Building a bridge to a greener future

WestEnder
October 8, 2009

For all its Pacific vistas and North Shore mountain beauty, Vancouver, in its relative youth, is just beginning to define itself as a green city. Mayor Gregor Robertson’s speech at the Vancouver Board of Trade Meeting on September 30 introduced a new “Green Capital” economic branding strategy to the city’s business community, which focuses on growth in Vancouver’s green-technology industry.

Earlier in the week, a group of local environmental advocates unveiled their plans for Bridge to a Cool Planet, a day-long festival on October 24 to commemorate the International Day of Climate Action, and to draw attention to Canada’s role in December’s international Copenhagen Climate Conference.

“We need the same kind of movement now that we had back in the day of the peace marches,” says Kevin Washbrook, Bridge to a Cool Planet organizer and director of the group Voters Taking Action on Climate Change. “This hasn’t happened yet for climate change and global warming in Canada. The government we have in Ottawa right now... they don’t feel compelled to act, and right now there isn’t the pressure on them to do so.”

While Washbrook is supportive of the City’s recent efforts to draw attention to our potential as a green city with its Greenest City Action Team and the Green Capital branding strategy, he says citizen support will be crucial for the City to move forward on its sustainability goals. “For the City to make those kinds of fundamental changes, they’re going to need public pressure from below,” he says. “They don’t operate in a space right now to say ‘We are going to make huge changes in how you live and work’ until they know that the public’s there.”

That’s the goal of Bridge to a Cool Planet: to garner widespread public support on action for fighting climate change. The day’s festivities will close Cambie Bridge to car traffic, with activities taking place on the bridge, along Pacific Boulevard, and on the Science World grounds. “This is an opportunity to remake society in a way that’s fair for everybody,” says Washbrook. That involves making connections between social issues, citizenship, and sustainability, he adds.

Ben West, spokesperson for the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, one of the organizations involved with Bridge to a Cool Planet, says Vancouver is at a critical juncture in its approach to climate change. “We could be looking at a bridge to a cool planet, or we could be looking at a gateway to global warming,” he says. “This could be a place where we’re enabling the rest of the world to use more and more of our tar sands oil and do more and more coal exploration...or [we] could be a model for sustainability for the rest of the world.”

Part of the rationale for situating Bridge to a Cool Planet around the Cambie Bridge, West says, is to unite citizens in a place that geographically connects the east and west sides of the city, and ideologically joins citizens from diverse backgrounds. “It’s trying to look at not just ways of addressing climate change, but looking at addressing equity issues, social-justice issues,” he says. In regards to the City of Vancouver’s recent green branding efforts, West says it’s a start, but it’s not enough. “Vancouver can do a certain amount, but it really takes the province and the country and an international movement to make change.”

More information on Bridge to a Cool Planet can be found at BridgeCoolPlanet.ca.

PHOTO: Organizers of Bridge to a Cool Planet, which will take place October 24 on and around the Cambie Bridge, promoted the day-long event last week by, among other things, dressing up in a polar bear costume. By Doug Shanks.

Mental Illness Awareness Week focuses on city's Chinese community

WestEnder
October 8, 2009

While at least one in five people in B.C. develop a mental illness in their lifetime, mental-health issues continue to fly under the radar among the Lower Mainland’s large Chinese-Canadian population. The Canadian Mental Health Association aims to address that in this year’s annual Mental Illness Awareness Week, which runs to October 10. Vancouver-based workshops this week will focus exclusively on Chinese and Mandarin speakers, with the aim of educating audiences on mental illness among seniors and youth, mood disorders, and stress and anxiety.

Dr. Hiram Mok, a clinical associate UBC psychiatry professor who published a 2003 report in BC Medical Journal about mental-health-service access among Chinese Canadians, says shame plays a large role in preventing access to mental-health information and services among Chinese communities. “There are a lot of problems in Chinese cultures about shame in having a mental illness... If you have a family member who has a mental illness, it will be shameful, and they will lose face,” he says. “Therefore, coming forward for treatment is a problem.”

Compared to other groups, Dr. Mok says there is a stronger tendency among Asian populations to express emotional difficulties in physical terms; for example, someone struggling with mental illness might first tell their doctor that they’re in physical pain, he says. “There’s not enough words in [Chinese dialects] to describe the different types of emotions that we have, compared to the Caucasian population,” says Dr. Mok. “So, a lot of people will convert emotional distress and present to their family doctor in physical terms.”

Andrew Lee, a registered clinical counsellor based in Richmond, deals with the transitional struggles of new immigrants, and sees an increasing number of Chinese immigrants dealing with adjustment-related mental-health difficulties. “We see a lot of depression and anxiety,” he says. “Traditionally, Chinese [populations] are not very aware of how to take care of their mental-health concerns... We still see quite a few Chinese families [who] minimize the impacts of their mental-health concerns, or they just totally reject the idea because they feel so ashamed.”

While Dr. Mok points out that stigma surrounding mental-health issues continues to be prominent regardless of race, he says cross-cultural psychiatry plays an important role in delivering sensitive care to diverse populations. Oral therapy among new immigrants in Chinese communities can be a point of difficulty in depression treatment, for example. “They don’t understand why they’re talking about problems to a stranger, which will bring more shame to their family,” he says. “In cross-cultural psychiatry, we rely a lot on community agencies. We also rely a lot on family and the family doctor in terms of giving us the whole story or what the background is.”

The Chinese-language workshops, as part of the Canadian Mental Health Association’s Mental Illness Awareness Week, take place Saturday, October 10, at Raven Song Community Health Centre (2450 Ontario), from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Mandarin workshops will take place in the morning, with Cantonese workshops following in the afternoon. Interested participants can phone 604-872-4902, ext. 235. More information on dealing with mental illness can be found at HereToHelp.bc.ca.

Housing activists protest government convention

WestEnder
October 8, 2009

The annual convention of the Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM) took place at the Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Centre last week, drawing thousands of municipal-government representatives from across the province. The last day of the conference (October 2) featured an address by Premier Gordon Campbell, which was protested by Vancouver housing advocates in a demonstration in front of the Pan Pacific Hotel.

The protest, organized by the Downtown Eastside’s Carnegie Community Action Project (CCAP), was aimed at drawing attention to what activists called a dearth of affordable housing in B.C.

“The city councillors and the premier have got to get their priorities straight. They can’t spend... on the Trade and Convention Centre without considering housing,” CCAP organizer Wendy Pedersen told WE before the protest. “This is the sixth year in B.C. where B.C.’s had the highest number of people in poverty in Canada.”

The demonstration followed a September 30 UBCM resolution to call on the provincial and federal governments to develop a national affordable-housing strategy. UBCM has passed similar housing resolutions in the past, but COPE councillor Ellen Woodsworth, who helped bring forward the resolution, says it’s especially important to bring municipalities together on the issue now.

“I think that people are very aware of the kind of cost overruns that are tied into Olympic spending, and that there’s still millions of dollars that are being poured into... things like Olympic security,” Woodsworth says. “And right now, if you look at the rental situation in Vancouver, even the simplest single-room-occupancy units available are over $400 for 10-by-10-foot rooms, and yet the shelter portion of income assistance is only $375. And I’m talking about people who’ve got serious mental illness and addiction problems, and there’s no detox beds available.”

Laura Stannard of the Citywide Housing Coalition, a Vancouver-based housing advocacy group, helped Vancouver city councillors flag the issue at UBCM. “To be silent on an issue like that is tantamount to telling the provincial and federal government that we think you’re doing enough,” she says, “and we don’t.”

The same day that the affordable-housing resolution was passed at UBCM, Vancouver East MP Libby Davies’s bill for a national housing strategy, Bill C-304, passed second reading in Parliament, and will now progress to the committee stage. Bill C-304 is an act to ensure secure, adequate, accessible, and affordable housing for Canadians.

PHOTO: Wendy Pedersen, organizer with the Carnegie Community Action Project, spoke last week at a demonstration outside the Pan Pacific Hotel, where the Union of British Columbia Municipalities was holding its annual convention. By Doug Shanks.

New public art aims to provoke

WestEnder
October 1, 2009

Love them or hate them, the laughing cast-bronze statues in Morton Park, near English Bay, have been attracting people in droves since they were unveiled last week.

The installation, called “A-Maze-in Laughter” (an English translation), depicts a series of laughing men sculpted in the image of Beijing-based artist Yue Minjun, a leading figure in China’s ‘Cynical Realism’ movement, which began in the 1990s. The movement grew out of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, in which emphasis on individual expression broke away from the dominant collective mindset of the era. The piece is making its Canadian debut as part of the Vancouver Biennale, a citywide public art exhibit that will feature Minjun’s work and those of 30 other artists until June 2011. The “A-Maze-in Laughter” exhibit will also serve as the site of the Biennale’s official launch on October 27.

“Art has been in collections, in museums — and museums are a great place for exhibition — but our public doesn’t necessarily have a real opportunity to engage and to really grasp what art does for our environment, and for an urban environment,” says Vancouver Biennale co-chair Sandra Garossino. “Bringing art into the urban environment is the mission of the Vancouver Biennale.”

Garossino hopes the Biennale will also help to communicate the importance of the arts in the wake of recent provincial-government cuts to gaming grants, which funded arts programs across B.C. “I think something that the public really doesn’t have any awareness of is just how little money goes into public arts funding,” she says. “The reality is that arts programming in British Columbia takes maybe 0.05 per cent of the budget... It’s pennies.”

While the Biennale does not rely as heavily on public funding for its operations as other organizations, Garossino says the Biennale is funded in part by a multi-year gaming grant. It is largely self-funded, and its programming staff have been working with Vancouver Park Board staff to install the art pieces in public spaces throughout the city.

As for the controversy that public art can attract, Garossino says it’s expected — and healthy. “This is how a city establishes its identity and how it provides for its citizens. There will always be controversy. But I have never once heard anyone argue that movies are a bad thing because some people make bad movies,” she says. “If there’s anything we lack in our communities, it’s that we’re too disengaged. We aren’t talking to each other enough. Art brings us together: we can argue about it, we can have good fights about it, we can love it, we can not like it. But it brings us together; it becomes a locus for public engagement.”

In addition to the exhibits, Vancouver Biennale staff are organizing a series of public art events, including an October 1 lecture on public art by Charles Jencks, an internationally acclaimed architectural theorist, and a group bike ride on October 4 to view the Biennale sculptures. More information can be found at VancouverBiennale.com.

PHOTO: Sandra Garossino, co-chair of the Vancouver Biennale, in front of the new art installation by English Bay. By Doug Shanks.

Downtown Ambassadors organizers refute human-rights complaint

WestEnder
October 1, 2009

The organization implicated in a human-rights complaint against the controversial Downtown Ambassadors program wants the complaint dismissed by the BC Human Rights Tribunal before its scheduled hearing next spring.

Charles Gauthier, executive director of the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association (DVBIA), which co-manages the Downtown Ambassadors program with private security firm Genesis Security, hopes the complaint will be dismissed before its first hearing in May 2010 because of what he calls a lack of documented evidence produced by the complainants, Pivot Legal Society, the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), and United Native Nations. Gauthier issued a media release claiming that Pivot and VANDU have “failed to disclose any documentary evidence to substantiate their complaint against the Downtown Ambassadors” following the September 18 deadline to disclose such evidence to the Human Rights Tribunal.

“I think it’s an abuse of the Tribunal process,” Gauthier says of the complaint. “I think it’s political in nature, and we said so in all our submissions to the Tribunal... I think it was politically motivated because Pivot did not want to see City dollars, taxpayer dollars, being used for the [Ambassadors] program. And I also think their other motive is they have a beef with the private security industry.”

The complaint was launched in July 2008 by Pivot and VANDU against the DVBIA and the now-defunct Project Civil City Program, a program led by former mayor Sam Sullivan’s NPA-dominated city council in the interest of reducing street disorder. The complaint called the activities and objectives of the Downtown Ambassadors program discriminatory, claiming that the policies of Project Civil City and the DVBIA, through the Ambassadors program, directly discriminate against drug-addicted and homeless populations in Vancouver by limiting their access to public space.

“We were literally blindsided by [those claims],” says Gauthier. “We have absolutely denied the allegations. We don’t deny anyone access to public space, and we’ve been very clear about that. The Ambassadors have no enforcement ability. If someone’s sleeping on the sidewalks or panhandling in an aggressive way, we have very clear guidelines in terms of how we deal with anyone in the public realm. And if anyone [says] anything differently, it’s not telling the truth.”

Laura Track, Pivot’s housing campaign lawyer leading the human-rights complaint, calls Gauthier’s criticism of Pivot’s lack of documentary evidence “ridiculous.” “I think it’s incredibly disingenuous for the [DVBIA] to try to make something of the fact that we haven’t disclosed documentary evidence,” she says. “They can’t have expected documentary evidence. What documentation would there be that we would have about a homeless person being removed from the front of a business?”

Track says what Pivot and VANDU allege has happened — that Downtown Ambassadors ask homeless and drug-addicted people to ‘move along’ from sidewalks in front of businesses — is incontestable. “The complaint is about the human rights of people who have no choice but to use public spaces like sidewalks and parks and streets to live their lives — to sit, to sleep, to rest, to socialize. Everything a homeless person does has to be done in the public sphere. Just by definition, they don’t have access to a private space of their own,” she says. “When businesses are allowed to dictate who can and can’t use public space like a sidewalk, and are empowered to move people from that space, we say that’s discrimination.”

Gauthier says it’s unreasonable for Downtown Ambassadors not to ask people to leave private property, such as the doorways of street-level businesses. “Our Ambassadors do have the ability and have authorization to ask people to leave private space under the B.C. Trespass Act,” he says. “But our first interaction with those people is always, Can we help you? Can we refer you to the shelters?”

Gauthier prides the DVBIA on playing a significant role in helping marginalized populations in the downtown core through partnerships with organizations such as Coast Foundation, which provides employment opportunities for people with mental illness; and United We Can, a Downtown Eastside recycling depot. “What Pivot has done has really strained the relationships with the partners that we have in the downtown community, in the social service area,” he says.

The BC Human Rights Tribunal hearing will take place in May and June 2010. While Gauthier hopes the hearing will be dismissed for lack of evidence before then, Track is not backing down. “For Mr. Gauthier to suggest that we are remiss in not providing any documentary evidence of what we allege ­— well, there’s no need for us to do that. The evidence is very clear that these removals happen,” she says. “We want the Human Rights Tribunal to look at the policies and practices of the Downtown Ambassadors and affirm that they are discriminatory, and have a discriminatory impact on groups protected by the human rights code.”

PHOTO: While one objective of the Downtown Ambassadors program is to help tourists find their way, critics say they're prohibiting homeless populations from full access to public space. By Doug Shanks.

MOVIE REVIEW: Whip It

WHIP IT
Starring Ellen Page, Marcia Gay Harden
Directed by Drew Barrymore
4 stars (out of 5)

Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut, based on the novel by Shauna Cross about women’s roller derby, is a riot — and may be the most fun PG-rated movie in years.

Whip It follows 17-year-old Bliss Cavendar (Ellen Page), the eldest daughter of a beauty-pageant-obsessed mother who escapes her small-town angst by joining the Hurl Scouts, a roller derby team in Austin, Texas.

Page is brilliant, and her talent finds its best home yet in an expertly written screenplay, bolstered by an all-star female comedic cast. Alia Shawkat (best known for her role as Maeby on Arrested Development) shines in a supporting role as Bliss’s bawdy best friend Pash, and Saturday Night Live’s Kristen Wiig injects love and light as Bliss’ s big-sisterly mentor on the derby team. Juliette Lewis’s turn as arch-nemesis rollergirl Iron Maven is deliciously mean and cougar-y, perfectly embodying the punk-rock viciousness endemic to the roller derby subculture.

Satisfyingly, the teen-angst storyline doesn’t tie up as neatly as other movies of this genre, instead favouring more nuanced territory that would have been stamped out by a less sensitive director and cast. The rise of roller derby has been begging to be documented on screen for years, and Barrymore perfectly captures the frenzied hipster fun of the sport without watering it down with saccharine “team spirit” clichés of other girl-athlete movies like Bend it Like Beckham or A League of Their Own. Whip It is a bright star amidst an otherwise problematic genre, and is a film parents can bring their daughters to and not feel embarrassed.

MOVIE REVIEW: Fame

FAME
Starring Naturi Naughton, Kay Panabaker, Asher Brook
Directed by Kevin Tancharoen
3 stars (out of 5)

Much like the starry-eyed students jockeying for a coveted spot at the New York Academy of Performing Arts, this millennial remake of Alan Parker’s Oscar-winning 1980 hit is ambitious. So ambitious, in fact, that it often stretches itself too thin across its multiple and shallow character arcs, its myriad attempts at grand philosophical discussions about the true meaning of fame, and its hamfisted lyrics that try too hard to drive home mom-friendly messages (literally belting out phrases like “Be yourself!” and “You can succeed!” is like motivational Mad Libs, which feels like a cheese grater to the ears).

The cast features a number of promising young actors, among them Naturi Naughton as Denise, a classical pianist whose newfound love of hip-hop puts her in conflict with her conservative parents. Trouble is, Naughton is 25 in real life, and was last seen on screen playing L’il Kim in a movie about the Notorious B.I.G., so her obvious maturity and real vocal talent put her at odds with the nervous ninth-grader that is Denise.

Such is the case for many of Naughton’s peers, but the teachers, like Megan Mullally as Fran, are infused with more authenticity, likely because they’re acting their age.

The strengths of this otherwise scattershot film lie in its impressive choreography and big-budget camerawork. But Fame’s true absurdity culminates at the graduation finale, most notably with a somewhat offensive and totally awkward Native American tribal-dance sequence. Viewers will be alternately cringing with embarrassment and dazzled by the vitality of youth — just like high school itself.

Communal house fights eviction threat

WestEnder
September 24, 2009

The big brown house at 1823 East 2nd Avenue, just off Commercial Drive, is full of life. The dozen fish in the backyard pond, the two cats who roam the grounds, the herb and vegetable garden on the balcony, and the eight tenants who live together in the house are the fruits of owner Tzvi Tal’s years of work creating what is lauded by neighbours as an East Vancouver hub for potluck dinners, musical performances, and community celebrations. Affectionately known as Tzvi’s Place, the house has been home to a rotating cast of artists, foster children, and students ever since Tal moved in 11 years ago. The house saw nearly 300 people pass through its door this month during the recent In the House Festival, during which the living room and back deck served as the performance site for tenant Ari Lazer’s play, The Book of Doorways.

Homes like Tzvi’s Place are a rare phenomenon in Vancouver these days, and the hundreds of people who have signed a petition in support of preserving the house in its current incarnation speak to widespread community support and a desire for houses like it to continue to flourish.

The petition to save Tzvi’s Place continues to circulate online (ThePetitionSite.com/1/To-Support-Tzvis-Place) and on the streets, with the aim of calling on the City of Vancouver to amend or change zoning bylaws that have threatened four of the house’s tenants, including Lazer, with eviction.

City of Vancouver building inspectors confronted Tal with a stop-work order on renovations to the house this summer following their discovery that it was originally zoned for 2.7 suites (Tal’s improvement of basement rooms, which currently house four tenants, was done without a City permit). By the end of August, Tal was starting to reach an agreement with former City of Vancouver deputy chief building official Ed Neufeld. But then Neufeld passed away suddenly over Labour Day weekend. Now, City licenses and inspections department director Will Johnston is picking up where Neufeld left off. “Essentially, there’s been some construction done on the building that was done without a permit, and they’ve also installed two new dwelling units into the building that they don’t have approval to do,” he says. “At this point in time, we’re willing to work with the owner to help them bring the building into compliance.”

Original orders from Neufeld instructed Tal to evict the four tenants living in the two ground-floor suites by September 30, but Johnston says he is now willing to grant an extension in order to give Tal time to bring the house up to compliance with building bylaws.

“It’s their job to enforce the bylaws, and the bylaws are there for very good reasons — to protect tenants like myself from bad landlords, to make sure everybody’s safe — and that’s all really important. But in certain situations like this one, strict adherence to those bylaws doesn’t serve anyone,” says Lazer, who rents a room on the ground floor of the house. “Asking us to essentially kick out four members of our house... would leave those people without anywhere to live, and leave the rest of the tenants in the house in a financially unsustainable position, essentially doubling the rent of the house. And city council is well aware that housing costs in Vancouver are among the highest in Canada, and so what we [seek] to do is find a way... to work with the City, to try and find a solution that [won’t] result in anyone losing their home.”

Tal hopes the situation will spur the City to review its zoning bylaws and explore a more nuanced approach when considering homes like his. “The whole 11 years that I’ve been here, it was this organic process of creating a comfortable living space for artists, for students, for kids in need, and for people who wanted to share this kind of communal living arrangement,” he says. “Not only have we created beautiful living spaces and affordable living spaces for artists and students, we also have kind of a unique property from the point of view that it really supports itself [environmentally]... If it seems like I violated some city bylaws, then maybe it’s time for the city councillors to take a look at those bylaws, because they really don’t serve the community.”

Activists voice Olympic concerns

WestEnder
September 24, 2009

With five months until the 2010 Olympics begin, negative discourse is on the rise in Vancouver, as critics organize public-education forums to draw attention to the potentially negative social impacts of the Games. It’s a trend that former University of Toronto sociology professor Helen Lenskyj says is typical of past Olympic host cities.

Lenskyj, who has authored three books criticizing the event’s history, visited Vancouver last week to kick off a fall lecture series on the Olympics at UBC’s Green College, organized by local Olympic critic Chris Shaw. In a phone interview with WE before her lecture on September 14, Lenskyj said that “very little” has changed since she was researching a book on the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, Australia.

“The situation that’s unfolding [in Vancouver] is so similar that it’s scary,” Lenskyj says. “I was in Sydney a few months before the Games, and I saw the same kinds of bylaws that were criminalizing poverty and homelessness, criminalizing things like posters and flyers that had an anti-Olympic or critical message about the Olympics.”

David Eby, of the BC Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA), is working to mitigate the negative effects of the 2010 Games through public education and engagement programs, such as a new legal-observer program that the BCCLA launched last week in partnership with the Pivot Legal Society, which will train volunteers to watch for human-rights violations by Olympic security personnel during Games time. The first training session took place on September 20. “I see our job as sending a strong message to the [International Olympic Committee] that it’s not business as usual in Vancouver for 2010 when it comes to their restrictions on free speech,” he says. “I firmly believe that Canada has a duty to set an example in protecting democratic dialogue around the Olympics, including protest, as an example for future Olympic cities, and our work will be a part of that.”

Eby will be speaking September 28 at SFU Harbour Centre’s Fletcher Challenge Theatre as part of a public lecture. Titled “The Right to the City: Civil Liberties and the 2010 Olympics,” the lecture will feature presentations from local Olympic critics and activists such as Harsha Walia, Matt Hern, David Dennis, Stefanie Ratjen, and others. “We wanted to have a venue for critical perspective on the policies that are going to be put in place,” says lecture organizer Am Johal, chair of Olympic watchdog group Impact on Communities Coalition. “Even though people at City Hall or the police say that rights will be protected, the reality is that there is an infringement that’s going to happen by virtue of hosting these Games, and so we want to make sure that there’s sufficient public exposure to what’s going on.”

RCMP Cpl. Bert Paquet, of the Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit (ISU), says the ISU has “no problems” with initiatives such as the BCCLA and Pivot’s legal-observer program, as long as the observers don’t interfere with other security measures. “Most of us have been police officers for years, and it is no different than doing police work in the eye of the public, as we do every hour of every day, so we definitely have no issues about legal observers observing our actions,” he says.

Cpl. Paquet added that increased interest in civil liberties issues as they pertain to the Games has been anticipated. “We expect that sideline discussions or groups are taking interest in not only what we do, but the Olympics and what they represent,” he says. “For us, we want it to be a peaceful celebration of sporting events, of great achievements and athletes’ performances... We’re also trying to balance legal rights and needs from different groups, as well as the communities that are implicated in the Games.”

Eby, however, is skeptical that the ISU is striking a legal balance that keeps the interests of citizens a priority. “Their emphasis has continually been on protecting the International Olympic Committee and the Olympic sponsors,” he says. “There has been very little discussion about protecting the members of the public in Vancouver who will be affected by the Games.”

Top picks for this year's VIFF

WestEnder
September 24, 2009


MY YEAR WITHOUT SEX
When a doctor’s orders prohibit Natalie from engaging for a year in any activity that causes unnecessary strain to her body, including sex, the Australian wife and mother is forced to experience her otherwise chaotic life at a slower, more measured pace than she’s used to. Writer-director Sarah Watt cleverly uses Natalie’s year of recovery to explore the intersections of sex, death, and the ties that bind. Sat., Oct. 10 at Empire Granville 7, 4 p.m.; Tues., Oct. 13 at Ridge Theatre, 7 p.m.

PRECIOUS: BASED ON THE NOVEL 'PUSH' BY SAPPHIRE
It’s Harlem in 1987, and Claireece ‘Precious’ Jones is pregnant for the second time by her father, treated like a slave by her mother, and on the verge of getting kicked out of high school. This monumental film — based on the novel by one-time Harlem teacher and poet, Sapphire — was the darling of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and also one of the most anticipated entries at TIFF, where it won the Audience Choice Award. There’s much to recommend in this transformative indictment of racial, sexual, and economic injustice. Wed., Oct. 7 at Empire Granville 7, 9:15 p.m.; Fri., Oct. 9, 2:30 p.m.

PROM NIGHT IN MISSISSIPPI
The very heart of the black-white divide in America lives in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, hometown of actor Morgan Freeman, who has been fighting an uphill battle to host the town’s first-ever integrated high school prom — in 2008. The documentary comes to life thanks to the voices of students who take on the community’s fear of (and desperate need for) change. A must-see for anyone who’s ever laid claim to the notion that racism is a thing of the past. Sun., Oct. 11 at Empire Granville 7, 6 p.m.; Tues., Oct. 13, 1:30 p.m.

THE RED ROOSTER
The anticipated follow-up to director Terry Miles’ 2008 VIFF hit When Life was Good, The Red Rooster explores the restlessness and recklessness of Terrance, a young writer who embarks on what he believes is a fishing trip in hopes of curing a creative dry spell. What results is a series of misadventures that spring from Terrance’s vain attempts to break through his jaded ways and feel something again. Fri., Oct. 9 at Empire Granville 7, 9:15 p.m.; Sat., Oct. 10, 4 p.m.

City Home Style: West Coast Style with Brent Comber

WestEnder
September 24, 2009

You are... Brent Comber, principal designer, Brent Comber Originals Inc.

You can find my work at... “Salt Tasting Room and Obakki’s flagship Vancouver store in Gastown, the lobby of Whistler’s Adara Hotel, the West Vancouver Recreation Centre, and BrentComber.com”

How would you describe your work? “I have a mix of Northern European [ancestry], so there’s lots of different influences from more of a Nordic aesthetic, meaning clean, clear interpretation of the material. I very much like the Asian sensibility of tranquility, calmness, and borrowing from the landscape as a whole.”

What are your influences? “I’m very proud of where I’m from — I’m fourth generation North Shore — and I wanted to convey that somehow in some work. It just happened that I was drawn to working with wood, I guess indirectly from my days of designing and building gardens. I found the message of using indigenous materials or indigenous wood strongly resonated with things that were important to me, like climate and geography, sense of place, and culture.”

How would you describe Vancouver’s design scene? “I feel it’s very much undiscovered, which is nice. Christian [Woo, opposite] and some other fellows are making a mark locally, but we’re not known for furniture or design [elsewhere], which is really a blessing in disguise, because Christian and some of these other, younger companies can really start honing their craft, understanding what they’re good at doing. Because it won’t be long when they have way more work than what they know what to do with!”

Has the recession affected your work? “What it’s done to me is I’ve stopped reading the news! But we just hired two more people, so we haven’t really felt the downturn at all. I don’t want it to sound arrogant or pompous or anything like that, but I think we have felt the downturn in the U.S. market, and we’re just more cognizant of not trying to over-extend ourselves as a business. But the appeal for our work is much greater now. We’re getting more exposure: in Tokyo, we’ve furnished the corporate offices in Switzerland for Yahoo!...”

What are you currently focusing on with your new work? “I’m moving more to art, as art takes [over] the functionality of my work. I’m still very drawn to telling stories about the material through my work, and there’s some large-scale art projects.”

BOOKS: Chronicles of a generation

WestEnder
September 24, 2009

It's noon in Toronto when Zoe Whittall picks up her cellphone, fumbling for the handset through what sounds like the detritus of a desk covered in paper. Her voice is tempered by a hushed, professional tone reserved for quiet office environments as she ducks out the door and into the hallway. Best not to disturb her coworkers with media calls in the middle of the day. After all, she’s only two weeks into her first full-time job in years.

Marking a departure from the usual writer’s patchwork cycle between day jobs and writing periods, the 33-year-old Whittall has just started as a staff writer at Quill & Quire magazine, an appropriately bookish environment for a rising literary star who has been turning heads on the Toronto scene since the release of her 2007 debut novel, Bottle Rocket Hearts, for which she was named best emerging author by weekly newspaper NOW. The book also earned a spot on the Globe and Mail’s list of the year’s best books. Last year, Whittall won the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Dayne Oglivie Grant for best emerging gay writer in Canada, and now, upon completing a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Guelph, Whittall has released her second novel, Holding Still for as Long as Possible, through Toronto’s House of Anansi Press.

Surprisingly, Whittall doesn’t seem to have let any of the acclaim go to her head. She’s refreshingly considerate and unselfishly kind, traits that hint at the origins of the compassionate approach she takes to her characters in Holding Still, an incisive and captivating love story of a transgendered man and two bisexual women living in Parkdale, a rapidly gentrifying neighbourhood in downtown Toronto. It’s rare to read Canadian fiction situated so squarely in the present, and rarer still to see a generation that’s not quite finished growing up captured so sturdily in print. Holding Still holds fast to a group of people defined by their transience and the anxieties — and anxiety disorders — of contemporary times.

Parts of the novel weave their way through the Toronto streets with Josh, a young paramedic whose character was inspired by ambulance ride-alongs and paramedic interviews that Whittall took part in as research. “It was fascinating — fascinating to be able to go into people’s houses and see how people live,” Whittall says of the experience. “It’s kind of an interesting way and a weird time to get to meet people in moments of crisis... I gained a lot of respect for the types of things [paramedics] deal with and the politics of the job. It was an interesting insight into someone I could absolutely never be.”

Whittall’s personal life also informed aspects of the characters in Holding Still, including her current girlfriend, who works as a paramedic, and Whittall’s own experience with mental illness, which influenced the shaping of the character Billy, a former teen pop star with a crippling anxiety disorder. “When I had my first panic attack, I had no idea what was happening; I thought I was having a stroke,” Whittall says. “I found there was a mix of wanting to hide it and be embarrassed about it... but then realizing that when I did talk about it with my friends, it’s so common. It’s such a prevalent disorder amongst my generation.”

“My generation” meditations aside (Whittall herself confesses she is uncomfortable with them), Holding Still holds an astonishingly astute mirror to a generation still struggling to define itself. A fine sophomore novel by one of Canada’s most promising young writers.

Zoe Whittall takes part in the Vancouver International Writers Festival, running October 18-25. Whittall will appear Friday, October 23, at the Mini Poetry Bash (Waterfront Theatre, 1 p.m.), and the Literary Cabaret (Performance Works, 8 p.m.). Info: WritersFest.bc.ca