Chris Shaw - Photo by The Blackbird

When two plainclothes officers approached Dr. Chris Shaw last June, it had started off like any other day for the Vancouver-based neuroscientist. Shaw had just stepped out of a café with his morning caffeine fix, and was heading to his office at a university research lab around the corner. Within moments, Shaw was flanked by the two intelligence officers from the Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit (ISU), an RCMP-led task force in charge of Vancouver’s $900-million Olympic security operation.

The officers wanted to have a chat with Shaw, but not about his neurological work. There were concerns for 2010 security, the officers told Shaw. Concerns prompted by elements of a book he had written.

Shaw is not only a leading expert on Lou Gehrig’s and Parkinson’s disease, but he has also become one of the city’s most vocal critics of the Olympics. His 2008 book, The Five Ring Circus: Myths and Realities of the Olympic Games, is a critical exploration of the social, economic, and environmental impacts of the Games, and of the history behind Vancouver’s bid for the Olympics.

The ISU’s visit to Shaw was part of a larger surveillance campaign on anti-Olympic activists and protestors in the build up to 2010. Controversy erupted when local media revealed that friends and relatives of Shaw had also been targeted by ISU.

“If this is what almost $1 billion in security costs buys you,” Shaw wrote after his ISU visit, “then maybe we aren’t really getting our money’s worth?”

Shaw fears that civil liberties — the rights an individual has in a society, such as the freedom of expression — are at risk. The Olympic Charter declares that “no kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.” In order to enforce this rule, Vancouver signed a contract with the International Olympic Committee, ensuring that no “propaganda or advertising” is placed within or outside the Olympic venues in such a manner that it could be seen by TV cameras or spectators.

I interviewed Dr. Shaw last November to discuss his concerns about the Olympics’ impact on civil liberties.

Sean Casey: Why has there been so much controversy regarding the ISU’s surveillance tactics?

Chris Shaw: I think a lot of people were very comfortable with the ISU doing their job, as long as it was just with activists. I wouldn’t, but one could make the case that the ISU have to go around and talk to people that have been vocal critics of the Games because, who knows, maybe I really have Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction in my backyard and I’m going to throw them at the Convention Centre (laughs). It could happen, but it’s not real likely. So let’s say they have to talk to me. But having them talk to my friends? Talk to my ex-wife? Talk to people that vaguely know what I do?

Such as Danika Surm? [Surm, a 24-year old nursing student, was approached by two plainclothes ISU officers at her local community college. Though she knows Shaw, she has no involvement with his activism.]

The problem with Danika’s case is that it was so far removed from what I do as an anti-Olympic activist. For a lot of people who may not have a particular opinion on the Olympics beforehand, it’s suddenly in their face because it means that they too could be approached by the ISU. If someone talks to me in a coffee shop, or takes a pamphlet, or comes to a lecture I give, are they going to get a knock at the door? Danika was an ordinary person, who was all of a sudden subjected to police surveillance, and people think: ‘That could be me.’ The ISU crossed a boundary there, and I think they realize it.

Why do you think the ISU has focused so much on activists?

I think they’re going after low-hanging fruit: Protests. There are two reasons for it. First of all, it’s easy. I’m known, other activists are known, we’re very vocal, we speak at forums, it’s easy to find us and therefore to appear that they’re doing something by talking to us. Number two, it does have an intimidation factor. It’s meant basically to tell people, ‘Look, I can come up to you in the street, I can find you at home, at work, at your coffee shop. I can find you anywhere.’

Underlying all of this is that VANOC and the government are pathologically terrified of embarrassment. They’re afraid of the P.R. that could spill out at protests during the torch run. What they’re managing is the political impression rather than any real threat. I don’t think that they look at protestors and think ‘these are a bunch of dangerous criminals,’ because I don’t think there’s anything that suggests that at all.

You filed a joint lawsuit with the B.C. Civil Liberties Association against the City of Vancouver over sign restrictions at Olympic venues, stating that the bylaw prevented you criticizing the Games. Why did you decide it was necessary to sue the city?

Because you cannot take Charter rights away for commercial interest, and you can’t surrender them for three weeks, or three minutes. Once you’ve established that slippery slope that Charter rights are subordinate to something else — and the Charter is supposed to be the supreme law of Canada — you’re opening up a Pandora’s Box that you don’t want to open up in a democratic country. Because, why should they restrict it to the Olympics? And what happens across the country when municipalities see that they can do this? If Vancouver pulls it off, why shouldn’t they?

What about proposed free speech zones, or “safe assembly areas” as they are now called, near Olympic venues?

They’re saying that protestors don’t really have to use these zones, that they’re just for your convenience if you want to stay safe. Except the city came in with a signage bylaw that said you can protest, but you can’t have a sign with a stick, you can’t have a sign that blocks anyone’s view, you can’t do anything to annoy anybody that is celebrating the Games, you can’t have a voice amplification device, and you can’t have a large backpack. But you can go to your free speech zone! They’re streaming there basically, and some people are totally going to be comfortable with that. But most people I know will take a view that all of Canada is free speech zone, and I will protest wherever I feel like it on public property.

The city has since amended the Olympic bylaw to distinguish between commercial and political speech. Did the amendments satisfy your concerns?

No, they satisfied some of my concerns, but not all of them. They satisfied some aspects of what is going to be considered an illegal sign on someone’s private property. It was unclear before if the city would enter your private property to take down an anti-Olympic sign, and now they claim that they will not. Before, they were trying to make it very clear that the city’s intent was not to stifle freedom of expression, but only to prevent ambush marketing. But one notes they ordered the removal of an anti-Olympic art mural, claiming it was graffiti. This was our concern, that people who are not adept at understanding the Charter would be going out and enforcing a bylaw that was repressive to begin with.

I was satisfied that the city was going to curtail their enthusiasm for kowtowing to the International Olympic Committee, but the amendments didn’t go far enough. I still think the bylaw should be scraped altogether. The lawsuit was about making sure we are as broadly protected as possible in the exercise of our Charter rights.

Vancouver had gone down a very dangerous path by creating the law in the first place. Dangerous not just for residents of Vancouver, but for anyone in Canada that respects the Charter as the supreme law of Canada. The City was creating case law that would allow any Canadian city to trade civil liberties for commercial rights.

A lot of us assume that the Charter is this great wall protecting us from the government. If it’s not as strong as we think, then we need to change it to make it stronger. Because what’s the point of having a Charter on paper that doesn’t apply?

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Art by Stephen B. Whatley

But could he now survive a hostile corporate takeover?

At The Daily Planet, Clark didn’t need super powers to realize something was amiss. The complimentary donuts and coffee were nowhere to be seen. How were the reporters to survive the editorial meeting without a caffeinated high?

Perry White, the paper’s editor in chief, waved his hand at the empty space in the center of the table. “Cutbacks, the first of many,” he declared. “We’re dying, people. Hack bloggers beat us to every headline. Craigslist has decimated our ad revenue. Print’s irrelevant thanks to Google News and their ilk.” White leaned back in his chair, stubbed out his cigar. “That’s why management has decided to sell the paper to LexCorp.”

Stunned silence. The missing doughnuts and coffee were instantly forgotten.

Lois Lane slammed her fist against the table. “You’ve sold us out!”

“It had to be done,” Perry said. “Readership’s down and we’re running deep in the red. People aren’t looking for investigative reporting anymore. They want to know which celebrities are in rehab, which ones are packing on the pounds and which ones are purging. That’s the kind of news Metropolis can’t get enough of.”

Lois refused to relent. “We can’t give in like this. Look at what happened to Gotham’s paper. It used to be a leading standard. Now they’re just reprinting press releases and calling it ‘reporting’. We can’t let Lex Luthor win like this!”

Perry stared out the window, lit up another cigar. “Don’t you get it, Lois? He already has. The papers were signed this morning. We are now officially part of the LexCorp family.”

In the distance, Clark heard a 747 plummet toward the earth. He quietly excused himself from the meeting. In the hallway, he ripped open his shirt and changed into his costume. He flew out of the building, into the upper atmosphere, and rescued the plane before it crashed into a local sports stadium.

Deep in thought, Clark returned the plane safely to the ground. He didn’t understand Lois’s outrage at the meeting. Sure, Luthor was evil, he knew that. But how was his takeover of The Daily Planet a bad thing? Hadn’t Luthor just saved the paper from bankruptcy? Perhaps everyone was over-reacting.

Clark flew back to the office, changed into his regular clothes. Inside the office, the editorial meeting had broken up. Only Jimmy Olson remained. The young photographer clicked away at his computer.

“Hey Jimmy,” Clark said. “I heard Superman just saved a plane from crashing!”

Jimmy didn’t look up. “I know. Had a Google news alert about it a few minutes ago.”

“Shouldn’t we get out there and interview the survivors?”

“Why bother? Some blogger already covered it.”

Clark frowned. “Don’t you want to at least snap some pics for tomorrow’s front page?”

Jimmy turned his computer screen towards Clark. Centered on it was a large photo of the survivors exiting the plane. “The blogger also had a digital Nikon. No one wants to read yesterday’s news tomorrow.”

Creeping dread descended upon Clark. He was faster than a speeding bullet. But, he realized, he was no match for the Internet.

* * *

Perry White was the first to be fired from The Daily Planet after the take-over.

It was part of the corporate restructuring strategy, the new management claimed. The recession’s upon us, we’ve got to do more with less. They swore it had nothing to do with the editorial Perry wrote about Lex Luthor, said it was in no way related to his negative comments about Luthor’s quest to become mayor of Metropolis. Perry’s departure was strictly business, the new management said as they smiled broadly. Just business.

“We’re next,” Lois muttered at the next editorial meeting, tapping her pencil against the table.

“Why do you say that?” Clark asked.

She snapped the pencil in half. “Because reporting the truth is no longer profitable.”

The buyouts were announced later in the week. In a cost-cutting coup de grâce, the new management offered paltry severance payments to any of the old-timers who would accept early retirement. It was purely optional, they said, but emphasized that those reporting current affairs should give extra consideration to it.

Clark, Lois, and Jimmy went for a drink-and-bitch session after work. Lois and Jimmy were sloshed within the hour, while Clark remained cold sober. The alcohol could not conquer his super liver.

“What about the Coast City News?” Jimmy wondered aloud. “We could find new jobs there.”

Lois held her head up with her hands. “Owned by LexCorp as well. Cutbacks are going on there too.” She threw back another shot of tequila. “I’m going to take the buyout. Maybe switch to marketing, write up cute advertisements for crap nobody needs. At least I can afford to put food on the table with that. Hell, I’ll even be able to afford a table.”

“But Lois, you can’t give up so easily!” Clark said.

“This ship’s sinking,” Jimmy said. “I heard that they’re outsourcing the copy editors to India. India!”

“We’ll be a country with the exact same opinion in every newspaper soon,” Lois said. “Have you considered wedding photography, Jimmy?”

Clark stood up in disgust, resisted the urge to flash-fry the entire bar with his heat ray vision. “What about all that we’ve fought for all of this time? Truth? Justice? The American way?”

Jimmy placed a sympathetic hand on Clark’s shoulder. “Bought out by the corp, along with the rest of our cred.”

* * *

The newsroom was quickly depleted of experienced journalists, soon replaced with twentysomething interns. Dust gathered on Lois and Jimmy’s desks, their files went unused. Their names faded from the bylines of The Daily Planet.

Clark struggled to understand the new dialect of the twentysomethings. Twitter. Ajax. RSS. Wiki. He hadn’t a clue what they were talking about. The twentysomethings looked at him with pity, especially when he brought up certain topics. Research and analysis caused pained expressions on the faces of the interns. Fact-checking was an anachronism to them.

They whispered and giggled about him behind his back. Called him Stegosaurus. It was only a matter of time before he became extinct, before the meteorite of technology wiped him off the face of the copy desk. Clark heard every muted jibe, every muttered insult. He cursed his super hearing.

At the next editorial meeting, Clark proposed they investigate the allegation that recently-elected Mayor Lex Luther siphoned money out of the city treasury. Rumour had it that Luthor planned to use the money to build a weapon to destroy the moon.

“Didn’t you read Luthor’s press release?” one of the interns asked. “He’s already said he had nothing to do with the missing money.”

Clark zapped him with x-ray vision and hoped that it would give the mouthy intern cancer. “Yes, but read between the lines. What doesn’t the press release say? Notice how he doesn’t mention anything about his supersonic weapon research program? Or the host of killer robots that he hired to guard city hall? We need to dig deeper here.”

The paper’s new editor shook his head. “Our surveys show that readers aren’t interested in boring politics anymore. They yearn for bleeding-edge entertainment news. That’s why we need you to cover the final results of this week’s American Idol.”

Clark heard gunshots from a bank robbery in progress several blocks away. He ignored it. “Are… are you trying to tell me that I’m…”

The editor nodded. “Reassigned to the entertainment section, which is now on our front page. Congratulations, Clark! Welcome to your new career.”

* * *

The depression brought on by the reassignment was too much for the man of steel to bear. He tried drinking himself asleep to no avail. He tried to forget his troubles with a small pile of uppers and downers bought from a nearby dealer, but his super metabolism quashed the drugs before the side effects kicked in.

Desperate, he opened the lead-lined safe hidden in his apartment. He took out a few of the small glowing rocks, carried them into his kitchen then placed them on a small mirror. He cut the kryptonite into several powdered lines with a small razor blade, and quickly snorted each line in rapid succession.

He was high, higher than any time he had ever flown. Clark went club hopping and danced the night away. He snorted more kryptonite off of countless toilet seats in numerous club washrooms, and accidentally ripped the arm off of a bouncer that tried to kick him out of one club. At some point in the night, he dropped and lost his thick-rimmed glasses.

Shortly before dawn, Clark stumbled to Lois’s apartment. He pounded on her door until she woke up and answered.

“Christ. Clark, you’re a mess.”

Clark rubbed his nose, snorted. “Entertainment news, Lois. They have me covering entertainment news!”

“We tried to warn you,” she said. “Adapt or die, Clark. It’s as simple as that.” Lois moved to close her front door, but paused. “You know, without your glasses, you kind of look like Superman. And look at him. He can spin the earth backwards, but he still wouldn’t be able to change the way the world’s turning. Go home, Clark.”

Lois shut the door. Clark slumped against the wall outside as morning dawn broke.

* * *

Inside the American Idol green room, Clark waited patiently for his interview with the show’s host. Restless, he flipped through the channels on the room’s TV, stopped on one of the LexCorp news channels.

Footage was shown of the moon as it was blown up by a sonic weapon. The footage cut to a press conference held by Lex Luthor. The bald mayor denied all responsibility for the events, claimed that it was just coincidence that he had recently developed a weapon similar to the one that pulverized the moon. The scene cut to the small audience of carefully selected reporters. They smiled, nodded in agreement with Lex, and obediently wrote down what he told them. The show cut back to the news anchor, who introduced the night’s feature news item: an investigative report on a bleach blonde celebrity’s recent jail house stint.

There was more to come after the break, the news anchor promised. Much, much more.

Superman characters are copyright and trademarked by DC Comics.
-30- story by Sean Casey.
Photo by Stephen B Whatley

Photo by Andrew Whitmarsh

I’m incredibly proud to announce today’s launch of Bankrupt Magazine — Vancouver’s newest online literary magazine.

Bankrupt is the brainspawn of Meredith Hambrock and I. It’s a place for up-and-coming Vancouver writers to share their work with the world.

We’re looking for fiction and literary non-fiction that’s written for readers, not just other writers. Reading should be exciting; it should grab you and say “Hold on tight, this is going to be wild.” It should be accessible, not elitist. Anyone should be able to pick up a piece of good writing and say: “You were right, that was one hell of a ride.”

Live in Metro Vancouver and want to share your story with us? Or just looking for a damn good read? Then check out our site:

http://bankruptmag.com

A huge shout-out goes to Marty Batten for all his help with the site. Bankrupt wouldn’t have been possible without him.

Photos by Jay Sturdevant

Evening descended upon the Ou river in Laos, and still we had not found shelter. Our hand-scrawled map of the river was not drawn to scale. The next village could be mere minutes away, or many miles yet.

Arms sore, I laid down my paddle across the front of our canoe. Looking up at the towering limestone cliffs that enclosed both sides of the river, I asked the question on everyone’s mind:

“What if they don’t let us stay?”

We had encountered only one other village that day. They dismissed us with a simple head shake. Whether out of mistrust or misunderstanding, we didn’t know.

The canoe rounded a bend in the river. The American, James, sat up suddenly at the stern. “There it is!” he shouted, pointing towards the river’s edge.

Along the shore, women in argyle sarongs bathed themselves in the murky river water. A lone man in shorts scrubbed his laundry against a boulder. Children chased each other along the water’s edge. One child spotted our approaching canoe and halted.

“Fallang!” the boy shouted out. Foreigners.

The villagers stopped and faced us. In the middle of our boat, Annike turned around towards Ellen. “Get the paper out.”

Ellen stopped bailing out water, then pulled out our Rosetta stone: a single piece of paper containing every phrase of Lao we knew.

“Sabaidee!” she read aloud. “Náwn yuu nîi dâi baw?” Can we stay here tonight?

The villagers continued staring for a moment. The man turned to the women. The women shrugged. He faced us again, evaluating the four canoeing backpackers in front of him. A radiant smile dawned upon his face. He dived into the river, swam out to the canoe, and towed us back to shore.

Annike and Ellen were stereotypical Swedes, tall and blonde; sisters in every way except by blood. They had first found me two months earlier in a Cambodian bar, curing a case of travel romance heartache with a bottle of Thai whiskey. The three of us clicked together easily in that strange way travellers are able to do in far-away lands, despite having nothing in common other than the bags on their backs. Memory of that first night blurs into darkness as the empty glasses piled up on the bar counter. I remember neither the final rounds of drinks, nor literally being carried back to my guesthouse.

The next morning when I came to, I was in the back of a bus with the Swedes, heading out of Cambodia and into Vietnam. I had been kidnapped.

“We rescued you, Sean,” Annike would interject as I recounted the tale to others we met later along the road.

We took the scenic route together through Vietnam, one bar at a time. From Ho Chi Minh to Hanoi, we drank at sidewalk speakeasies, danced on the pool tables at the Apocalypse Now, and pounded back snake whiskey while floating in Halong Bay. We trekked through the country seeking new places to drink and dance, culture and history be damned.

“It’s incredible how well you three travel together,” a girl once commented to us at the border crossing from northern Vietnam into Laos.

Ellen laughed. “That’s because none of us have slept with each other.”

“Yeah, there’s absolutely no tension,” I said in feigned agreement with Ellen, making sure not to keep eye contact with her for too long.

In between thatched cottages and palm trees, an unpaved space served as the village center. Dozens of the villagers formed a circle around us. The adults kept a cautious distance. The children clung tightly to each other, giggling and pointing, venturous enough to come close, yet too shy to talk to us. We stood still, grinning idiotically.

“Now what?” James asked through clenched teeth. We had just introduced ourselves and were running low on language.

An idea formed in my mind. I took a deck of playing cards from my bag, shuffled, and fanned them out to the children.

“Pick a card, any card.”

Giggles erupted. The crowd pushed forward a reluctant volunteer. She took a card. “Now show it to your friends,” I said, pantomiming the action. I flipped the bottom card of the deck upside down while her back was turned, then turned the entire deck over.

The girl slid her card back into the deck. I waved my hands over the cards, chanted a spell, then secretly flipped the deck over once more. I fanned the cards out to the children again. The girl’s card was the only one facing face up.

A collective oooohhh went up. I performed the trick once more, showing them how it worked. The children took the cards, performed it a few times with each other, then rushed over to the adults to show off their new magical powers. The adults laughed. The tension broke.

A light flashed. Everyone jumped back. James snapped another photo of the children playing with the cards. The adults scowled.

“This isn’t National Geographic,” I muttered.

“It’s cool, man,” James said, adjusting the focus on his camera. “It’s cool.”

* * *

Three’s company. James made it a fucking crowd.

Annike introduced the interloper into our travelling posse. They met in northern Laos, where we bought our dilapidated canoe. Infatuated at first sight, she charmed James into making the week-long journey down the Ou river with us.

I knew his type, had him figured out from the start: loud, ignorant, neo-Conservative. Condemned to spend the next week in close-quarters with an American, my misguided sense of Canadian superiority became enraged. I held him personally responsible for the current state of world affairs.

“Hey James, who did you vote for in the election?” I asked guilelessly during the first day on the river.

“Gore, man. I can’t believe Bush got in.”

No doubt he was completely ignorant of the world, however.

“Have you guys ever been to Nepal?” he asked on the second day. “Beautiful country. Even with the Maoist uprising going on there.”

Dammit. I knew he was a prick at heart though.

“Hey Sean, the sun’s burning you up pretty badly there,” he said on the third morning. “Here, take my hat.”

I hated him even more for being such a nice guy. I told myself it had nothing to do with his Adonis looks, or the fact that Ellen kept glancing at him when she thought no one was looking.

* * *

One of the village families sheltered us within the bamboo-thatched walls of their home. As we dined with our host that night, an English-speaking Buddhist monk from a neighbouring village appeared at the door.

“You are the first foreigners to visit here in over a year,” he announced, digging into what was left of the sticky rice. “And your timing couldn’t have been better. There is a wedding in the village tomorrow. Would you like to stay for it?”

“I don’t know,” James said. “We really should be going –”

“We’d love to,” I interrupted. I locked eyes with James. “I mean, seriously, when will we get another chance to attend a Laotian wedding again?”

Annike and Ellen sided with me. Take that, USA.

The wedding began with a bachelor party in the early hours of the morning. The men gathered to throw back shot after shot of gasoline-flavoured rice whiskey. The four of us were invited to join the men, though whether as honoured guests or as foreign amusements, I wasn’t sure.

I excused myself after two hours of debauchery to sneak down to the river. There had been stories in Thailand of backpackers drowning while swimming intoxicated. But the appeal of a sobering dip on a humid day was too much to resist. I dived into the Ou river, and felt drunkenly rejuvenated.

I swam back to the shore. A group of children stood over a still body on the ground. James had passed out by the river bank. I stumbled over, looked down at James. “This, kids, is why Americans shouldn’t drink!” I slurred.

I led the kids back to the village, leaving James behind. We ran into Ellen along the dirt path. “You better check on James down there. Make sure he’s alive.” I staggered back into our cottage, climbed underneath a mosquito net, then promptly passed out.

* * *

Annike’s crying broke my reverie. The afternoon sun still snuck through the cracks of the walls. I rubbed my eyes open, then looked over at Annike on the other side of the room. “What’s going on?”

“Ellen and James, that’s what! I thought he liked me…” She burst into tears again before she could continue.

I pulled myself upright, stumbled past Annike towards the door. Outside, only a few lingering guests remained in the village center. The wedding had commenced and concluded while I’d been comatose.

I jogged back to the river’s edge. Several villagers were gathered in front of a tangle of bushes. They spoke in hushed tones, their body language betrayed vexation. I drew closer. The bushes rustled loudly. Ellen emerged, tucking up a bra strap up as she stepped out of the bushes. She gasped, taken aback by the gathered group. The leaves shifted again, this time James emerged, tying the cords of his shorts together as he walked out of the foliage, dazed and oblivious to others around him.

In a country where exposed shoulders are considered offensive, one massive cultural faux fucking pas had just been committed.

From honoured guests to ostracized delinquents in a matter of minutes. We hid in our hosts’ cottage for the rest of the evening, cut off from the rest of the village. Shouts and arguments broke out between Ellen, Annike and James long into the night. I passed the time by polishing off the rest of the rice whiskey in silence.

I woke up first the next morning, walked down to the shore, and prepped the canoe for departure. One of our hosts was down there as well, watching dawn mist rise from the river’s surface. We stood in silence together. I desperately wanted to say something, anything. Unfortunately, I had never learned to say I’m sorry in Lao.

* * *

We paddled the last two days down the river in relative silence, speaking only when necessary.

What had we taken away from the village? A hangover and a few photos. What had we left in return? We had been on the cusp of a moment, of a unique experience, and we squandered it. I couldn’t even remember our host’s name.

The water’s flow gained velocity as we reached the end of the Ou river. An airplane flew over us, the first engine heard in a week. The old colonial city of Luang Phabang appeared in the distance. We stopped paddling, put down our oars, and gave in to the river’s force as it merged and became part of the Mekong. I wanted to turn around, to go back, to do it over again, but couldn’t. The current was too strong, the course could not be changed.

Laos photos by Jay Sturdevant

I’ll be reporting at The Tyee — an independent online magazine based in Vancouver — over the next few months.

Check out a few of my recent posts there:

• Nuclear arms ban is hot again
• Police conduct report shows flaws with complaint process: Pivot
• Canada slow to track human trafficking: UBC legal prof
• Vancouver may loan Millennium up to $100-million
• Union jobs at risk in BC’s largest security firm

See a list of all my Tyee posts here.

Coffee is the new smoking. It seems like everyone’s trying to give it up. I’ve overheard it everywhere recently: “I’ve been trying to quit since last week / My friend’s felt fantastic since giving it up / My manager picked the wrong day to get in a fight with me, it’d been three days since I had a cup / Decaf makes me want to stab someone.”

The pros to cigarettes and coffee are almost identical. Both offer an amazing pick-me-up mental boost. Both serve as a great tool for social interaction. There’s no better way to start the day than a drag of smoke or a slurp of brew. However, they also leave you feeling edgy and twitchy. And darken pearly white teeth. And let’s not forget the hopeless addiction. Apart from the lung cancer, they’re basically the same vice.

Too extreme of a comparison? Perhaps. But consider the marketing behind both addictions. Not too many years ago, most advertisers portrayed smoking as the habit of the suave and sophisticated. Celebrities proudly endorsed their favourite brands. Marketers presented tobacco consumption as a cultural activity, an edifying practice.

Sound familiar?

1951 du Maurier ad

2008 Nespresso ad with George Clooney

Marketing has subtly turned a simple caffeinated beverage into a fashionable lifestyle, just as they did with cigarettes. Friends showed North America that cafes were the place to be. Celebrity powerhouses, such as George Clooney, have helped brands like Nespresso obtain global revenues nearing almost a billion dollars. And we, the consumers? We have gradually substituted one addiction for another, trading cigarette packs for soy lattes.

I’ve been both a smoker and a coffee fiend. I’ve managed to quit the cigarettes, but giving up coffee has been virtually impossible. I tried joining the abstinence trend last week by switching to tea, the caffeine addict’s methadone. But it’s just not the same high. Besides, the battle was lost from the moment the coffee beans in the kitchen cupboard began to whisper my name.

Nicorette marketers take note: caffeine patches will be the next big thing.

Top photo credit: Thought Sparks

Photo by The Blackbird

“Pleasantly shocked” best describes my reaction to David Eby’s announcement today that he is seeking a nomination for City Council for the November elections, and will be running under Vision Vancouver’s flag.

If you don’t know who David is, here’s a quick run-down: he’s a social activist lawyer who has worked with the Pivot Legal Society for the past three years, and has become one of the leading advocates for social housing and homeless rights in the Downtown Eastside. He co-authored the 2006 Cracks in the Foundation report, which exposed the numerous roots and causes of the housing/homeless crisis in Vancouver. In a short amount of time, he has become a leading human rights activist in the city and a noble example of how one person alone can make a difference.

I interviewed Mr. Eby a few weeks ago, and was convinced he wouldn’t make his election bid until the next term in 2011. However, I’m glad that he’s making his move sooner than later. If there’s one person that Vancouver needs on the city council to prevent the city from further becoming a property developer’s playground at the cost of basic human rights, it’s him.

Photos by Brett Beadle

In the grey Sunday morning light, a costumed procession marches through the quiet streets of Downtown Vancouver’s financial district. Dressed in matching black business suits and stylized Guy Fawkes masks, the sombre group looks more like a displaced Day of the Dead parade than members of an organized protest.

A loud cheer greets the group as they swing onto West Hastings Street. Over a hundred fellow protestors await them, most of whom also have their faces hidden behind Halloween masks. The two groups merge, and the protest commences. Pamphlets are handed out to curious passerbys. Picket signs rise high. A man with a microphone begins a chant: “Brain-washed, brain-washed, brain-washed!”

On the opposite side of the road, the Church of Scientology doors swing open. Two members strut out proudly, unfurl a banner, then raise it high on poles. “Scientologists For Peace,” it boldly proclaims.

The protestors break out in mocking laughter. A new chant starts, aimed at the banner: “Lies, lies, lies!” A section of the protestors splinter off and sprint across the street to the church. They raise their picket signs high, blocking the banner from view. One protester, her face hidden with a plaid handkerchief, wields a simple cardboard sign: “Religion is free. $cientology isn’t.” A veiled man beside her holds up a hand-written plea: “Free Tom Cruise.”

It’s difficult to describe the inside of the Scientology building in Vancouver as a church. Devoid of the scents of melted wax or burning incense, the Vancouver mission looks more like a marketing office than a sanctuary of religious devotion. Tall promotional signs line each wall. The receptionist’s desk is adorned with a bookshelf full of Scientology material for sale. In two cubicles behind reception, Scientologist members place follow-up phone calls to potential members.

George, a Scientologist for over 27 years, sits at a promotional table near the church doors. The table is decorated with E-meters and books on Dianetics, the foundational belief system of Scientology. George calmly sips on a cup of coffee as he offers a demonstration of the E-meter, paying no attention to the protest across the street.

The E-meter looks like a volt meter, the kind available at Radio Shack, attached to two tin cylinders. He turns on the device. The needle on the meter hovers at neutral. The E-meter, George explains, measures the electrical current in the human body, and can be used to observe changes in a person’s mental energy. “Hold the cylinders and think of a stressful moment in your life,” he says. “The needle will react to your thoughts.”

The needle fails to budge.

“Are you concentrating? Here, let me make an adjustment.” He turns the dials on the meter. Suddenly the needle violently swings back and forth.

“See?” he says, smiling affably.

Back outside at the protest, an altercation has broken out. Two muscular passerbys become enraged when videotaped by a protestor. They corner her, demanding the tape. Other protestors rush over, surrounding the two men. While outnumbered, they still pose a potential physical threat. The men begin shouting. “Why are you hiding behind masks? Stand up for what you believe in!”

“We are,” counters one protestor. “This is about free speech.”

Rain begins to drizzle. “Then prove it! All of your shit stands for nothing. Take off the masks! You’re all a joke. Behind a mask you’re nobody.” The two men storm off.

“We’re not nobody,” another protestor weakly retorts, his voice muffled under a Guy Fawkes mask. “We’re Anonymous.”

Photos by Lung S. Liu

Seen through the lens of Lung Liu, a scarred victim of a motorcycle accident becomes buoyantly handsome. A half-nude woman lying in a condom-strewn alleyway transforms into a caricature of beauty. Photos from his series on the Downtown Eastside capture Vancouver’s ignored and isolated denizens, of those forced to live in SRO hotels or on the street. While Lung’s street photography lacks any candidness, the black-and-white portraits humanize his subjects without capitalizing on shock value.

Lung claims the beauty in his work is neither contrived nor created by him. “It’s everywhere. If you stop and really look, there’s something beautiful about everyone.” He spins around in his seat. “Like that girl right behind us, she’s fucking gorgeous!”

I lean past Lung and look. Until now, I hadn’t noticed the woman he points to. She hovers over a pile of textbooks, oblivious to us. She sips on coffee and nods her head in rhythm with the beats flowing out of her headphones. Sure, she’s moderately attractive, but gorgeous? I don’t see it. She’s not someone that would cause a look-back if passed on the street.

Lung continues unabashed. “Sometimes you have to just go up to someone and say you’re really lovely. People aren’t going to be weirded out.”

I don’t buy it. A random stranger claiming that you’re beautiful? Surely a hidden agenda would be assumed. It can’t be as simple as that, I tell him.

Lung’s out of his seat before I complete the thought. He walks across the café and taps the girl on the shoulder. The words “I just wanted to say you’re beautiful” float across the room. The girl smiles. A thank-you forms on her lips.

Lung sits down again nonchalantly. “Just like that,” he declares without a trace of embarrassment.

I look back at the girl. She hovers over the textbooks once again, only now the headphones remain off. The curved edges of her mouth betray the remnants of the compliment.

The confidence to approach and profess admiration to complete strangers is relatively new to Lung. Adolescence and his early 20s were marked with little social interaction. Friends were few, girls were admired from afar. His idea of fun on weekends during high school was memorizing Pi to 120 decimal places.

His social isolation may have been due to the upheaval in the formative years of his life. Born in northern Vietnam, Lung’s family fled to China during the war in the early ‘70s. Five-year old Lung spent the next few months in a refugee camp in Macao, before his family was sponsored for immigration to Canada by a church in British Columbia.

As with many children of immigrant families, parental pressure was placed on young Lung to excel academically above all others, to earn a prestigious and secure financial future. His parents wanted him to become a doctor, a path he initially followed: after high school he went directly to UBC and earned a degree in microbiology.

“The future was all set for me, and I couldn’t handle it,” Lung recalls. “I had ulcers because I was so stressed about academics. I had these fantasies about just getting away, seeing things I hadn’t seen before, about getting away from life as I knew it. I kept dreaming of things like going on a trip and finding a cave which exits into Shangri-La, where no one has to work, and people can be happy and do whatever they want.”

His relationship with microbiology after university was brief and bitter, lasting a mere three months. On the rebound, he started anew as a systems analyst for a market research company. Life outside of academia became mundane and routine: “I would wake up, have breakfast, go to work, come home, cook myself dinner, go to sleep, do the same thing every day. After three years I realized I couldn’t differentiate one day from the next.”

Lung knew he had to change, but logically he couldn’t figure out what needed to be altered. He was at a loss.

And then the planets aligned, and Venus entered his life.

They met at a costume party. Lung was dressed as a woman; Venus was into drag queens. She approached him and complimented his beauty, and they chatted throughout the night.

Their next rendezvous was on his birthday. For a present, she promised him a print from her photography. She showed him her portfolio, containing nudes of every man she had been friends with. Conservative Lung told her that he could never pose nude. His resolve lasted a full week.

They went down to Wreck Beach. While taking photos of Lung, she removed her own clothing to make him more comfortable. “That’s how I started photography. I thought: If she can do this, so can I.”

Venus moved to Montreal for film school a few months later. Hundreds showed up to her going-away party. Many were so affected by her departure that they literally burst into tears. Her life was in an opposing orbit to his: loved by many, chasing her true passions. The party was a catalyst for Lung: “I just realized that, wow, what was I doing with my life? I had no real ties with anyone, I was working at a job I hated, all for a nebulous goal that I really didn’t know.”

In a pitted moment, he made his first unplanned, irrational decision. He moved to Montreal as well.

Jobless and unable to parle français, resources became scarce in Montreal. Desperate for cash, he tried to become a dancer at Club Adonis, a gay strip club, even though he is straight.

But could he actually dance?

“No, but I figured I could work the small Asian kid angle. I figured I was the type that could attract the Bears, that I could be a cage dancer or something. It was the only thing I could think of that would give me money and time to pursue my photography.”

Quebec’s governmental employment agency saved him from cages and bears, however, by sponsoring him to learn French full-time. Freed from financial worries, he pursued his hobby of photography, and excelled quickly in both language and imagery.

Separated from structures of family and familiarity, Lung was forced out of his introverted shell, forced to experience life less passively. Two years later when he moved back to Vancouver, the reserved persona was gone, replaced by an outgoing, freer personality. As Venus had first approached him years previously, he now had the confidence to do the same.

The change in confidence parallels the evolution of his photography. Over the course of the past four years, his work has progressed from traditional nature shots to complex, narrative portraits. Lung credits the escape from introversion as the key to his work. “Everything you need to know about photography, the technical aspects of it, can be learned in a day. The difference between a great photographer and a brilliant photographer is just social skills, that’s all.”

His art has developed a large following on several community websites, such as Livejournal and Flickr. His four major series – centered on the Salton Sea, Northern Vietnam, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and Majico in Mexico – have won praise from viewers around the world, which has not gone unnoticed by photography community. Last summer, he was awarded Editorial Non-Professional Photographer of the Year by the International Photographer’s Association, an organization which annually draws in nearly 20,000 entries from over 90 countries.

“When you take a picture of someone, you take them at that moment you see something in them that reminds you of how you feel about them,” Lung says as my coffee grows cold. “Your audience will clue in on that.”

Lung’s gorgeous girl gathers up her textbooks and exits the café. She turns and glides past the window we sit behind. I look up as she nears, and comprehension comes together like the click of a shutter.

This woman will never be on the cover of Cosmo. She will never star in the next summer blockbuster. She will never drink Diet Coke on a commercial. And that’s the point. She’s beautiful in a way I have forgotten exists, gorgeous in a way that doesn’t require silicone or Photoshop.

I ask Lung if he ever falls in love with his subjects.

“All the time,” he says.

It doesn’t though. He fills the glass to the top, takes a sip, and lets out a satisfied ahhhh. He winks at me. “Still got it,” he says.

* * *

My first memory of Jimmy is the strongest. I was seven, on a family pilgrimage back to England, running around maniacally with my cousins in their garden in Middlesex.

“Hey kids,” Jimmy called. “Come here for a second.”

We ran over to the man I barely knew but nonetheless called grandad.

“Watch this,” he whispered. Jimmy opened his mouth wide. The top row of his teeth fell out of his gums.

We fled in terror to our parents, screaming about bewitched teeth. Our parents looked back at Jimmy. “I don’t know what they’re talking about,” he said, smiling with two sets of perfectly aligned teeth.

Our parents returned to their conversation. Still smiling, Jimmy looked back down at us, then dropped his dentures from his skull yet again, sending his grandchildren fleeing once more.

* * *

The years pass, and yet I still know little about Jimmy beyond his cursed teeth. The Atlantic separates us. The little knowledge I have of him comes out of the stories told by visiting uncles.

“I was 16 years old the first time I flew in a plane,” says my uncle Gerald, the youngest of Jimmy’s children. “As we’re about to go on, Dad suddenly tells me that near the end of the war, planes were assembled so quick and carelessly that most of them fell completely apart on take off. I’ve been a nervous wreck on flights ever since.”

Jimmy rarely spoke of the war. His sons have only a few small anecdotes of his experiences. “Like the time I introduced him to Sue,” his son Chris says, recounting the first time Jimmy met his future daughter-in-law.

“And whereabouts are you from?” Jimmy asked Sue.

She named a small town in northern France.

“Oh yes,” he said. “I was there once. Back in the early ‘40s.”

She was surprised. Her Norman hometown was far off the tourist track. What was he doing all the way out there?

He shrugged absently. “Bombing it from the sky.”

* * *

I return to England over a decade later and tour the Imperial War Museum in London with Kevin, the eldest son. He points out a replica of a Lancaster, the bomber plane Jimmy served in. “He once told me how everyone in the plane would be chatting and smoking as they flew over the Channel, laughing like they didn’t have a care in the world,” Kevin says. “Then the pilot would shout out from the front – twenty minutes to target! – and all of the boys in the back would fall utterly silent.”

Jimmy was positioned in the rear turret, an exposed glass dome that hung from the tail of the plane. The turret was uninsulated and unheated; the gunner had to wear an electrically heated suit to prevent frostbite. I climb into the Lancaster replica, through its fuselage, and drop down into the gunner’s nest. I try to imagine what it must have been like waiting here, shivering, alone with my thoughts and my machine guns. I try to envision black clouds of flak detonating around me. I lean forward and listen for the whistle of falling bombs. I try to imagine what it felt like to be Jimmy, but can’t.

* * *

By the time I’m old enough to appreciate that there’s more to Jimmy than false teeth, it’s too late. Another stroke destroys his memory.

“Remember the time I came to Vancouver for Expo?”

It’s the third time he’s told me the story today. I look across the living room to the man who once dangled in a frozen glass bubble twenty thousand feet in the air. There’s no chance of recovering the experience. Born in a generation that didn’t worship the individual, his experiences were never recorded in a diary, or a movie, or a blog. His memories die as his neurons do.

“I can tell you everything that happened a decade or two ago,” he tells me. “But everything else…”

What about fifty years ago?

“Nothing,” he says. “Were you here yesterday?”

Yes, I tell him. And earlier this morning.

“Oh. I see,” he says, polishing off his glass of Guinness.