Heather Conn Blogs

— Heather Conn photos

Sunshine Coast MLA Nicholas Simons with Sechelt band elder Theresa Jeffries

This was no Sesame Street public spelling bee. And Big Bird and Elmo were nowhere to be seen. Instead, dozens of local people lined Highway 101 yesterday in Davis Bay, BC., each holding a white sign with a different single letter, which collectively spelled out the phrases: “No Tankers,” “No Pipelines,” and “Defend Our Coast.”

 

 

These were some of the 500+ Sunshine Coast residents who gathered along both sides of the highway as a public, collective voice to reinforce that most British Columbians are against the Northern Gateway pipeline, proposed by Enbridge, and do not want supertankers off their coast.

Local school trustee Lori Dixon

As a symbolic gesture, the line of protesters extended roughly 235 metres, to represent the length of a supertanker along the Sunshine Coast. Event organizers placed two hand-painted white sandwich boards next to the highway to indicate where the tanker’s bow and stern, respectively, would appear.

“They [tankers] can’t turn, they can’t stop and they’d take eight kilometres to stop for an emergency,” Jef Keighley of Alliance 4 Democracy, one of the main organizers, told protesters. They gathered in the Beach Buoy parking lot at 1 p.m. after their one-and-a-half-hour public action. “And that’s in open waters with no navigational hazards.”

At least 90 percent of drivers who passed the demonstrators honked their horns in support, according to one of the letter-card holders, who did not want to be identified. This included drivers of commercial heavy-duty trucks, dump truck operators, people in luxury vehicles, and not surprisingly, Smart cars.

One irate male senior stopped his grey van on the highway, rolled down his window and hollered at protesters: “Did you drive to this event? How did you get here?” (He presumably found it hypocritical to burn gasoline to get to an event protesting oiltankers and pipelines.) Increasingly enraged, he repeated his questions until driving off.

 

The protest, which featured homemade signs by people of all ages, was peaceful. It included members of the Sechelt First Nations band, such as elder Theresa Jeffries and local school trustee Lori Dixon, plus teachers from the region, and representatives from the Sunshine Coast Conservation Association. Local RCMP officers were on hand to ensure the safety of participants and asked them to move back farther onto the shoulder, away from the highway.

After the event, demonstrators heard rousing roadside comments, via megaphone, from Keighley, local activist George Smith, and Nicholas Simons, NDP MLA for Powell River-Sunshine Coast. Keighley pointed out that unlike Norway, which captures about 70 percent of the value of its oil, Canada (via Alberta) receives only one per cent in royalties from the gross (not net) value of its bitumen. (Bitumen is the heaviest, thickest form of oil, which Alberta wants to transport from the tar sands via the Enbridge pipeline to Kitimat for initial processing. Then supertankers would take it through the fragile coastal B.C. coast waters and to China for final refining.)

After all of the related capital cost improvements are made, such as building the Enbridge pipeline, tanker terminal etc, Canada would receive only 25 percent of the net value, which will amount to less than one percent in royalties, said Keighley.

“We’re paying the cost to the environment and in jobs,” he said. “This is bad for B.C., bad for Alberta and for the Canadian economy.”

Smith, who has been active in the fight to stop the Site C dam in northeastern British Columbia, outlined the connection between that megaproject and the Enbridge pipeline and tar sands. The provincial government wants to use water power from the proposed new dam for fracking, in the search for natural gas, and for Shell Canada’s liquid natural gas project in northern B.C., he said. The gas would be shipped to the tar sands, then the oil sent to the coast via the pipeline. This, in turn, would enable oil and gas companies to export their product more cheaply to Asia.

“B.C. gives $300 million a year in royalty and tax breaks to oil and gas companies,” Smith said. “They [the B.C. government] are planning to eliminate 83 kilometres of rivers and 13,000 acres of class one farmland [to build Site C].”

Standing on a picnic table not far from his local constituency office, Simons acknowledged that the gathering was on traditional Salish territory. He told the group: “You’ve done the Sunshine Coast proud. Our voices are not solo voices. They are a choir of voices in the right key for the right people to hear.”

The Davis Bay protest was one of dozens of Defend Our Coast actions held yesterday across the province, including demonstrators linking arms outside MLA offices. Defend Our Coast told local organizers that the Davis Bay event was likely the biggest one of the 65 related events around British Columbia. Many thanks to all who participated and helped plan and organize the Sunshine Coast action, including the flyover pilot and photographer (you know who you are).

When elected officials bend to the will of the people and vote accordingly on important community issues, it is a rare and beautiful thing. We enjoyed such a momentous event three days ago, when the five-person city council in Gibsons, BC voted unanimously in favour of leaving the Gospel Rock waterfront as undeveloped greenspace. Wow. And council will not consider related issues to the proposed Gospel Rock development, such as density, access, and its impact on the town’s aquifer, for another five years.

 

What a surprise! This truly unexpected decision brought shocked looks from councillors Lee Ann Johnson and Dan Bouman and tears from Mayor Wayne Rowe and councillor Charlene SanJenko. I can’t interpret councillor Gerry Tretick’s expression because I wasn’t there. I was one of the cynics who had assumed that the full Gospel Rock development was a done deal and wanted to avoid seeing that confirmed at Tuesday’s meeting.

 

Boy, am I glad that I was wrong. This vote renews my faith in the ability of a small group of committed people to change the minds of decision-makers and create positive change. Some people in our community have been fighting to protect Gospel Rock for decades. We all choose our level of involvement in any issue, and for some, it’s enough to attend meetings, perhaps write the occasional letter to the editor, or speak at a public hearing. That’s all worthy activism. But it always takes people in the trenches with a vision and ideals, who persevere over months and years to plan strategy and meetings, raise funds, send emails, lick envelopes, and keep the message rolling on, and most important of all—to never give up—to make the ultimate difference. That includes both individuals and groups like Friends of Gospel Rock.

 

Last night, at a victory party at a Gower Point Road home, many people from those trenches and ones who spoke out at last week’s public hearing gathered to celebrate this week’s decision. (At that hearing, only three people from a speaker’s list of about 50, spoke in favour of the bylaw amendment to incorporate the Gospel Rock Neighbourhood Plan into Gibsons’ Official Community Plan bylaw 985, 2005. For more details on that, see my post “Preservationists dominate public hearing for bylaw amendment.”)

 

Having people from the community of all ages speak out did, indeed, make a difference. Yahoo! This latest decision has given renewed fire to those who want to raise funds to create the Gospel Rock area as a park. Sure, this latest waterfront development issue could be a mere bargaining chip in a larger process, and decisions made to woo voters is always at play, but that doesn’t matter. You will always find people who care and ultimately vote from their heart, even at unexpected times and places. A community rallied, made its views known, and the people’s representatives heard. That’s sweet success.

                                              — photos by Heather Conn

About 40 hikers tromped out to Batchelor Lake (yes, it’s spelled that way, after a military surname) Sept. 20 to enjoy free pancakes, fresh blueberries picked by the cabin, and hot chocolate, thanks to the Tetrahedron Outdoors Club.

Convening at the second parking lot of Tetrahedron Provincial Park on B.C.’s Sunshine Coast, we divvied up the breakfast gear, from propane stove to canned evaporated milk and napkins, and carried it up in our respective packs, with Club member Victor Bonaguro overseeing the operation.

Within 40 minutes, we were at the cabin, able to admire the lake views and surrounding forest. In the park’s true volunteer tradition, people immediately pitched in to make pancakes, start a fire in the wood stove, collect and boil water, prepare outdoor seating areas, etc.

The event was one of three pancake breakfasts (tomorrow’s is at Edwards Lake), held to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the construction of the four cabins in what later became the park. Club members Victor and George Smith were two of the primary volunteers in 1987 who supervised the creation and placement of the cabins, trails, and firewood collection.

Some people present, who have lived on the Coast for 40 years, said it was their first time up to the cabin. We had a short spit of rain but only a few people crowded into the cabin for shelter.

Victor Bonaguro

Many thanks to George, Victor and others for such a fun event. The cabins and the park reflect what a committed group of volunteers can achieve. As cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Tet Club members Sue Sleep and George Smith

Anyone who thinks that human activity and industry have little or no impact on global warming needs to see the astounding 2012 documentary Chasing Ice. (This movie was screened last week at The Heritage Theatre in Gibsons, BC as part of the Sunshine Coast’s excellent Green Films series.)

 

National Geographic nature photographer James Balog, a former geologist who was himself a skeptic about climate change, uses truly disturbing Arctic footage to prove how quickly the world’s glaciers are indeed receding. With the help of young male assistants, some of whom have never even worn crampons, he sets up Nikon time-lapse cameras in Arctic glacial fields in places such as Iceland and Greenland and checks them after a six-month interval.

 

What he discovers surprises even him. When he initially holds up a photo taken a half-year earlier of a glacial landscape that stretches in front of him, he thinks that he must be looking at a different location. He can’t believe how much ice has disappeared in such a short time. But when he rechecks the contours, he confirms that yes, it is the same spot.

 

As part of his self-created Extreme Ice Survey, Balog crawls onto high, fragile ice shelves to shoot straight into a crevasse. He ropes himself to the shoreline while taking stills of glacier-fed waves smashing onto ice floes. He scales and belays down steep walls of ice, all the while in pain from a much-operated-on knee which doctors say he shouldn’t even be walking on. His eldest daughter says she’s never seen her father so passionate about any project.

 

The most visceral scenes, besides Balog’s own stunning imagery of glaciers and Arctic ice, are the outlines on a topographical diagram that carve out how much polar ice has disappeared in the last 10 years, compared to the previous century. After managing to film one ice peninsula, the length of five football fields, breaking off, Balog is inspired to capture the same activity at one of the world’s largest glaciers in the Arctic.

 

He assigns two young assistants, stranded amidst frozen oblivion for two weeks, to keep a camera trained on this glacier. Sadly for us and the planet, and yet fortuitously for the filmmakers, the monumental wall of ice, higher and far bigger than the entire Manhattan skyline, rises up 600 feet, turns on its side, and “calves” (breaks) off. The process takes an hour.

 

I think that this remarkable, 75-minute documentary should be required viewing in all schools and workplaces.

With multi-festival awards from Sundance and Telluride to Hot Docs, it offers beautiful cinematography by director/co-producer Jeff Orlowski. Editor Davis Coombe does an excellent job of weaving together Balog’s stills with his indoor public appearances and footage from helicopters, dogsled and canoe. Both writer Mark Monroe and co-producer Paula Du Pre Pesmen, repeat their respective roles from the Academy-award-winning documentary The Cove about the slaughter of dolphins.

 

Some critics charge that Chasing Ice is more emotion than science, but researchers interviewed in the film confirm Balog’s findings. The documentary doesn’t give a platform to the political naysayers who dismiss global warming, yet its website provides a list of top 10 questions that people ask about climate change. The site also provides the resource skepticalscience.com.

 

Meanwhile, veteran Arctic researcher David Barber, director of the Centre for Earth Observation Science at the University of Manitoba, warns that North Pole ice, which used to be considered impenetrable, is now more like Swiss cheese. When he first visited the Arctic in the 1980s, the ice there usually receded only about a few kilometres offshore by the end of the summer. Today, he must travel more than 1,000 kilometres north into the Beaufort Sea to even find the ice.

 

James Hansen, a climate scientist with NASA, says: “The scientific community realizes that we have a planetary emergency.” Peter Wadhams, one of the world’s top ice experts from Cambridge University, told The Guardian this month that Arctic sea ice will collapse within four years (in the summer months), calling this “a global disaster.”

 

Here in British Columbia, the Sierra Club recently announced that the province’s 2010 carbon emissions are four times higher than those reported by the provincial government last June. The B.C. Liberals stated then that 2010 emissions had dropped by 4.5 percent to 62 million tonnes. But the Sierra Club report “Emissions Impossible?” reveals that these emissions total more than 250 million tonnes, when emissions from fossil fuel exports and forests are included. Click here to read more at Sierra Club BC.

What can you do? Stay informed. Ask how your lifestyle and purchasing choices affect global warming. Join groups such as Bill McKibben’s 350.org and support the ones that are educators and advocates for the planet, including scientists and politicians.

Join with like-minded others. Calculate your ecological footprint. Drive less or not at all. Walk and bike.

     — iPhone photos by Heather Conn

It’s almost the end of summer yet I’m still revelling in the creative spirit of Roberts Creek. Before the rains come and we head indoors in hibernation, I’d like to honour the artistic vision of my community.

I feel inspired to share some images from the first Roberts Creek Arts Crawl, held last spring. It was a joy to wander down driveways I’d unknowingly passed for years and discover what homegrown talent lay in my own neighbourhood.

I met many interesting souls and heard some local lore I’d never known (like the coins of a transplanted miner buried under a log cabin). To meet artists in their own milieu, see how they had transformed their studios and living spaces into workable art, taste homemade goodies, and hear local musical talent felt like a Canadian coastal version of Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion. I cherished the opportunity to glimpse into people’s creative sanctuaries and find out what themes and ideas keep them afire.

Here’s to the heart of the Creek, in every sense of the word . . .

(I had hoped to get these images up much sooner, but hey, I’m a busy gal.)

 

 

 

 

 

Author Wayson Choy is a joy.

 

When I saw him last week as the opening guest speaker at the Festival of the Written Arts in Sechelt, BC, I expected him to read from his classic novel Jade Peony and his latest book, the memoir Not Yet.

 

Instead, he walked out from behind the onstage podium and told the sold-out crowd: “I almost died twice.” With wry humor, he explained that while unconscious and in surgery, near-dead from an asthma and heart attack, he remembered no dramatic out-of-body experiences or ghostly encounters — just hospital staff discussing mundane things like recipes and golf.

 

Yet these seemingly dull topics are part of the “human mosaic” of everyday life, Choy said, the ordinary world that lives intertwined with the realm of what he calls “the invisible.” Our daily lives, and the secrets and sense of community they reveal through our stories, are the true valuables we leave behind, not real estate, jewelry or investments, he told us.

 

For an hour straight, with wit, irreverence and no notes, 73-year-old Choy graciously flowed from thanks and gratitude (“I do care so much that you’re here”) to punchy power (“I don’t give a shit.”) He quoted Antoine St. Exupery’s line from The Little Prince: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” (I have that saying framed on my wall.)

 

The soft-spoken, grey-haired author shared the Zen proverb “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water; after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water,” and reinforced that he focuses on the here and now and does not believe in an afterlife.

 

“In story, I found meaning,” he says on his agent Denise Bukowski’s website regarding writing his memoir about his two brushes with death (he had another heart attack four years after his surgery): “I found myself somehow assured that there is more strength in living one’s life as everyday adventure, as an unfinished tale to be lived, one enlightened moment after another, than to live blindly chained to the idea that life simply ends.”

 

A delightful storyteller, Choy described to us his brief attempt to write pornography. When he showed the new writing to Bukowski, she told him: “Don’t go there.” He spoke of learning how to write under novelist mentor Carol Shields, who told him to write about “what we don’t know.” She suggested Chinatown; he initially thought the idea “boring,” yet ended up producing his acclaimed novel Jade Peony.

 

“Chinatown has always been a mythology of the mind,” he said, referring to today’s Chinese enclave, Richmond, as “bubbles of wealthy people.” He said with a laugh that “his” people (Chinese-Canadians) are reading about making money. He spoke of secrets within families and cultures and how humiliation and racism have deeply imprinted the history of the Chinese experience in Canada. “We can tell the truth,” he said, while affirming “No one escapes the truth.” He urged us all: “Tell your stories.”

 

Overall, it was a treat to hear a noteworthy Canadian voice reveal such humble wisdom, fuelled by awareness of the potential story in every moment. “We only have to meet each other and know each other,” he said. I found his perspectives welcome validation of my own outlook. Thanks for the inspiration, Wayne.

 

Wayson Choy was making his fifth appearance at the festival in celebration of its 30^th anniversary. He was the festival board’s first choice as opening night speaker, said board president Wendy Hunt.

 

Happy Canada Day! This year, I’ve avoided the parades, entertainment, and other public hoopla that normally come with our nation’s birthday. However, I did wear green for our national birthday, as advocated by Nanaimo, BC resident Dana Haggarty.

 

“I would like to see green added to the celebrations this year, so we can all show that we care about our environment and we don’t support the government’s changes to environmental protection,” says Haggarty, a PhD student at the Biodiversity Research Centre at the University of B.C.

 

This marine biologist invited all Canadians to wear green on Canada Day as a symbolic gesture against the Conservative Party’s omnibus budget bill, Bill C-38. Sadly, this bill, which eliminates a cutting-edge environmental research centre and decades of environmental regulations, fisheries and species protection, has just passed in the Senate. Its legislative changes will soon be law.

 

“The stories of cuts and closures to scientific labs have really affected me and my colleagues working on ecological integrity monitoring that have lost their jobs from the cuts,” says Haggarty.

 

Our prime minister is poised to begin more program cuts, layoffs, and amendments to environmental assessment, including measures that weaken the legal clout of the federal Fisheries Act and Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

 

That’s ironic, since Canadians consider the country’s wilderness the best symbol of “what Canada really is,” even beyond hockey and our flag, according to a Canada Day poll by Ipsos Reid. We’ve allowed Stephen Harper to trample on our natural heritage and threaten the very earth and ecosystems that we cherish as a nation and people.

 

That’s not even mentioning the other unwanted aspects of Bill C-38, like cuts to old-age security benefits, employment insurance, health care, immigration—even stiffer penalties for marijuana use. All will become part of our new reality as Canadians this year.

 

That’s why I support Haggarty’s Green Canada Day as a collective sign of protest. As she says on her website:

 

• I will wear green to send a message that our country’s identity is our environment.

 

• I will wear green to protest the dismantling of environmental protection through changes to the Fisheries Act and repeals of the National Round Table Act and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

 

• I will wear green to protest what has been dubbed the “environmental devastation” act, bill C-38, and how we have not been consulted.

 

• I will wear green to show that I care about our climate and I am ashamed that our government has missed all of their targets and has no adequate plan to cut emissions.

 

• I will wear green to protest funding cuts and closures to our important centres of environmental research: the Experimental Lakes, PEARL, the Centre for Plant Health, the Bamfield Marine Science Centre, and others.

 

• I will wear green to protest cuts to Ecological Integrity Monitoring in National Parks and cuts to the Contaminants Program Fisheries and Oceans.

 

• I will wear green to protest cuts to fish habitat management at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

 

• I will wear green for my health and the health of my unborn children.

 

• I I will wear green for our land, water and air.

 

• I will wear green for our climate and environment.

 

• I will wear green for our oceans.

 

• I will wear green for our wildlife, our trees, our plants, our animals, our fishes.

 

• I will wear green for you, for me, for our future.

 “This land is your land, this land is my land . . .”

 

 

 

Jamie Biggar and Julia Pope of Leadnow.ca address crowd in Sechelt last week

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is the best thing that ever happened to activism in Canada, says Leadnow.ca spokesperson Jamie Biggar.

 

“He’s over-reaching catastrophically for his own causes,” Biggar told about 100+ Sunshine Coasters at the Seaside Centre in Sechelt, BC last week. “He’s the greatest organizing opportunity. People understand this.”

 

But more about that later.

 

Today, I mourn the passage of federal Bill C-38 and all that it means to Canada’s democratic process, environmental future, and habitat protection. (I won’t recap these issues here, since media pundits have already thoroughly covered them.)

 

Last week, I joined dozens of concerned Sunshine Coasters to hear Leadnow.ca activists Jamie Biggar and Julia Pope ask: “What does YOUR Canada look like?” The visiting duo, rooted in a vision of hope, positive action, and collective organizing, asked the crowd to each write down a personal view of Canada, articulating the values and traditions that have made the nation special to our hearts. Biggar then urged us to mail these handwritten notes to our local MP John Weston and Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

 

I dutifully complied, easily stating the qualities that have made me proud of Canada, from its tradition of an open democratic process to freedom of speech and dissent. I mailed my letter to Weston the next day. Yet, it was obvious when reading Weston’s subsequent editorials in local media, in direct response to the correspondence that he had received, that he has neither truly listened to, nor respected, his constituency.

 

The paternalistic tone of his writings essentially insisted that Bill C-38 will help the environment. He did not once acknowledge the validity of any countering viewpoint; his opinion pieces, instead, held this implied thread: “Listen, you poor misguided souls: The sooner you realize that I know best and will move ahead regardless, the easier it will be for all of us.”

Biggar inspires an audience of multi-ages at Seaside Centre

At the Sechelt gathering full of activist spirits (with regular faces like George Smith, Rick O’Neill, Jack Stein, Caitlin Hicks and others) it was easy to feel hopeful about the power of group action and speaking out. Yet, what struck me visually as I sat on the aisle next to the audience’s microphone were the number of white-haired seniors in the audience. Indeed, they were the majority, embodied in the leadership of Jef Keighley, chair of the Sunshine Coast Senior Citizens.

 

These seniors weren’t radical naysayers and hippie extremists, as Weston likes to portray anyone who disagrees with his stance on the environment and other positions. Weston, this is what democracy looks like.

 

“The energy is out there,” said Biggar, who refered to online and on-site activist momentum as “a wave.” “We built a surfboard for that wave.”

 

Buoyed by Biggar’s praise – he said that the Sunshine Coast’s rally at Weston’s office the week before had been the best turnout (200 people) in the country, along with the Yukon’s, of 75 similar actions nation-wide – the group agreed to form an alliance of diverse activist groups on the Coast.

 

“You’re an inspiration for the rest of the country,” said Biggar.

 

I think that such action is essential and I applaud it. Yet, when I consider how patently Harper and Weston ignore the voices of grassroots democracy and public process and discourse – even in our highest political body, federal Parliament – I grieve for this country. As Canada’s current stance at the Rio+20 summit reinforces, at the political level of official decision-making, our nation is going backwards.

 

“There’s been a fundamental eruption in our democracy,” said Biggar. “It was a rupture, a wound. We’re trying to go back to that moment and heal that fabric of democracy.”

 

Today’s democratic protest movement needs more youthful energy, said many people at the Sechelt event. They’re the ones who are media and technology savvy and can easily use social media as communication and organizing tools. (A few students from Elphinstone Secondary were present.) That’s why groups like Leadnow.ca and visionary catalysts like Biggar need our support.

 

For next steps, Biggar offered his own suggestions and those he recapped after listening to speakers at the mike:

• Make moveon.org a good model for action. This U.S. group built “democratic muscle” against the Iraq war, as one success story.
• Use “unscripted opposition” (not protest form letters) because it’s more vigorous and can change political calculations.
• Build a community of activists. Engage people face-to-face and integrate art and fun into public actions.
• Ask young people what they care about.
• “You need to ask for what you want and back it up with mobilization.”

 

Biggar reminded us: “Success looks like changing the national conversation.” He added: “We want you to be powerful. It is a moment of alchemy. It’s time to meet the anti-democratic with a groundswell of democratic revitalization.”

 

                                                                                                — Jef Keighley photos

Day-of-Action participants at John Weston’s office in Sechelt

It used to be in Canada that if you had a black mark against your name, it meant that you were on the do-not-admit list. Not anymore. Now it means that you can run the country — and ignore core democratic principles like freedom of speech.

 

On this day of information blackouts by progressive media to protest Harper’s unscrupulous Bill C-38, I feel compelled to speak out. As we know by now, our prime minister is trying to ram through, at the highest level of this nation, a host of new regulations in his Blackmark Budget, with limited debate and discussion, that will fulfill his too-obvious agenda: to get the Northern Gateway pipeline built as quickly and easily as possible, and to silence the groups and individuals who disagree with this plan.

Bill Forst, past president of the Sunshine Coast Teachers’ Association, speaks to those in Sechelt gathered to protest Bill C-38

High-profile folk like activist David Suzuki, federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May, and Liberal leader Bob Rae have villified this 450-page omnibus budget Bill that takes aim at anyone who doesn’t fit the Conservative party agenda of economy and profit above all else.

The Bill is designed to weaken environmental protection and fisheries laws, make it easier to launch major natural resources projects, and eliminate the watchdog that monitors the activities of Canada’s spy agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. It is also geared to zero in on, and stop, the political activities of non-profits (read environmental groups) that speak out against the Northern Gateway project and other earth-destructive projects. Basically, if you love the planet and this province, you’re Harper’s enemy.

Thankfully, Canadians have collectively spoken out against this outrageous abuse of their democratic freedoms. Two days ago (June 2), they gathered in a Day of Action at 75 locations across the country at Conservative MPs’ offices, in conjunction with Leadnow.ca.

Here on B.C.’s Sunshine Coast, about 200 people, including the region’s NDP MLA Nicholas Simons and Sechelt councillor Alice Lutes, rallied against Bill C-38 at the Sechelt constituency office of Conservative MP John Weston.

Local NDP MLA Nicholas Simons addresses the crowd

“Bill C-38 changes and/or eliminates some 70 pieces of federal legislation, the majority of which have nothing whatsoever to do with the budget,” says Jef Keighley, chair of the Sunshine Coast Senior Citizens and lead organizer of the Sunshine Coast protest.

 

This nation-wide stand against Bill C-38 had three purposes, says Keighley:

 

• to make sure that Canadians are aware that the Bill contains a sweeping agenda to remake Canadian society that goes against most citizens’ interests and values;

 

• to rally Canadians to stand against the Bill before it puts a black mark on our democracy

 

• and to find 13 Conservative MPs who will represent their constituents and stop the Bill.

 

“It will take 13 Conservative MPs to make it impossible to pass the Bill without changes,” says Keighley. He and others are calling on a baker’s dozen of Tory MPs to divide the Bill into reasonable components and start over. That way, prior to the Bill’s third reading, the appropriate parliamentary committees can share reasoned discussion and debate, inviting Canadians to help them make laws that work better for all of us. That’s what democracy’s all about, right?

Roberts Creek activist Caitlin Hicks reaffirms the need to defend democracy in Canada

Our freedom of speech is on the line. As a Canadian citizen, you can help to ensure that our fundamental democratic laws, practices, and principles do not disappear under Stephen Harper’s efforts to squelch dissent. You can stop Bill C-38 and Harper’s “culture of bullying and intimidation,” to use Bob Rae’s words.

 

If you’re on the Sunshine Coast, write a letter (not an email) to John Weston and ask him to vote to divide up Bill C-38 so that our elected officials can debate and discuss its components separately. (Weston’s constituency office is 207 – 5760 Teredo Street, Trail Bay Centre, Sechelt, BC, V0N 3A0.) We deserve this kind of democratic representation – not Harper’s form of autocratic power.

 

Here’s a sample letter, written by Jef Keighley:

Dear _________:

Please Vote to Divide Bill C-38

I am writing you as a concerned Canadian who values and respects the traditions of our representative democracy and the processes of debate and decision of Canada’s Parliament.

Bill C38, the 450 page omnibus budget bill that is seeks to amend and/or eliminate some 70 pieces of federal legislation, the majority of which has precious little to do with budgetary matters, is the most sweeping set of changes in Canadian parliamentary history.  Many of us take issue with the content of the proposed changes, but we also take issue with the hurried process and limited debate.  It seems designed to ensure that the vast majority of MPs and Canadians will not know or understand the impact of those changes until after they are made law after the imposition of closure.

In 2005 Stephen Harper, then Opposition Leader, in response to the 120 page budget bill under Prime Minister Paul Martin said “How can members represent their constituents on those various areas when they are forced to vote on a block of such legislation?’  Harper was right to voice those sentiments then and the call of all of the opposition parties to divide C-38 into its component parts for debate by the appropriate parliamentary committees prior to third reading is the right and fair thing to do now.

As a constituent I am not asking you to express opposition to the content of Bill C-38, but I am asking that you respect our parliamentary traditions and vote to divide Bill C-38 so that MPs and Canadians can know the content and intention of the proposed changes prior to third reading.  Otherwise, MPs will be voting blind and Canadians will be kept in the dark, and that will truly make Bill C-38 a blackmark budget.

I look forward to your positive response.

 

For those on the Sunshine Coast, a gathering is planned on June 14 at 7 p.m. at the Seaside Centre in Sechelt, led by Lead now representative Jamie Biggar.

 

If you live elsewhere in Canada, speak out, stay informed, and write your local Conservative MP. Demand a change and return to participatory democracy. Check out the Lead now website.

“Not success. Not growth. Not happiness. The cradle of your love of life is death.”

—  Stephen Jenkinson

 

Can you read that phrase without wincing or wondering what it means? It challenges many beliefs and philosophies upheld in popular western culture.

 

In the hospice volunteer training that I’m currently taking, we received a handout with a list of statements about grief. The two comments that most tugged at me were “Grief is a way of knowing. It is not an affliction” and “The willingness to suffer out loud is a gift.”

 

That last one especially confronts most tenets of western society: Don’t cry.  Get over it and move on. Don’t be sad, and so on. How many of us truly have the courage to let grief envelop us and receive any gifts that it might share?

 

That is what we’re slowly learning to do as hospice volunteers. Stephen Jenkinson, the star of the National Film Board’s Griefwalker, is head of palliative care counselling at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital. He offers the notion of grief as revolution:

 

“What if grief is a skill, in the same way that love is a skill, something that must be learned and cultivated and taught? What if grief is the natural order of things, a way of loving life anyway?

 

“Though addicted to security, comfort and managing uncertainty, our culture could learn to honour, teach and live grief as a skill, as vital to our personal, community and spiritual life as the skill of loving. In a time like ours, grieving is a subversive act.”

 

I love that approach. Rather than face grief with shame, apology, and embarrassment, we could embrace it like a much-loved friend, as cherished as life itself.

 

An excellent book of inspiration in this area, which we’re using in our training, is Alan Wolfelt’s The Handbook for Companioning the Mourner (Companion Press, Colorado, 2009). Wolfelt, a doctor who serves as director of the Center for Loss and Life Transition in Fort Collins, Colorado, says: “Surrendering to the unknowable wilderness of grief is a courageous choice, an act of faith, a trust in God and in oneself.”

 

Decades ago, amidst tremendous trauma, I faced my own grief in its deepest and most despairing form. That experience, which lasted for months, enabled me to open and heal a part of myself that might otherwise have stayed frustrated and suppressed for years. As a result, I can now offer greater empathy and compassion to others who are grieving.

 

As a new hospice volunteer, I hope that I will be able to provide a loving and understanding presence for someone else to feel safe and trusting enough to open to raw, death-related sorrow. This is true soul work that heals us all.

My training is through the Sunshine Coast Hospice Society in Davis Bay, BC. If you’d like to volunteer at this centre, call 604-740-0475 or email coasthospice@gmail.com.