.’s $8 minimum wage, unchanged since 2001, is now the lowest in Canada. Critics call it a product of an uncaring provincial government, while supporters say it’s taken eight years for the rest of the country to catch up. One week into the election campaign, debates are heating up across the province on the question of raising the minimum wage to $10 per hour as requested by the BC Federation of Labour, a union federation dedicated to protecting and advocating for workers’ rights. The call is also backed by the Union of B.C. Municipalities (UBCM) and more than 30 municipal governments.

Vancouver city councillor Geoff Meggs wants to add Vancouver to that list by introducing a motion in council this week calling for Vancouver City Council to support the BC Federation of Labour’s “$10 Now” campaign.

“It just sends a signal to the low-wage earners that we understand the need to raise the bottom as well as try to reduce the cost of things,” says Meggs. “It can’t all be on tax cuts and subsidies to various products.”

But B.C. Labour Minister Iain Black, the B.C. Liberal MLA candidate for Port Moody-Coquitlam, calls the minimum wage debate the “Trojan horse” of this year’s provincial campaign. “It sounds simple, it sounds seductive, and it sounds like some sort of silver bullet, but it is not any of those things,” he told WE. “It has sweeping implications that go well beyond those making $8 an hour today. It has very dangerous implications for a small business community, and in terms of its simplicity or existing in a vacuum, it is one of several tools that government has at its disposal, and it has to be used very, very cautiously.”

Plus, Black says, there’s no big disparity between minimum wage rates across Canada. “We led the country for minimum wage for six years. It took six years for the rest for the country to catch up with us, and the first province finally caught up with us last May,” he says. “All the minimum wages right now are grouped within about a dollar of each other.”

At the beginning of April, Ontario’s provincial government raised its minimum wage to $9.50, and that wage will go up to $10.25 by March 2010. BC Federation of Labour President Jim Sinclair, who has lead the union group’s “$10 Now” campaign, contends that minimum wages in other provinces better reflect the cost of living than in B.C., even though a minimum wage is still far from a living wage above the poverty line. “In Newfoundland, for instance, the minimum wage is going to $9 [on July 1, 2009]... At $9 in Newfoundland, you’d have to have a minimum wage in Vancouver of $12.27 to buy the same stuff,” Sinclair says. “No one believes $10 is a livable wage... but it’s a lot better than $8.”

Black says 80 per cent of people making minimum wage in B.C. are youth aged 16 to 24, and as a group, make an average wage of $13.30. “What that tells us is that the vast majority of people who are working, even in that age bracket... these people are doing way better than a policy of minimum wage indicates,” he says, adding that the $13.30 number reflects those who have first jobs as trades apprentices or work in the service industry. He also criticized Vancouver City council for introducing a motion on the provincial minimum wage that “has nothing to do with their area of governance.”

Still, Sinclair says the majority of minimum-wage earners are over the age of 20. “This also applies to new immigrants. You can come here with 20 years’ experience and your first job in B.C., you’d get paid six bucks an hour [training wage],” he says. “If we’re going to live in this society where we tell people to work hard and work 40 hours a week, and we’re going to let employers pay them $8 or $6 an hour, which is below the poverty line... I think that’s morally bankrupt.”

SFU economist Krishna Pendakur, like Black, says minimum wage is no measure of prosperity, but suggests that the prospect of increasing the wages will not bring about the disastrous consequences some fear they will have on businesses. “The downside of minimum wages is that, by pushing up the price of low-wage labour, they may induce firms to want to hire less low-wage labour,” he says. “However, given the evidence we have for North America, increasing minimum wages when they are as low as they are does not have much effect on the demand for labour... if wages are more fairly distributed, then our society is nicer to live in. Minimum wages can give a more fair distribution of wages by pushing up the bottom end.”

PHOTO: Doug Shanks.

Green support of STV aims to fight voter apathy

WestEnder
April 23, 2009

As Vancouver heads into what, for some, is the fourth election season in six months (following a federal election, a provincial by-election, and a municipal election), voter fatigue and apathy can be as much a part of the election campaign as the candidates’ platforms. But cynicism may bode well for Green Party votes, says SFU political scientist Kennedy Stewart. “They attract people who wouldn’t ordinarily vote, so that’s where they’re collecting most of their support,” he says. “It’s people who are usually disaffected.”

The problem of low voter turnout is why deputy Green Party leader Damian Kettlewell says he supports the referendum on the B.C. single-transferable vote (BC-STV). Kettlewell, a small business owner and Kitsilano resident, is a star Green Party candidate running in Vancouver-False Creek, a new riding comprised of the eastern territory of what used to be Vancouver-Burrard, which was renamed and divided into Vancouver-West End and Vancouver-False Creek last year. Kettlewell is running against B.C. Liberal Mary McNeil, a Yaletown resident and former president of the BC Cancer Foundation. A new NDP candidate will replace Ray Lam, who dropped out of the race this week due to controversial photographs discovered on his Facebook page. As WE went to press, the new candidate was not yet announced.

Whether Lam’s Facebook incident changes the way people vote remains to be seen, but the fact that no candidate is perfect is hardly a new idea. That’s where BC-STV could be successful, and the Green Party is alone in officially supporting it this election. “Right now, it’s just one choice or the other, and I don’t think any candidate has qualities that every voter agrees with 100 per cent,” says Kettlewell. “With the preferential voting system, people will be encouraged to get to know more candidates, people will be encouraged to get to know their different party positions.”

For now, Kettlewell is optimistic but realistic about his ambitions for his party. “We’re not going to form government, but we are going to have an influence on the governing party and how they craft their policy,” he says. “When I got involved with the Green Party in 1999... we were small and the ideas we had were kind of on the fringe. But I’ve seen the political centre move to a lot of our policies on carbon, on decriminalization of cannabis, on preventative healthcare... things like that are becoming really mainstream. One of the things people haven’t quite caught on to is the Green Party’s not going away.”

Lessons from Portland

WestEnder
April 23, 2009

Portland, Oregon is like Vancouver's utopia--as a hub of DIY youth culture, a thriving music scene, and home to historic queer and feminist movements, Stumptown often feels like Vancouver's beautiful, more sophisticated American cousin. There is, after all, much to learn from Portland's innovative city planning and transportation systems that have paved the way for a strong bike culture and well-established light rail and tram systems. With Metro Vancouver reaching a critical juncture point in which planning for the growth of the region includes tough questions about how to best to build sustainable, long-term public transportation, it's a fortuitous time for Sam Adams, Portland's newly-elected mayor, to pay a visit to Vancouver this week to lecture on Portland's sustainable transportation systems. Adams will speak tomorrow (April 24) at UBC Robson Square as part of a lecture series hosted by the SFU City Program. He plans to talk about how a city friendly to pedestrians and cyclists can tackle climate chance, peak oil, and public health.

"There has always been more than a grain of truth when I joke that Portland is rated the most sustainable city in the United States," Adams said in an interview with WE. "A lot of people have worked hard at that, we should take that as inspiration, but with the knowledge that's high praise on a very low standard."

Elected in May 2008 as Portland's first openly-gay mayor, Adams has focused on improving his council's efforts at integrating environmental sustainability with economic sustainability and social equity. "We've only scratched the surface in terms of our potential to be a prosperous community and a more ecologically just community," he says. "An older line of thinking is that sustainability is hippy-dippy... it's a good thing to do, but it'll hold you back economically. In terms of our land use and transportation planning, that's absolutely wrong. It makes us more competitive economically, it makes our economy more self-reliant."

So far, Portland is leading the United States with its highest per-capita percentage of bike trips, which is just above five per cent. "If we expand our bike boulevards which prioritizes bike travel on the quiet adjacent suites instead of the scarier, busy streets, we believe we'll triple our bike ridership here in the city," says Adams. The city's bike culture, light rail transit system, and streetcars are consistently ranked highly in citizen surveys about what people like best about Portland.

Similar to Vancouver city council's Homeless Emergency Action Team, Adams has set targets to end homelessness in Portland in 10 years. Portland's city planning departments are also working on what's called a 20-minute neighbourhood concept, where planners analyze the number of residential units and office spaces in the city are within 20 minutes of meeting basic needs by walking or biking. "Doing that kind of analysis is really important to us to take it to the next level," he says. While Adams says his work as mayor is hardly done, he's flattered to hear of so many Portland fans in Vancouver. "It's really humbling to have so many people look to us for inspiration. It's really important that we are constantly improving our efforts at sustainability."

Admission to Sam Adams' April 24 lecture at UBC Robson Square this Friday is free, but reservations are required. Phone 778-782-5100 or email cstudies@sfu.ca.

Retailers, residents fear proposed transit project

WestEnder
April 16, 2009

During these final months of Canada Line construction — a three-year project that has been blamed for disrupting lives and, in some instances, ruining the livelihoods of business owners along its path — the proposal of another rapid-transit line, from Commercial Drive to UBC, has sparked immediate worry among West Broadway merchants and residents. A coalition of business groups and residents associations held a town hall meeting at St. James Community Square in Kitsilano Tuesday evening (April 14) to share their concerns. Scheduled to begin in 2011, many fear the project would bring about a replay of the Canada Line construction fiasco along Cambie Street, which caused daily traffic jams and is said to be the sole reason for the bankruptcy of dozens of retailers.

Public consultation on the 12-kilometre rapid-transit line is set to begin this summer and extend into 2010. But in light of the December 2008 announcement of a cost-sharing partnership between TransLink and the provincial government to plan and develop the project, many of those who stand to be affected by construction say they need to voice their concerns now, as well as express their desire for financial compensation.

“Without compensation, regardless of the method [of construction] they choose or the route they choose, they’re going to devastate West Broadway,” said Donna Dobo, owner of Just Imagine, a children’s costume shop at Broadway and Balaclava, in an interview with WE. She later spoke on behalf of the West Broadway Business Association at Tuesday’s meeting. “If you talk to any business owner on West Broadway about it, they will tell you that they have time to plan their leases. I, for one, have just signed a two-year lease, so I that have the option of moving before the construction begins.” But Dobo would be remiss to move her 20-year-old business away from its current location, since she waited years for a lease space to open up on Broadway. “It’s just a beautiful, mature shopping district, and the residents really treasure it,” she says.

Mel Lehan, the Vancouver-Point Grey NDP candidate in the upcoming provincial election, organized the meeting with the intention of bringing businesses and residents to together to discuss potential alternatives to the rapid-transit plan, which was not approved by the Broadway community before being announced publicly. “[The Province has] already put out a press release saying that there’s $2.8 billion allotted to a UBC rapid-transit line... $2.8 billion, and we haven’t even approved it within the community, and they don’t even have an overall plan? It’s insane,” he says.

But rapid transit is not the only option on the table, says Judy Rudin, TransLink spokesperson. “There’s going to be an evaluation of everything, including rapid bus, light rail, and rail rapid transit,” she says, adding that there have been lessons learned from Canada Line construction.

Professor Patrick Condon, who holds the UBC James Taylor Chair in Landscape and Livable Environments, delivered the keynote speech at the meeting. He is concerned that the construction of a rapid-transit line across Broadway could put a halt to the growth of a more sustainable Metro Vancouver region in which people commute shorter distances by living closer to jobs, education, and other necessities. “For a very long time, it has been the policy of this region, as embodied in the Livable Region Strategic Plan, to create not one job centre but many... In the past 30 years, downtown Vancouver has added very few jobs, while almost a million new jobs have been added further east and south,” he says. “These large [rapid-transit] expenditures will unleash forces that slow and perhaps retard the long-term organic evolution of our region toward jobs and housing balance, and drain our coffers of funds that should be used to make a sustainable region for our children.”

Condon describes the current rapid-transit proposal as one that would best serve “Manhattan-level densities,” but Vancouver’s Broadway, he says, would never reach that level. “I believe that the Broadway corridor is a natural [fit] for modern European-style tram,” he says. “This is not the first time it has been proposed. Serious proposals have been made many times by regional transit authorities over the decades, only to be thwarted by the erroneous assumption that the systems had to work at SkyTrain speeds and could not interfere with moving all the cars back and forth on Broadway.”

SkyTrain-level speeds, however, are what many Vancouverites have come to expect with the establishment of new public transit systems. That expectation, says Condon, only applies to a relative minority of transit riders. “The system should go slower than SkyTrain because it’s designed mostly for complete communities where people live close to what they need, and use transit not to cross the region but to cross the district,” he says. “Right now, the long-distance commuter — a distinct minority — is the tail that wags the dog.”

PHOTO: A proposed rapid-transit line from Commercial Drive to UBC has raised concern among West Broadway residents and business owners, who say construction could negatively impact the community much like the Canada Line project along Cambie Street. By Jackie Wong.

Retired officers facilitate evictions in Kitsilano

WestEnder
April 16, 2009

Two retired police officers are currently facilitating the evacuation of tenants from their Kitsilano apartments, at West 4th Avenue and Trafalgar Street, to make way for major building renovations. Former officers Moe Coll and Don MacPhearson operate as MoMac Consulting Ltd., which, among other tasks, acts as a third-party mediator between tenants and landlords. “MoMac Consulting Ltd... offers property owners and landlords assistance in handling problem tenants, property management, rental negotiations and security,” reads the company website. “We offer a unique and valuable service to clients in negotiating additional rent increases.”

In an interview with WE, MacPhearson, MoMac’s director, denied similarities between what his company does and the renovation-related evictions — which have come to be known as “renovictions” — that have taken place in the West End. “You hear about incidences in the West End of evicting tenants for doing minor repairs on apartments,” he says. “This is not happening in this case.”

To help persuade tenants to move out of the 12-suite apartment complex at 1955 Trafalgar Street, above the Quattro on Fourth restaurant, MoMac offered them two months’ rent in compensation, plus the return of security deposits and an offer to help with their moving. Letters and information packages were issued to tenants on February 19.

“It’s interesting to note that nine [suites] of the 12 have already moved out, and seven have asked to come back,” says MacPhearson.

The renovations — which include the installation of new flooring and cabinetry, new bathrooms, dishwashers, kitchen appliances, and a refurbished outdoor courtyard — will take four to six months to complete. “Whatever the going rate is for that area, and I don’t know what that is, I would assume that for a two-bedroom, fully renovated suite up there, you’re probably looking at $1,700 [to] $1,800,” says MacPhearson.

Some tenants say the new rates will be unaffordable for them. Patryk Drozd lives next door to roommates Chris Lyne and Patrick Renard. They pay about $1,000 per month for their two-bedroom suites, and are disputing what they believe is an unfair eviction. The three have scheduled an arbitration date with the Residential Tenancy Office for April 29.

“They were selling us on the idea that this was a demolition,” says Lyne of his dealings with MoMac. Lyne showed the eviction package to a contractor friend, who told him the proposed renovations could be carried out without tenants having to vacate their suites. “If I owned my house and I want to put in a new bathroom, I don’t move into a hotel for a month,” Lyne says.

MacPhearson contends the renovations will be extensive enough that the suites will be inaccessible, and that the arbitrating tenants are playing political games. NDP provincial candidates Jenny Kwan and Mel Lehan have offered their support to the Trafalgar tenants, and the BC NDP’s party platform calls for closing loopholes in the Residential Tenancy Act that allow such evictions to take place. “These guys are stirring it up because it’s a political issue right now,” says MacPhearson. “They’re taking the media down a road that I don’t think the media would want to go down.”

“I don’t think anyone should be in the situation that the people at 1955 Trafalgar are in,” says Lehan. “You live somewhere for 15 years, then all of a sudden, boom! One day, at the whim of a landlord who’s greedy, you get evicted.”

PHOTO: Patryk Drozd (left), Chris Lyne and Patrick Renard are fighting eviction from their Kitsilano apartments. By Jackie Wong.

Students demand fair transit pricing

WestEnder
April 16, 2009

Establishing a single-price transit pass (U-Pass) for all Metro Vancouver post-secondary students is the subject of an eight-year battle that was taken before Vancouver City Council last week (April 9). Councillors voted unanimously to support student unions from Vancouver Community College (VCC), Douglas College, and Emily Carr University in their launch of an April 8 complaint to the BC Ombudsman, calling for a review of what they say is a discriminatory pricing policy. Student union representatives presented council with 6,000 signed postcards calling for a fairly priced U-Pass. Currently, the price fluctuates between schools.

“You’re using the same [transit] system, but you’re being charged different rates based on where you go to school. It’s completely unfair,” says Michael Olson, the national executive representative for B.C.’s Canadian Federation of Students (CFS). “For example, say there are three students living in a house together. One goes to UBC, one goes to Langara, one goes to VCC, and the students each pay very different [transit] rates — anywhere from $22 at UBC to $39 at Langara, and upwards of $75 or higher at VCC.”

The BC Ombudsman complaint has been filed by the student unions of VCC, Emily Carr University, Douglas College, and the Canadian Federation of Students, and directed at TransLink and the B.C. Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure. The complaint states that students at VCC, Emily Carr, and Douglas College pay up to five times as much for a monthly bus pass as students at schools where the U-Pass program has been implemented, such as UBC and SFU. The complaint also suggests the U-Pass pricing policy discriminates against the most socially and economically disadvantaged post-secondary students in the Metro region, particularly those attending VCC. According to the college’s Research and Strategic Services Department, 50.2 per cent of VCC students are immigrants, 53 per cent speak English as a second language, and 33 per cent work full-time while completing full-time studies.

“The vast majority of [VCC] students are already in a situation where they’re disenfranchised, whether they’re new Canadians or they’re ESL students, or if they’re students and, therefore, living on the poverty line,” says Maggie Murray, VCC’s internal relations officer. “We also feel that it should be [an election issue], because the provincial government has set a carbon-neutral goal for 2020, and this is a huge part of that. It’s impossible for us to become a sustainable city if we don’t publicly fund our transit system.”

But funding is at the heart of the universal U-Pass stalemate, says Shamus Reid, CFS chairperson. “What it comes down to is that the system is simply under-funded in this province,” he says. “Ultimately, what we’re looking for is... to expand transit options to not just students, but to all British Columbians, and affordable transit as an option to meet our climate-action goals.”

Meanwhile, on the same day the student unions filed the U-Pass complaint, TransLink and the provincial government announced a $100-million “priority project” to implement controlled-access gates, called Faregates, and electronic fare cards (called Smartcards) on the Lower Mainland transit system. The Faregate and Smartcard system will be implemented with the aim of minimizing fare evasion and, according to TransLink CEO Tom Prendergast in a written statement, “significantly improve the public’s perception of safety and security on transit, and their confidence that fare evasion issues are being addressed.”

PHOTO: Vancouver Community College representative Maggie Murray (front) and a group of post-secondary students presented city council with 6,000 signed postcards calling for fair student transit pricing. By Doug Shanks.