Raise a Shout for the Wild – Feb. 10 in Mission, BC

Salmon survey volunteer Tyler Smart profiles a dead coho salmon for the camera. This one has been decomposing for a week or so already, probably after having spawned successfully.

Things are heating up in the battle to protect BC’s wild salmon. The Cohen Commission has revealed scientists being silenced, lawyers are exchanging barbs in Vancouver courtrooms, and deep divisions at the core of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans’ mandate are being brought into the limelight.

Through it all, BC’s irreplaceable wild salmon continue to perform the miracles they have carried through the generations for millennia, connecting the oceans with the rivers by cycling nutrients from the one to the other. Today, as we all know, they face a gauntlet of threats to their existence – from the run-off from our roadways, to the foreign-owned fish farms that have proliferated on BC’s fragile coastline.

Everyday, we reap the benefits of Fraser River wild salmon, from the fertility of the Fraser’s alluvial soils to the height and girth of BC’s famous Douglas Fir and Cedar trees that sustain a forestry industry that is the bedrock of so many of BC’s communities and still a cornerstone of our economy.

In celebration of all that wild salmon bring to the people of this province – not to mention to the eagles, bears, wolves, wild medicines, and other life-forms that depend on the health of our forests and our rivers – YOU are invited to a night of music and dance in central Mission. Abbotsford’s own Harma White – big supporters of wild salmon conservation in their own right – together with East Vancouver’s Mathieu Lavigne and Mission’s Nitya St. Laurent will play their tunes for the benefit of all. Mission’s Grab-a-Java coffeehouse – owned by the co-founder of Abbotsford’s Ravine Park Salmon Hatchery Dave Perritt – will provide refreshments, including Cafe Femenino fair trade coffee.

Join members of the Ravine Park Crew, some of Abbotsford’s own Stoney Creek Salmon Stalkers, the McLennan Watershed Alliance, and the Fraser RiverKeepers as we fundraise for groups fighting for the survival of our wild salmon against the pressures of industry, commerce, and no-holds barred trade. Monies raised will go to Alexandra Morton and the hardy warriors at Salmon are Sacred who have been pulling out all the stops in keeping the heat on the DFO, and the Fraser RiverKeepers who are inspiring a generation of RiverWatchers across the Fraser River Watershed.

Admission is only $10. We’ll see you there! – Let’s see if we can’t raise $3 000! Event details are below.

First, more information on the saga of the Cohen Commission’s inquiry into the disappearance of millions of sockeye salmon in 2010 can be found at Alexandra’s weblog: www.alexandradramorton.typepad.com. We also encourage you to visit www.salmonaresacred.com, as well as www.fraserriverkeeper.ca for more information on those organizations and their respective campaigns and efforts toward the sustainability of this watershed.

Please pass this notice far and wide to your friends and family.

Location: The Playhouse – 33100 10th Avenue, Mission (corner of 10th & Taulbut)

Venue: ~ 1600 square foot dance hall in central Mission. Plenty of parking available. Transit will get you to the event (www.valleymax.com) but unfortunately the last runs for the evening are around 9:30 p.m. so you would need a carpool away.

Time: 7:00 p.m. – 11:00 p.m.

Contact: e-mail danv@inbox.com – a flat $10, but there are no guarantees there’ll be any left at the door – get them now!

Current UFV students run over by a bus?

Having lived in the community of Abbotsford for some 23 years, I feel as if I’ve started to get an understanding of it. On a smaller scale, I actually lived in the Clearbrook part of Matsqui for all of those years, starting to spend a lot of time in the central and Abbotsford side from 2006 on when I began attending University of the Fraser Valley. If this is a little complicated, I’ll explain by just reiterating that Abbotsford/Sumas which I understand to have been the more eastern and southern part of what is now Abbotsford merged with Matsqui/Clearbrook which comprised the more western and northern part of the city, some years ago. Indeed, the two became so interlinked as they expanded that to keep them separate would have frankly been silly.

Today, around a year from completing my time at UFV, I’ve been involved to varying degrees with planning the design of the city by attending Transportation Open houses, participating as a citizen in Community Planning sessions, advocating by demonstrating public support for a transit link between Abbotsford and Chilliwack, and helping to orchestrate the U-PASS campaign (which implemented a Student Union backed mandatory public transit pass for all UFV students).

Of late, I’ve had doubt about the justice of such a pass. The amount of money the pass costs each semester is trivial – $40, especially when you consider that not only does the pass cover transit access in Chilliwack and Mission as well as Abbotsford, but also covers major public recreational facilities in each of those cities, as well as numerous discounts generally in the 10-20% range at business throughout the region. I’d wager that as a result of the program, young people of university age in the eastern Fraser Valley are healthier, fitter, and financially better-off, and I’d also wager that our air-shed is cleaner than it would have been.

My doubts over the wisdom of the policy stem from a couple of areas. One is that I suspect that most students at UFV aren’t even aware of the many realized and potential benefits that the program provides to them, and for programs such as this to be truly effective, I believe it’s critical that participants are aware and cognizant of the program’s benefits, or they will be lulled into complacency instead of becoming the alert, aware, and informed guardians of a just and wise society that they should be.

Secondly, the mandatory nature of the pass is a critical flaw in the policy. Were the pass not mandatory and universal it wouldn’t work, but this mandatory nature represents a top-down dictate of what is best for people, depriving them of choice, discussion, and the need to think critically about issues which are directly related to issues of personal liberty at higher levels. A society where people are told how to function, what is best, how they will use their money, and where their biggest personal choices revolve around which products they will consume rather than how they are governed, is a society that strikes me as very vulnerable in many respects to abuse of power by those in power.

I anticipate a response to this argument to be that the students themselves approved this policy by a strong 60% plus majority. This is potentially a very good thing – if their votes were given on the basis of critical thinking rather than on social pressures – as I am afraid may have played out to a larger degree than many are acknowledging in the referendum of 2009. Further, today’s students who are subject to the levy are not the same students who voted to approve it – and by what principle do the students of the Fall 2010 semester deprive the students of today their say? One solid counter-argument is that it would not take much for some particularly concerned student to gather a group to mount a campaign for a referendum to remove the U-PASS to occur. Yet, such a campaign would likely be time-consuming and effort-intensive, and I’ve yet to meet the student who might be forward-thinking and altruistic enough to mount a campaign which would consume significant portions of their time and energy, while possibly only benefiting future classes of students.

I’d not intended to write on this subject today. Rather, I’d intended to work towards a discussion of my frustration with the City of Abbotsford’s foot-dragging in relation to upgrading its transit exchange system. That, I suppose, is a discussion for another day. For now, I’d appreciate your thoughts and input on the U-PASS issue. I’ll remind you that you’re able to post a comment personally or anonymously, and I also welcome personal e-mails to have a discussion that way.

I’ll just close by saying that yes, I was part of the team that campaigned in favour of the pass – and I continue to be of the opinion that the program is excellent policy with potential to be even better with continued advocacy towards the operation and structure of the transit system, but that I do admit that there my be bigger-picture issues here which I and the others who campaigned for this policy may have over-looked in our zeal to create a city that is less vehicle-dependent and less damaging to the environment…

Wrapping up with a challenge

Since my December 14 post in which I expressed my “disenchantment” with the way we’ve allowed the financial system to work on our behalf to not only take our power away but to mutilate the environment at the same time, I’ve not written much. I’ve begun a couple of posts only to be called away by more urgent tasks. Since starting this web-log I think three years ago, in a bald-faced emulation of barefoot poetry (who writes far more arresting material than I ever will), I’ve put out quite large volume of posts on a wide variety of topics, but never achieving the level of back-and-forth with readers that I’d hoped for. Lately, my posting volume had dropped off, primarily because I came to feel that the topics on which I was writing were not very suitable to the short, punctuated, concise weblog format, as well as the aforementioned low level of reader response. To those who read regularly, I apologize. I don’t really expect this to change. I don’t feel anything useful is necessarily being accomplished by posting here anymore, and so I’ll post only infrequently from now on.

At this point, I’m nearly 100% positive that Thoreau had something wonderfully expressive to say about the subject of tailoring one’s material to one’s audience and the distastefulness of such. I’m not able to recall it off the top of my head. If you are able, and I’ll rely on you to police yourself on this one, well, when I hike the Appalachian Trail, YOU are invited to come and to frequent Thoreau’s old haunts with me at the terminus of the hike (should a northward direction be chosen).

Exhiliration….

Not a Party

I might be making a colossal mistake.

But I want you to know that I’m making it. I want everyone to know I’m making it. I’m not embarrassed to be, but I am ashamed to have to make it.

This is starting to sound a little like my mum’s favorite adage about the flea: If you’ve got it, you don’t have it. If you don’t, you do. I wish I did have him, because then I wouldn’t, but now that I don’t, I do.

Ok, not quite that complicated. But made comparable, my dilemma might go something like, If we had, I wouldn’t have to. Or if we hadn’t, I would. But now that we haven’t, I must, for if we had, I mustn’t. Or something like that. I’m confused…

The point of this is to say, as I hope you’ve figured out by now, is that I’m not investing in gold, silver, stocks, bonds, mortgages, derivatives, exchange-traded funds, real-estate income trusts, options, IPO’s, futures, mortgage-backed derivatives, or much of anything of that ilk. It’s all poppycock and tommmyrot, fiddlesticks and balderdash, chicanery and larceny, the whole works, I’ll be having none of it at this time.

Since the 2008 financial “crisis”, we’ve taken numerous measures to stimulate the economy, most of which have been inflationary, debt-burdening, and outright deceptive. Knowing the inflationary effect of the measures taken, many have piled into gold and silver stocks. I was advised approximately 3 years ago that getting into gold would be a smart move, and I considered it (not that had I had a lot of surplus cash sitting around for that sort of thing). Still, my advisor was right – in gold, and perhaps even more-so, in silver, I’d have done well.

Historically, this society, going back who knows how far into medieval Europe, has considered gold and silver to be an ultimate repository of value, one that tends to hold value when the fiat currency loses it. Seems that, though I don’t see a reason for it being inevitable, managers of fiat currencies ALWAYS abuse them and end up destroying their value, and economic activity temporarily along with it, making possible a massive wealth transfer away from those with no buying power, and towards those with it.

So in this inflationary period, with metals and tangible assets increasing in value, you’d think those are the things I’d be buying instead of letting the value of my currency depreciate along with everybody else’s under higher taxation, increased food costs, and debilitating interest charges. But it’s not what I’ve done.

No, I’ve felt for some time now that the valuation of metals above their market value in manufacturing to be not only foolish, but dangerously destructive to our planet and moral fabric. When currencies devalue, the resultant and corresponding increase in the value of metals make it economically viable to go and get more of it, resulting in further destruction of wilderness (read, Fish Lake etc). At the same time, a system so rooted in cleverness systematically deprives the honest, hard-working common man of the value he builds with his labor.

Likewise the stock market. As Teddy Roosevelt remarked, it bears no inherent moral difference to gambling at the casino. Money is gained, but not earned. Disproportionate value is given over to those who specialize in manipulation and speculation, compared to those who labor honestly with their hands. Some get rich quick and easy, while many scrape out a living under high stress. (Then the rich claim to be generous and philanthropic too by giving away relative pittances. Absolute fortunes, relative pittances).

In this society, the working class has secured many things for itself. Decent wages, decent health-care access, better infrastructure, and enough leisure time to be able to enjoy moderately healthy family and social lives. Yet, I can’t help but strongly suspect, without being able to cite immediately reams of empirical evidence, that the standard of living has been regressing for decades now, as the average man works harder for less – and what is more, if we have managed to hang on to a large portion of that living standard, it has only been through the use of credit, which only delays our collective genius at allowing the rights our forefathers built to be frittered away.

For these reasons and more, I’ve been extremely reluctant to buy into this system that is bereft not only of a healthy amount of sanity and measures of restraint, but also of watchful, observant leaders to guard the hen-house, if you will.

I’d feel horrible knowing that my hard earned dollars were increasing demand for a habitat exploiting gold or silver mine either in the Skeena Watershed or in Brazil. My sense of satisfaction from being able to provide for my family and loved ones would be strongly chastened by the knowledge that the system I had used to profit was exploiting not only so many of our brethren who cannot speak for themselves, but so many members of our human family several times removed from us.

What accursed mixture of stupidity and apathy overcomes us that we cannot create a system that honestly assigns purchasing power to those who have worked for it, without constantly depreciating its value and thereby efficiently transferring a portion of it to an invisible minority?

An ISA-Driven Media Firestorm and the Political Implications

Is it as clear to anyone else as it is to me that the developments we are now seeing in terms of the arrival of foreign viruses amongst our wild salmon stocks are issues of free trade (DFO justified the import of Atlantic salmon eggs from Norway despite the absence of proper regulation on the basis that not doing so might potentially incur trade challenges by the World Trade Organization) and globalization (the transfer of foreign viruses and organisms would not have occurred without the trans-national nature of the fish farm industry and the trans-national consumption patterns that globalization has permitted)? And that these developments validate the many political activists who rallied in opposition to “forced trade” and globalization and that they not only justify but necessitate continued, nay, redoubled, political action on those fronts? Or does such talk distract?

Academic Vindication, Academic Failure

Being my community’s environmental conscience or my neighbor’s sustainability adjudicator are roles that I have no desire to play, but you have to face facts and I admit that my disapproval of lifestyle choices that negatively impact the natural environment around us seems to be extraordinarily easy to detect. In addition to my focus on “the environment” seeming to be written on my forehead, I get the sense that the extraordinary inconvenience of my own lifestyle choices needs a bit of ‘splaining now and again.

It’s very disappointing that the topics I study as I complete my B.A. rarely address my foremost concerns in life head-on. To date, they haven’t answered the question of whether Lomborg’s statistical claims in “The Skeptical Environmntalist” are valid. They haven’t answered the question of why people continue to consume significantly more resources than is sustainable on a global scale. They haven’t answered definitively the question of how valid the theory of anthropogenic climate change is, nor whether the urgency expressed by scientists over species and habitat loss is totally justified, nor whether militarily speaking, petro-abstinence is at all feasible, nor why in tar-nation we cling to an asinine, mathematically doomed monetary system which can have no other results than persistent inflation or high unemployment and ever-increasing taxation. And I can offer opinions based on some combination of common-sense and my own reading on each of these questions, and in fact, that is why I cycle and transit wherever and whenever I can, and why I don’t live in rural isolation and why I rarely consume and even more rarely purchase meat, and so on.

So now that my typically lengthy preamble is out of the way, I wanted to discuss how even though my studies haven’t dealt directly with many of those topics (with the exception of ecological footprint analysis in Geo 140), my readings on the side often do so. I picked up a copy of “Eco-City: Healthy Communities, Healthy Planet” edited by Mark Roseland from a hall-way stack of free books in my Geography department, and here at last is a book that address one of my foremost quandaries in life; that of how the place and style of residence we choose affects how much of the Earth’s surface we are directly responsible for consuming. I’ve long felt that the detached, relatively isolated style of living that seems to characterize the western life-style – the man, his chariot, and his castle mentality – is socially and environmentally untenable. The essay I’m reading from Dr. Bill Rees and Lyle Walker from the UBC School of Regional and Community Planning addresses at least the environmental part of that question, even if it does leave the social one up to personal conjecture.

What Rees and Walker show is that residents of high-rise and Walk-up apartments have an eco-footprint only 60-64% as big as that of those people living in single-detached homes, at only 0.9 hectares per person. This is due to the lower demands for transportation, energy, and land occupations that are a direct result of that life-style choice. That one sentence there is where the principle of smart-growth through density comes from.

See, a lot of this stuff is fairly obvious, almost the level of being intuitive. Yet I would bet that most of the people in my cities (Abby & Mission) live in single-detached homes with poor transit service, high heating costs, and inefficient land usage, and given that the tool of ecological footprint analysis that I just described shows that as of 1997 when this book was published, the average Canadian used 4.3 hectares, or equivalent to a consumption-demand of three planets if all the world’s population lived the same way, how can I go on living my life and not raise the occasional voice of dissent over this state of affairs?

A side-note here is that I presume that when and if I decide to go to Master’s school, and when and if I’m accepted, I would have the chance to examine those questions with which I am personally pre-occupied and which presumably my under-graduate studies ladder into, yet which even the under-graduate level of study doesn’t adequately address. This situation, in my view, underscores in marked fashion the absolutely critical importance of robust funding for our educational system – because if these crucial questions about the long-term sustainability of the land that we grow our food on aren’t answered until and if we choose to to study them at grad-school, what hope is there that we will transition to sustainable, steady-state economy as quickly as our society needs, to?

The Cost of Representation

My city is now one of the largest in British Columbia, only behind cities such as Victoria, Surrey, and of course, Vancouver. I was thinking about this fact as I dithered around Abbotsford in my car on my way from Mission this morning. I’ve got heaps of reading and writing to be doing, so I was looking for a cafe with the right feel for studying that was open on Thanksgiving. Legal Grounds was closed, as was Sumas Mountain and InterCity. Wired Monk McCallum was full, so I eventually ended up just going to my parent’s place.

In trying to select a place to study, it was so clear how much ground I was covering just in checking a few different places. Abbotsford sprawls out over the landscape, going on and on from Mt. Lehmann Road to the slopes of Sumas Mountain – some 12-14 km just to cover its urban area, let alone its expansive farmland. Now, council is even entertaining an application to deviate from its Official Community Plan and permit an estate-style high-income development all the way across Sumas Praire on Vedder Mountain that would be closer to Yarrow and Sardis than urban Abbotsford.

Of course, it’s gotten this way because what were once the districts of Matsqui (Clearbrook) and Abbotsford (Sumas) expanded outwards until they were virtually indistinguishable geographically, so a decision was made to make them one politically. I believe the process was by referendum, at the same time as which the people chose the name “Abbotsford” over “Matsqui” (that, by the way, is Strike One against this jurisdiction within which study in my books).

So those 268 words are the foundation for what I really want to talk about. (When I write long preambles like this before getting to the point I often get mental images of various writing instructors and coaches over the years grimacing and pursing their lips. The same applies to when my bracketed content is wordier than my actual content).

My point is that when Abbotsford and Matsqui united politically, what were two councils (of probably 7 people ‘aldermen’) suddenly became one of 9 people. It was probably done in the name of “efficient government” or some other euphemism for the elimination of oversight. I don’t know about you, but I distrust this notion that 9 people can govern an area just as well as 14 can. Let me go on first by saying that I realize I’m opening myself to all kinds of criticism about sanctioning government largesse and stifling bureaucracy, and I do think there’s a lot of validity to those kind of claims. You don’t want to have an over-size government body that eats up all kinds of resources while taking nice pay-cheques. At the same time, Abbotsford is a great example of a city that grew up and out with no regard for rhyme nor reason, and the outcome, for better or for worse, is a city where everybody drives everywhere, valuable farmland is consumed for urban amenities, and our waterways are not places that salmon like to call home.

The other big concern than I have is the erosion of democracy that occurs when less people represent a larger area. In this case, I refer to the cost of getting elected to that council or school board position. To accomplish that, you need to let the citizenry know that you are running, which means you need to market yourself with mailings and oodles of signage. Those things are expensive, and the more people you represent in your jurisdiction, the more expensive it is going to be. Now, by all appearances, you have a situation where it has become prohibitively expensive to run for political office to all but moderately to exorbitantly wealthy businessmen, or to those would-be candidates without the backing of a patron sponsor.

It all plays into the theme that “money talks, so let me pose to you a question: Are you comfortable living inside a democratic structure in which all the shots are called by those who have demonstrated proficiency at earning money, or are other skills and abilities important to you?

Recommendations from a user (transit that is)

I ride Abbotsford and Mission’s public transit system almost daily and have used it extensively since 2006. During this time, I’ve noticed flaws in the system that some simple policy changes would correct.

First, when is the last time that while crossing town you shut down your car while en-route and spent five minutes kicking rocks, playing hacky-sack, or chatting with passersby? Never? I thought not. Might I suggest that when the buses stop at the Bourquin exchange and sit there idly for sometimes as much 7-10 minutes, that this might be an annoyance that deters people from using the system? It’s time to deal with this massive inefficiency by having buses sit down for a “rest” at the end of their route – not in the middle.

Secondly, to permit a car-free lifestyle, inter-regional connections are paramount, but right now you can’t even get to Chilliwack, and can’t get to Aldergrove after 5:30. I know our council has passed motions to focus on local improvements, but when there is no service at all to an area at a given time, I think that takes priority.

Third, transit exchanges are busy places where people spend a great deal of time waiting – yet the exchange has no amenities to at least make these annoying and frustrating waits tolerable. Let’s use policy measures to encourage commercial zoning along the transit exchanges so that people can sit down, read the paper, and enjoy a drink or snack while they wait.

Fourth, though Abbotsford is a quiet, laid-back community, life doesn’t end here after 10 o’clock like the buses do. In Vancouver, Surrey, or Kelowna I could be secure in the knowledge that if I was out until mid-night, there would still be options for me to get home. In Abbotsford, I would be calling a cab.. It’s time that we implemented some late evening service until at least midnight – at least on Fridays on Saturdays.

Lastly, there should have been service to YXX fifteen years ago – there is hardly a more logical place to send public transit to since it would save people the trouble and cost of leaving their cars at the airport. Why is it that as a community we sometimes insist on defying logic even when it stares us in the face?

Abbotsford citizens are recognizing that they no longer live in a small farm community, but a city fast expanding its footprint into its farmland and its remaining forests. Municipal candidates who recognize that mass transportation will be an integral strategy if we want to both protect our wild spaces and cope with the growth that we are experiencing will have my support come November.

Up, Up, and Away – Bank on It

I’m seeing a trend here.

Not long ago, the Bank of Montreal vacated its building in Downtown Abbotsford, which I suppose was quite understandable considering that it had just built a large multi-story building at the corner of Bourquin & South Fraser Way. Now I come across this story about BMO also vacating its location in Downtown Chilliwack, just as it did in Abbotsford.

Only a few years ago, a ScotiaBank branch still occupied a building at the corner of Montrose and Essendene, but the building now sits empty. Because I use a local credit union, not a big bank, I’ve been able to use the Downtown Prospera Branch many times to get cash to go to the Farmer’s Market, for instance – but now, to add insult to injury, I found out that the Prospera branch is uprooting itself and moving to Sumas Way – leaving the only financial institution still located Downtown as the RBC branch.

I see all of this as evidence of the hollowing out of local Downtowns, as banks and credit unions choose to locate where the money is – and apparently, that’s along the big modern shopping centres with parking lots surounding four lanes of traffic – not in the historic centres of our communities.

In the place of the old BMO in Abbotsford is now a Roasted Grape cafe/fine diner, which is certainly more aesthetically appealing than a bank, so if the financial institutions can be replaced by attractive restaurants or other retail outlets, then I suppose that’s not a bad thing. Still, banking is a necessary functions for many people, and like Chilliwack’s Mayor Gaetz, I’m concerned about the absence of any banking centres in our cultural and historical centres – which still have their finger on the pulse of our communities.

The other interesting story going on here is Mayor Gaetz being quoted as saying that, “That’s the nature of development – we can’t control where it goes.” This is a concept that still confounds a lot of people; the concept of community structure being completely market-driven. Many people like to think that councils exert more control over development than they actually do. In reality, other than set zoning policy, and approving or denying piece-by-piece amendments to the Official Community Plan, councils can’t actually do very much to control business location – business will choose to locate where it feels it can make the most money, and there’s generally not very much that council can do about it.

So as our banks and credit unions keep lifting off and re-locating like arco’s in SimCity trying to find new world’s, my question to you is, how do you think this will affect our Downtowns? For me personally, it’s a bummer because I now have no way of getting cash without paying fees Downtown, but do YOU think this will be a net benefit, or a loss to our communities?

Wired on SmartGrowth

I’m sitting here at GoGo Beans in Abbotsford at the shop’s new location, right across from City Hall; my first time here since it moved around the corner from being adjacent to the Booster Juice and Flying Wedge Pizza. That old location as one occupant of the Shopper’s Drug Mart strip-mall, the story goes, was intended to be a vibrant, mixed-use development complete with residential spaces above the commercial spaces. That vision never happened due to some combination of economic factors and City Hall shenanigans, and the tenants of the new strip mall had to settle for a very different type of commercial experience than they had anticipated. For GoGo Beans, it didn’t work out, and they up and left, moving to a South Fraser Way street-front location under Town Centre Tower.

Right in front of the store is a bus stop serviced by the #1 & 2 Go-Lines, as well as the 17 Townline and the 21 Aldergrove. With some 17 or so stories of housing units above it which are now withing walking distance of the library, City Hall, Starbucks, Safeway, Shopper’s Drug Mart, Kin’s (a produce market), a cafe, a pizza store, and an up-scale restaurant (Original Joe’s), this cafe defines smart growth – even more-so than the new Wired Monk does over on McCallum.

I mention my intent of sitting down and writing a blog while I’m here, and a conversation with the barista ensues. He’s real friendly, and we joke about the enormity of his tip jar. He’s a travelling artist type, not one to let the grass grow under his feet, who laughs and jokes with all the customers. I expect the friendly atmosphere here, not to mention the high quality of coffee, will make this establishment a popular feature in Abbotsford. I, for one, will visit often as I ride transit from my parent’s place up on Blueridge to Downtown Abby, UFV, & Mission. In fact, I’m finishing this blog while riding the #31 route to Abbotsford to attend the Saturday morning Farmer’s Market – which, in my opinion, is the best thing to happen to Abbotsford since I’ve lived in the area, which is 22 years!

A Voice Emerges…

For two August months, I’ve cycled the Fraser Basin with Michelle Nickerson so that I could get to know my watershed while supporting legislation to move fish farms onto land and raising awareness about today’s Wild Salmon Rally at the Art Gallery in Vancouver.

Michelle arrived in Vancouver a couple of days ago, and was interviewed several times, and I wanted to feature the clip of her interview because she says some really, really, good things; in particular, “if we continue to treat our fish as resources to be farmed, then we are going to lose our fish and be a lesser people for it.” Powerful.

Here is the link:

Also, a link to an earlier piece that first aired on CKPG around the beginning of August: http://www.ckpg.com/news/15437-relay-brings-attention-video.html

Jack

Canada’s Jack in one of his best moments: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jeNdGnVWYg&feature=related

Rest in peace Jack. Thank-you for your commitment, leadership, tenacity, humility, and courage. You were one of Canada’s best, and we will ensure your legacy lives on.

Two Weeks Cycling the Fraser

I’ve just finished writing up an account of a period of two weeks that I spent on a bicycle touring the Fraser River Watershed, from August 5 to August 18, riding with is technically termed “The Ripple Relay”, which so far has consisted of myself and fellow Sustainable Living Leadership Program grad Michelle Nickerson cycling this watershed for the last two August months, joined intermittently by other bike and/or watershed enthusiasts.

We work under the auspices of the Fraser River Ripple Effect Relay and Fundraiser Society, also, like the Relay, Michelle’s brain-child after she emerged from the Fraser canyon after SLLP 2009. Generally speaking, though we have a formal constitution and group description posted on the web-site (www.ripplerelay.ca), in my own words, I would say that I have always seen the strength of this organization contained in one short phrase: “The power of motion.”

It’s closely related to athleticism. In a way, it is athleticism. Both Michelle and I have athletic backgrounds. Much of our early years were spent doing sports. Speaking for myself, I don’t think I really thought about anything else (ok, I counted wild birds) until about Grade 11, when I grew interested in botany and native plants, and spent much time wandering local parks and green-ways.

But neither of us “made it to the big time” in the world of athletics. Michelle at least swam at the university level; by the time that Gr. 12 came around, my athletic involvement was almost purely recreational. At some point I lost interest and focus in it, and that was that. What I mean to say is we both understand athletic values; that is something that we bring to the table. Some people bring innate speaking abilities; some bring a talent for theatre; some bring a knack for building group cohesion. We bring, among other things, an ability to move our bodies with some skill, and so doing an endurance event highlighting the Fraser River jumped out at us as something that held a lot of potential.

A month ago I wasn’t sure that I was going to ride this year for a variety of reasons. To make a long story short, I did end up joining Michelle in Prince George after she’d ridden to there from Lumby over an 11 day period, and I rode with her for the next 13 days. (I had already done one day of the trip from Salmon Arm to Neskonlith Hall.)

When I left the ride on Thursday, Michelle had talked to countless people about the upcoming Wild Salmon Warrior Rally on August 30 at the Vancouver Art Gallery. This rally, though it won’t be something that Justice Cohen considers as evidence, is aimed at creating the groundswell of public support that will make an un-nuanced recommendation for swift, decisive action to protect wild salmon from fish farms and other threats both publicly palatable and politically acceptable – because we all know there is a subtle under-current of politics that runs behind the scenes at these sort of processes. I urge anyone reading this to be there – it’s important.

Michelle also put up posters anywhere she could until she ran out, and spent quite a bit of time asking questions and learning about fisheries management issues from the various people, mostly “fish people”, that we stayed with. We got to raft on the as yet fish-less Stellako River, meet folk-rock and social activist singer Rachelle van Zanten, connect with the 3rd Avenue Collective in Prince George, support local organic agricultural economic activity by getting supplies and lunch at the Vanderhoof Farm Market, meet cyclists travelling the Yellowhead corridor from Spain and Switzerland, and develop a tentative concept for next year called “Bike-lanes not Pipelines”, specifically aimed at improving cycling conditions and hence reducing oil dependency along the Yellowhead Corridor from Prince Rupert to Mount Robson – another example of a situation where Michelle and I, despite the occasional….difference of opinions….work together extremely well to develop concepts and ideas. In this case, I’d mused aloud the thought that if there were safe, separated bike lane along this corridor, a lot of cyclists would use them and a lot more people would turn to cycling, and then Michelle packaged that thought up with the “Bike-lanes, not Pipe-lines” catch-phrase. In the summertime at least, it’s not uncommon to meet cyclists along this highway, most destined for or coming from Anchorage, and a little bit of separation from the trucks that strike fear into every cyclist’s heart along this corridor would go a long way.

What do you think? Can our economy afford a shift away from trucking and car-dependency by building hundreds of kilometres of separated bike lanes? I’m writing this from a Blenz cafe at UBC, and I’ve just come from hearing Dr. Lawrence Frank describe the abundance of research emerging which shows very clearly that in places where people use public transit, let alone ride their bikes, people are much more likely to achieve the recommended levels of physical activity – thereby reducing the likelihood of chronic disease onset. (Nothing against Dr. Frank, because I think that a society that has the time and freedom to really look critically at itself is a wonderful thing, but this might just qualify as another one of these “duh” moments that people love to criticize academia for).
Perhaps the better question is whether our society, let alone our environment, can afford for this shift NOT to happen…

The Ripple Relay isn’t over. I will re-join in a couple days, and we will continue the fight to take back control over our watershed and it’s fish stocks. There is time for you to join this fight if you have not already, and an excellent way to do that would be come out and join salmon-people observing the Cohen Commission as it investigates fish farms from now until September 8.

In particular, be at the Art Gallery in Vancouver on August 30 from 12-4. Show your support for wild salmon. Bring a friend and a drum,(or even better, a friend with a drum), and remind our leaders of what they must already know intuitively – that we can have an economy without trashing our environment. Tell them we’re not going to buy the lie that our economy can’t function without ruining our environment any longer – and that the people of the Fraser River are going to start by marooning fish farms that destroy wild salmon.

Visit www.salmonaresacred.org, www.ripplerelay.ca, or www.cohencommission.ca for more information on any of these topics.

The SalmonPeople Are Here

In 2005, I went to the Fraser Valley Bald Eagle Festival without my family for the first time. I was in Grade 12, and owing to my still developing antipathy towards private automobiles, I didn’t have a licence and was able to hitch a ride with the then manager of the Mission Chamber of Commerce who I’d met at some environmentally-focused event.

That year, Peter Donaldson was part of the festival for the first time, performing his one man show “SalmonPeople” – the play that’s about the space that doesn’t exist between the words “Salmon” and “People”. It was the first time that I’d heard the word “SalmonPeople” coined, and I thought it was brilliant. Still, I interpreted it mainly in a historical concept as describing how deep and intertwined First Nation’s people’s relationship with the salmon has been (and remains, mostly).

Donaldson performed absolutely marvelously, drawing a standing ovation at the Clarke Theatre in Mission. He acted out the First Salmon Ceremony at Celilo Falls (now drowned by hydro-electricity) on the Columbia River. He drew every major watershed from California to Alaska along the Pacific Coast by hand as the clock ticked. He drew attention to the lunacy of measuring human progress by the changes in the stock markets. He mesmerized the audience. I can’t describe how much all the people at SilverCity (local movie theatre) missed out that night.

That night, I am proud to say that following the show, Peter grabbed me in a big bear hug & wrote on a poetry sequence he had given me, “Daniel – this world needs you to care for it with all of your being”. It was a bit of a, “Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is…..” kind of a moment. And of course I accept it.

I’ve only seen Peter once since that event, when I went to see him perform “EagleEye” at the X:aytem longhouse at the 2009 Bald Eagle Festival – another creative performance that tries to answer the question, “What is needed for human society to transition to a sane and sustainable way of living?”

In the ensuing years, my caring for my world has involved primarily working through the Ravine Park Salmonid Enhancement Society raising coho salmon for release, but also coordinating salmon spawning surveys on a local urban stream. It’s not really enough at all.

Then last May, I went on a Wild Salmon Paddle, on board the “Salmon are Sacred” canoe from Hope to Sydney. We walked, carried banners, and joined a march to the legislature buildings in Victora, where 5000+ people eventually gathered to demand that government take action to take legislative action to remove the fish farm threat to wild salmon.

The event had no direct tangible results in terms of law and policy. But it marked the coming together of the SalmonPeople from all corners; the First Nations peoples, fishermen, guides, StreamKeepers, biologists, naturalists, watershed stewards, environmentalists, farmers, and many others. Music, celebration, and speeches marked this rally, and the SalmonPeople emerged energized, not dismayed – all thanks to scientist Alexandra Morton and the Salmon are Sacred advocacy group who started the rally by walking down Vancouver Island’s coast for weeks on end.

Since then, SalmonPeople are everywhere, making headlines with a mass canoe journey finishing in False Creek, length of Fraser Watershed cycle trips, and in their own local communities working to restore waterways stream by stream. Headlines not for their own notoriety, but to say to their fellow citizens, “Look everyone, we have a problem and it’s time we changed our ways.”

The SalmonPeople are no longer a quaint historical entity. They are a living, pulsing, active, energetic political and cultural force saying, “We will do what it takes to preserve our salmon from the forces that threaten them”.

Because the SalmonPeople know that as go the salmon, so go the oceans, the rivers, the trees, the bears, the mayflies, and the people.

In science they call this a “keystone species.” Problem is, the importance of salmon in supporting the ecosystem & the biosphere is so obvious, why do we need science to tell us this?

Don’t we all know this already?

Swimming Deeper – 2011 Ripple Relay

Last August (2010) I rode as a member of the Wild Salmon Express as part of “The Ripple Effect”.

My then partner Michelle Nickerson and I along with 7 others along various points of the journey rode our bikes from the head-waters of the Fraser River near Mount Robson to the river’s mouth at Vancouver. 1500 individual kilometres for Michelle and I; 2700 in-total. 100+ of the Fraser Basin’s communities. 341 post-cards collected in support of M.P. Fin Donnelly’s Private Member’s Bill C-518 to regulate open-pen salmon farms to closed containment. Hundreds more blank post-cards handed out. Long-term connections made with 170 people through-out the Basin. 9 different articles about the goals for the trip in various community newspapers. $136 in donations raised towards the Fraser River Ripple Effect Relay and Fundraiser Society.

By travelling in self-propelled fashion, we demonstrated that a less consumptive, less oil-dependent society is possible. We may also have shifted the political yard-sticks in having had the opportunity to speak with Michael Ignatieff, former federal Liberal leader, about fish farms when in Yale, BC.

To accomplish this, Michelle and I dedicated a month of our lives and spent $1200 out of pocket to keep the trip going. Michelle sustained a long-term wrist injury when she hit an edge outside Vanderhoof, and we sustained another $4000 or so of costs that don’t immediately hit the balance sheet and some of which still haven’t in the form of vehicle mileage, bicycle mileage, and the opportunity cost of unemployment.

Now, the August of 2011 is nearly upon us, and a new Relay to build on last year’s successes is being organized. For various reasons, I will not personally be able to be as involved as I would like, but Michelle has committed to spending 35 days on her bicycle in the Fraser Basin, speaking and advocating on behalf of some worthy objectives. The first of these includes fixing the travesty that there is still no fish passage around the Wilsey Dam on the Shuswap River, a tributary of the Fraser, almost a century after its construction. She will also gather feedback from people across the Fraser Basin to bring back to the Cohen Commission proceedings at the end of August. Simultaneously, last year’s themes – “A unified watershed within a global economy”, and “People working in their watersheds for a sustainable future” continue to be over-riding themes of this event that Michelle, any riders that join, and I (to whatever extent I’m able) will continue to work towards a watershed-wide understanding of.

Ms. Nickerson is a wonderful person with incredible passion, strong vision, much potential, and with her finger on some of the hot-button issues that we need to address as a society. She is and will continue to be a key voice in the emergence of a culture that lives in tune with its natural supports. In spite of all this, I believe that this event needs to be better organized, and does not currently have a “narrative” that is quite strong enough to galvanize the level of support for a gentler economy that I think is needed. I also believe that it will develop this narrative and become better organized and that it will fulfill the enormous potential that Michelle and I see in it in future years.

Not long until this year’s incarnation of the “Ripple Relay” hits the road now. There is a humourous piece of artwork out there from Ray Troll with the caption, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” The woman needing a man part is entirely a subjective thing, but I do know that this is happening because getting on my bicycle is one of the best ways that I know to make some ripples for the Fraser’s fish, and that’s worth all the pedal-strokes in the world.

Me, Myself, and……You?

I manage my money with a local credit union, I purchase my gasoline from the Otter Co-operative, I bought my tent with my Mountain Equipment Co-operative membership, & bought a membership to the East End Food Co-op when I lived on Commercial Drive.

I purchase my veggies from the Abbotsford Farmer’s Market, and routinely patronize the smaller, neighbourhood stores & cafes, when I know I could sometimes get better prices by going to the mega-store.

Haven’t set foot with the intent of shopping in Walmart for years, and I’m less and less likely to shop at corporate chain-store entities such as Starbucks or Tim Horton’s.

Taken as a whole, I think it’s fairly easy to discern that I have a strong preference for structuring my activities as a consumer to favor outfits that have working together with people, not independently of them as a core principle. When I walk into a Starbucks, no matter how sweetly the barista is smiling at me, I see an environment where people remain almost exclusively immersed in their social circle, and don’t move beyond that to get to know strangers. I see the same offerings in every store, together with the same newspaper. Frequently, the system is so restrictive that the employees can’t or aren’t allowed to do even a small amount of cash back if you ask for that.

The principle of co-operative structures just make so much sense to me; that by pooling our efforts and resources, we’ll have more freedom to pursue the things that really matter. By sharing profits with members, a culture is created where-by people have each other’s backs and will pitch in to help out if needed.

Of course, co-operative structures have varying levels of profit-sharing, ranging from a cursory, “lip-gloss” level, to a more sincere level that really takes the idea seriously and essentially turns the organization into a not-for-profit enterprise.

I don’t think that co-ops by themselves are entities which will be able to function to adequately address issues such as perpetual inflation, higher taxation, increased costs of living, or out-of-control environmental degradation.

Yet, all of my instincts tell me that where I have the choice, opting to align myself with a entity that has co-operation instead of apathy, sharing instead of hoarding, at its roots is going to be a good thing.

Another Fish Rides the Bus!

As of yesterday, Abbotsford is ramping up it’s level of public transit service, implementing 11 700 hours of additional service and 5 new buses. This sounds like a lot. To put that number in perspective from one angle, right now the Fraser Valley has less than 0.5 service hours per person for the region, compared to five times that number in Metro Vancouver, and three times that number in two cities smaller than Abbotsford – Kamloops and Kelowna. (note that the .5 service hours/person number would probably be higher for Abby/Mission by itself, as Chilliwack is notoriously under-serviced from a transit perspective).

So these 11 700 hours will come in handy for sure. Primarily, they fill in gaps rather than create new services. Gaps such as no statutory holiday service, late service start-time and early service end-time on Sundays, confusing and ineffective service to the University of the Fraser Valley on evenings and Sunday, and poor, infrequent, and limited hour service to the new Regional Hospital and Cancer Centre. On that note, if you visit the hospital, it’s striking how glaringly transit access was completely neglected in the planning phases. The old hospital had 2 routes travelling past its front entrance and one around the back, making it relatively easy to access if you knew the routes pretty well. The new hospital, on the other hand, has one stop street-side, on the other side of a huge parking that is hazardous to navigate for an able-bodied person, let alone a hospital patient. On top of that, the service is on a half-hour frequency, which is totally inadequate for a high-traffic destination such as the hospital. Given the placement of the bus stop, if I was planning this transit service, I probably wouldn’t even bother to upgrade the service frequency, as that stop is almost useless anyway.

On that note, I do welcome any transit upgrades that materialize because they tend to benefit me personally, but I would strongly suggest that city council consider holding off on future funding increases. I never thought I would say that, given the frequency with which I make use of the system and how much money I save in so doing, but it’s clear to me the current design of the transit system is failing to live up to its potential, and is probably wasting taxpayer’s money.

I realize that not everyone thinks like I do. (see, all my posts have bombshells). In regards to transit, I kind of wish they would. When I was starting university and looking at ways to get to UFV in 2006, I looked at my options and saw that I could put a car on the road, get a bicycle, or try and use the bus system. I thought it would be ridiculous to put yet another vehicle onto Abbotsford’s streets and spew yet more pollutants into the atmosphere. In 2000, I’d cycled for 25-30 minutes one-way every single-school day, but this would be nearly twice as far and I wasn’t really up for that. (not until two or three years later did I get an actual road-bike and discover that I could do that distance in 35-40 minutes without much difficulty, and in 30 with a fast bike and good effort.) So even though the buses took 45-60 minutes to get me to UFV and even longer on the way back, I got used to using the buses.

Obviously, that was a fairly idealistic choice. Imagine though, if more people made choices according to idealism rather than sheer individualistic practicality? My continuing faith in the transit service stems from being convinced that if the rest of Abbotsford’s citizens chose to accept the temporary inconvenience of using transit, that before long we’d have crowded buses, and this would inject enough revenue into the system to more than pay for a fast, effective, and practical city-wise public transportation system.

Since those days, I’ve realized that it’s incredibly naive of me to ever expect people to take this approach en masse. It would take a level of abandonment of personal desires and concern for the whole that just isn’t something that we are even presented with as an option in our school systems. The HST debate is a classic example of how individualism, so often a noble and admirable characteristic, has the ability to turn into a destructive social force. People, including MLA van Dongen, justify this change to the tax structure, by remarking that it will benefit them personally, or in van Dongen’s case, how it will benefit one sector of the economy – agriculture. For example, sure Abbotsford is an agricultural economy and so the area might see disproportionate benefit from this tax policy. But if, as van Dongen does, you have to point to isolated benefits, isn’t that an admission that there will be no universal benefit? If there was, why wouldn’t you point that out instead of focusing on an individual benefit? Under a representative democracy like we have, van Dongen is doing the right thing only if he genuinely believes, based on consultation with his constituents, that the HST will bring an overall benefit to the Abbotsford-Clayburn area that he represents. But if he believes this, why only focus on agriculture?

In this discussion, it’s interesting to note that though elected representatives should represent the views of their constituents in the legislature and not necessarily their personal beliefs about the bigger picture, I believe that the constituents themselves are entirely free, and indeed, have a responsibility to, build on their beliefs about the bigger picture in their communication to their elected representative. I would also think that if the representative in question has doubts or personal misgivings about the vote he/she plans to bring to the legislature based on constituent feedback, he/she should consult extensively and tirelessly in coming to a decision. I would classify anything less as laziness, arrogance, or cowardice.

How does this relate to public transit? Before the city pours more money into building a transit system that is still used almost exclusively by people who have no other choice (ie. have no car/can’t bike), staff need to start communicating with citizens, holding community transportation open houses and doing significant marketing to help break the cultural deadlock against public transit by showing how its increased use can bring efficiencies in transportation costs, land-use space-savings, social benefits stemming from increased interaction, and many other benefits.

I believe that taken in sum, the benefits of public transit, of which I’ve mentioned only a fewcan significantly outweigh the costs.

But putting more resources into lumbering more mostly empty buses around the city in the desperate hope that a few more people will use them, and then designing the city in a way that isn’t conducive to transit use at all (as we see at the hospital) is just foolish, inane, and short-sighted.

Remember the old saying, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” (forget for a minute my customary revision, “and you feed him until the fish run out”)? Abbotsford needs to stop feeding its citizens for a day by giving them cheap, inefficient bus service. We need to start a dialog over whether we want to be a compact, efficient city that functions productively and cleanly by making transit (as well as cycling & walking) practical and cost-effective, or whether we want to continue to attract the class of citizen that feels that they’ve succeeded in life if they can create a private palace in the countryside where they don’t have to interact with anybody else ever unless they choose to do so.

If that achievement, which often excludes nature, wildlife, and the less fortunate, constitutes success in life, than give me the failure that means I can’t ignore the homeless person sitting on the street corner, or (what might be even worse) doesn’t enable me to think that I can deal with the problem simply by opening up my cheque-book. Give me the failure that allows me to see the occasional raccoon or possum at night, or hear a coyote howling at sunset.

I’ve been called worse things than un-ambitious…

Philosophy of Love

This was a neat advice column that I thought I’d re-post ’cause I found it so interesting. I think I line up a little more on the guy’s side of this one, but I can see it from both sides. That’s about the only comment I have at this point:
________________________________________________________________

What do lovers talk about when they talk about philosophy?
My boyfriend has posited a hypothetical that he says is just hypothetical but is driving me up the wall
By Cary Tennis

*

What do lovers talk about when they talk about philosophy?
Salon/Zach Trenholm

Dear Reader,

Sometimes I work very hard all day on a piece and even miss my deadline trying to get it right and still have a feeling I’m missing the boat and this is one of those times so please read this person’s very long but quite articulate letter carefully and provide her with the thoughtful dialogue she is seeking. I think I kind of get it but I also think in trying to entertain more than one possibility I have blurred the whole thing. –ct

Dear Cary,

The other day I was having a conversation with my boyfriend about the viability of lifelong love and he expressed the conviction that it is inevitable, even in a happy marriage, that at some point over a lifetime both people will meet someone else who inspires the thought: “Wow, I could have made it with this one — s/he has all of my current partner’s positive qualities and none of the negative ones.” When I asked him to elaborate, he said that he has talked to “a lot” of older people about this, and that they have universally reported having had at least one such experience at some point in their marriages. “Why would I be any different?” he asks. He also says that no one compares to me, and that he would discount a reaction of this type to another woman as being based on illusion, because the risk that the new person would turn out to be a disappointment is too great to justify discarding a relationship that is known to be good. After much discussion he stands firmly by his remarks.

I have a lot of thoughts about this. I have a lot of thoughts in general. But the reason I am a person who has a lot of thoughts is that I am a person who has a lot of feelings. I have intense feelings about things that other people seem to not even see, and I have to think about them in order to keep them from taking over. Like homeless people. I walk to work every day and see at least four homeless men on the way. I can give them a little money or buy them some breakfast, and then I know I have to keep going, and I do have a job that lets me work against systemic injustices, but every morning part of me wants to hit pause and yell around to the crowd: “Wait! Wait a minute everybody! There are people sleeping on the sidewalk in pools of urine! Not just one person, but one person every other block! What the heck?! What are we going to do about this? Someone sleeping on the street is an emergency! What is going on? Why are you just walking by? Are you all CRAZY?” And I know that it is not that they are individually crazy, it is that we are living in a sort of insane society, and that ignoring that insanity has become necessary in order to put one foot in front of the other every day. Every day can’t be a revolution. Except that secretly I think it can. Secretly I want it to be. Secretly I am trying to have my days be little revolutions.

* Continue reading

Other small things that I have intense emotions about: mean remarks about a person’s appearance, even (maybe especially?) when they are flippant and not in earnest; contempt for categories of things (like religion — I have a lot of friends that are contemptuous about religion. I am not religious myself, but it really bothers me to hear religious belief used as a proxy for ignorance and conservatism); remarks about “criminals” — usually in a way that suggests the “criminals” in question have ceased, upon conviction, being human.

Anyway, I think what all of these examples I have mentioned have in common is that they are essentially harmless affirmations or invocations of broader harmful truths. Like, there is nothing shockingly malicious about referring to “dumpy middle-aged women” as a group. But when a friend of mine used that phrase the other day I felt a simmering fury. And I know it was not because the comment was such a terrible infraction, but because it is true that physical appearance — especially when you are an American woman — is a very powerful determinate. And that over-emphasis on physical beauty causes suffering. I’ve seen it. I think it’s horrible and devaluing. My friend’s remark called that truth up for me, and called up my hatred of it.

I don’t usually indulge in the emotional reactions I have to these sorts of things. I understand the feelings I am having, I think they are legitimate, but I don’t invest in them when they come up inside me, and I don’t push them on others. If I gave them too much space I would not be able to function socially.

But sometimes, when it is someone I am intimate with, I do get caught up in them. This means that most of my loved ones have at some point been subjected to interrogation sessions prompted by their casual unthinking and seemingly meaningless comments or actions that I see as having, at their base, the unconscious adoption of a harmful truth. I don’t do it very often anymore because it makes people feel attacked and judged and I don’t want them to feel that way especially because that isn’t what’s motivating me when I dig in on some little thing that someone I love says — what’s motivating me is a feeling of vulnerability. I am scared to be in a family (family for me means anyone that I rely on for love and support) with someone who is comfortable with — or worse, perpetuating — harmful truths. And the more intimate the relationship, the more likely I am to feel alienated by words and deeds that reflect such comfort.

So, back to the thing my boyfriend said. When he said it, I felt like I was being dropped from the top of a 50-story building. I definitely don’t expect my life partner to be blind to the beauty, intelligence, humor, warmth or genius of other people, whether or not they fall within the right age and gender range to be sexual possibilities. I wouldn’t want that even if it were on offer. I want to be with someone who actively enjoys and appreciates other people. But I think there is a difference between appreciating the wonderful things about someone, and viewing that wonderfulness as a commodity with relative market value in one’s own personal economy. (And yes, there are other things about my boyfriend besides this one remark that make me hear his comment in this way — like he is extremely ambitious, hyper-aware of how others perceive him, has had a very privileged life, and is a huge flirt.) And I think that he’s right that there is an element of this in most relationships — but I don’t think that is evidence that it is “inevitable.” I think it is evidence of another one of those harmful truths — the harmful truth that we tend to view others in terms of what they can do for us. I agree that this is prevalent, perhaps even biologically ingrained, but that doesn’t make it good or right. And it doesn’t mean that I should just accept it as an unavoidable condition of any long-term romance — does it?

Is this making sense, Cary? I don’t want to be in a partnership where I have to survive daily head-to-heads with the rest of the female population, where the ever-present possibility of upgrade has any gravitational force, where other people who seem great have to in actuality be not so great in order for me to retain my place of prominence in my partner’s romantic imagination.

When I told my boyfriend that I didn’t think what he described was inevitable for me, he told me I am an “outlier” and that it is crazy to expect that your partner will never be tempted. But I don’t expect that. In fact, I sort of don’t care whether the thing he is talking about actually happens. I mean, I know it would hurt to find out my love is attracted to someone they have deemed superior to me, but I know I can’t control outcomes and that pain is always a part of intimacy, and I don’t want to waste emotional energy worrying about ways that pain could happen; I’d rather just work on loving and being loved. So, I’m not fretting about the possibility of him finding someone who strikes him as a missed opportunity, I’m fretting about whether I should be giving myself to someone who views people as opportunities to begin with. And I know that what I hope for is rare. I know most people never find it, or learn it themselves. But I can have the kind of life I want without a partner, and I’d rather be alone than with someone who doesn’t share my same intentions in love.

I want to know what you and your readers think — about my boyfriend’s comment, about my reaction, about any of what I have said. Sorry this is so long. I am struggling.

The Rambler

Dear Rambler,

I tend to think when lovers say they are talking about philosophy they are really talking about, Will you love me forever until the stars fall from the sky no matter what happens even if I grow a mustache?

Love is what lovers talk about when they talk about philosophy. How will you feel about me if I get a humpback like an old lady? Will you ditch me?

That’s what you are talking about, isn’t it?

In an ideal world he would apologize for bringing it up; he would admit that it was a silly and stupid conversation, and you would forgive him and that would be that except you would file it away as his secret weakness and every time a pretty woman in a great dress said something dazzling and faintly suggestive you would be a little short with him and he would wonder why, but then he would realize why.

I find your thinking admirable. I am drawn to think with you about these things. But as you say, you think so much because you feel so much. It is your feeling that is driving you to ask what the hell is going on in your boyfriend’s head.

Of course you are concerned. It sounds like he is trying to warn you that one day he is going to see some woman and make a calculation and dump you on the spot. So for him to say confidently that the calculation could never work out in her favor sounds hollow. How does he know, once he starts calculating, how the numbers will add up? And what is he to do if they don’t add up the way he expects? It is not enough, now that he has brought it up, for him to claim that he would not be swayed. We know that logical thought is no match for the passions.

But that is just the danger of talking about this. It can’t be decided or figured out. It was a bad choice. But part of its being a bad choice, and of his boneheaded insistence on a weak argument, may be that he is just a guy. Sometimes we have to let people be not quite so good as we wish they were in order that they can be who they are.

This I know: At times I am just a guy. World peace is important but sometimes I want to be just a guy on his way to a baseball game. And maybe he would like you to acknowledge that most people have this side, that we will walk by the Ferrari in the window and we will think about what it would be like to have one and if the opportunity ever arose … well, we think about things. But if we are wise we keep these thoughts to ourselves.

I admire you greatly. Your prose, your mind, your high ideals. I admire you. My advice would be to be careful around your boyfriend because he is indeed telling you something about the pressures and longings he feels, but he is also just being himself, and may just have been having a bad day. So if he could just apologize and the both of you could just back away slowly from the unprovable philosophical proposition, you’d be better off.

Selective Subsidization

Sent this write-up to the Abbotsford Today: today – they usually don’t hesitate to public the material I send in.

Abbotsford council employing selective long-term thinking

Our councillors here in Abbotsford are apparently entirely willing to throw taxpayers into a deficit so that we can have big-league hockey, but aren’t willing to show the small amount of leadership that it would take to potentially save taxpayers buckets of money by investing in a decent public transit system.

That’s what I read into the recent news that there are no immediate plans to fund a connecting bus route from Abbotsford to Chilliwack.

Abbotsford cannot profitably support a Chilliwack-Abbotsford connector which would save students the need for a student loan so that they can pay for both tuition and a private vehicle, but this city can’t support a professional hockey team either, yet our council is more than willing to subsidize professional hockey until we can support that.

I realize that Chilliwack needs to come on board to make this a viable enterprise, but what is stopping our councillors and mayor from approaching Chilliwack with a “hey, both our cities’ students, seniors, and workers need this. How can we make this happen?” approach, instead of using Chilliwack’s recalcitrance as a convenient excuse to hide behind?

My friends point out that today, it is actually easier to use public transit to get from Abbotsford to Seattle than it is to get to Chiliwack.

Council and mayor of Abbotsford, I ask you, what is more important – that our students can get to their classes in an affordable fashion enabling them to contribute to a productive economy, or that our citizens can sit and be distracted from the issues that really affect them while eating over-priced food? What is more important – that we have transportation systems that don’t worsen our over-polluted air, or that we create yet another drive-in destination, hastening the onset of congestion problems and more idling in so doing?

Don’t get me wrong – I have nothing against hockey as a sport. I’ve certainly been known to indulge in being a hockey fan myself (which those who know the younger me will label that an understatement). But it should remain a sport, not a business. Especially not a publicly operated business.

Public money is for providing essential services, not operating a business for the dubious benefit of a minority of citizens. It appears our leaders need to go back to Civics 101. I think it’s high time that we elected leaders with the experience, training, and financial know-how to manage the public purse.

Until the AESC debacle, I’d been under the impression that politicians were incapable of long-term thinking. Now, it’s clear they are capable of it – when it involves saddling taxpayers with a long-term debt, pollution, and congestion.

The City We’re Not

Philosophically, Abbotsford/Mission is at the epicenter of at least a couple of major dichotomies that consume many of my waking thoughts. The place is growing so fast that the issue of how fast is too fast is front and centre more-so than many of BC’s smaller towns and larger cities. This growth trend is also shining a spotlight on how Abbotsford/Mission’s rapid expansion is going to affect local farmland and the regions’s level of food security.
The other dichotomy I want to quickly mention is a more social question. Can people – children and families – be well adjusted and fulfilled in a busy urban setting? Here in Abbotsford, we call ourselves the “City in the Country”, emphasizing how Abbotsford is starting to resemble a city while still surrounded by acres and acres of farmland right on the outskirts of the city.
In a sense, the latter question is more or less moot, considering that with the sheer numbers of people on this planet, cities are an absolute necessity, and the balance is shifting towards urban living rather than rural. At heart, I’m a rural-living kind of a guy. I’ve always loved the outdoors more than the typical indoor environment; I loved it when I had the time to have a veggie garden, and I see so much benefit to raising a family exposed to nature and the wild things compared to the social pressures and consusumerism that characterize urban living. As Gary Snyder writes about, I believe that a natural ecosystem can be a complete teacher in its many different facets. These days, so many are growing up never really learning to appreciate or understand how nature functions, and this is creating great imbalances and stresses in society.

Going a step further, many believe that whether we acknowledge it or not, human beings have an innate need to experience contact with nature as we grow up, and when we do not, we experience something called “Nature Deficit Syndrome”. I am not sure what the symptoms would be, but I believe that to interact frequently with wild things promotes aspects of alertness, calmness, and responsibility, and provides a solid grounding and confidence in oneself and one’s place in the world that is not so easily gained in the urban jungle. When we lose urban green-spaces as my friend who made this video about the loss of a green-space near her family’s home in east Abbotsford, or when my riding partner on last summer’s talks about her pain as a child at losing a copse of trees in her backyard at her father’s hands and her desire to live in the shadow of large trees, I feel like I know what they are talking about.

The long and the short of it is that I am caught in contradictions between personally preferring a rural lifestyle while also vouching for an urban lifestyle as the only realistic way of addressing the current unsustainable level of resource use. Some days I see myself as an urbanite who enjoys the urban lifestyle and all that it has to offer, but on the other side of the coin, I don’t see the fundamental values of good sense around the proper use of money and of strong community spirit that I believe we need to resist the influence of, charitably, the consumer culture, and uncharitably, the military-industrial voluntary slave-state emerging out of an urban setting. On the whole, the balance is tipping to favour high-tailing it out of the fast-paced city that Abbotsford is becoming as soon as I’m free to do so, and start a new life somewhere that offers potential to move in the direction that I want whichever community I become a part of to move in.