I was told that it would be a beautiful drive. I was not disappointed. My plane landed in Grand Junction, which is about two-and-a-half hours from Telluride. It’s two-and-a-half hours of driving south along small highways. But also two-and-a-half hours of driving up small highways.

Telluride is located in the San Juan Mountains, its altitude is 8,750 feet. As I drove from Grand Junction to Telluride, I watched the landscape morph from dessert-like to lush forests. From dusty mesas to snow-capped peaks.

I spent the whole drive thinking about Mountainfilm itself. It’s one of the longest-running film festivals in the US. It was initially dedicated to mountaineering films. And mountaineering and adventure are still at the heart of the festival. But it’s expanded to include films that focus on the environment, activism, and even art.

Several years ago, someone suggested that I submit Living Downstream to Mountainfilm. I have to admit, the festival’s name and its history tricked me. I couldn’t see the connection between Living Downstream and what I thought Mountainfilm was about. Happily, in the intervening years, I’ve heard a lot more about Mountainfilm—and about the amazing films that have screened here—and realized that the focus of the festival has become much broader.

But it wasn’t until yesterday that I really understood what this meant. I drove through the mountains, crossed over the streams, and walked in the forests. I was awestruck by the beauty. I felt grateful to be here. And I realized that this is a feeling that outdoor enthusiasts have regularly. They find themselves in places like this. They love places like this: their mountains, forests, and streams. And they feel compelled to protect these treasures. In Living Downstream, Sandra Steingraber herself says, “What we love, we must protect.”

So, in a way, Mountainfilm is still all about mountains. It’s about the mountains (and forests and streams) we love. And all the ways we can protect them.

We’re happy to announce that we’re heading to the women’s Olympic qualifiers (and world championships) in Qinhuangdao, China, next week! Above, we celebrated the news with a bowl of Cheerios.

We already have more than enough footage and editing is already underway, so the idea is to film as little as possible. But this is a historic moment, as those who qualify will become the first women boxers to participate in the Olympics.

The Amateur International Boxing Association (AIBA) reports: The seventh AIBA Women’s World Boxing Championships will take place from 9 to 20 May 2012 in Qinhuangdao, China and will serve as the only qualifying event for the London 2012 Olympic Games. For the very first time in history, women boxers will be competing at the Olympic Games, in three weight categories: 48-51 kg, 57-60 kg and 69-75 kg. With 24 quotas places (eight in each weight categories) up for grabs, this 2012 AIBA Women’s World Boxing Championships is sure to be fiercely competitive.

We will be editing as we go in the hopes of wrapping up the film as quickly as possible. On May 20, we’re flying to India with the team to film the aftermath. We have to mentally prepare for two weeks of sun, sun, sun. Looks like it’s only going to get hotter…

If you still have the April 28 edition of The Times Crest kicking around, flip to the cinema section for an article about our film by Ruhi Batra.

Find it here or read online. Thank you Ruhi!

Before I began shooting Living Downstream, I did the usual prep work that most filmmakers do. I read a lot of research and background materials, I met with my crew members and showed them films that I admired, I closed my eyes and tried to visualize my own film in real time. But I did something else too. I spoke with potential end-users of the film. Dozens of them.

I did this for several reasons: I wanted to begin building buzz for the film early, to learn what would make my film most useful for environmental health activists, and to decide what additional resources I should create to make the film more attractive to nonprofit community.

So, I spent many hours during the spring of 2008 talking with heads of nonprofit organizations and grassroots environmental activists. I really liked having all those conversations. They energized and inspired me. They confirmed for me the value of the work I was doing. But they also connected me to the larger community—in several ways.

As someone who worked from home for years, I enjoyed having stimulating conversations with people in the outside world. Likewise, as a new mother, I enjoyed connecting intellectually with other adults. (Maybe you can envision me sitting on my living room couch, cradling the phone on my shoulder, holding a moving pen in one hand, and my nursing my daughter in the other.)

But beyond the act of having these many conversations, the ideas that were discussed four years ago still bind me deeply to the environmental health community today. The most common idea that emerged from these conversations was that various groups could hold a screening of the film, followed by a discussion. (And they have. To date, Living Downstream has been screened publicly about 200 times. I’m going to one tonight, as a matter of fact.)

But there were a few very creative folks with whom I spoke who took me a step farther in the planning. Folks like Jeanne Rizzo of the Breast Cancer Fund and Charlotte Brody then of Commonweal (now of the BlueGreen Alliance). Jeanne and Charlotte are both creative problem solvers and—coincidentally, or not—nurses. They energetically brainstormed ideas for the creative use of film in the work of nonprofit organizations. What about creating a series of screenings so that one event builds upon another? Or screening shorter clips from the film and using them as a springboard for workshops on environmental health? Or creating a training program so many people within one organization are empowered to hold smaller screenings? Or building a grassroots campaign around the film?

When these conversations ended, I felt like celebrating. I had been reminded of the need within the community for this documentary. And I had also become deeply aware of how the documentary would benefit from the input and involvement of the community.

At some point, I put the notes from these conversations on the shelf and went about the more typical work of making the film. But when the documentary was completed in 2010, I dove back into my notes and began exploring the ideas that had first emerged during my early conversations with activists and the leaders of nonprofit organizations.

As a result, I began the intensive work of writing two guides (one for nonprofit organizations and one for educators) to be used in tandem with the film. The first guide, Living Downstream ~ In the Community was directly inspired by the many energizing conversations I had during those early days. It’s grown a lot from its beginnings as informal phone conversations and scribbled notes. It’s now over 200 pages in length and features background information about the film; detailed workshops and screening worksheets; and many, many topical handouts.

That work is now coming to a close. Living Downstream ~ In the Community has just been released on our website for download. My hope for this publication is that it will inspire those who are using the film to keep using it. I hope it will give them new ideas for ways in which to use it. I hope it will reinvigorate their work within their individual communities.

So, once more, I’m celebrating community—and the feeling of being deeply connected to it.

Chanda Chevannes is the producer/director of the feature-length documentary adaptation of Sandra Steingraber’s book, Living Downstream. She is also the author of Living Downstream ~ In the Community, a guide for nonprofit organizations and community groups who are using the film as a catalyst for change.

Though she shared the stage with Bollywood actresses, Mary Kom had everyone’s attention at the Mumbai launch of Procter & Gamble’s “Thank You Mom” campaign this week. P&G, which owns pretty much everything in your kitchen and bathroom, is “committed to helping moms make the most of their everyday,” according to StyleIndia.com. Ahem.

Photos of the launch were posted on Facebook by Jimmy Leivon and there were some interesting comments attached. Anand wrote that Mary was “the only real achiever among these people. the others just smile in movies.” And Hangsing said: “mary should be at the centre…dse high profile celebrities make crores of rupees yet totally worthless for India as a whole.” !!

It’s high time for these world renowned boxers to surpass Bollywood actors, in our opinion.

P&G will be paying for Mrs. Kom to fly to London to watch Mary compete in the Olympics, provided that she qualifies in May (which she will). More photos here.

Mary Kom (far left) sits next to her mother Akham Kom the launch in Mumbai. Photo by Jimmy Leivon.

Head over to Women’s Web: Online Community for Indian Women to read all about our film!

Canada’s CTV network says MC Mary Kom might be “the toughest mom on the planet.”

We could have sold them some footage had we known this was in the works!

Today is the second anniversary of the world premiere of my documentary film, Living Downstream. The film took a total of six years to complete. And now, two years after its completion, I’m still working on it! I’ll probably be working on it two years from now.

On a winter’s day back in 2004, I spoke with Sandra Steingraber for the first time. Before picking up the phone, I closed the door to my office and stared out my drafty bay window. My stomach was in knots. I had a detailed script for the conversation in front of me. I had prepared it several days earlier, just in case Sandra suddenly decided to call before the appointed time.

At exactly 10am, I picked up the phone and dialed Sandra’s number. She answered almost before the phone had even rung. This was the first time I ever heard Sandra’s voice. Up until this point, I had only read her words off the page. I hadn’t seen her speak publicly, listened to any of her radio interviews, or watched any of the films or television programs that used her as an on-camera expert.

Writing this now, it sounds crazy. I was calling Sandra Steingraber to ask her to allow me to make a film based on her book, Living Downstream. Like the book, the film would look at the connection between synthetic chemicals and human cancer, blending Sandra’s personal experiences as a cancer survivor with her scientific research as a biologist. Not only did I need Sandra’s permission to make the film, I needed her enthusiastic participation as an on-screen subject and an off-screen collaborator. It was a big ask. And I didn’t know how she came across on camera—or even what her voice sounded like.

But I had already decided that anyone who could write with Sandra’s eloquence must also be an eloquent speaker. Of course, we all know that good writers aren’t necessarily good speakers, but I was lucky to be very right about Sandra. Over the phone, she sounded just as I had imagined she would: calm, thoughtful, kind, direct. By the time of that first call, we had already exchanged several emails. During our correspondence, Sandra had told me that she couldn’t imagine being able to spare the time that would be required to make a film. She had basically already said no.

But I pride myself on being persistent. And now, on the phone with Sandra, I had a mission: to convince her that making a film with me would be a good idea. The points that I wanted to make were: 1) the film would help her to sell more books, spread her message, and reach a different audience; 2) making the film would be an enjoyable experience; and 3) it would all only take a small amount of time—maybe ten days at the most.

We had a brief but warm first conversation. My words caught in my throat several times. My heart pounded so loudly that there were times when I couldn’t hear what Sandra was saying. More than once, I winced as my voice pitched up, making my statements sound more like questions. But when I hung up the phone, I felt good. Although Sandra hadn’t agreed to be in the film yet, she hadn’t turned me down, either.

Sandra did eventually agree to participate in the making of a film. In fact, she jumped in with both feet. On April 3, 2010, our film, Living Downstream, premiered at the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival in Ithaca, New York. Just to be clear, this was six years after I first called Sandra. We started shooting together in earnest in 2008 and have been in regular contact since then. Most days we still speak on the phone or email each other at least once. And even though the film had its premiere two years ago, we are continuing to work on this project together. We’re writing guides for activists and educators who are using the film in their work, attending public screenings, selling DVDs, blogging, social networking, and more.

Looking back at that winter’s day in 2004, I can’t believe I promised Sandra that I would only need ten days of her time. When our work together is officially over, it will have taken a total of ten years. But in my defense, this isn’t the only time in the life of Living Downstream that ten days has become ten years. Sandra likes to say that when the book was released in 1997, she began a two-week book tour that lasted ten years. So I feel I’m in good company.

I like to tell this story during the director Q&A sessions which often following the screenings of Living Downstream. The line I sometimes use to end this anecdote, “Somehow, ten days turned into ten years” usually sparks laughter from the audience. And I usually laugh too. But sitting here now, I would be hard pressed to say what we’re all actually laughing about. Are we amused by the idea that a feature film could ever only take the main subject’s time for ten days? Or are we tickled by the fact that Sandra had allowed herself to be so carried away by the project after initially declining to participate? (Though she always says that she didn’t believe me when I said it would only take ten days.) Or is it simply that we are amazed by my obsession with this project—how could I have ever let ten days grow into ten years?

In the moments when I feel as though the various pieces of this project are taking too long to complete—or at the times when I feel as though our society isn’t making any progress on the issue of environmental health itself—it’s usually the last question that I end up asking myself. How did this project balloon out of control in this way? How did it get so big? How have I managed to spend almost my entire adult life thinking about cancer and the environment?

But in the sunnier moments of this project (and there have been just about as many sunny moments as there could have been, largely thanks to Sandra) I just feel lucky. Lucky that Sandra said yes. Lucky that I’ve found a film that I have wanted to work on so intensively. Lucky that the book and the film have a momentum of their own and that Sandra and I have been able to allow ourselves to be pulled along by the current-like forces of Living Downstream.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/38945125[/vimeo]

Today we celebrated International Women’s Day by presenting our project at Vanier College.

Special thanks to Cheryl Donison and Sherry Hergott for inviting us, we really enjoyed the experience.

A TALE OF TWO NURSING MOTHERS

When my husband, Nathan, and I first announced that we were expecting a baby, we quickly received a lot of unsolicited advice — advice we usually ignored. But we did hear at least one good idea: Don’t change your life to fit your baby; fit your baby into your life.

As documentary filmmakers, we immediately saw the wisdom in this suggestion. Which is why, at seven o’clock one Saturday night in July 2008, I found myself, with my mother and my three-month-old baby, in the tiny, wood-paneled village hall of Congerville (population 502), in central Illinois. I was there with my small Canadian film crew to shoot the night’s events for my new documentary, Living Downstream. The subject of the film, acclaimed ecologist and cancer survivor Sandra Steingraber, was preparing to give a public speech. And we were preparing to shoot it.

Sandra’s topic — the links between synthetic chemicals and human health—was sure to challenge many of her audience members, including local farmers and their families. But, maybe because Sandra had grown up nearby, the mood was welcoming. A patchwork quilt hung on the wall behind the podium where Sandra would speak. Smells wafted from Crock Pots, casserole dishes, and serving platters brought by the local residents for the evening’s potluck. Rows of chairs filled the room, and all those chairs were filling with people who were strangers to me. Except for two familiar faces in the back row: my mother and my daughter, Hannah.

This is where my personal life met my public life: my milk — Hannah’s milk — was about to be used by Sandra as her sole visual aid of the evening. She was planning to hold the jar up for all to see. First, she would list off the amazing benefits of breast milk. Then she would pass the jar through the room and invite audience members to contemplate it. And then the reveal: Sandra would go on to say that breast milk is the most contaminated human food on the planet. Over two hundred chemicals have the ability to trespass into breast milk, including toilet deodorizers, mothproofing agents, and dry cleaning fluids. Organochlorines such as dioxins, DDT, and PCBs also make regular appearances in our milk. So do farm chemicals.

And the revelation of this evidence would lead Sandra to the main points of her lecture: that inherently toxic chemicals find their way into the most intimate parts of our lives, even our milk. That our environment is within us. That what we love, we must protect.

Mammal to Mammal

As a new mother, I was already sold on the benefits of breastfeeding. The World Health Organization recommends that infants be breastfed exclusively for the first six months, and then non-exclusively until at least the age of two. We know that babies who are breastfed have better immune systems, better hearing and eyesight, and higher IQs. They respond better to vaccinations, are less prone to infections, and have fewer allergies. We also know that breastfeeding means busy working mothers don’t have to waste time mixing (or money buying) formula. Breastfeeding seemed like a really good idea to me.

I had chosen to breastfeed Hannah for all of these compelling reasons. But what began as the logical choice became a deeply emotional activity. Nursing my daughter was a bonding experience. I could feel myself getting closer to her with each feeding. As I held her close to me, and watched her drink the milk I produced for her, a deep feeling grew inside of me. More than anything, I wanted to protect her.

As a filmmaker working on a scientific film, I also knew some worrisome facts about breast milk. For example, in an ongoing study, researchers at the University of Montreal have discovered that, compared to their male counterparts, female beluga whales in the St. Lawrence River have a lower burden of organochlorine chemicals in their tissues. What sounds like good news is not. According to the investigators, this finding is “best explained through massive transfer to the newborn during lactation, resulting in juvenile [organochlorine chemical] concentrations equal to or higher than in adult males.”

To obtain this and other information, the researchers have been autopsying whales and collecting data for over twenty years. I had the opportunity to film one of these procedures for Living Downstream. An autopsy of a beluga takes more than four hours and about a dozen people. It is a smelly ordeal and by the end, the floor is slippery with blood. It’s a sad thing to witness the dissection of a whale. But this work could reveal at least a partial answer to the question of how these toxic chemicals may be affecting our health. About 25 percent of autopsied beluga whales in the highly polluted St. Lawrence River have been found to have cancer. And yet cancer has never been found in the belugas living in the less contaminated waters of the Arctic Ocean.

Standing in the autopsy room, I felt a strong connection to the mother beluga on the autopsy table. This feeling washed over me when veterinary professor Stéphane Lair, Ph.D., removed her mammary gland. Holding the whale’s breast in his gloved hands, Dr. Lair squeezed gently, and a greyish liquid oozed out. These were the last few drops of this mother’s milk. “What happened to her calf?” Dr. Lair wondered aloud. He spoke eloquently of the significance of this whale’s death. Not only does the population shrink when a mother whale dies, he said, but the entire community loses the knowledge she carried.

As he spoke, I thought of all the people who will meet a similar fate. One in four North Americans alive today will die of cancer. Even while breastfeeding clearly protects both mother and child against some types of cancer, the toxicants in our milk counteract its goodness.

Seeking Signs in Breast Milk

Back in Congerville, the camera rolled and the bright lights warmed the room, Sandra spoke with ease and humor. As she spoke tenderly about our children’s right to pure milk, I watched the audience absorb her words. But mostly, I watched the milk make its way through the audience. Some people passed it quickly, as if embarrassed to see human milk. Others looked at it with smiles of familiarity. A few even gripped the warm jar tightly, held it up to the light, swirled the creamy substance around and gazed at it as if they might catch a glimpse of one of the contaminants hidden within.

It was a meaningful moment for me. I knew the facts and figures Sandra was reciting, but I knew a few other things too. I knew these particular ounces of milk intimately. I had pumped and frozen them weeks ago when I was preparing for this trip. It had taken me three days to pump twelve ounces. (That’s four ounces each morning from my right breast. Now you know it intimately too.) My daughter also knew that milk. It was her sole source of energy and nutrition. She relied on it for her health and her survival.

Don’t fit your life to your baby; fit your baby to your life was good advice for me on a personal level. I wanted to stay independent. I wanted Hannah to learn how to live in the adult world. But that night as I watched my milk move through the audience of strangers, I realized that this motto doesn’t work at all on the public level. Bringing a child into a busy filmmaking family and asking her to adapt is one thing. Bringing her into a toxic world and continuing to ignore the practices that make it toxic is quite another. I don’t want my newborn infant to be ingesting toxic chemicals in her milk. I don’t want breast milk to become so contaminated with chemicals that infant formula suddenly seems like a good idea. (It’s not.) I don’t want to ask Hannah to live in the world the way it is. Instead, I want to change the world for her.

Strong evidence says that beluga whales are developing cancer and other health problems because of the toxicants that we have inserted into their habitat. Many researchers believe that the same is happening to humans. This unites us humans with the whales—as does the ability to feed our children from our own bodies, which is a distinct trait of all mammals. (We mammals are named for our mammary glands, after all.) But we are also united by the vulnerability of our bodies — and therefore the vulnerability of our children—to toxic chemicals. Like the beluga of the St. Lawrence, we have already lost a lot. Unlike the beluga, we can do something about it. This seems to me like the best idea of all.

Quick update: editing has begun. We’re making things out on the wall right now in our little office. We’ll keep you posted!

A threat

Last week, the Charest government announced that the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions and the Sureté du Québec (provincial police force) would investigate on leaks to media related to the Ian Davidson case, a retired Montreal police officer suspected of attempting to sell lists of police informants to organized crime. Neither the Minister of Public Safety Robert Dutil, nor Premier Jean Charest have agreed to guarantee that journalists would not be investigated or wiretap.

Let’s remind us that the “lawful access” bills that already died three times because of dissolution of Parliament have not been tabled again yet. However, it is expected that the Harper government will go ahead. The latest versions of the legislation gave the police new powers to access data held by Internet services providers (ISPs). They allowed the mandatory disclosure of customer information without judicial oversight, as well as real-time monitoring across ISPs’ networks. All measures deemed unnecessary and dangerous, not only by civil libertarians, but by many police forces also. A detailed legal analysis was published recently by the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association.

The meeting was organized by Koumbit an IT workers coop that offers several services including web hosting: thus, it has already had its share of searches for information and of servers. Like many other businesses it that field, Koumbit fears the effects of the “lawful access” initiatives on the civil liberties of its customers and of all the citizens who use the Internet from anywhere in the world. Indeed, the opening presentation of Antoine Beaupré dealt with less the legal aspects of the bills as of their technical and political dimensions.

Feb 7, 2012: Tonight, I am at a screening of my film in Orillia. As I write this, the film is playing in an auditorium about twenty meters away from where I sit. The audience is made up of a mixture of university students and community members.

I am always very grateful for the opportunity to attend a screening of my film. So often as filmmakers, we spend years making a single film and then release it into the world. We rarely know much about how it’s doing out there—who is watching it, what they are thinking after they see it, how it might contribute something new to their understanding of cancer. So attending screenings like this gives me some answers to these questions.

So when Dr. Cheryl Lousley invited me to speak at Lakehead following their screening, I immediately said yes. But I was more excited about this screening than I usually would be. And that’s because this area has played a pretty significant role in my life. The year before I was born, my parents bought an old house on the north bank of the Severn River. That’s about fifteen minutes away from here, up Highway 11. My parents wanted to use that home as a cottage, and so bit by bit, they began fixing it up. We spent most of our weekends from Victoria Day to Thanksgiving up here—and many weeks during the summer too. And there were two things I did up here more than anything else. I read. And I swam.

As my parents hammered and sawed and worked to make the house more livable, I would sit outside, or at my aunt’s house next door and read. I read everything from Shirley MacLaine to Alice Walker, and from Gloria Steinem to Truman Capote. And all those authors had an important influence on my thinking as a young teen. But a few years later, when I was just out of high school, I read the book that has had the biggest impact on my life to date. Lying in the grass in the backyard of my cottage, occasionally gazing out at the Severn River, I read a book about cancer and the environment, called Living Downstream by Sandra Steingraber.

I was nineteen when I first read Sandra’s book. She was twenty when she was diagnosed with bladder cancer. That’s probably about the age a lot of the members of my audience are now. As I introduced the film to them tonight, I tried to put myself back into the place I was when I first read the book. I tried to remember all the ways in which it changed my view of the world. I remember being shocked by what I read. And I remember being inspired by the beautiful way in which the book was written. Standing in front of the audience, in the back of my mind, I was hoping that the film might have the same effect on some of them.

In addition to reading, I did a lot of swimming up here as a child. Almost every day, my parents would take a break from their dry-walling and painting and take me and my sister to the local beach in the neighboring village of Washago. Washago is a stereotypical village, with one main street, one main intersection, one hardware store, one gas station, one convenience story, and one watertower. Drive past all those things and over the train tracks at you’re at the tiny public beach. But I do remember one special time when my parents drove us down the highway to Orillia and we went swimming at Couchiching Beach Park. (This was way before I was reading Steingraber or Capote, just to be clear.) And the beach was a bit daunting—there were a lot more people than at our little beach. The washrooms were much farther away. And there was even a lifeguard on duty. After swimming for a while, I decided to sit on the beach—probably to read, or to sleep, which was another activity I did a lot of.

All of a sudden, the peace of the beach was interrupted by a screeching whistle. And then the lifeguard started shouting into the bullhorn for volunteers. She was asking for all available adults to get into the water, hold hands with one another, and walk in a straight line from one end of the beach to the other. There was a child missing and this was the strategy that they would employ to make sure he wasn’t below the surface of the shallow water.

I watched the scene unfold, riveted by it. It was kind of like something out of a movie. It was scary. What if they found a drowned child in the water? What if someone wasn’t dragging his feet in the exact right way and walked by the kid below the surface? But soon enough, the drama ended. The child had been found somewhere else in the park—he hadn’t been in the water at all.

That scene made a very strong impression on me. And here’s why: I was impressed by how quickly everyone jumped into the water. I was impressed by the single-minded focus that everyone shared in that moment. As far as I could tell, no one hesitated. Walking through the water, holding hands with strangers, possibly stepping on the lifeless body of a child is a scary thing to contemplate doing. But in the moment, no one let that fear stop them.

I told that story tonight because I thought it was a good metaphor for the problem of environmentally caused cancer. Like the prospect of finding a drowned child, the idea that we are poisoning ourselves with synthetic chemicals is a scary thought to contemplate. This knowledge can be paralyzing. In fact, I have heard from university teachers that their students often find my film to be frightening and depressing.

I have to admit, hearing that students find Living Downstream frightening and depressing made me feel frightened and depressed, too. I had intended to make Living Downstream informative and emotionally impactful, but also hopeful and inspiring. I think it’s okay to be afraid when we learn something new, at first. But if we let it, knowledge can also be energizing. When I first read Living Downstream, it energized me. It taught me to see the world, the environment and our bodies in a different way. It made me want to do something to help others to see it this way too. This film is what I chose to do.

Like that lifeguard on the beach here in Orillia, my film has an urgent message. We can let the message depress us and make us afraid, or we use the message to energize us to do something to change the problem. Luckily, there are rows and rows of strangers already standing in the water. And that’s part of what I asked my audience to remember tonight as they were watching the film. I’m also planning on asking them, when we begin the Q&A, if they are willing to join us in the water, or if they would rather stay warm and dry up on the beach. I hope they won’t let fear stop them from jumping in.

Last week I reported that my notary declared that she was unable to help me manage the components of my digital of identities and assets in case of death (will) or inability (mandate).

I also described calling the legal information service of the Chambre des notaires du Québec (notaries’ professional corporation). The answering notary found my questions quite relevant and about pressing issues. However, she told me that the corporation had no available guide, checklist, standard clauses for will or mandate in case of incapacity, nor specific training to its members about these issues.

After publishing this article, I wrote to Jean Lambert, president of the Chambre des notaires (CNQ). I briefly described my situation and actions I took before asking the following questions:

Are there any guides, checklists, model provisions or tips on these topics?

If not, what are you waiting for to help us to live and die peacefully in this twenty-first century?

Response from the Chambre des notaires

In the absence of Mr. Lambert, it was Mr. Antonin Fortin, director of Communications and assistant to the president who responded:

We are talking about a complex, relatively new and evolving phenomenon. In addition, the CNQ cannot substitute itself to the legislator and “create” law in this matter. To our knowledge, there is no guide to meet your expectations.

(My translation)

That the Chambre des notaires declares not having or be able to recommend a guide is OK. The question is indeed relatively new.

However, to claim that this is a complex phenomenon that requires a law reform reveals some profound misunderstanding or some abdication of social and professional responsibilities. Indeed, as I suggested in my email response:

Allow me some radical disagreement with you: it is in no way about “creating” new law whatsoever.

There is no need for this. I do not see what role legislatures could play here.

Indeed, the need is primarily to provide guidance and useful tools for those seeking to put their affairs in order and organize the sequence of things to do in case of death or incapacity as well as for those who will act as executors or agents. Nothing that requires any law reform. The law is indifferent to the fact that the objects in question changed from macroscopic to microscopic formats or have exploded in numbers.

Communicating instructions through time

In other words, the issue here is not one of legal standards or implementation thereof. It is about effective strategy for communication of instructions over time. A skill that notaries are supposed to be the masters of.

Take a familiar example relating to a form of information that is one of the oldest and most abstract ever invented by mankind: money. At the time when I am writing my will, I could own a small money nest-egg and be without children. But in three years, I might be a multimillionaire and father of a child. In five years, be bankrupt and with three children. In twenty-five years, have restored a modest but comfortable financial cushion, having experienced the death of one of my children, but welcomed two grand-children in the family. In fact, when I write my will, I know nothing of the future. Nor my legal advisor. How to write instructions as I do not know what will be at my death the amount of money which I will own, nor the number of my children or grandchildren, if any.

The typical solution is to write a statement like, “this portion of my financial assets will go in equal amounts to each of my children and grandchildren living at time of my death.” So regardless of the amount available and the number of heirs the day I die, it will:

• give entirely the sole heir of this class, if there is one;
• divided into two, if there are two;
• divided into three, if there are three, and
• so on.

This type of instruction expresses in words a first degree algebraic equation with two unknowns:

Amount given to each heir of the class = Total money determined at time of death / Number of heirs of this category at time of death.

A = T / N

 By a similar method, it is possible to establish all kinds of conditions like : “if a child or grandchild is under 25 years at the time of my death, that heir will have access to a third of the amount prior 18 years old, a second third at 18, and the last third at 25 years old.”

If notaries and lawyers are experts in effective communication of instructions through time about largely unpredictable situations, why can they not use or transpose this expertise to digital identities and assets? Not that this issue has no potentially problematic legal dimensions. But within current law, it is already possible to effectively communicate instructions to the executors of our wills, to the liquidators of our succession or our agents in case of incapacity.

“Multilayered” proposed solution

The solution I proposed in my previous text for managing digital identities and assets distinguishes the general instructions writable in a will, from the information and instructions that may change very frequently. A third kind of document links together the two previous one. A multilayered solution. Or a Russian dolls type of solution, if you prefer that metaphor.

The upper layer consists of very general instructions that signal one’s desire to ensure management of components of digital identity, digital assets and intellectual property, by whom, and to achieve which objectives. Such instructions may be found in a will, a mandate in case of incapacity or a business succession plan.

The lower layer is one or more permanent inventories of these items as well as information and specific instructions for each. One can keep the inventory in secure files (passwords, encryption keys, secret locations) so it can be accessed and updated at any time.

The middle layer is a “sealed” document which specifies where the permanent inventories are, and how to access them, who is responsible for implementing which types of instructions regarding what types of items. This document is kept by a trusted third party that will allow access only at predetermined times (death, incapacity, serious incidents jeopardizing the continuation of business). Its content can be changed from time to time without having to change the instructions of the documents forming the upper layer.

This is a way of devising the communication of a set of instructions capable of supporting rapid changes in the elements to be managed, in practices, in techniques, in personal and professional situations, and even in the law itself. In short, a solution that can be implemented immediately.

Only a few years ago, one could easily find the documents of an incapacitated or deceased person. It was enough to systematically round the various places where the person lived and worked. The nature of the documents generally jumped in the eyes: contracts, invoices, private correspondence, books, recordings, professional documents, etc. In the absence of specific instructions, one could apply certain customs: such as delivering private correspondence items to their authors, distribution of content libraries, records shelves, photo albums or collections to interested close ones; retention of fiscal documents for some six years before destroying them.

Digitalization of assets

As more and more people around me, I hold less and less documents on paper or other macroscopic media. Already, most of my documents are to be found in digital forms: private correspondence, files, invoices, contracts, tax documents, banking and accounting, books, music, photos, work documentation, etc.

We’ve taken a little break from With This Ring to appear as extras in a short film produced by our friends at Arid Sea Films. We’re playing “teenagers from Saskatchewan.” Not sure if we pulled it off. Back to the grind tomorrow.

Text derived from my presentation

to the Citizen Forum on surveillance of communications

organized by the Quebec caucus of the New Democratic Party

Montreal, Notman House, Thursday, November 3, 2011

Regardless of the fate of the bill named “Lawful Access”, the information society will continue to develop. Then again, an information society is necessarily a surveillance society. Hence the question: what role the parliaments, governments and civil society should play to not only preserve freedoms and democracy, but to enhance them?

Here I propose – in quick rough strokes due to the short time available – some ideas for reference in regard to challenges the twenty-first century presents to us.

Social Life and Surveillance

Idea # 1: Surveillance is an integral component of all social life.

This is true of all human societies, likewise of many animal societies, and even vegetal ones.

Idea # 2: Surveillance takes many forms with very different, even opposite consequences.

I am a grandfather. Obviously I watched my children and grandchild. However, the forms that such surveillance takes can lead children to more and more autonomy, or, conversely, to dependence and submission.

That is why, idea # 3: The concepts proposed by author Ivan Illich of autonomy versus heteronomy, conviviality and counterproductivity are useful to this discussion.

These concepts can be applied, for example, to a convivial urban neighborhood that combines the functions of housing, labor, commerce and recreation. Such an area appears safe because its residents, workers, passersby and idle bystanders spontaneously and freely offer themselves mutual, continuous, autonomous surveillance.

Conversely, an unconvivial single function neighborhood that is deserted during the night or day appears to generate insecurity. No expensive police, guards or electronic surveillance will succeed to produce real security. And such surveillance is likely to increase heteronomous forms of power over individuals and community.

Hence, idea # 4: It is important to consider the complex interrelationships between environmental, physical, social and technical structures and conditions, on the one hand, and the forms of surveillance that these structures permit or not as well as their effects, on the other hand.

Assessment Criteria

And therefore, idea # 5: Respect for freedom is a necessary, but totally insufficient assessment criteria (thus ineffective alone).

In addition, idea # 6 (stated earlier): The information society is necessarily a society where surveillance is becoming widespread, increasing in power and scope, and is being democratized.

Let us illustrate this with a surveillance activity which, unlike the “Lawful Access” bill on the State’s power over private communications, is conducted by private actors on public communications, namely: the high-frequency stock transactions which constitute some 60% of the volume of North American exchanges. This surveillance involves the use of computers that, each microsecond, monitor and analyze all transactions around the planet. This surveillance allows the same computer to purchase securities at one instant and resale them a few seconds later at a profit. The speeds of surveillance, analysis and decision making are so great that human operators can only control possible failure occurrences. Such as those that caused the Flash Crash of May 6, 2010 when these automatic systems suddenly made the Dow Jones Index to plunge several hundred points within a few minutes.

Such capabilities are becoming more democratic. Let’s remember that today a lower end smartphone is already more powerful than these big central computer that, in the sixties, most thought only States could afford. That the customers of data mining software, indispensable to produce results from digital surveillance, are roughly divided into four areas: academic (teaching and research), business (marketing, R & D), police and military intelligence, and we call civil society (various organizations and individuals). That information items on the behavior of individuals and organizations have never been produced in such large numbers or have never been more accessible (just take all the wealth of personal information items disseminated via social media).

Some surveillance activities can easily be described as harmful, such as surveillance of the private communications of citizens or of their legitimate political activities. Other surveillance activities can easily be described as beneficial, such as those about who funds political parties and about who does what lobbying with which decision makers.

However, idea # 7: The majority of the surveillance activities that will emerge will not be so easily assessed: understanding their nature and their effects will require deliberations.

So idea # 8: Drawing on a proposition from economists Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, we could state that: all surveillance should be subjected to the application of the principles of freedom, but that any surveillance involving some exercise of social power should also be subjected to the principles of democracy.

These principles are to be applied, no matter the public or private nature of the actions being monitored; or the state, commercial or civilian identity of those conducting the surveillance.

Logically, the same principles should also apply to the decision making on environmental, physical, social and technical structures and conditions that determine the forms surveillance may or may not take. Indeed, various social movements express the same demand, whether about shale gas extraction or high finance business: one’s obligation to subject to the action of another called for one’s right to know and right to have one’s say.

As a Preliminary Conclusion

Idea # 9: Such radical democratization calls for deep legal, parliamentary and political transformations from the local to the international levels.

Such changes could indeed be facilitated by possible information societies’ developments.

However, idea # 10: The exact forms that these changes should take remains yet to be defined.

Here, our situation is similar to those of different protests movements (such as Occupy Wall Street) that clearly identifies how current practices are unacceptable without being able to define what should be the alternatives. However, it is as equally urgent to conceive concrete solutions. Let us illustrate with two cases.

Electronic payment

The first case is about privatization of a decision of a public nature. It is the introduction in North America of smart banking cards that raise issues of individual and societal surveillance. Electronic payment is a “radical monopoly” to use another concept from Ivan Illich: if citizens retain the choice of the financial institution that will provide the banking card, there is only one electronic payment system that is imposed on all financial institutions and to all their customers on a given territory.

However, the choice of a new microprocessor based payment system is not trivial. This is because there are dozens of concepts for implementing this technology that are quite different in terms of individual surveillance. Some concepts can make electronic payments as anonymous as the use of paper money. For example, the financial institution knows by the end of the day that it should debit the account of such customer to such total amount, but remains unable to connect this with the various suppliers where the customer has spent money. At the other end of the spectrum, there are concepts that provide the financial institution with a wealth of information about who has purchased what from whom precisely at what time and how much. The choice between one type of concept and another has little to do with technical or budgetary constraints. It is in practice a political decision on the level of surveillance that financial institutions may or may not carry on the activities of their clients. But it is not elected parliaments that decide. Rather, parliaments have left the decision to private clubs of financial institutions (in Canada, to the Canadian Payments Association).

But it’s not just the surveillance of individual clients that is at issue. The generalization of electronic payments offers financial institutions a breathtaking real-time view of economic activities and situations of entire societies. This truly represents a strategic advantage in times of economic turmoil. Especially when compared to the situation of governments, media and civil society who discuss measures that will have some impact only several months into the future on the basis of statistics reflecting situations often four months old in the past. Why only financial institutions could have as up to date data?

In one individual surveillance as in societal surveillance, the democratic principle should apply - in addition to that of freedom - with respect to decisions about social powers of such magnitude. Should parliaments recover the power to legislate publically on these matters? Or should we try to democratize the work of clubs such as the Canadian Association of payment? Or follow a different model of democratic decision making?

Passports

The second case is about internationalization of a public decision. This is about passports used to monitor border crossings of citizens, and often their movements within these boundaries. Design standards of electronic and biometric components of passports are taken in international forums, such as the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), by senior public servants of the Member States surrounded by lobbyists of the airline and surveillance technologies industries. National parliaments often only have the choice to endorse or not the standards already established elsewhere.

Again, we must find a way to preserve the principle of democracy against such technocratic fait accompli through international bodies. Should parliaments or governments publicly pre-debate options to be offered in international forums? Should we engage a democratization of discussions in international forums to allow a real voice to citizens to be affected by decisions? Or a combination of both? Or another model?

These are the types of changes, needing to be outlined, that I propose to explore with you during the following discussion.