Why I love Vancouver

Yep, it's spring already in this rainy city. Photo by Galit Mastai.

There are so many reasons to love Vancouver, but here are a few of them for those of you that need a pre-Olympics pick-me-up.

The weather

It's already springtime. One year I played tennis outside every week starting the last week of January. It's not uncommon to see our first flowers coming up in the middle of January. Yes, we'll have some shitty weather in February, and then it will rain until the end of April, but right now it's sunny. Here are some photos my friend Galit took recently in our Mt. Pleasant neighbourhood.

The neighbourhoods

Today, to enjoy the sun, we went over to Commercial Drive to grab some coffee and pastries for breakfast. I miss two things about Commercial after moving over to Mt. Pleasant last year: Italian cafes and Chinese grocers. I was once a denizen of Abruzzo, the best place to watch soccer in the city, and it feels very good to go back to order an Americano con leche para ir (the servers are always Spanish-speakers). We got our coffees, and while waiting were treated to a goal by Messi in Barca's match against Getafe.

Abruzzo, Magpie and Highlife, the Saturday trifecta. Sadly Magpie

closed down a couple of years ago.

From Abruzzo we wandered up to Fratelli's, an amazing Italian bakery at 2nd and Commercial. A spinach and feta brioche and chocolate croissant complimented the Italian coffee perfectly. From there we wandered back down the street, stopping at Highlife World Music to buy some records, a new offering in an excellent music store.

The bookstores

I've written before about Pulp Fiction, the best bookstore in the city, and I'd like to mention another. Bookstores, more often than not, accurately reflect the neighbourhood they are situated in. Like Pulp Fiction, like Little Sister's in the West End, the People's Co-op Bookstore on Commercial embodies this principle well. In addition to the standard fare, it also features local and Canadian writers, labour theory and queer fiction, and a great selection of magazines. Unfortunately they were out of Charles Demers' excellent Vancouver Special, a book I highly recommend to anyone with an eye on Vancouver's history and politics.

I tried to pick a good quote, but there are too many.

I almost never leave a bookstore without a book, so I apologize, PCB. I've been on a tear recently, and need to read the ones I already have.

It's home

On my way home from coffee, pastries and shopping, I stopped in at Tino's, my barber shop on Commercial. For $15, and about 12 minutes of my time, he gives me a perfect haircut with only the briefest of instructions. Here is a typical exchange:

Tino: A trim?

Me: Yep. Pretty short.

And that's it. Really. I'll be good for another couple of months, then when my hair's to shaggy again, over to Tino's I'll go.

Then I stopped in at Dollar Grocers for some Avalon milk and to say hi to Quoc (who asked for my autograph... guess I haven't been in in a while).

So, yah, the Olympics may suck for some folks who commute to downtown to work or need to take transit during the gold medal hockey game, and homelessness may still be a huge issue, and the Downtown Eastside may still feel like a warzone on occasion, and there are huge swaths of South Vancouver that deserve zero attention and gang warfare may spill over onto our streets, and it may rain for a month straight at times (for real, it did a few years ago), and there might not be many corporate headquarters and we may all dress in Gore-tex and it might be hard to find a slim-fit dress shirt...

But I sure love Vancouver.

Canadians support the death penalty?

I had no idea. Here's the article:

US, Britain and Canada Endorse Death Penalty

Most people in the United States, Britain and Canada support relying on the death penalty for homicide convictions, according to a poll by Angus Reid Public Opinion. 84 per cent of respondents in the U.S., 67 per cent in Britain, and 62 per cent in Canada share this view.

Since 1976, 1,193 people have been put to death in the United States, including five this year. More than a third of all executions have taken place in the state of Texas. Fifteen states and the District of Columbia do not engage in capital punishment.

Britain began a five-year moratorium on all death penalties from criminal convictions in 1965, and made the suspension permanent in 1969. Execution for any of five military offences—including "Serious Misconduct in Action" and "Obstructing Operations or Giving False Air Signals"—was repealed in 1998, though the last instance of its invocation occurred in 1942.

The last execution in Canada took place in 1962, and the country abolished the death penalty altogether in 1976.

Polling Data

Would you support punishing each of the following crimes with the death penalty? - Homicide (murder)

	CAN	USA	BRI
Yes	62%	84%	67%
No	29%	14%	23%
Not sure	10%	3%	10%

Source: Angus Reid Public Opinion
Methodology: Online interviews with 1,001 Canadian adults, 1,004 American adults, and 1,049 British adults, conducted from Aug. 13 to Aug. 16, 2009. Margin of error is 3.1 per cent.

Here's the complete poll.

There are some that question the validity of the methodology of online polling that Angus Reid undertake. I'm not completely convinced myself, but I haven't talked to anyone about it or looked into it very much.

Also in the poll:

44% of Canadians say that, to the best of their knowledge, crime rates in their country have increased on the last five years (though it's fewer than in the US and UK, at 56 and 59% respectively).

Typically, they're wrong. According to StatsCan, crime was down 5% in 2008 (latest years for which there are total numbers), and has been on a general decline since its peak in 1991. It rose slightly in 2003 but has declined steadily since. Not only that, but the severity of crime has followed the same trend.*

62% believe long prison sentences are the most powerful way to reduce crime.

Don't get too alarmed. 79% believe rehabilitation is an important part of crime prevention, and 88% believe the justice system should focus, above else, on preventing crime.

Bit of a mixed bag, I suppose.


*Homicides were one of the few violent crimes to increase in 2008, though they make up less than 1% of violent crime.

New Years resolutions - Mozart and my grandfather's cuff links.

I'm not sure I've ever made a New Year's resolution. N and I were discussing what we would like to do differently in the new year, and I came up with one idea:

I'm going to listen to more classical music.

I've largely stopped listening to most forms of music, though I'm not sure exactly why. It may be the demise of the cd; I don't like playing around with iTunes that much to make playlists, and find myself listening to the same thing, or I put iTunes on random and let it go.

This fall, though, we finally hooked up our record player. I've got a decent collection of records, mostly classic rock, and having a working record player is a treat. I also have a small but varied collection of classical: one or two records of each of the greats.

I remember Mozart blasting as my mom and I baked in the kitchen, or read in the living room. So, I've decided to listen to more classical music. So far I'm dong pretty good. I've played Beethoven's 6th a few times, and a mish-mash of Tchaikovsky. Mozart can wait.


I also want to buy a shirt with French cuffs. I have some cuff links that I inherited from my grandfather, and they're just sitting there in the brass box on my bedside table. I almost bought one while in Toronto, but at $150 it was a little pricey. I'll start looking.

Canadians think Stephen Harper is...

A whole raft of things, I'm sure, but "not doing a good job" is right up there. I just subscribed to the RSS feeds for the Angus Reid Global Monitor, a newsletter from the polling firm that deals with almost every political situation around. Here's something you might not have seen about Stephen Harper:

Rating for Harper Drops to 28% in Canada

Fewer Canadians are satisfied with the way their prime minister is handling his duties, according to a poll by Angus Reid Public Opinion. 28 per cent of respondents approve of the Stephen Harper’s performance, down four points since December.

And down six points from November. Something is hurting the Prime Minister, and I'm guessing it's not his foreign policy. An Angus Reid poll from the first week of January shows only 19% of Canadians agreeing with Harper's decision to prorogue Parliament. 53% disagree, and 28% aren't sure.

Did Harper think his Conservative party can weather the storm, that Canadians don't really care whether Parliament is sitting or not? That this will be just a blip on the electoral landscape come September, and that by announcing the decision over the holidays and on a (figurative) Friday, that no one would really notice?

David Eaves thinks otherwise. He writes that the anti-Harper/prorogation Facebook group will help to extend the issue. At 200,000 members, the group continues to grow, and as David points out, may help to circumvent the traditional news cycle. This issue isn't going away; even if those 200,000 people don't get out and march, they're still using Facebook to raise awareness of the issue.


Seeing these numbers, the opposition may take a run at Harper when Parliament returns in March. With a 28% approval rating and only 19% in favour of prorogation, Harper looks weak right now. The only question is whether the opposition parties feel strong enough to challenge him at the ballot box.

Review: Geist magazine Fall 2009

I bought the Fall issue of Geist magazine a short while ago, forgot about it, then picked it up to read on the bus the other day. I am very impressed. In short, it's a brilliant collection of news, features, interesting tidbits, and short fiction, not unlike Harper's. Alberto Manguel has a good piece on Dante and torture, Robert Everett-Green of the Globe tries to transpose Iraqi deaths to Toronto, there's some excellent travel stories, and a look at Western Sahara that kind of blew my mind.

Did you know that there is a 2700km rock and sand wall that runs the length of Western Sahara, separating Saharawis from Moroccan occupiers? Here's a map to help you out:

That squiggly line is the wall, labeled "Berm" in this drawing.
The dotted lines are international boundaries.

Morocco invaded in 1975, and has occupied parts of Western Sahara since. The UN brokered a ceasefire in 1991, and peacekeepers are still there. Marcello di Cintio's Wall of Shame (for some reason there's no link on the Geist site) is a truly wonderful piece of journalism. My friend Rob also wrote about the situation in this unfortunately titled but otherwise excellent article for the Angus Reid Global Monitor, Thinking Outside the Box in Western Sahara.

Also included in this issue is a compelling and informative photo-essay on the history of the Fraser Valley, Memory and the Valley. It's always interesting to read about where you live from a new perspective, and this piece does it brilliantly:

In the mem­ory of those whose fam­i­lies have lived here through the ensu­ing 350 gen­er­a­tions, the story that begins with Simon Fraser is one of loss: first there was small­pox, then the land was taken and their chil­dren seized. For the mil­lions of us who moved here after Fraser, the story is one of gain: trees the cir­cum­fer­ence of ten men, rich black soil, ocean views. Throughout the val­ley, these oppos­ing nar­ra­tives are writ­ten in the rocks and flow­ing in the river.

Stave Lake, reaching north into the Coast Mountains from the Fraser just west
of Mission, was logged then dammed in 1911.

Finally, there's an opinion piece by Stephen Henighan (also no link on the Geist site) calling on Canadians to not support our troops in Afghanistan because politicians have squelched debate by using the Support Our Troops slogan. This sloganeering is a symptom of a larger issue, the general lack of reasoned debate in this country. It's an interesting and valuable position that the author undermines by asserting that we shouldn't be in Afghanistan anyway, as any rational, informed person would conclude.

Just to be clear: We need more debate about Afghanistan, but any debate is a foregone conclusion? Well done. The author goes on to make the case (or fails to, rather), that without debate, we should resort to counter-slogans. So, the debate is closed and let's chant slogans? That's an odd place to end up at given the original position of the author.

So it's not all brilliant and insightful, but for the most part, Geist has me hooked. I paid for a year's subscription (a mere four issues, unfortunately), and I'm eagerly anticipating the next issue. It's a local magazine, published right here in Vancouver, and I'm proud to support our Canadian magazines, thank you very much.

Professor Peter Ladner

Ever wonder what Peter Ladner is up to these days? It recently came to my attention that he is teaching urban studies for a semester or two at SFU, for their notable Semester in Dialogue program:

The Undergraduate Semester in Dialogue addresses what we believe is the principal challenge for contemporary education: to inspire students with a sense of civic responsibility, encourage their passion to improve Canadian society, and develop innovative intellectual tools for effective problem solving. Each semester we develop an original and intensive learning experience that uses dialogue to focus student education on public issues.

This is from the SFU release from October:

Under the project title Planning Cities as if Food Matters, Ladner will teach in the spring 2010 Undergraduate Semester in Dialogue program Finding Space, Understanding Place: Redesigning our Region for Resilience.

He will also be researching and writing a book of the same name and participating in related workshops and dialogues.

It's probably a good fit for the former councilor and mayoral candidate, who championed community gardens as a councilor. Not as soft a landing as Larry Campbell, but a lot more clear than what Sam Sullivan is up to.

PS. I'm trying to upload a photo but my lovable laptop, aftera bout with sickness, is refusing to cooperate. I really wanted a photoshopped image of Mr. Ladner in a straw hat.

Bill Bennett heads up Municipal Election Task Force

I'm stealing from Paying Attention again. At the Union of British Columbia Municipalities convention this summer Gordon Campbell announced the formation of a task force examining civic election rules/laws. We currently have no restrictions on election spending, transparency, and so on. In a speech that offered little to anyone* and was largely bereft of substance, GC announced this task force as if it was a major policy move or something. Okay.

The other day the government announced the formation of the task force. Liberal MLA Bill Bennett (he of questionable judgment at the best of times) will co-chair with Harry Nyce, president of the UBCM. They are joined by two more Liberal MLAs, Donna Barnett from Cariboo-Chilcotin and Douglas Horne, Coquitlam-Burke Mountain, and Surrey Councillor Barbara Steele and Quesnel Mayor Mary Sjostrom, both vice-presidents at the UBCM.

Here is Paul Willcocks' take on it:

"The task force will have six members - three from the UBCM and three MLAs. All Liberals. No public interest representatives. No NDP MLAs, or independent Vicki Huntington. The fix appears to be in. Campbell has rejected any limits on corporate and union donations to provincial parties. Any recommendations on limits for municipal donations would be embarassing. Stacking the committee reduces the risk."

I'll have to take his word that the three UBCM officials are Liberals (his word is pretty solid, kids). This is ridiculous. No experienced experts from Elections BC or Elections Canada? No policy wonk professors? Nope, instead we get Bill Bennett. Our choice. He's one of us. What?

Thinly veiled racism? "You want someone who pays taxes and is concerned about how that money is spent."

Co-chair Bill Bennett is a horrible choice, given his chequered past (see link above). His campaign this spring was rocked by controversy, including the publication of the above ad, which pretty clearly asks East Kootenay residents to vote for him because he's white (his NDP opponent, Troy Sebastian, is a member of the Ktunaxa nation): "He's one of us... You want someone who pays taxes..." Um, who doesn't pay taxes, Bill? Do you mean Indians? They don't care about how money is spent, right, because they suck up government funds like nothin' else. Freeloaders...

This is the guy we have directing a body tasked with making ethical and policy decisions about election reform? Brutal.


*Usually he gives millions and millions to municipalities.

Your new BC NDP provincial executive

In the interests of transparency (because it's doubtful that this group will ever see the light of day on the BC NDP website), here is the full list of the new provincial executive, with my limited impression of each:

President: Moe Sihota - ex-NDP cabinet minister, businessman, pundit; wants to focus on our relationship with labour, environmentalists and ethnic communities.

Treasurer: Bob Smits (acclaimed) - tons of experience at a large credit union.

Vice Presidents:

Marianne Alto - been on the exec for a while (urged the need for institutional memory); stickler for details; knows our constitution well.
Scott Lunny - United Steelworkers; keen, friendly.
Heather Harrison - Langara professor; affable; been on the exec for a while.
Spencer Herbert, MLA - all-around great guy; stands up for the homeless and artists; sharp dresser extraordinaire.
Lorraine Shore - not a clue.
David Zirnhelt - another ex-cabinet minister; small businessman (sustainable wood products); inspires trust (in me, anyway); great white beard.

Members at Large:

Jennifer Burgess - not a clue.
Debbie Lawrence - ex-candidate; HEU; wears sparkles; great smile.
Troy Sebastian - another ex-candidate; principled; wants to expand our relationship with First Nations (his campaign used material translated into the language of his nation, Ktunaxa).

Vice President, Labour (appointed by "labour"):
Lynn Bueckert - BC Fed; smart, funny, competent.

Member at Large, Labour (appointed by "labour"):
Summer McFadyen - BC Fed; a friend.

How not to deal with an information security breach

Brought to you, of course, by our very own Liberal government. I just copied this straight from Paying Attention (see blog list on the right), who ganked it from Press Pass at the TC in Victoria, so you lazy types don't have to click through the link if you don't want to. It's amusing and scathing at the same time:

The Times Colonist runs a Sunday column called Press Pass, compiled mainly by the newspaper's press gallery reporters- currently Lindsay Kines and Rob Shaw - and legislative columnist Les Leyne. The reporters have broken all the stories on the government's bungled response to a major privacy breach.

On Sunday, Press Pass added this background.

"SUGGESTED READING: With all the hoopla around those missing government files, perhaps it's worth brushing up on the fundamentals. What's supposed to happen when government learns of a major privacy breach?

According to the Key Steps in Responding to Privacy Breaches guide, written by the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner in June 2008, there are four key steps. Let's contrast them with what happened in this case:

1. Contain the breach and notify privacy/security officials.

If, by that, you mean don't tell the senior bosses or ministers until the Public Affairs Bureau hears about it seven months later, then done and done.

2. Evaluate the risk of the breach.

Let's see. Employee under criminal investigation for fraud has swiped sensitive personal information that could be used for fraud ... we'll go with "high" risk.

3. Notify people "as soon as possible" to warn them their privacy has been compromised.

In this case, wait more than half a year before writing letters to the wrong people.

4. Prevent a future reoccurrence by investigating the cause of the breach.

Or, repeatedly claim ignorance about when you found out or what you knew and bolt from the legislature to enjoy a four-month winter break.

When should you follow these four steps? According to the guide: Immediately.

Maybe someone in government should read this thing."

Dune, the part two: politics and humanity

The first half of Dune has motored along. It's fast-paced, crisp, action-packed and completely intriguing. The Atreides are having a little trouble settling on their new home, the desert planet Arrakis. Everything is about the new planet: the desert, the weather, the Fremen, the worms. At the behest of the Emperor, they replaced their arch-enemies the Harkonnens as rulers of Arrakis, aka Dune, the source of the most valuable substance, spice, which allows for space-travel.

Betrayed by the Emperor, the Atreides are forced to flee, their forces defeated, the Duke captured by the evil Baron Harkonnen, only Jessica the beloved Bene Gesserit concubine, Paul the prodigy and a few loyal lieutenants surviving. They turn to the Fremen, the people of the desert, for help. Paul has been undergoing some changes with exposure to spice, able to absorb and compute infinite amounts of data and see infinite future possibilities.

The complexity of the later books is only hinted at so far. What is evident right away is the careful observation by the characters, the almost unimaginable ability to read people and situations, and the intrigue that accompanies every action. This is politics at its most intense at every level, from personal interactions between family members to galaxy-spanning plots. And everyone is so good at it. This, probably, is why I love the book so much. I want to be Paul Atreides, with the ability to read and process minutiae and predict actions based on the data. I want to be able to know what my opponents will do before they know it themselves. And I want to ride a sandworm.

The first idea addressed in the book is this: what defines our humanity? What separates us from animals? Paul, at the behest of his mother, undergoes a test administered by a Bene Gesserit, one of the school of specially trained female advisors. (and Jessica's superior and teacher at Bene Gesserit school). Holding a poisoned needle to his neck, she tells him that it is a gom jabbar:

"It kills only animals."
Pride overcame Paul's fear. "You dare to suggest a duke's son is an animal?" he demanded.
"Let us say I suggest that you may be human," she said.

She forces his hand into a box, saying she'll kill him if he removes it, telling him that animals will chew off their legs to escape a trap:

"A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he may kill the trapper and remove the threat to his kind."

His hand tingles, then itches, then burns, so much so that he imagines it crispy and blackened. Overcome with the intensity, the Bene Gesserit halts the test, exclaiming that no woman has ever endured so much (and internally wondering if he might be the Kwisatz Haderach, the chosen one).

Apparently the test sets humans free, to fully think, not reliant on machines as they once were:

"The Great Revolt took away a crutch," she said. "It forced human minds to develop. Schools were started to train human talents."
"Bene Gesserit schools?"
She nodded. "We have two chief survivors of those ancient schools: the Bene Gesserit and the Spacing Guild. The Guild, so we think, emphasizes almost pure mathematics. Bene Gesserit performs another function."
"Politics," he said.

Politics, indeed.



Future post ideas:

Spice as oil, the jihad of the Fremen, and the worms.
David Lynch's movie adaptation.
The Guild and the Bene Gesserit: gendered power-play to the nth degree.