Public Riches

Recently I stepped back to re-examine my life and realized how ridiculous this is getting. In my day-to-day activities, I don’t have a cellular telephone, so I use pay-phones or whatever phone I can find at any given moment. I don’t have a driver’s licence, so I use public mass transit to get around, or simply ride my bike. I don’t have a computer or a smart phone so I do my internet work at public libraries or on the campus which I study at. Taken as a whole, I’ve shown almost no propensity for the accumulation of personal assets, but in utilizing public transit and volunteering for the Ravine Park Salmon Hatchery for 5 or 6 years, I’ve shown quite a tendency for the conservation of public resources.

I’ve never wanted to possess a personal vehicle – something I’ve rationalized in part on it not being my right to pollute a public commons, even if everybody else does it.

Similar, if I’m going to use the purchasing power that I earn to sustain myself, my thinking has been that I should in some way give back to the natural systems from whence comes my sustenance. Since high school, I’ve sensed that the bounty of the systems that produce my daily food is in large part dependent on the salmon that have run so plentifully in this watershed for thousands of years, so I’ve tried to give back in a very partial way through the local community salmon hatchery. Similarly, I’ve always supported in principle and sometimes in practice, community gardens and farmers markets.

Is then the relative solitude that accompanies this path proof that my thinking is wrong in some way? Whatever the case, it’s all ending soon as I transition to a way of living in a smaller world, a la Arundhati Roy.

UFV’s Growth Trajectory in the eastern Fraser Valley

Yes, it’s been months since I wrote anything here. I’ll be finishing university a few semesters from now and moving on to a new chapter entirely. Having been at university on and off since the latter half of 2006, it’s a welcome development. My time at UFV has been a mixed bag to say the least. This “little” university on the edge of the young suburban communities of Abbotsford and Chilliwack is intriguingly positioned. Originally Fraser Valley College in the early days, to the “University College” of the Fraser Valley when I registered, to the University of the Fraser Valley as of just a few short years ago, it is rapidly growing into an educational powerhouse in the Fraser Valley.

UFV is poised to become a multi-dimensional institution as its rural, isolated campus in Chilliwack, the Canada Education Park develops, and its urban counterpart in Abbotsford remains small geographically but becomes the hub of a vibrant University District over the next 20 years. Since 2006, I’ve gotten around Abbotsford mainly without driving; even when I had a car on the road and was doing pizza delivery, I still cycled and used public transit whenever my schedule would allow it; a lifestyle choice I’ve stuck by throughout my university “career”. Innumerable times have I been left frustrated and borderline apoplectic as a route was early, late, or I’d misread the schedule; yet, on transit I’ve met many a unique individual whom I would never have gotten to know had I desired to have my own wheels as virtually every other post-secondary student whom I’ve met seems to. Not that there aren’t a few of my fellow students don’t use mass transit frequently, but as a rule most would prefer to be in charge of their own schedules, not leaving their options to the mercy of a transit system that in the eastern Fraser Valley is at best sporadic, and generally considered woefully inadequate - the ”poor man’s transportation,” and that is the perception that I have tried to change, mostly by showing a faithful loyalty to the system and a capacity for forgiveness that I’ve been astonished to discover that I possess. I’m pretty sure that my willingness to still use this system when having a personal automobile is an option that is entirely within my grasp is proof-positive of at least a small measure of insanity on my part.

I’ve always said that were I not in post-secondary, I don’t know that I would be able to make such use of the city’s transit system, and now that the onset of graduation looms on the horizon, I’ll reiterate that. Yet as long as I live in this region, I really believe that I’ll take the initiative to step onto the public transit bus as often as I possibly can. Having to rely exclusively on it would be limiting in the extreme, but now that I know how the system works inside and out, backwards and forwards, if there is a transit route I can use that will get me to within a short walk of my destination, you’d better believe I’ll be using my transit pass to do it and leave the car at home.

This current semester I’m enrolled in a class called, “Transportation Geography”, and at the moment my group is embarking on a project that is perhaps the most anticipated of my time in university. As part of a look at campus transportation, we’ve the opportunity to quantify the potential cost savings through gains in efficiency as well as intangible benefits that would arise from a significant scale modal shift to alternative forms of transport – carpooling, cycling, pedestrianizing, and of course mass public transit.

As the eastern Fraser Valley develops, we’ve the very unique opportunity to develop in a way that takes advantage of cutting edge techniques that ensure that development is done in a way that ensure the ecological footprint of that development will be smaller than in the past. With UFV Abbotsford being so close to the Downtown hub of the city, city planners are preparing to make it a central fixture that guides development for a generation, or more, including running one of the primary bus routes directly from UFV up South Fraser Way instead of along the secondary arterial George Ferguson as UFV’s route does now. Unfortunately for the Chilliwack campus (in my opinion), its shift away from Chilliwack’s urban core to an isolated rural model in Sardis that calls to mind UBC-Okanagan, the same can’t be said for that campus….

Canada’s Left Hand…

I just want to rant a little bit here…

My disclaimer is that invariably these issues are significantly more complex than they seem…

People need to stop making excuses so that they can profit from market processes while patting themselves on the back and feeling like they’re doing a good thing. They are rationalizing to meet the ceaseless demands of an inhumane economic system.

I used to have some mutual funds, purchased on the basis of two theories:

1) Long-term investment of ~10% of my income on a monthly basis would result in the accrual of a healthy retirement fund if and when it came to that time. This is often termed “dollar-cost averaging”, and is done on the assumption that in the long term, market returns are always positive and worthwhile.

2) Profitable mutual funds operating on do no harm, values-based principles, do exist.

I’ve since redeemed all those funds, paying a front-end load to do so at times, because on the realization that the second condition, in fact, if not being demonstrably and unequivocally false, was not being met by the funds within which I was invested.

I won’t name any specific funds, but they largely fell into the category known as “Socially Responsible Investments”, which meant they were tailored towards investor’s non- profit seeking criterions (not sure if that’s a word), such as not being invested in the nuclear industry, tar sands, gambling, pornography, environmental destruction, etc. etc.

These funds operated not on the do no harm principle, but on the support the least bad principle. Rather than eschew any specific sector, they would try their best to find the best company within a sector, and direct client’s funds towards that company – even if that company could not show themselves to be innocent of the practices that clients expressed a desire to avoid. This resulted in fund holders being invested in the tar sands, when they didn’t want to be. In money going towards damaging resource extraction when its owners had expressed a desire to avoid that. These companies weren’t boycotting many sectors; rather, they were simply using shareholder activism to express occasional discontent with a companies’ practice and urge window dressing style changes to a firm’s operating style. Perhaps in this world, the doctrine of incrementalism that this strategy reveals is the best that we can do as activists, because slowly, we do change the world through such practices.

Yet, how can we be content with incrementalism, when the exploiters are radically pursuing ever increasing volumes of resource extraction in the interest of maximal profits?

Incrementalism for social progressives, and radicalism for the financial racketeers? Kind of like the policies of the last few decades, known as socialism for the wealthy through bailouts, and capitalism for the rest of us?

The reason I feel the need to comment is that I now observe this strategy of not withholding investment, yet claiming to still be able to exert influence toward the cessation of activities mutually agreed to be destructive, in force not only at the relatively small scale investor-mutual fund level, but also on the largest stage imaginable. Is not the assertion by our federal government of being able to conduct business even while decrying human right’s abuses on the part of a business partner equally hypocritical and destined for abject failure?

It’s time we stopped letting the wool be pulled over our eyes…

Consumption Revolutions – Buy Quality

Old-timers that I run into around town, in cafes, and when I visit my parents, lament the lack of good jobs in Canada. We`ve been asleep at the wheel they say; we’ve allowed our manufacturing base to be hollowed out. We no longer make much of anything, but are content to ship our resources out of country to allow others, mostly cheap Asian labourers, to do our dirty work for us, the refrain goes.Even though the official unemployment statistics are reported as less than 10%, the high-paying union jobs are gone, having been replaced by low-paying, often less than full-time service sector jobs, lament the retirees as they powerlessly watch their grand-children toddle of to university. I say powerlessly because I always get the feeling that for the life of them, they can’t figure out what the kids learn in these universities that’s worth so many years of commitment.

Lacking at this point and time empirical evidence of what percentage of people are employed in service sector jobs compared to past decades, I’d suggest that the proliferation of discount stores, dollar stores, Walmarts, and even thrift stores all awash in cheap goods is a pretty solid indicator that the malaise of cheap goods backed by low-skill labor has come to dominate our society. It’s certainly not only cheap goods that tend to break, spew carcinogens, or just suffer from poor quality; the proliferation of Tim Horton’s, A&W’s, Burger King’s, McDonalds, gas station food, and convenience stores is indicative of the same phenonemon on the dietary side of our consumption habits.

My question is, why do we have to give over our power to use and consume quality to the doctrine of the lowest price? This “doctrine of the lowest price” is today probably one of the most characteristic features of our society, and I think that we don’t even comprehend the damage that it is doing to our social and financial fabrics – or we just don’t want to admit it. This opens wide a gaping rift suggesting a raft of errors in the way that we life our lives. Almost to the man, those rickety old men who decry the feeble nature of the employment that is available to the younger generation that I mentioned will vociferously confirm that we ought to be favoring quality over quantity; yet, faced with economic uncertainty, they either overlook the junk quality of food and implements that their sons daughters come home from the store with, or sometimes capitulate even more thoroughly and resort to these sad-sack buying habits themselves. The problem here is that even if their children, now raising families of their own, stoop to (gasp)! actually ask for advice, they have no solutions to the problem of ever deteriorating quality in our consumable goods – because these solutions are layered in complex issues such as free trade, exchange rates, and trade deficits. Of course most often, they are assured that this insistence on quality, frugality, and self-reliance is old-fashioned and out of date; surely a consequence of the rapid pace of change within our society.

Here is what I am suggesting. Let us utilize the power of numbers to create a consumer’s revolution. Numbers move markets as they shift around the demand; let’s stop allowing ourselves to be pushed around like sheep and to be cheaply manipulated by clever advertising. As long as I recall, my parents have followed a purchasing philosophy that I wholeheartedly endorse and have continued in my own life as a consumer; namely, the purchasing and consumption of largely organic foods, primarily plant and locally based. Essentially, it’s a eating philosophy that I’d say mostly falls in line with Michael Pollan’s sage advice, to “Eat food. Not too much, mostly plants”, but with the word “organic” inserted before “plants”. As I said, it’s a philosophy that I’ve largely followed, not because I automatically endorse my parent’s philosophy, but because that particular one makes a lot of sense to me. Over the years, that’s involved varying levels of patronage at Sprigs Health Foods (Abbotsford, now defunct), the Pantry Natural Foods (Mission), Roots (Maple Ridge), and others, and also being happy to see the increased amount to which the big grocery chains have adopted organic foods into their offerings. Some people will spout some tripe about the application of petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers being necessary to sustain yields, but I would just ask those people to try thinking holistically for a change. Buy organic, local foods, as much as possible.

Today, Abbotsford is home to one Walmart store, with one more on the way. Chilliwack has one. Mission is getting one in the near future. Most larger communities I pass through in BC have one or are getting one. I mean, this is one huge corporate entity with an enormous amount of power to shape the world that we live in. Off the top of my head, Salmon Arm, Kamloops, Prince George, Quesnel, Kelowna, are some of the medium size cities in BC that I know have fallen victim to the Walmart syndrome. These stores are huge; they do virtually no domestic manufacturing; they promote automobility with huge parking lots; they are really just blights on the urban landscape with, like most if not all corporations, a goal of maximizing profit by minimizing costs and maximising sales. I’d put myself firmly in the anti-Walmart camp, and am proud to say that I can only recall contemplating one purchase at my local Walmart in the last five years, which I don’t think I ultimately made. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Walmart came to Mission, and sat there vacant as Mission’s consumers shunned the corporation in favour of a lesser quantity of higher quality goods from locally owned stores, and subsequently had to restore the land they occupied to a forest ecosystem?

You’ll note that I’m not calling for some heavy-handed, top-down legislative measure to “ban” Walmart or something. Those kind of decrees mostly just get people’s backs up; rather, I would be delighted to see a consumer’s revolution where the people wake-up and see how much power they really have if they work together rather than allow the consumeristic, media-heavy society we have to overwhelm their sensibilities with temptation and easy access to low-price stuff.

Citizens of the eastern Fraser Valley, if you want to strike a blow for quality over quantity; for communities built for people rather than corporations, and ultimately for your grand-children’s wellbeing, stay away from your local Walmart. Do with less; share work, meals, and tools. Talk to your neighbours and create co-operative structures, and tell your friends and family: Don’t shop at Walmart, do shop at your local grocer, Farmer’s Market, cafe, and locally owned stores – in the interest of your community and the health of the world.

Your grandpa will be proud of you.

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.