Capilano Courier Volume 46 Issue 15

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46

north vancouver

× February 4 2013

issue

N o . 15

Bridge to Terrorbithia An Account of Aging Infrastructure

Biking Better

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Grammy Forecast

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Counting Cats

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The New Homeless Tax

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CAPILANO Courier TABLE OF contents news

The Staff 4

of this disco infernal university newspaper JJ Brewis Editor-in-Chief

Aramark contract culminates soon

columns

6

The futile search for proper English

arts

Giles Roy Managing Editor

Samantha Thompson Copy Editor

Lindsay Howe News Editor

Leah Scheitel Opinions Editor

Natalie Corbo Features Editor

Celina Kurz Arts Editor

9

South African pop star, yay!

features

12

Kitty crisis

calendar

15

Family day hits theatres

Opinions

16

Scott Moraes Caboose Editor

Stefan Tosheff Production Manager

Katie So Art Director

Andy Rice Staff Writer

Connor Thorpe Staff Writer

Vancouver is awesome(ly expensive)

CABOOSE

19

Cross(word) your heart

the capilano courier

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46 issue N o . 15

Ricky Bao Business Manager

The Capilano Courier is an autonomous, democratically run student newspaper. Literary and visual submissions are welcomed.

All submissions are subject to editing for brevity, taste, and legality. The Capilano Courier will not publish material deemed by the collective to exhibit sexism, racism or homophobia. The views expressed by the contributing writers are not necessarily those of the Capilano Courier Publishing Society.

Shannon Elliott Web Editor

Colin Spensley Distribution Manager

Leanne Kriz Ads & Events Manager

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× Letter from the editor ×

LOSING MY RELIGION × ON the Cover ×

Susan li Susan took calculus as electives when she studied science at UBC. Who said artists can't do math?

Mou-s.deviantart.com

Featured Contributors

Featuring: giles Roy

The Voicebox gives you the chance to have your opinion heard, no matter how irrelevant or uninformed. Just send a text message to (778) 235-7835 to anonymously “voice” your ”thoughts” on any “subject.” Then, as long as it’s not too offensive, we’ll publish it! It’s a win-win-win, unless you’re a loser.

“There's a clothing swap on Jan. 31 in the Maple lounge between 12 and 1 p.m. Come one come all!”

I'm publishing this even though this issue comes out on February 3rd.

For future reference, we warmly welcome submissions to our weekly calendar, as long as they're sent more than a week in advance! Warmly.

Email calendar@capilanocourier.com.

“Cap Courier kids should have a uniform so all of us can compliment (or flame) your genius newspaper making skills.

This uniform should consist of hot pants and faux-fur jackets and NOTHING ELSE. Oh and footware should be something noisy like wooden cogs or castanets so we can hear you coming and we can get our wallets (blowtorches) out.”

What are you going to do with a blowtorch? Wait, is this a death threat?

I’ve received sexts, drunk texts, sober texts, high texts and wrong number texts, but never a death threat. Wow! “Also, I am thinking about starting a Giles Roy shrine, similar to the one Helga has for Arnold in 'Hey Arnold.'”

×

I’m not especially familiar with that show but I’ll take that as a compliment rather than another death threat.

I had to Google it, but very exciting! If anyone wants to buy tickets, hit up Toifa.com.

“MELISSA DXZ GUZMAN IS AMAZING”

“Yo mom iz da finest. I'd li3k 2 wine n dine wit hurrrrrr yeaaa” She's very nice, it's true. I wine-n-dined both of my parents this week, before taking them to the opera. Actually, they paid for everything, but still. Thanks for writing.

Melissa Dex Guzman sure is. You can stalk her online at Melissadexguzman.ca.

46 issue N o . 15

“Hi Voice Box readers, How exciting is it that the Times Of India Film Awards are coming to Vancouver in April?”

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longer made sense to me to subscribe to a particular belief system that didn’t really align with my changing views. How could one set of ideals survive, unchanged, for thousands of years? The foundation made sense to me: be nice to people and lead an honest compassionate life. But Christianity has changed and evolved a lot since its birth. People have taken its scriptures and twisted them and attached them to terrifying and alarming ideas. Human beings have killed in the name of God, cast people aside for their sexuality or social status based on their own interpretation of one line of an ancient text. What’s perplexing to me is that I was always taught that God loves and forgives everyone, yet some of his most devout followers seem to be filled with nothing but judgment and hatred.

I truly believe that, in its purest form, religion is probably an okay thing. Christianity for example, in my opinion, is a set of values based on a book of stories. They are entertaining and enlightening. But do we need to take social cues from a book of fairytales from thousands of years ago? Probably not. And if so, why are we so selective? People don’t take moral advice from the Brothers Grimm, otherwise we’d all be cutting off our toes to fit them into glass shoes. Sounds ludicrous, yet some folks out there are quick to condemn others based upon what can be boiled down to a story.

What has taken away from the appeal of Christianity and other religions, for myself and maybe for others, is the amount to which people let it take over their whole existence. Many people, it seems, have a hard time having a casual relationship with religion, which is where it seems to get tricky. I have a hard time letting any one thing define me, and as soon as I start becoming associated with one thing, I start to feel boxed in. Across the board I’m known as a gay vegetarian artist writer hipster type. Labels are annoying to me, but some people look to them for a sense of belonging. Everyone is different, which both makes our world interesting and unpredictable.

I am not saying at all that Christianity, or any other religion, is all bad.

Just as some Christians have wrongly chosen to condemn people based on race, sexuality or colour, it would be wrong for me to speak about all Christians with a blanket statement. But as a person who happens to be gay, it’s hard for me to be okay with a religion that has produced a website called “God Hates Fags,” which mocks young victims who were killed merely for being gay. My grandma also happens to be Catholic.

And she didn’t make a hateful website about me when I came out to her.

She sent me some homemade cookies in the mail.

I guess what it all boils down to (aside from “everything’s gonna be fine fine fine,” because, yes, Alanis, yes), is that people believe in what they want, and as long as it’s giving them hope and not causing anyone else pain, nobody else should argue with it. For me, I choose to believe as well - I just believe in myself, and the people around me. To me, that’s my religion, and nothing can take that away from me.

When I was young, my parents elected to move me to a Catholic elementary school. Despite the fact that it was certainly better than the public school I had previously attended, it was an experience that ended up being quite rough around the edges. The kids at my new school were uniformly more badass: they lied to their parents and forged notes to skip class, stole art supplies from the school, and made up elaborate schemes to get teachers fired. It was a weird time for me. As one of only a few kids in the class who didn’t have a Catholic upbringing, I felt left out in mass when I had to hold my hands across my chest in a giant X-formation during Communion (the ritual of accepting juice and wafer as the “blood and body of Christ”). As someone who wasn’t baptized Catholic, I was allowed to enroll in the school, learn about Catholic practices and be almost fully integrated in the school, but they made sure to find ways to make me feel “not quite Catholic enough.”

Similar to the lack of Communion, I also wasn’t allowed to learn the little call-and-response chants used between the priest and congregation at mass. When my friends in choir prepped me on these sing-along cues, they got in trouble. The teachers would rather I sit there awkward and confused, rather than brought up to speed. When it came time for Confession, I was asked to pray double the amount of Hail Marys as my peers - even though my lowly sins were tame in comparison to theirs (so I stole a Salt-N-Pepa cassette from the store - hardly equivalent to my friend who stole his dad’s porn and outed him to his mom). It seemed just sort of unfair at the time, but in retrospect it feels even more like being left in the cold. What was the point of leaving some poor kid out of the rituals when all of the lessons in class were about acceptance and togetherness?

Years later, I’ve all but left my Catholic and Christian roots behind, but some things still linger. When I’m walking home in paranoia of coyotes or cop-slashing vigilantes (both of which have been sighted in my house’s vicinity), I say a prayer for guardian angels. When I lose my wallet, keys or phone (so, basically every day), I ask Saint Anthony in prayer to help me discover the lost item.

But I don’t really believe in angels or prayer at all, so why do I call upon these resources? I guess, in short, because they seem to work for me. Regardless of if prayer is a placebo or the effective link helping me find my lost belongings, it doesn’t really matter. It’s become part of my subconscious routine, even though I have no affiliation with the church at this point in my life. For whatever reason, I can’t let a few pieces go.

Religion, like any form of belief system, exists for the believers because, well, they need something to believe in. I’m not saying this is good nor bad, it just simply is. I’m not talking about just Christianity, but this is the only religion I have any personal experience with. I was raised Christian, and throughout elementary and middle school, I subscribed to the ideologies and methods. I refused to use swear words, even as my Catholic-raised classmates spoke like sailors.

I started slipping away from Catholicism and Christianity altogether as I hit high school and started thinking more for myself. It no

THE VOICE BOX

× Editor-in-Chief

the capilano courier

Kelly Mackay, a second year creative writing student at Capilano, moved to Vancouver in 2011, having lived in London, England for most of her life. “I have been asked if my accent is a speech impediment before. It isn’t,” she jokes.

When she’s not writing or working at Topshop in downtown Vancouver, Kelly spends her time “drinking obscene levels of alcohol, eating everything and generally enjoying Vancouver as a place that, unlike my home, has trees.” A fan of “anything that isn’t written by Ke$ha,” Kelly finds herself idolizing Kristen Wiig, dreaming of visiting Kurt Cobain’s old residence (“I have been told that Kurt’s grandfather is more than up for visitors to come to his house,”) and being perplexed by people’s eating habits (“Vegetarianism is confusing to me.”) Kelly’s eclectic taste allows her to enjoy the fine things in life: Game of Thrones, tacos, Guinness and Prague. But she’s a bit different from the average beer swigging, TV-watching gal. “I have absolutely no cartilage in my nose,” she boasts. Kelly’s proudest achievement is getting a series of poems published in a British journal, and she surrounds herself with as many pugs as she can. “It’s not a breed. It’s a way of life.”

Tom Nugent is a Digital Compositor for VFX St u d i o s , and also moonlights as a freelance photographer and videographer. Tom studied at Vancouver Film School, but left his program after his first year. Despite that, he’s done pretty well for himself, proud of “getting to where I am now without a formal education in my fields of work.” In his off-time, Tom plays drums in two local bands, Grey Empire and Ape War, in addition to fixing up and riding around on his motorcycle, and pipe dreaming about one day opening up a sandwich shop. No matter what he’s up to, Tom is select about where he delegates his time. “I'm really passionate about the work I do, the projects that I choose to take on and that I create for myself,” he says. Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia and raised in Rothesay, New Brunswick, Tom relocated to Vancouver in 2007. A big fan of both pizza and pizza pops (“Pizza’s fast and more mobile younger brother,”) Tom has a sad confession: “Despite really wanting to, I can’t eat or be around pancakes – they make me sick.”

You can view more of Tom’s work online at To m n u g e n t . c a , and f o l l ow him on Twitter @Trextom.

JJ Brewis

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NEWS

News Editor ×

Lindsay Howe × n e w s @ c a p i l a n o c o u r i e r . c o m

FOOD FIGHT Cap considers new options as contract deadline looms for Aramark Andy Rice × Staff Writer After nine years of an exclusivity contract with Aramark as Capilano’s food services provider, changes may be on the horizon. Aramark’s 10-year food and beverage contract comes to an end in August 2014, meaning the University will have some decisions to make regarding the campus’ food future. Though the date is 19 months away, students and staff are already buzzing with excitement over potential options and opportunity.

Much has changed since the signing of the agreement back in 2004, which granted Aramark exclusive rights to all food and beverage services on campus. Student collectives like the Campus Food Strategy Group are hopeful that the next chapter for food service at Capilano University will reflect a changing trend in not only how people view their food, but how they source it and eat it as well.

Tiaré Jung, one of three Campus Food Strategy Group coordinators working as part of a larger network of universities through the Campus Food Systems Project, says she is particularly excited about an opportunity to diversify the food and beverage options on campus. ”It’s a really opportune time to get a little more creative with what we want our food services to be and sort of step out of the traditional confinement of a cafeteria,” she says. “I’m really excited about exploring a cooperative model where instead of having one company provide all the food services we have a collective or a cooperative of food businesses, like a bulk organic grocery store or food trucks, for example.”

Looking at Capilano University from the perspective of a community, the food truck option makes sense, and it’s one that’s been explored not only by Jung but by School of Business instructor Andrea Eby as well. In the fall semester, Eby invited three food truck owners to visit her classroom to talk to her marketing students about their operating model. The presentation shed light on an important fact. While most food trucks are busiest in the summer months, they often strug-

gle in the other seasons when academic pursuits are in full swing. Those peaks and valleys can be very strenuous financially, especially when operators face year-round costs for the rental of an industrial prep kitchen, something Capilano University happens to have on-site.

“It seems like a logical balance to have these folks come up on campus in their down season – which happens to be our school season,” she says.

“In doing that we could have a much more community experience with different types of foods.

You could have several different food trucks ... and maybe even potentially change the trucks [every few months].”

Since city regulations changed two years ago to allow a wider variety of street food options, Vancouver has become home to over 100 food trucks. The city has quickly become an example for other destinations around the world, and Eby says it’s her hope that Capilano University can become a model for other universities if its own food truck project ever finds its wheels.

The concept certainly won’t come without its challenges. After all, exclusive contracts like Aramark’s are put in place to help even the largest food and beverage contractors at post-secondary institutions weather those very same financial concerns that plague the smaller food trucks.

While Mark Clifford, Capilano University’s Director of Contract Services and Capital Planning, says the idea would not instantly be ruled out, it would have to meet certain requirements, from FoodSafe to insurance to indemnification agreements. “Can we have food carts? As long as they’re clean and follow health regulations and they’ve got insurance and all that kind of stuff, then that could float around as a contractual thing, but in my mind whoever has a food cart would be a subcontractor to whoever has the overall food service. That way we deal with a general contractor, a single entity who’s already vetted and they’re responsible for all those other people that come in. That’s a much easier way, otherwise they’ll end up on my desk and I’ll have 10 food cart guys I’ve got to deal with. That’s not what I do at the university.”

Capilano University uses a competitive bid process to award all of its major contracts.

Applications are looked at on a matrix basis and are scored based on certain requirements ranging from return of revenue to sustainability.

“Whatever those factors or attributes are, we attach those attributes in the tender document and they’re published up front,” says Clifford. “The committee that’s responsible for evaluating the tenders, they score it and ... whoever scores most, no matter who it is ... gets awarded the bid. The actual award does come out of my office but the award process is done by [a] committee. “ While the exclusivity of such contracts has been a bone of contention with on-campus groups like the Capilano Students’ Union, Clifford says he expects it to remain even with a new provider.

The CSU has frequently complained in the past about being strictly obligated to use Aramark for its events instead of being able to bring in more inexpensive and creative food sources from external sources, such as pizza and ethnic cuisine.

“I think it leads to real problems to open up that exclusivity thing. Now can you do it in smaller amounts? In places you may be able to, but it’s not something I would necessarily support,” says Clifford. “If you award a contract to somebody and they’re going to give you some kind of return on revenue they need some guarantees as well.

You have to be able to allow people to have the confidence that what you’re asking them to bid on is in fact something they can make a return at.”

That said, Clifford assures that “anything’s possible” with regards to food and beverage services on campus. “There could be a bunch of reasons why [something] may not go but there’s nothing to say that we can’t look at a bunch of different options and that’s what this whole process that we’re coming up to is going to be looking at.”

Between now and August 2014, the University plans to conduct focus groups and bring in a consultant to help develop a master food plan on campus that covers not only current interests but changing trends for the future as well.

Clifford says that student, faculty, staff, union and administrative interests will all be represented by

various groups who will provide input to a more formal food services committee. “We’re probably going to have to be into this [process] within the next six months I would think, maybe earlier.”

In anticipation, Capilano University’s Campus Food Strategy Group, EarthWorks club and the CSU have already begun increasing their own role in the process. These organizations have several food and sustainability-related events planned for the week of Feb. 12 to 15, including a student food symposium called Future of Food on Campus: Capilano on Feb. 13, from 7 to 9 p.m. in CE148 theatre.

“It’s going to be sort of a night to inspire people to imagine what food on campus could be,” says Jung. In attendance will be Steve Golob, “who’s kind of a superstar chef at UBC. He runs [Vanier Hall] dining services and he’s spearheaded a lot of connections between the UBC on-campus farm and his food services to purchase as much local produce and ethically-sourced products as possible. We’re excited to have him coming.”

Much like Clifford, Jung believes that anything could be possible when it comes to food and beverage options on campus. “I think the objective is really getting a lot of people on board and excited about what our food services could be,” she says, “and then from there taking a step backwards to figure out what’s the most efficient way to make it work.”

For more information on the Campus Food Project or the student food event in February, contact capilano@studentfood.ca.

×× victoria furuya

time to take action

the capilano courier

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Connor Thorpe × Staff Writer Is there reason for concern when considering political engagement in British Columbia? Recent voter turnouts in provincial elections indicate that there is.

The 2009 voter turnout in the British Columbia provincial elections sat at 51 per cent – according to Elections BC, the worst turnout in the history of the province and a significant decline from the 2005 elections, which boasted a 58.1 per cent turnout. Elections BC is now considering the introduction of e-voting in provincial elections to turn around the dismal – and steadily decreasing – participation rates.

The reasons for political disengagement vary from individual to individual. A new report from Samara Canada, a non-partisan research organization, indicates that nationwide satisfaction with the way democracy functions in Canada sits at just over half the population. Another recent study by Samara, which gathered the opinions of

those who are not actively engaged in politics, suggests that disinterest stems from a mistrust and skepticism towards politicians rather than a lack of political knowledge.

Alison Loat, the Executive Director of Samara, told Global News that respondents “weren’t even asking for major changes to make government more participatory. A lot of it was really just having opportunities to have their voices heard, and having the services they received be a little more responsive to their needs.”

Direct involvement in politics from a public standpoint can be daunting for those who haven’t yet learned to navigate the myriad of political topics that permeate Canadian society and the rapidity with which they change. As part of an effort to increase political knowledge and engagement amongst British Columbians, the BC Federation of Labour –- an organization which serves as the voice for labour issues in the province –- is now offering a series of one-day Political Action courses for those who want to grasp political concepts, develop informed opinions and make their voices heard.

The BC Federation of Labour website describes the courses as an outlet for British Columbians to “meet others and talk politics” while “brush[ing] up on issues like: the economy, workers’ rights, seniors’ issues and health care.” The courses address the relationship between the public and the media –- and how British Columbians can voice opinions through media outlets by writing letters and utilizing radio call-in shows. Attendees will also learn how to effectively engage in informed political discourse with neighbors, friends and co-workers.

“We’re basically meeting with various union members and sometimes labour councils around the province, depending on where we’re going, and we’re talking about the … changes that need to happen in terms of the labour code, employment standards, that kind of thing,” says Donalda Greenwell-Baker, spokesperson for the organization. “And then [we are] doing some work with skill development around canvassing and speaking with members, and encouraging them to be interested in politics.”

Since their inception in October 2012, Political Action courses have been held in

c o m m u n i t i e s a c ro s s t h e p rov i n c e .

Courses are held almost every weekend and Greenwell-Baker says the BC Federation of Labour will continue to hold courses leading up to the 2013 B.C. provincial election, and beyond.

“Sometimes we’ve been able to involve somebody from the Labour Council or possibly a candidate if there happens to be one in that area, or if someone’s been elected,” says Greenwell-Baker, noting that the courses are most often presided over by one or two instructors.

Greenwell-Baker claims that the issue isn’t necessarily political disengagement. “I think there’s a real focus on wanting to see a change and having a government that is more focused on some of the issues that people in British Columbia are concerned about -– some improvements need to be made, particularly from the labour perspective.”

To learn more or register for a Political Action course, visit Bcfed.ca.

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FORGET THE PHONE

WHAT'S NEW

Study warns of smartphone addiction Darryl Gallinger × The Lance (University of Windsor)

WINDSOR (CUP) — A new survey suggests Canadians are becoming addicted to their smartphones; good news for those in the business, but phone dependency is a real problem.

On behalf of Canadian cell phone provider, Wind, Vision Critical recently conducted an online survey of 1,501 Canadians to determine what they would give up in order to keep their smartphones.

“The response to pets was the most surprising,” said Alexandra Maxwell, a spokesperson for Wind.

The survey shows that 17 per cent of smartphone users would give up their pets. “I just didn’t see that coming, but I guess some people just love their phones more.”

According to the survey, 40 per cent would give up video games, 28 per cent would give up alcohol and 23 per cent would part with coffee rather than give up their smartphone.

“Surveys are a great way to check the pulse of consumers. With more and more Canadians switching to smartphones, we wanted to see just how much Canadians loved them,” said Maxwell.

“I’d feel pretty weird without my phone,” said Hanna Bellacicco, who wouldn’t give up her pet in exchange for her phone but would cut out coffee to stay connected. “It has to be near me. Even when it’s charging it has to be near me.”

Ken Hart, a psychology professor at the University of Windsor, was surprised by the re-

sults of the survey and said it could indicate an addiction trend.

Hart defined addiction as a loss of control. “The person feels a compulsive need,” he said. “This overwhelming urge to engage in the behaviour is very strong, and the person is unable to restrain themselves.” “[Addictions] cause your life to become smaller and narrower, because other activities in your life are being displaced by this,” said Hart. “Important life goals that you’re trying to achieve don’t get accomplished, so you start becoming unhappy.”

A Pew Research Center study of 2,200 Americans last March indicated that about 10 per cent feel they use their phones too much, suggesting people are becoming aware of potential abuse.

“I use my smartphone every day,” said Allisa Oliverio, who admits to feeling like she’s addicted to the device. “Without it I think I’d be lost … It’s always with me; it’s always in my hand.”

Oliverio said that she sets boundaries with her use, such as avoiding using it when she’s hanging out with friends since she views that as rude behaviour.

Other countries are already struggling with smartphone addiction. According to the Toronto Star, South Korea has started a program to help children with their addiction to the Internet through various gadgets, including tablets and smartphones. The South Korean government estimates that 2.55 million of its people are addicted.

Mohsan Beg, clinical director at the University of Windsor’s Student Counselling Centre, has not yet encountered issues of smartphone addiction among students. “We do see some Internet addiction,” he said, adding that patients typically have

issues with video game use. “[Students] engage in the technological world to escape the real world,” explained Beg. He said symptoms of depression are often tied to Internet addiction and people often resort to escapism by playing video games to cope.

Hart said that improper smartphone use draws people’s attention away from the current task at hand, be that studying, driving or holding a conversation.

“As an instructor, I see students use smartphones in class, even when they’re not supposed to,” said Hart, adding that despite his policy against mobile phones, students violate it regularly, even after seeing him confiscate phones. “It can be dangerous in the sense that it can harm their academic well-being.”

Hart said he was unaware of a program to treat such an addiction, but said that he could see an increased need for one in the future.

“The larger problem is being distracted … maybe they’re addicted to distractions,” said Hart.

“On the other hand ... feelings of depression and loneliness can be alleviated by the smartphone, which is an outlet for social engagement.”

Hart uses the Internet mostly for work and engages in social media sparingly. He only uses a landline and doesn’t own a mobile. “I don’t need one,” he said with a laugh.

BUT WHY ISN'T THERE A MEN'S CENTRE Women's Centre Strives to answer questions Celina Kurz × Arts Editor

Lindsay Howe × News Editor

The most recent meeting of the Board of Directors’ for the Capilano Students’ Union was held on Jan. 25. While the meeting opened with some not-so-good news from the University that classroom heating has been turned down to conserve funds, a plethora of more positive news followed.

CSU Library Lounge Sarah Sylvester, a permanent employee of the CSU, suggested that the way students rent out the library lounge should be amended. In the past, students were required to put down a $250 deposit on the room in case of damage. Sylvester suggested that a staff member or teacher of Capilano University should now be required to sign off on the room and their personal cost enter number be on file if there is damage to the room. Sylvester suggested that this would be a smart idea as sometimes student events, particularly student events involving alcohol, have the ability to cause more than just $250 of damage. The Board of Directors’ made her suggestion into a motion and passed it.

University Senate Rep Jenna Theny made a motion to purchase a pool table for this lounge. The pool table is said to be used but in great shape.

The cost for the table would be $500 plus an additional $250 for delivery. This motion is carried, and Theny is going to view the table in person before making a final decision about its condition.

CSU Students’ Maple Lounge Theny also made a motion to purchase a new microwave for the lounge, as the current microwave is dead and many students and staff use it to heat up meals. The cost for this new microwave is $200. Motion passed.

Valentine’s Day with the CSU Women’s Liaison Alyssa Laani will be putting on a Valentine’s Day event on Feb. 13 from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the CSU Library Lounge that aims at bringing up the topics of consent and communication in relationships. There will also be information on the No Means No campaign, the Rape Relief Shelter and other informational resources. Little candy bags will be handed out to attendees.

Location TBA, for more info please visit Csu.bc.ca/calendar

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Lalani echoes this idea, saying, “A lot of people just use [the Centre] to relax and do homework, but sometimes we have really cool conversations out of nowhere, and it’s really nice because I don’t know if those conversations would happen anywhere else.”

It can also be a place where students can, like Prakash, find some peace and quiet – if you can find a seat. “[I wish we had] a bigger space. A lot of the time I come, there’s a lot of people here and it’s like, ‘oh, no seats,’” she says.

While Agyeman agrees with this, she also feels that not enough women know about or utilize the space. “I wish there was more space but I also wish there were more women. Like it’s always full, but it’s always the same people,” she says. “I just wish it was more of a community resource.”

The Women’s Collective is set to put on several other events which are open to the entire student body within the next few months, including an open dialogue on the meaning of consent coming up on Valentine’s Day – but until then, the Women’s Centre is open to all self-identified women. As Lalani explains, “It’s not only a women’s issue to improve relations among the genders, but it definitely has to start within a network of women, [and the Centre is a place] where women can connect.”

CSU?

the capilano courier

“I was in a class and I had a guy who was talking to a girl and he would say stuff like, ‘You’re such a dumb bitch,’ and, ‘Why can’t you think for yourself?’ His personality and how aggressive he was – I can see myself walking at night and that’s someone I’d be terrified of because I’d feel like I’d be subject to rape or abuse ... I feel like the Women’s Centre [is where] I hide, either I run to my car and I go home, or I run to the Women’s Centre and no one can get me.”

Natahsha Prakash, a student at Capilano University, is one of the regular users of the Women’s Centre, located in LB137. For her, the space is a “place of solitude” in a campus that can be overwhelmingly busy and male-dominated. She explains that even though there’s a higher ratio of women to men at Capilano, “men here are very dominant – they just have this personality, I just get nervous.” On Jan. 28, the Centre held an open house in order to raise awareness about the space.

Alyssa Lalani, Women’s Liaison for the Capilano Students’ Union, explains, “We’re actually trying to raise awareness about the room because a lot of women don’t even know about the Centre.” By making it an open house for all CSU members, it was also an opportunity for male students and staff to check out the space and ask questions.

“We also want to let other members of the campus

know why it’s so important,” emphasizes Lalani.

Overall, the event saw approximately 70 people come through the space, with half of them being new faces; however, only about 10 of those were male-identifying.

Part of the reason why Lalani is so committed to raising awareness for the space is because of conversations happening elsewhere about the need for women’s-only spaces. “There are a lot of other campuses right now, such as Douglas College, who right now are questioning why they even have a women’s centre on the campus,” explains Lalani.

“We want to make sure that people know that it’s really important to have a women’s space.”

The lounge is open as long as the school is open, and any self-identified female can get the code needed to unlock the door at the main CSU office in Library building. It is equipped with couches, a microwave, fridge and sink; a computer; pamphlets with information on pregnancy options, rape relief, and volunteer opportunities among other things; condoms and dental dams; and all-natural tampons and pads.

Jane Agyeman is another regular user of the space, using it at least twice a week. For her, the Centre is a place where she can feel free to speak her opinions without being judged. “When you identify yourself as a feminist or with a femalebased opinion [anywhere else] ... you kind of get brushed off, it doesn’t get taken seriously ... In the Women’s Centre, you can openly discuss your feelings and issues.”

WITH THE

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Columns

Columns Editor ×

JJ Brewis × E d i t o r @ c a p i l a n o c o u r i e r . c o m

GRAHAMMAR

Graham Robertson × Columnist

I don’t care what you think “proper English” is As I go about my (largely confusing) daily life, I'm haunted by a phantom army. I see them everywhere: lips pursed, eyes narrowed, copies of The Elements of Style — or Eats, Shoots and Leaves for the truly misguided — tucked under their arms. A well-meaning but somewhat humourless horde, poised to spring upon a hapless grocery clerk who dares to hang a sign that reads, “Four items or less.”

“Don't you know,” they cry, “that the correct term is ‘fewer?’”

Here are a few contextual facts about little ol' me: I'm a man with an English degree, one who has had the unique experience of marking introductory college essays and has thus seen the bizarre ways in which our mother tongue can be distorted, and one who occasionally writes for something resembling a living. In short, I consider grammar an actual hobby of mine. So, as an enthusiast for participles and dependent clauses, I'd like to address the prescriptivists and grammar snobs out there: please, let's all just rein this whole thing in. This isn't how to enjoy language.

I have trouble conceiving a more tedious existence than spending one's nights trawling — or perhaps trolling — the Internet or newspaper, hoping to find some mistake to get outraged over and haughtily correct it. It's a doomed quest.

Of course, people will always break the rules of spelling and grammar while still managing to communicate. And the stakes are so very low. I refuse to believe this is keeping anyone up at night. After all, this doesn't harm anyone significantly, and I hope our sensibilities are not so delicate that our monocles pop out upon witnessing an honest mistake. So where does this drumming up of manufactured outrage come from? Why the umbrage at

quotation marks mistakenly used for emphasis? To me, it seems either an attempt at looking superior, which is boring, or a misplaced love of language, which I'll get to.

I can already hear the phantom army rushing to the defense of our mother tongue, which according to them is in her death throes. Because it's not enough to simply correct another person's grammar in some desperate attempt at validation; such attitudes are commonly paired with the apocalyptic prediction that English is dying, that in a few decades we'll be communicating exclusively through text acronyms and LOLCats.

First off, the rampant classism is on display here with regards to language and ideas of propriety, as well as ethnocentric notions of dialect when our phantom army attacks something like the Southern drawl or African American Vernacular.

The idea that there is one platonic ideal of any language that some people deviate from – well, it's laughable. Especially if you consider said platonic ideal to be how you happen to speak. In defense of this, I'll just smugly point to the entire scientific field of linguistics, which has a foundational premise that language evolves.

Second, as the excellent work of Melvynn Bragg or Henry Hitchens’ entertaining book The Language Wars shows, one of the few consistencies of the English language over the past eight or nine centuries has been the doomsayers predicting its decline. For a while the complaint was that English was too structurally unlike Latin, then that it borrowed too many words from French, and so on. What we call English now shares surprisingly little with what was spoken even a few centuries ago. Despite this, we're doing alright, aren't we? We still manage

to talk about our day or write poetry. Trust me, civilization will stand.

Collected prescriptivists and grammar snobs, despite your ample skills and blind faith in the Oxford comma, no one is clamouring to hear your opinions on their use of the passive participle. But that's fine, because it's not about that. If you are in this to feel superior, it's not working out. For those of you who want to continue this nit-picking battle, I hereby condemn you to being that annoying person at parties.

But for some, I believe in your redemption. If you have stumbled upon grammar snobbery out of some misplaced enthusiasm, you should love our language by using it, not attacking others.

What makes language so fantastic is its flexibility: the ability to effectively write or speak by bending rules and delighting in quirks. Any writer worth his or her pen ink will tell you that rigidly

Brandden Dancer × Columnist

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A cinematic childhood

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Graham Robertson is a graduate student at SFU who writes about issues in the arts and literary culture.

You can follow him on Twitter @onehandhighfive, but it's pretty obvious he has no idea what he's doing.

He's completely serious about the MLA thing.

×× Alex harvey-wickens

FILM CLUB I remember screaming. The earliest memory I have of watching a movie is when I was about four. It was Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and I was watching it with my parents. At some point I became bored and left during the movie to play in the basement. After I was done, I came up the basement steps to open the door, but to my surprise and utter panic, the basement door was locked. What made the situation even more terrifying was the painting of the Virgin Mary right above me, watching me. In that moment, it was just me and her and all I could hear were the shenanigans of Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, to the tune of my parents’ enjoyment.

There’s not really a point to that story, I just wanted to see how far back I could remember. A huge chunk of my childhood memories was spent watching movies. Not because of neglectful parenting or my own lack of interest in the outside world, but I probably found this method of storytelling to be very stimulating from a young age, especially for a visual learner. Not only did I spend much of my youth watching movies, but like many of my peers, I would watch the same movies over and over again. I remember certain visual components that mark the time: wearing out the VHS tape until there were lines on the

adhering to the bare rules of grammar will only produce dry, stuffy work. Snobbery is putting English in an airtight box, letting it wither away while loudly proclaiming its salvation. Language is alive, it needs room to grow and change. Otherwise, it's nothing more than a series of grunts, only good for asking directions to the bathroom.

So let's all delight in complexity, not put others down for incorrect or non-standard use – and more importantly just calm the hell down.

Unless, of course, you wish to claim that MLA is a superior formatting style to Chicago. Because then I will fight you.

screen that could no longer be fixed with tracking, the creased paper cases which had been stepped on or taped to hold the flaps together, the plastic Disney cases that you had a separate shelf for. What a pain in the ass it was to rewind. I loved the ritual of walking down aisles and aisles of videotapes, looking at all the cases in the now mostly defunct video stores. Most of the movies I wasn’t allowed to watch or had very little interest in watching, but I was curious. I would study each case, piecing the movie together in my head with only a description and a couple of pictures to go on.

Why is it that we love to watch the same films again and again? Perhaps it is because they make us feel safe. We get to know the characters, and whether their intentions are good or evil. The familiarity gives us someone to both champion and identify with, and a challenge to defeat. It shows us another side of the coin, one that, in a way, shows us the reality of life. There will always be someone who sees differently than you do. There will be people we do not agree with or situations that may make us uncomfortable. We will get hurt and we have to learn to pick ourselves up again and conquer whatever battles we face. In the films we watched as children, no matter how rough real life could be, we knew everything would

work out in the end.

There was a point right up to around the age of 20 where I would still watch a film again that I had seen the day before or very recently.

What changed? I believe the culprit to be time.

As we get older, our time seems to become more precious. We start to understand the fleeting nature of life, and really, if you actually counted the hours we have spent watching movies (not to mention television shows) that shit would add up.

Perhaps I have just become more selective with the films I watch. My roommate told me recently, “You’re too nice when it comes to movies,” referencing that for the most part, I don’t often have bad things to say when it comes to the films I watch. I will probably not waste my time watching That’s My Boy or Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Witness Protection when I know I probably won’t enjoy them. Although, say what you will about their cinematic value, they have an audience.

So do we watch films for the same reasons we did when we were children? Now as adults we still seek that sense of escapism. In fact, you would think we would rely on films more now than ever, to imagine a life without limits or the structure we have become accustomed to. We go to films for the same reasons, except that our life experience has

given us new challenges and battles to face. The emotions that we seek may be more hard-hitting, so as we grow the films grow with us.

Looking back on the movies we watched as children, no matter how much our tastes have changed, as we get older, they continue to remain a part of us. They taught us how to laugh and cry; they were almost like a third parent who only appeared to us as images that played to our most wondrous desires. Even through re-watching and deconstructing, no matter how dated or abstract these films appear to us now, they rarely change our fondness of them. I am curious to see how the children of today and future generations will look back on their most cherished favourites, seeing as how technology seems to keep breaking new limits every three films or so. What kinds of challenges will they have to overcome? Well, whatever villains they have to face, I’m sure they will stand triumphant.

Brandden has a variety of interests, one of them being film. He co-hosts an Internet movie review show called Dangerhouse Reviews which features movies, friends, comedians, and fellow Courier writers. You can watch it at Youtube.com/dangerhousereviews. He is father to a cat named Wyatt, who is a weirdo.

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GARDEN CITY OF GOOD AND EVIL Our anonymous avengers In Canadian politics, the anonymity of our representatives and public servants is the norm.

A friend of mine told me a story about volunteering as a B.C. NDP phone canvasser that brought the anonymity of our political process home for me. The computers were on the fritz.

Their auto-dialing program was phoning up numbers without providing any information about the supporter being called, including their name. My friend would be two minutes into a phone call with a stranger before their name would finally pop up on his screen. He would then ask if he had been talking to the correct person, ultimately feeling foolish and unprepared. On the day of the glitches, the NDP’s leader, Adrian Dix, happened to be visiting this operation. When Dix peeked into his cubicle, my friend said “Hey Adrian, the computers aren’t working. It would be great to have that fixed.” According to my friend, Dix smiled vaguely, said nothing, and moved on to another volunteer more content in their anonymous service to the political process.

Dix’s non-response to his problem soured my friend on politics. He was anonymous; the supporters he was calling were anonymous. The only relatively non-anonymous person in the room, Adrian Dix, couldn’t help fix a simple problem in a rented strip mall storefront. “It’s all smoke and mirrors,” is my friend’s oft-repeated refrain about politics in this province. It’s all smoke and mirrors, and one or two politicians are Criss Angel, most others are the assistant getting sawed in half,

and everybody else is sitting in the crowd, waiting in the dark.

Though my friend’s response is a little dramatic, the feeling of toiling in anonymity is something most politically-engaged people can relate to.

I count myself as a politically-engaged British Columbian. I’ll willingly read about politics. I’ll volunteer dreary hours canvassing for candidates I like. I’ll march on the Legislature in support of salmon and against pipelines. But then the controversy over the reappointment of B.C.’s Auditor General, the previously anonymous John Doyle, erupted earlier this month. I had my own mind-freak and was at a loss as to who this guy was. What was the big deal?

The basics of the controversy are that in December a bipartisan committee of MLAs first declined to reappoint Doyle as AG. After growing media attention, the Premier said that the committee process was “profoundly flawed.” The same committee then tripped over themselves to offer Doyle a two-year contract extension.

For his part, Doyle has called the whole process “Mickey Mouse,” and he’s absolutely right.

It’s all very embarrassing for the government.

The B.C. Liberals have come off as half-assed Stalinists, unsuccessfully trying to send a critic to the gulag. Right on cue, we learned that Eric Foster, the B.C. Liberal MLA who chaired the reappointment committee, is being audited by Doyle over possible mismanagement of funds to renovate his constituency office. Anonymous no more, Fos-

× Columnist

ter has been struggling with damage control.

To me, this controversy seems like a bit of time-killing by politicians and the media until our Legislature finally returns in mid-February and offers up some fresh meat. Conversely, this dispute is more interesting than most because of the disconnection it exposes between the represented and the representatives.

I’ve since discovered that John Doyle is Australian, and was Deputy Auditor General for Western Australia. He’s been our AG since 2007, and he has dropped the hammer on the government repeatedly over issues such as the criminal debacle of the BC Rail sale and spiraling BC Hydro debt. I also learned that the Auditor General is a hugely important job. The AG’s website tells you that the AG “serves the people of British Columbia and their elected representatives by conducting independent audits and advising on how well government is managing its responsibilities and resources.” Of course, “How well am I governing?” is usually answered by Canada’s independent officers as “Not too hot.” John Doyle is one of the rare anonymous assistants that gets to saw our political Criss Angels in half.

B.C.’s independent officers are called Statutory Officers of the Legislature, whose job is to monitor and assess every action the government takes. In addition to the AG, Statutory Officers of the B.C. Legislature include the Chief Electoral Officer, the Child, Youth and Family Advocate and the Police Complaint Commissioner, among others.

STYLE REVISTED

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Buying vintage online can be tricky, but very successful if you are diligent in your searching.

The main issue with purchasing from places such as eBay and Etsy is that you can't see the item in-person. However, there are certain pieces of information you can receive from online sellers to paint a clearer image of what a garment looks and

FIX IT UP Vintage sellers typically price items based on their condition, so it's a great idea to check out the “asis” items if you're on a budget. Having basic repair skills is a huge asset here. Some useful skills to have up your sleeve are repairing/reinforcing seams via sewing machine, hemming by machine or by hand, subtle hand-mending or patching of holes, stain removal and cleaning by hand, and proper pressing with an iron.

One of my personal favourite repair tricks is cleaning and brightening certain vintage fabrics at home by soaking them in OxiClean. First, ensure that the fabric is safe to be treated with the substance (absolutely no wool or silk!). I have been able to take many stained, discoloured or dull looking garments and bring them back to life. Always make sure to do a small test beforehand on an inconspicuous area of the clothing to ensure

no damage will be done. If it is safe to go ahead, I will usually soak the garment for a few hours. I've literally been able to transform some pieces in my collection from being completely unwearable to looking like new with this method.

If you are shopping with a specific item or style in mind, it is important to remember that it may take many trips to the vintage store or scans through eBay before you come across your ideal item, especially when you start getting into the rare stuff. Patience is key. However, if you're anything like me, the hunt for the perfect item is part of the fun.

Katie Blecker is a devotee to vintage style, with a particular interest in collecting items from the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s. She also enjoys sewing, Old Hollywood, dance and cheesy puns. Follow her on Tumblr at Threadandcloth.tumblr.com.

46 issue N o . 15

It is important to make sure that the style of the garment you're interested in spending money on suits you. Make sure that the silhouette is

SHOPPING ONLINE

feels like in-person.

Know your exact body measurements.

The most common garment measurements referenced by online sellers are the bust, waist, hip, shoulder width, sleeve length, rise, inseam and overall length, depending on the item you're looking at. It's often best to measure your body, but also measure a piece of clothing in your wardrobe that fits you very well and is similar to the item you're looking at online. Ensure that the garment you're about to purchase has enough room for you to move around if the fabric doesn't contain any stretch.

Don't be afraid to ask questions. Contact the seller and request a detailed response if you are at all unsure of any aspect of an item. Request extra photos of damaged areas or “flaws,” if necessary.

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In addition to ensuring that the fabric is of sound structure, it is also important to check that the construction of the vintage item is sturdy. One of the first things I look for is the stitching, particularly along the seams. Always take note if some of the stitching in the seams is broken, as it may be a sign that more will break in the future.

This is where basic mending skills really come in handy!

Another important element to check is the closure of a garment. Look for missing buttons, in which case, you'll likely have to replace all of the buttons to match. If there is a zipper, make sure it's sturdy and functioning.

× Columnist

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Ensure that the material of the item is structurally sound. Is it strong enough to withstand the strain of moving around without tearing? I once (heartbreakingly) had a 1930s cotton dress shred to pieces on my first wear because I didn't initially notice that the fabric was thinning very badly all across the back. If there are any holes, stains, or other areas of damage, figure out if they can be repaired.

CONSTRUCTION & DETAILS

Max Olesen, a recent graduate of the University of Victoria, is a freelance writer and political enthusiast. He will use his column to help illuminate the workings, failings, and eccentricities of our provincial government and its fearless leaders from the front lines of the City of Gardens. Follow Max on Twitter at @WritingOlesen

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FABRIC

flattering on your body. It's easy to love a particular detail about an item so much that you overlook the inherently unflattering shape or proportion of the garment. Many items made back in the day were home sewn and tailored to fit an individual's particular measurements, so trying an item on for suitability and fit before purchase is recommended. Ideally, all parts, details and silhouette of the garment should work together, creating a unifying piece that you feel fantastic wearing.

They all sound pretty crucial, right? Until John Doyle was ousted as our AG, I couldn’t name a single one of these independent officers doing the faceless donkeywork ensuring a properly functioning government.

Financial prudence will play a major role in May’s election. Polls continuously show the socialist hordes in the NDP set for a return to power, and the cold-hearted businesspeople of the B.C. Liberals want to campaign on a record of sound financial management. I think they are going to find that difficult. This has a great deal to do with John Doyle and his relentless auditing.

Now, adding to the Liberals’ sorry reputation as incompetent managers is this nightmare of employee-relations. Keeping a non-political officer whose job it is to investigate politicians beyond the reach of politics will always be tricky. Maybe his previous anonymity outside of legislative circles helped our AG do his job better, but now that I know who John Doyle is, I want to keep hearing from him.

Katie Blecker

The thrill of the hunt I remember the first vintage garment I ever purchased. I was 16 when I saw the 1960s silver lamé mini dress glistening amongst the racks of a consignment store. Something about that dress made me want to find more pieces like it. Thinking back, I believe that at the time I was most drawn to the idea that nobody I knew would be wearing a dress like mine. Perhaps vintage collecting is in my blood. Whatever the reason, that silver dress sparked a desire in me to spend my free time seeking for more unusual relics from the past to add to my wardrobe.

Hunting down the perfect vintage item can seem a daunting task. However, there are certain things that can help make your search more successful, both in-store and online. It helps to develop an eye for certain key elements to determine the age and life still left in a garment. Try looking for these key visual and tactile elements to ensure you are making a worthwhile purchase:

Max Olesen

×× Shannon elliott

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Columns

Columns Editor ×

JJ Brewis × E d i t o r @ c a p i l a n o c o u r i e r . c o m

ADVENTURES IN HOLLYWEIRD

Luke Atlas × Columnist

Ride the waves, bro Awakening to the sound of a Frenchman cursing in his native tongue, generously peppered with English “fucks” (pardon my French) wasn’t how I imagined I’d be starting my days after moving to Los Angeles. Yet nearly every morning, such was life at my rented guesthouse under the backyard deck of a middle-aged couple living in the Hollywood Hills. Maybe I should have chosen somewhere “normal” for the month while I waited for my permanent, modest, not-in-Hollywood Hills rental to become available, but I wanted to start my L.A. adventure in a grand way. This was the start of New Me: going big or going home and experimenting with the Hollywood lifestyle.

I guess I got a lot more Hollywood than I bargained for.

For starters, this couple operated a legitimate art gallery out of their home. The husband was one of those found scrap metal sculptors like the guys that display their work by a farm road in the middle of nowhere, and his life-sized metal sheep and robot creations were the cause of all the aforementioned swearing. This guy took his work so seriously that he financed a documentary about himself traveling to a certain Caribbean nation in which he patronized local artists creating similar (perhaps more authentic?) works of scrap art.

After attending the work-in-progress screening of said documentary in his backyard, during which he asked his friends for money without so much as a thank-you-for-coming-and-sitting-throughmy-hour-long-vanity-project, I started feeling the weight of the miles of blacktop between here and home. Moving to a new place completely out of

my circle of friends made something clear: I was going to be learning to deal with a lot of weirdos.

A few days after moving in I found myself in a Home Depot at midnight pacing the mini-fridge aisle, arguing with the Frenchman on the phone about such well-established facts as the freezing point and the temperature at which refrigerated food should be kept. The fridge in my little house had begun giving me the cold shoulder by refusing to make anything cold, but my hosts repeatedly insisted it was fine (though they didn’t taste my fun lukewarm sour milk). The couple had left for a vacation, and after days of stressing, in an act of desperation, I decided to buy a new fridge and make them pay for it later. In this new city, this act was a part of creating the New Me; I wasn’t going to take crap from anyone anymore. Leaving the store, I rebuffed offers from lingering day labourers (apparently they’re night labourers as well) to deliver my purchase, which clearly wasn’t made to fit in a Honda Civic. After eventually cramming the giant mini-refrigerator in the front seat, I was sweating and angry. I just wanted to fall into bed and sleep.

To my surprise, when I returned “home,” the house sitter was throwing a party on the deck above my dwelling. Of course the socialites didn’t even look up from their drinks when I grunted past them dragging a huge box into my lair like a grotesque subterranean troll. I seethed at the sound of their laughter and foot stomping above me. I was fed up with these Hollywood Hills types who were responsible for my terrible day.

Then I heard a knock on my door. A middle-aged

blonde woman was holding a glass of red wine and extended it to me saying, “You looked like you could use a drink.” She introduced herself and invited me to join their gathering. My gut reaction was, “Hell no,” but I smiled and meekly said, “Okay.” After she left I considered my options: sit down here like a hermit crab and sulk, or ride this weird wave that I had knowingly swam into by moving to California, and go up to their party.

New Me was here to do new things, after all, so I changed my shirt and went upstairs.

Everyone was already very drunk or in other altered states, which in this case put me at ease.

They wanted to know my name and asked questions about being a songwriter new to L.A. from Seattle. They gave me more wine, and offered me a heaping plate of leftovers from their fancy dinner earlier in the night. We raided the couple’s liquor cabinet and played a word game I never fully understood, which consisted mostly of drunken arguing. I realized I was having fun. Maybe these people weren’t so bad.

The day before my hosts’ homecoming, the original fridge — which I had kept plugged in with fingers crossed — by some miracle, started working again. I went back to Home Depot, fully prepared to fight to return a shoddily taped, water-leaking mini-fridge, but the cashier accepted it with a smile. The couple arrived home oblivious to my ordeal and were happy to hear my fridge was working again. The husband, having Googled “refrigeration,” apologized for our earlier argument.

My remaining days in The Hills were a breeze, and upon checking out, my hosts overpaid me by $100

on my security deposit. Maybe that was the great, bronzed Cali Gods’ way of encouraging New Me to not let unpleasant people or situations get in the way of a good time. I think they were saying, “Be ready to stand up for yourself, but most of the time, just chill out and enjoy riding the weird waves of life, bro.”

Luke Atlas is the former singer and songwriter for Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head (later renamed Brite Futures). He currently resides in Los Angeles, California, where he is an aspiring Svengali for the pop stars of tomorrow. He enjoys sunshine, among other things.

×× Dave Mcansh

× staff editorial ×

Four More Beers

A lover’s guide to Vancouver’s growing craft beer culture Colin Spensley

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46 issue N o . 15

× Distribution Manager

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I will never forget the first hand-poured pint of beer I ever drank. The way the light reflected through the glass and the heavy yet smooth foam delicately balancing itself between the rim of the cup and the air above. Sadly, like many young adults in our country, that first pint was poured from a tap crested with out national symbol. Yes, that beer was a Molson Canadian. If you’re like me and have since refined and expanded your tastes towards beer, simply the thought of that light, lifeless watery swill is enough to make your skin crawl, and if you’re not, well, taste is taste and drink what you like. But I’m here to tell you there is a whole world of other options out there; thousands upon thousands of brew masters and beer enthusiasts are carefully crafting new and exciting beer using only the finest ingredients. All you have to do is understand the basics, be a little adventurous and try a few beers.

Let's start with the most basic determinant: ingredients. Pick up a can of Budweiser or Molson Canadian and try to find an ingredients list on the can. Well, I can tell you right now that it’s not there. This is because companies like Molson and Labatt’s have such a wide scale production of beer, leaving them forced into using artificial flavors and preservatives in their beer to keep up with demand for the crappy product. A true beer exists of just three main ingredients; water, starch

(usually barley or wheat) and hops. I won’t bore you with the process of beer making since I’m not asking you to become a brew master, rather employing you to simply taste fine quality ingredients and understand what it is you’re drinking.

I’ve worked as a bartender in British Columbia for close to six years now and thus have been exposed to the vibrant yet often snobby culture that is the food and beverage scene. It’s an interesting and fun community to be a part of, and one of the few focusing on over-indulgence and barstool socialization. Sadly, it is also a culture of people telling you what is good, what is bad and how and where you should and shouldn’t eat and drink.

But don’t listen to those people; they’re just trying to apply their knowledge and tastes the only way they know how: by forcing it upon others. Like I said before, drink what you like. Even if your palate is tame or sensitive there are still a myriad of options to choose from. Even if you just like a classic lager, then get a classic lager but perhaps give a Bavarian Lager or Czech Pilsner a try. You may find something you like without even knowing it. Like anything else in life, rewards come to those who expand their horizons.

Now for the good stuff: we live in one of the finest and most renowned beer brewing regions in North America. Often known as the Cascadian region, stretching from the northern tip of California up through to central British Columbia, our area has been consistently producing some of

the best craft beers in the last 10 years. This means that you can sample new and exciting beers all the time which are brewed less then a hundred miles from your own home, guaranteeing the freshest product and, if you’re lucky, bottled just that day.

Perhaps the beer most responsible for our province’s craft beer spotlight is the intense and flavorful India Pale Ale, or IPA. It’s strong, it packs a punch and the flavours you’ll taste when sipping a well-crafted IPA can make your head spin.

The main thing separating an IPA from any other beer is the amount of hops used in the brewing process, and in the case of craft brewing these hops are usually added in fresh and provide a complex and almost fruity taste to the beer. The most common hop used in these IPAs is known as the Cascadian hop named lovingly after the region it is grown and it has a very distinct flavour of its own – think grapefruits and citrus melding with rich and roasted barley. It can sometimes take a few tries to grow accustomed to, but these beers offer a pallet-changing taste experience unmatched by any other.

It’s possible that if this is all new to you, maybe you just haven’t been exposed to anything like a Triple Hopped IPA yet and your local watering hole has the dreaded three-beer tap of Canadian, Coors and Kokanee. Well fortunately since craft beer has really taken off in our province, the trend has caught on and it’s pretty easy to find once you know where to look for it. Craft breweries continue to pop up all over Vancouver, with four

new craft breweries opening in the craft beer mecca that is Brewery Creek in Mount Pleasant. Parallel 49 Brewing Co. and Powell Street Brewery, both located in Hastings-Sunrise, offer fresh draft beer to go in two-litre bottles known as “growlers,” which can be purchased for a one-time cost of about $10, and then refilled at your leisure whenever you’re in the neighborhood. Even the BCL has a craft beer section, offering many different flavors and breweries. If you’re still unsure about whether or not craft beer is for you I recommend finding a bar stool at one of Vancouver’s many craft beer bars and talking to your bartender. They’ll be happy to share with you their wealth of knowledge and you’ll come out of the experience a little wiser, and probably a little tipsy, too.

×× Stefan Tosheff

13-02-01 8:52 PM

arts

arts Editor ×

Celina kurz × a r t s @ c a p i l a n o c o u r i e r . c o m

MUSIC'S BIGGEST NIGHT Breaking down this year’s list of Grammy nominees ×× tierney milne

HIT WORTHY Despite the indie leanings, for every M83 nomination there are a handful of Katy Perry, Rihanna and P!nk equivalents. It can be said that certain infectious tunes cannot be overlooked, but can we really expect to see “Call Me Maybe” awarded with a Song of the Year title? As catchy as it is, Carly Rae Jepsen’s biggest brainchild doesn’t exactly deserve to trump other lesser-known well-crafted songs like Ed Sheeran’s “The A Team”.

It’s interesting to watch what the Grammys actually end up rewarding. After all, the Black Eyed Peas won an award for “My Humps” a few years back. Other chart-toppers are hugely present in nominations, from Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know” to Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”. Whether or not these megahits will get rewarded or not is another story. In 2009, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss won Record of the Year, beating M.I.A. and Coldplay’s infectious radio hits. It’s hard to say if the Academy will award a monster hit or go for something more under the radar.

GETTING UPSET

album of the year and record of the year nominees the black keys

JJ Brewis × Editor-in-Chief

A MAN’S MAN’S MAN’S WORLD?

Similar to Adele’s big Grammy sweep in 2012, this could very well be Frank Ocean’s year. With an impressive six nominations, including most of the general field categories, Ocean has a big year behind him, as well as one of the most critically lauded albums in recent memory. His ability to relate to the public at-large helped make him a massive success, only adding to the impressive nature of his actual musical output. It’s an opportunity for Grammy to look good – Ocean outed himself as having a history of dating men last year. For those familiar with Ocean’s social media output, this would be an opportunity for some really emotional acceptance speeches. If the Grammys love anything, it’s good TV moments.

It seems that the fickle Academy doesn’t necessarily have loyalty to those artists who hold a bit more seniority, even if that artist is a big-time winner in previous years. Michael Jackson broke records with an eight-trophy win for Thriller in 1984, and was mostly ignored for the rest of his career. Despite Taylor Swift’s landmark win (the youngest person ever to win Album of the Year, at age 20), she received a measly one nomination this year. Despite two wins in 2006, this is the first time Kelly Clarkson has been multi-nominated since, despite having an eligible album released nearly every year between. The voters have spoken and they have no evident loyalties.

ALTERNATIVE UNIVERSE

As fascinating as the list of nominees can be, it’s just as interesting to see who doesn’t get nominated.

A notable omission in this year’s awards is that of Justin Bieber, a multi-nominee of years past, whose Believe record from 2012 was a massive hit. Bieber’s manager Scooter Braun tweeted in outrage, “this time there wont (sic) be any wise words, no excuses, I just plain DISAGREE. Grammy board u blew it on this one.” Other big releases from international stars like Nicki Minaj, One Direction and Lana Del Rey all went unnoticed.

But you can’t please everyone. Last year, Kanye West’s opus My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was a shoe-in for Best Album but ended up not even being nominated. Needless to say, he was absent

RECORD OF THE YEAR Should win: “Thinkin Bout You” (Frank Ocean) Will win: “We Are Young” (fun. feat.

Janelle Monae)

ALBUM OF THE YEAR Should win/will win: Channel Orange (Frank Ocean)

SONG OF THE YEAR Should win: “The A Team” (Ed Sheeran) Will win: “Stronger” (Kelly Clarkson)

BEST NEW ARTIST Should win/will win: Frank Ocean

POP SOLO PERFORMANCE Should win/will win: “Stronger” (Kelly Clarkson)

POP DUO/GROUP PERFORMANCE Should win: “Shake It Out” (Florence and the Machine) Will win: “Somebody That I Used to Know” (Gotye)

POP VOCAL ALBUM Should win: Ceremonials, Florence and the Machine Will win: Stronger, Kelly Clarkson

ALTERNATIVE MUSIC ALBUM Should win/Will win: Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming (M83)

RAP PERFORMANCE Should win: “Mercy” (Kanye West) Will win: “Ni**as in Paris” (Jay-Z and Kanye West)

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Comparing to previous years, Grammy stuck to a fairly “indie” (read: as indie as the mainstream awards have ever been) roster, leaning heavily toward non-pop genres like rock, alternative and folk. With major nominations for the Black Keys, Alabama Shakes, Florence and the Machine and more, this list has come a long way from the top-40-pop drenched list featuring Avril Lavigne, Ashanti and John Mayer that filled the same categories a decade ago. They haven’t gone so far as to put Japandroids up for Best Alternative Album, but this is at least a step in the right direction.

EMPTY SEATS

Who will win?

The crystal ball takes a closer look

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A LACK OF COMMITMENT

Each year, oddball duets are comprised strictly for the awards telecast, traditionally pairing legendary career artists with up-and-comers. Last year, Best New Artist winner Bon Iver famously declined to perform on the awards because he wanted to perform solo and was only given the opportunity to play alongside other artists. After he declined, vocalist Justin Vernon told Billboard, “We wanted to play our music, but were told that we couldn't play. We had to do a collaboration with someone else, [and] we kind of said 'fuck you' a little bit.”

This year sees Ed Sheeran teaming up with Elton John. Results may vary.

×

The last decade has seen big Grammy sweeps for female entertainers, with Adele, Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, The Dixie Chicks and the late Amy Winehouse all squashing their competition in their respective years. What makes that even more impressive is that last year the Grammys combined male and female categories into one gender-neutral award, and women are still filling the list.

This year, however, male artists received the highest amount of nominations, from Mumford & Sons and fun. to Frank Ocean and the Black Keys, among others. Only 29 artists received more than two nominations each, with only five being female artists. A large handful of males are up for as many as six awards, whereas the most any female act is nominated for is three. The pop field does see a break for women artists, with all five nominations being female.

YEAR OF THE OCEAN

THE SHOW

the capilano courier

Aside from the Oscars, the Grammy Awards telecast is likely the biggest ticket in the award show season. Certainly in the realm of recording arts, no distinction is considered more widely honourable than that of the Grammy.

Every year, music’s most elite get together, sing some duets, and hand each other a bunch of trophies. So what’s new in the world of the Grammys? Well, quite a lot, actually.

The Academy has made some bold, unorthdox choices in recent memory, notably in 2011 when widely unknown Esperanza Spalding beat out Justin Bieber and other household names for the Best New Artist trophy. She hardly went on to become a mainstream splash, whereas Bieber and the rest of the year’s nominees are all still holding their own. Most of the nominees this year don’t even seem to ring a bell (Hunter Hayes?), but it’s the uncertainty that makes the show worth watching.

from the show. So for those expecting a Bieber/ Minaj mashup at this year’s performance, don’t hold your breath.

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arts

arts Editor ×

Celina kurz × a r t s @ c a p i l a n o c o u r i e r . c o m

TAKE A BOW Capilano offers final act in theatre education Connor Thorpe × Staff Writer The pursuit of a career in the performing arts is often characterized by working to tell the stories of others. Stuart Aikins, Special Appointee to Capilano’s new Bachelor of Performing Arts degree, says that the new program provides students with the tools and training to “take control of [their lives] in order to be able to tell the stories [they] want to tell.”

“Capilano is, at this moment, if you go to study musical theatre or acting for the stage and screen, it’s what I like to call an ‘academic conservatory,’ and it trains those people to be actors or musical theatre performers,” Aikins explains. “[The new program] takes them to a different level, this teaches them how the discipline that they work in is probably not something they may even utilize in the show. They’re opened up to hundreds of other disciplines that go into the creation of a piece.”

The product of 10 years of work, the Bachelor of Performing Arts program emerged in the fall 2012 semester as a partnership between Capilano University, and Douglas, Langara and Vancouver Community Colleges. Until the debut of the program, students in Vancouver pursuing an education in the performing arts were limited to the narrow focus of diploma programs scattered across the city – like the two-year Acting and Technical Theatre Diploma at Douglas or the three-year Acting and two-year Production Diplomas at Langara. While these programs are sufficient for some, Capilano’s more comprehensive degree completion program allows the opportunity for students to deepen their understanding of the myriad of positions available

in the performing arts, while learning how to turn their degree into a career.

“It’s a degree in collaborative, interdisciplinary, entrepreneurial work in the theatre,” Atkins explains. “The students are trained to produce, direct, design, construct and write their own material, their own piece, their own performance art.

They’re taught how to find the money to create a company, how to build their own company if they go out once they leave [Capilano] and, really, how to work in what we call ‘devised’ or ‘creation’ work.”

By challenging students to work outside of their comfort zones, Aikins believes students become well rounded and have the opportunity to discover new passions within theatre. “[Students] all have three or four different jobs, they all have different functions in the show. Everybody has to have at least one technical function, one of what we call ‘dramaturgical’ functions – writing, editing, creation – and one acting.” As a result, graduates – in addition to holding a degree – will have the knowledge and ability required to forge their own careers, rather than following the path set by theatre companies.

However, bringing stories to life requires one thing that can remain elusive to aspiring performing artists: money. Aikins says that this issue will be addressed within the program.

Students will be offered two courses solely devoted to garnering financial support for projects, the establishment of a company and the architecture of granting. Another course teaches the strategic planning of a career trajectory.

The bulk of the program comes in the form of courses that are built around the creation of pieces – providing instruction that is utilized by students in the fall, when they collaborate on art

installations for the Fuse festival at the Vancouver Art Gallery. In the ninth and final month of classes, students leave the Capilano campus and relocate to the Russian Hall, where a piece is rehearsed for three weeks, culminating in a performance. The first graduating class of the program recently performed their show Qualia, on Jan. 31 and Feb. 1.

Aikins explains that students who graduate from the Capilano Bachelor of Performing Arts program leave with a heightened confidence that

allows them to embrace loftier ambitions and achieve their goals.

“Basically, they wanted to go off and just work in theatre companies, they didn’t want to actually have to do creative work – devised, creation work,” he says. “Now they get it, they get how to do that.

Before they wouldn’t. They would have just been a tool as opposed to [being] involved in it.”

For more information on the program, visit Capilanou.ca/

×× kira campbell

AROUND THE WORLD St. Lucia crafts personal account of pop JJ Brewis

the capilano courier

×

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× Editor-in-Chief

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“I’m just continuing to do what I do, which is in general, to follow my subconscious’ lead either into oblivion or to somewhere good.” Atmospheric pop artist St. Lucia is still figuring everything out, he says. But in many ways, it sounds like he knows exactly what he’s doing.

Born Jean-Philip Grobler, St. Lucia hails from Johannesberg, South Africa and spent much of his youth performing with the Drakensberg Boys Choir School. “St. Lucia developed out of me rediscovering and falling in love with a lot of the music of my childhood and youth,” Grobler says.

“Music that I’d grown to feel guilty about liking over the years because of being exposed to these different music scenes in the U.K. and the U.S.” Drawing on ‘80s pop, St. Lucia’s tunes are a distinct guttural reaction, set apart from the masses because of what he feels to be a genuine reflection on his roots. “It felt like if anyone was taking anything from the ‘70s or ‘80s, it was done in a very intentionally ironic way, in a kind of knowing nod to the music, but [a way] that still poked fun at the music,” he says. “What started getting to me was that it felt like everybody was starting to take

that approach of alienating their audiences in an attempt to look cool, and thereby creating a cycle that cancels itself out.”

Thus, St. Lucia was born out of a necessity to what he saw as a missing link of sorts. After relocating from South Africa to England, Grobler is now based out of New York. In creating a project that paid homage to the ‘80s sounds he loved like Madonna and Peter Gabriel, his self-titled EP struck a chord, and was picked up

by Neon Gold, a label that helped establish artists like Ellie Goulding, Passion Pit, and The Naked & Famous.

Crafting tracks for St. Lucia was a process more organic than going into a studio to brainstorm new ideas. “I’ll just be walking down the street, or jogging, or at a bookshop, and an idea will just pop into my head. I’ll just catch myself singing something and realize that it’s something that hasn’t existed yet,” he says. “I’ll either record it on my phone, or if I’m close enough to my studio and have enough time, I’ll go in and work on it.”

The lack of a pre-conceived theme seems to be working thus far, no matter where the spark is actually coming from. “If anything, that’s my theme, following the unconscious mind, or whatever it is that gives me these ideas, whether it’s some alien light-years away, or some deity or

godlike figure. Who knows, but I like to be open to these things.”

The result is what Grobler sees as a fine balance between many of life’s cross-sections. “As a kid and a teenager I was always very moved by music, but for some reason I was very put off, and still am, by anything that came off as one-dimensionally angry or happy or either side of the emotional spectrum.

I've always been moved mostly by conflict in music. A sense of happy and sad, because to me the most pivotal moments in life are the moments where there is that sense of conflict, and in many ways it seems to me that almost every moment in life is wrought with conflict.”

A feeling of space and atmosphere are present in his songs, a heavy pop foundation that dabbles in electronica, tropicalia and, at times, instrumental moments. But Grobler doesn’t subscribe to genre titles or pre-fabricate much of a song’s construct before he creates it. “I like my music to have a rich sonic quality to it, and for it to feel like every element is serving every other element,” he says.

Hitting number one in his home of South Africa with the infectious “September”, it’s clear St. Lucia is achieving goals. Even more – he’s done it by making the music he wants to, a missing link in a clouded soundscape of artists. In the meantime, St. Lucia is finishing up his debut album.

Despite his live setup including four other musicians, for now the recording process is an insular one. “It’s kind of like some sort of weird pilgrimage that I’m on. Sometimes it’s painful, and sometimes it’s really fun, but it’s like I have no choice and I have to do this. There’s something inside of me that needs to come out and I’m just letting it come out as much as possible, and as often as possible.”

St. Lucia opens for Ellie Goulding at the Commodore Ballroom on Feb. 5.

×× St Lucia photo by Shervin Lainez

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ART S H O RT S : -rev iewsFa johnther mist

y

×× tom nugent

JOIN THE MILE-HIGH CLUB

bands in blazers The Walkmen and Father John Misty get groovy at the Commodore Ballroom

By Brandden Dancer, Writer The Walkmen seem to be intertwining headlining and opening gigs here in Vancouver for their last couple visits. The band released their seventh and most accomplished to date album Heaven just last year, and on Jan. 28 they were joined for the last show on their tour by Father John Misty, or as he’s otherwise known, J. Tillman.

On stage, Tillman struts with a swagger, twirling the microphone stand, seemingly in another world. Backed by his band of five other gentlemen who groove to sweet sounds of songs like “Everyman Needs a Companion”, and “I Love You, Honeybear” - all of which are from his only album under the Misty moniker, Fear Fun. By the end of their set, the audience was taken on a psychedelic whirlwind of red lights and heavy guitars.

The Walkmen started their set jumping right into “On The Water”, a song from their 2010 album You & Me. Their music sounds like they walked into an old abandoned music hall with a stage and wooden floors. Their souls once inhabited the bodies of the band members who would frequently play school dances and socials.

They enter this hall to find the instruments are just as they left them sixty or so years ago, dust off the instruments and without hesitation, go right into the songs that feel so strangely familiar to them.

At the end of the title track, “Heaven”, lead singer Hamilton Leithauser introduced his bandmates and gave a wonderful send off. They left the stage while the rambunctious crowd began a synchronized clap and floor stomp, one that would not be out of place at a hockey game or Queen tribute concert. They came back for an encore of their radio-friendly “Heartbreaker” and capped the night off with my personal favourite, “We’ve Been Had”.

The Walkmen seem to mature with their music, with each album more accomplished than the last.

Now that their tour is over, they can rest for a little while and spend time with their wives and little walkboys and walkgirls, while Father John Misty is out in a desert somewhere on mushrooms.

Arts Club's Boeing Boeing reaches the stars

By Samantha Thompson, Copy Editor The classic tale of secrecy and complicated relationships is taken to new heights in the Arts Club's latest production, Boeing-Boeing. It features the romantic games of Bernard, who is engaged to three separate air stewardesses each of whom believes she is the only woman in his life. Naturally things begin to get a little complicated, and Bernard's loyal maid Berthe and long lost friend Robert are soon roped into keeping his game going.

Each member of the six-person cast performs brilliantly in their roles - particularly Gretchen (Colleen Wheeler) as a German stewardess, whose overbearing personality makes for excellent comedic fodder. The hilarious antics of Robert (Andrew McNee) and Berthe (Nicola Lipman) are excellently emphasized by their fantastic on-stage chemistry, and the pair truly stand out throughout the entire production.

The crisp set design, complemented by quirky musical accompaniment, will quickly transport you to an idyllic bachelor lifestyle that really only could take place in Paris. Although the show starts off a bit slowly, it’s worth following because the initial dialogue is necessary for all the ensuing hilarity.

Being a part of Boeing-Boeing is like watching a really good sitcom of decades past - except with this show, you witness the quirky lines and emphatic acting that only really come with live theatre.

Boeing-Boeing runs at the Stanley Theatre until Feb. 24.

××

Kimberley Sustad and Jonathon young in

boeing-boeing. Photo by David Cooper

BEGGING FOR MORE Ballet BC draws from peers with Encore

By JJ Brewis, Editor-in-Chief

××

makaila

wallace

in

ballet

bc's

encore.

Michael Slobo dianhirez photo.

Ballet BC gave their crowd something truly special with their newest endeavour, Encore. The performance, presented as part of the PuSh Festival, paid homage to contemporary ballet acts from around the world. Presented in three parts, Encore was a testament to the fact that modern ballet is certainly not all tutus and Tchaikovsky. In the opening number Herman Scherman, a quintet and duet offset each other with jarring, chaotic music by Thom Willems. Scherman saw its debut in 1992 at the New York City Ballet, and even 20-plus years after its debut is still as fresh and exciting for new audiences.

In 1st Flash, a more classical tone was set by Jean Sibelius’ Violin Concerto in D minor Op. 47. This act, which debuted in the Netherlands in 2003, saw a more romantic pace. Throughout the act, a large rectangular box raised and lowered above the six dancers, drawing comparisons to a mothership, or a UFO. In the finale, the word encore was given a new meaning as this was the only piece of the night which was premiered by Ballet BC itself, back in 2011. In Petite Cérémonie, each of the 15 dancers slowly entered the stage from the crowd, which created a soft transition from house lighting and intermission to an elaborate performance featuring light up boxes, juggling, and certainly the most avant-garde choreography of the night. With the dancers dressed in formal attire of suits and dresses, it was impressive to watch them give even more captivating performances than those in the traditional dance attire from the other acts.

To cap off the evening, Makaila Wallace, who featured in the first and third acts, was presented with a bouquet of roses to commemorate her 10-year anniversary with the company. The emotional “encore” of the evening was seeing this talented star in her moment of glory.

I WANT TO RIDE MY BICYCLE

Kickstand works to break down bike barriers Natalie Corbo & Leah Scheitel × Features and Opinions Editors

going to be really cool,” Clarkson explains.

Community spaces such as Kickstand are an example of collaborations of people just trying to get other people excited about riding their bike year round. With their support, it makes it easier to conquer the barriers of commuting by bike, which is great for the environment, your wallet and your workout regime.

Grrls, Queers and Gears is free and happens on the last Saturday of every month until April at Kickstand, located at 1739 Venables St. For more information on Kickstand, check out Eastvankickstand.org.

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that can be the making of people that identify as women or queer or transgender ... being like, ‘let’s create a space where we can create what we think is safe.’”

The programs offered at Kickstand vary from bike touring how-tos to bike art night. The space also features open shop nights, where bike enthusiasts can use the tools at Kickstand to fix their bike, and pick the brains of the friendly volunteers for maintenance tips. Because the programs are still young, Clarkson and her colleagues are looking for input on what people want to know about biking in the city.

“I think what we’re trying to do at the end of every session is open it up for a discussion of what people would like to see happening,” says Clarkson, “So I think one thing that we’ll be trying to get started in the late spring will be bike nights for Grrls, Queers and Gears.”

The Grrls, Queers and Gears program wants to expand as well, providing a space for people to discover different aspects about the history of the bike in Vancouver. “Our last one, which I’m actually really excited about, is going to be kind of more of a history and storytelling event. So we want to do histories of women and queers and trans folk and cycling and try and kind of have a dialogue around how we can link liberatory agendas and cycling, and then we’re going to have a bike ride and that’s

the capilano courier

Vancouver prides itself on being bike friendly. From the millions of dollars that Gregor Robertson spent to build bike lanes downtown to the miles and miles of pathways around the seawall, this city remains popular because the moderate temperatures mean biking year-round. Despite these relatively ideal conditions, there are still tons of excuses that we can make not to bike, from being unsure of what to wear to being intimidated in bike shops.

Aiming to make the biking more accessible and diverse, Kickstand is a new community space, where people can repair and maintain their bikes.

Recently, organizers have started running seminars to help people understand the risks and dangers of biking in a city, and how to overcome certain barriers about biking year-round. Most recently, on Jan. 25, the space opened its doors to women, queers and transfolk for Grrrls, Queers and Gears.

“The way that it came about was that we started to get really excited about the idea of having programs rather than just focusing on the space as a shop space,” explains Molly Clarkson, who volunteers at Kickstand. “So we started coming

up with all these ideas and people were really just kind of taking initiative on the things they were most excited about.”

Clarkson says that the idea for a female specific night wasn’t her idea, but brought to her by a male co-worker. “He asked me if I’d be willing or able to coordinate with some other folks and put on what was originally going to be a women’s night,” she explains. “And then working with the other people who were becoming involved it seemed really clear to us that women in kind of the gendered meaning of the term wasn’t what we wanted. Instead, Clarkson explains, “[we] wanted to create a more inclusive and safer space for people that identified as women or queer or transgendered to be able to come and sort of get away from some of the more masculine tendencies of a bike shop and a bike space.”

For Kickstand, offering this seminar series wasn’t in defiance of a macho stereotype, or about trying to create an “alternative” to other bike workshops.

It was more about just creating a safe environment for women, queer and trans people to talk about bikes and factors that affect them specifically while biking in Vancouver. “I don’t think it’s a case of other bike shops or our bike shops being like hyper masculinist. It’s about really trying to create a space that isn’t necessarily alternative to or totally distinct from those spaces, but to create a space

11 ×× jack wu

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arts

arts Editor ×

Celina kurz × a r t s @ c a p i l a n o c o u r i e r . c o m

Movie reviews Django Unchained

by Charlie Black

Gangster Squad

by Peter Warkentin

Django Unchained, the latest blood-soaked Quentin Tarantino flick, has sealed its place in today's popular culture lexicon. While some in the African American community, particularly Spike Lee, decried the film as trivializing slavery, Tarantino has handled the ugliest time in American history with dark humour and brutal accuracy. Perhaps the most justified of Tarantino's films to use the n-word so liberally, Django is a well-rounded spaghetti-Western that is less of a balls-out action film than trailers originally represented. Django is a clever mix of Pulp Fiction and Inglourious Basterds in terms of its style and delivery, with the former's calculated and tense sit-down scenes and the latter's revenge-fantasy action sequences. Acting nods go to Leo DiCaprio, who in one scene cut his hand on a wine glass while his character goes off the rails, notable for continuing on with the scene and filming it in one take, and Samuel L. Jackson, who plays one of recent history's most despicable film villains.

Judged solely on its marketing campaign, Gangster Squad looked like it was going to be a fun, stylish action romp marked by a star-studded cast, an awesome true-story premise, and one of the best trailers in recent memory. And for the first 15 minutes, it holds up to expectations.

Unfortunately, if you continue watching, it reveals itself to be empty, poorly executed and insultingly stupid. It’s as if someone handed director Ruben Fleischer a cornucopia of amazing ingredients, only to have them squandered by lacklustre vision. To be fair, some of these elements manage to shine through, despite Fleischer’s best efforts to ruin them. Sean Penn, Robert Patrick, and Ryan Gosling’s performances are all thoroughly fun to watch, even if the chemistry between Gosling and co-star Emma Stone is practically non-existent.

The beautiful production design, which recreates the world of 1940s Los Angeles, also deserves a nod. Save for one action scene set to the song “Chica Chica Boom Chic”, there really isn’t anything else good to say about Gangster Squad.

My advice: Just go watch L.A. Confidential.

This is 40

by Lauren Gargiulo This is 40 is the somewhat of a sequel to Knocked Up, dealing with the crazy sister and her family. Although the family seems normal, with a hysterical 14-year-old girl who always fights with her younger sister, a husband/father stressing over money, a mother who wonders about trusting her employees at her store, and of course random cameos from NHL players and musicians – they’re not normal at all. But at the same time, their everyday problems such as dealing with other parents and the school principal and worrying if cyber-bullying is crushing their daughter are all relatable. The characters are just as relatable: a teen girl crying over her body and LOST, an eightyear-old who just wants love, and parents who always fight about money. Simply, it’s a great movie chronicling the problems and insecurities that come with turning 40.

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we make taxes painle$$ hrblock.ca | 800-HRBLOCK (472-5625) © 2013 H&R Block Canada, Inc. *$29.95 valid for student tax preparation only. To qualify, student must present either (i) a T2202a documenting 4 or more months of full-time attendance at a college or university during the applicable tax year or (ii) a valid high school ID card. Instant Cash Back is included in the price. Students pay $79.99 for Complex/Premier return. Expires 12/31/2013. Valid only at participating locations. Additional fees apply.

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FEATURES

Features Editor ×

NATALIE CORBO

× s p e c i a l f e at u r e s . c a p c o u r i e r @ g m a i l . c o m

Vancouver organizations cope with record numbers of abandoned cats Connor Thorpe × Staff Writer

In 2012, 1,800 cats flooded into the protection of the Vancouver Orphan Kitten Rescue Association (VOKRA) – a number that vastly exceeded anything the organization had seen before. The summer temperatures that stretched into autumn allowed un-spayed cats to undergo another heat, increasing the number of pregnancies and kittens that needed homes. Coupled with the abandonment of unwanted cats, the amount of street cats soared and vacant space within animal rescue associations dwindled.

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Whether it’s moving to another city for school, entering a relationship with someone who has allergies, or being financially unprepared, there are a multitude of potential issues that can come with young people owning cats. Duncan says that VOKRA still has an option for them. “We encourage those people to foster if it’s an appropriate house, as we’re always looking for fosters. That’s a way to have an animal, we pay all the bills, they just have to look after it properly according to what we ask them to do.”

It’s this commitment to the wellbeing of the kittens and cats that leads to VOKRA being selective to whom they adopt. Finances, living arrangements and lifestyle can all lead to

prospective adopters being turned down. While some call for the placement of cats into any home that will have them, Duncan rebukes the idea.

“If they can’t afford that adoption fee, they can’t afford to feed them good food and keep them healthy if they get sick,” she says. “We’re not going to hand over the cats that we’ve worked so long [with], some of them raising from one-dayold on bottles, we’re not handing them over to a life that’s going to be worse.”

While the SPCA does not have the ability to be as selective as VOKRA, their partnership with the organization still helps curb the overpopulation problem.

“We work with VOKRA all the time, we work with about 60 rescue groups across the province,” Chortyk explains. “If they have kittens, or they have animals that need taking care of and we have space, we’ll take them and vice versa. They’ll help us out when we have animals that we need looked after as well, if they have the resources. We all work together and try and deal with the issue.”

Through their efforts, VOKRA has managed to find homes for 1300 cats and kittens in the past year. Still, 130 VOKRA cats are currently being prepared for adoption, another 140 are currently available, and overpopulation continues.

The feral, lost and abandoned cats that populate the streets of the Lower Mainland and beyond are subjected to brutal, short lives – and it’s the duty of pet owners to ensure their animals aren’t contributing to the problem. “They multiply very rapidly, but they don’t live long,” says Chortyk.

“It’s very frustrating because it’s a completely fixable problem and these animals can die just horrible deaths out in the community – through disease or predation, they’re eaten by coyotes. It’s a horrible life for them and they don’t need to suffer like that. It’s a lack of human responsibility that’s creating this problem.”

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Duncan cites the fostering process as crucial to ensuring that VOKRA’s kittens and cats remain in the homes that they are adopted to. The SPCA also reserves the right to turn down prospective adopters should they not be compatible with the animal they wish to adopt.

“We put pretty well all our cats in foster homes, so therefore we know what they’re like in a home.

We know if they have any bad habits that we have to work on, we know what they’re like with people, if they’re night owls or if we need to turn something around, we do that,” says Duncan.

Cats have a reputation as being an “easy” pet, which often make them an attractive option for younger people and students, whose typically transitory lifestyles are not conducive to pet ownership. While rescue organizations are striving to find homes for their cats, the wellbeing of the animals is paramount and there are strict conditions regulating adoptions on a case-by-case basis.

“None of us like to adopt to very young people, it’s not a time to adopt a cat,” Duncan explains.

“Cats are going to live, if they’re healthy and well cared for, they should live 14 to 16 years.

Someone in their late teens or early 20's is going to move a lot, they’re going to travel, they’re going to change who they’re with, lots of things are going to change and it’s just not the time to adopt an animal.”

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It wasn’t just VOKRA that was filling up. It was everywhere.

“We’ve definitely seen greater numbers of kittens coming in. Homeless kittens are being either brought to us or we have to rescue them, those have really gone up and when we have more kittens, it means it’s harder to adopt adult cats,” says Lorie Chortyk, General Manager of Community Relations for the BC SPCA – which brought 9,461 cats and 9,570 kittens into its protection in 2012.

A report by the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies on cat overpopulation in Canada noted that of 150,350 cats admitted to participating shelters, almost 60,000 were euthanized due to illness or lack of resources.

Furthermore, the study estimates that more than 20 per cent of cats remain unneutered or unspayed – suggesting that over 2 million cats are contributing to the overpopulation crisis nationwide.

“I think it’s growing exponentially across the province because we’re seeing these larger numbers of sort of free-roaming, un-owned cats in our communities where people just don’t bother to get their cats spayed and neutered and those cats are roaming in the community, they’re multiplying – and because cats do multiply so quickly, that number each year just grows and grows and grows,” says Chortyk.

The SPCA has partnered with other organizations like VOKRA in an effort to curb the street cat and kitten overpopulation in British Columbia.

Formed in 2000 as a no-kill rescue organization, VOKRA initially focused on caring for young kittens, which generally don’t survive without the constant attention provided by a mother cat. Soon the organization expanded to care for cats of all ages. VOKRA does not operate from centralized shelters, like many other rescue organizations do. Instead, rescued kittens are placed in one of over 100 foster homes across the Lower Mainland, in which they are rehabilitated, trained and socialized until they are ready for adoption.

The diaspora of rescued animals to different homes allows protection from widespread disease and other transmissible health issues that could sweep through a large congregation of cats in a shelter or a similar environment. The format of VOKRA also allows the organization the opportunity to get to know the personality of each of the animals in their care, says the organization’s president, Karen Duncan.

“We get our foster homes to do really clear bios about what the cats are like, and what kind of home they would like. That’s one of our big things – matching the right cat for the right person,” Duncan says. “It’s not about how they look, it’s more about the temperament and what the cat likes and what the people like. A really busy, crazy cat isn’t good for an older person in a quiet apartment, but an older cat with a calm demeanour is – older cats aren’t necessarily good for kids.”

VOKRA examines the compatibility between cats and owners through the bios produced by those temporarily fostering VOKRA cats, and interviews conducted with prospective adopters. Duncan explains that adopters must agree to raise their cats indoors, citing coyotes and cars as potential threats to a cat’s safety. “It’s really important to us that they go to indoor homes. Occasionally we get a call and one of our cats has been found and it’s been outside – we usually get the call because the pound has picked up the body.”

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FEATURES

Features Editor ×

NATALIE CORBO

× s p e c i a l f e at u r e s . c a p c o u r i e r @ g m a i l . c o m

TROUBLED BRIDGE OVER WATER

Local infrastructure deserves taxpayer attention

Charlie Black

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The Lower Mainland was long overdue for a new bridge.

Whether the new Port Mann Bridge, or its slightly older cousin, the Golden Ears Bridge, is the immediate answer to that issue has been a hotbutton topic for commuters over recent years. December marked the opening of a new, 10-lane Port Mann Bridge connecting Surrey and Coquitlam via Highway 1, but its first few months have provided many challenges to commuters, from falling chunks of ice to slippery conditions and multi-car accidents.

Regardless, the Port Mann was only one of a number of bridges in the Lower Mainland that are due for an upgrade. Darren Woodworth, a senior project manager at TransLink, confirms that plans are in place for an upgrade to the Pattullo Bridge in the near future. Despite taxpayer hesitancy, and the general public’s unwillingness to pay tolls on any new infrastructure, the dangers of old and poorly maintained bridges are considerable.

PORT MANN GROWING PAINS Dec. 18 of last year delivered a nightmarish trip across the Port Mann’s new span for commuters,

when accumulations of ice fell from the support cables of the bridge, hitting some motorists with frightening velocity. Two people were injured and dozens of vehicles were damaged from early morning until the bridge was finally closed around 2 p.m. The bridge reopened four hours later, and ICBC received up to 60 insurance claims from motorists regarding ice-bomb-related damage

by Dec. 20. The incident occurred just over two weeks since the bridge had opened to traffic.

While the ice bombs had yet to make another appearance on the span, motorists were far from out of the woods when a deadly combination of black ice and heavy fog caused multiple crashes, involving at least 40 vehicles, on Jan. 3. De-icing procedures on the bridge deck were not applied frequently enough prior to the disastrous day for commuters.

The issue of ice-bombs on cable-stayed bridges is not a new issue, but the particular design of the updated Port Mann, with the cables crossing over the bridge deck, left motorists prone to the falling ice. “These bridges have been built in other countries that have snow ... was it not known that this could be possible?” wonders Carrie Ortlepp, whose car was nearly hit by an ice-bomb midspan on Dec. 18. Christine Drummond-Welch, an SFU student who travels from Langley, believes the bridge's design could have been handled better.

“The bridge's first winter should have made the

contractors and engineers more aware of potential dangers and provide more precautions to ensure safety.”

B.C. Transportation Minister Mary Polak was very stern in her statements that taxpayers would not be on the hook for the necessary provisions to fix the bridge. “We will be looking to the contractor to provide us with not only a long-term permanent solution to ensure that this never ever happens again, but also for an immediate fix to the problem,” she told the Vancouver Sun. Cable-stayed bridges are quickly becoming the go-to design for new bridge infrastructure in the Lower Mainland, with the Alex Fraser Bridge, opened in 1986, being the first of its kind. It is joined now by the Skybridge from Scott Road and Columbia SkyTrain stations, the Golden Ears Bridge and the Canada Line bridges connecting Richmond and Sea Island to Vancouver. While the Alex Fraser has been prone to falling ice build-up on its cables, the bridge deck is not affected and traffic continues on unimpeded in winter weather.

NOT ALONE The Port Mann Bridge's soap opera is relatively mild in scope compared to other bridge troubles over time, such as the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington State. Built in 1940, three years after the Pattullo Bridge opened in B.C., it was

famously nicknamed “Galloping Gertie” for the bridge deck's tendency to twist and sway in moderate winds. Four months after opening, the Tacoma Narrows fell into Puget Sound, after succumbing to structural failure under 40mph winds. The most recent incarnation of the Tacoma-Narrows bridge was also shut down in 2011 due to falling ice, similar to the new Port Mann.

Closer to home, the first incarnation of the Second Narrows Bridge collapsed into Burrard Inlet during construction in 1958, taking with it the lives of 18 ironworkers and one rescue diver.

The collapse was due to a weight miscalculation by the engineers. The bridge was rebuilt and rechristened the Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing, and it is the bridge many Capilano students rely on to get to school each day.

Bridge disasters in the Western world are not limited to the mid-20th century, however: a piece of freeway overpass collapsed onto a roadway below in Laval, Quebec in 2006. Five were killed and six injured as the overpass fell straight onto two vehicles. It was the second such infrastructure collapse in Quebec in seven years, with revelations arising that the provincial government had been putting off crucial repairs to roads and bridges in order to keep a balanced budget.

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PRESSING NEEDS

The province and Kiewit-Flatiron, the contractor behind the new Port Mann, have released details of plans to keep further ice-bombs from wreaking havoc on the new crossing. Key to the plans are a series of cable-sweepers, designed to remove accumulated ice and snow by means of winches carrying scrapers and brushes along the 152 supporting cables along the bridge. Additionally, Kiewit is testing hydrophobic compounds to be applied to the cables to prevent snow and ice build-up, as a further precautionary measure.

While the news of solutions being undertaken is relieving to motorists, some worries are not quite quelled so easily.

“Realistically, it's our money paying for it in the end. Anyway, it's being paid for; it’s something that has to be done,” says Ortlepp, in response to comments that taxpayers would not bear the weight of such implements. “They have learned now and they are reacting accordingly and in a timely fashion.”

Drummond-Welch feels that the issues still should not have happened in the first place. She feels “[t]he contractors ... should have used a stronger solution to prevent icing as well as taken more precautions [against] ice formation on the cables.”

On the home front While the Port Mann project has not been subject to nearly as many accusations or difficulties, Kiewit's track record in the U.S. is notable. For the time being, the most troubling issue seems to be the ice bombs, for which solutions are expected to be implemented by mid-February. Even despite the ice-related woes, people utilizing the new Port Mann are appreciative of how much easier their commutes have become. “ The ne w bridge and highway improvements really cut down my commute time down to and from Simon Fraser University from outer Langley,” remarks Drummond-Welch. “Luckily I haven't experienced any negative events personally.”

“In terms of traffic, it's great to get to where I need and to go much faster; provided there are no ‘natural disasters’ [like] icy bridge decks and falling snow [and] ice death bombs,” cracks Ortlepp.

So far the new bridge is a hit with motorists, previously subject to gridlock alongHighway 1, commonly as far east as the Highway 15 interchange. For right now, this is the bridge the Lower Mainland was in dire need of. In regards to the Pattullo, the Port Mann is the bridge that Metro Vancouver deserves, but not the one it needs. It now falls upon the province to solve further transportation woes in New Westminster and Surrey, and hopefully with the learning experiences from the Port Mann project, Vancouver’s infrastructure will be sound well into the future.

The Pattullo Bridge turned 75 last year, and represents a time in B.C. history before modern highway standards.

When will they learn?

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While Kiewit-Flatiron has been developing solutions for their bridge north of the border, they have been dealing with bridge troubles on a project of theirs in neighbouring Washington State as well.

Shoddy construction is being blamed for problems with pontoons used to construct a replacement to Seattle's SR 520 Floating Bridge.

Tracy Vedder of KOMO News explains, “They need to be able to float and they need to be watertight. The first cycle of six pontoons that came out of Aberdeen that were constructed primarily by the prime contractors, Kiewit, has developed … quite extensive leaks.” Some of the pontoons were found to be missing rebar, and to be badly cracked despite coming in fresh from Aberdeen.

KOMO has also reported on contractors found drinking on the jobsite, and further ignorance to safety concerns from Washington State Department of Transportation engineers.

Other Kiewit projects under scrutiny for accusations of shoddy workmanship include the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge replacement and steel structures at Seattle's Safeco

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Fixing the Problem

Field, home of the Mariners. Kiewit is under investigation for the former, and being sued in part for the latter.

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Although it is not uncommon to have falling ice problems on recently built cable-stayed bridges, the infrastructure of the past represents a more potentially lethal danger. The Pattullo Bridge turned 75 last year, and represents a time in B.C. history before modern highway standards. The four-lane bridge has narrow lanes and no divider, which has resulted in many head-on collisions over the years. Woodworth also notes that it is not seismically sound. TransLink “aims to identify suitable solutions and funding [for a new bridge] by fall 2014 at the latest,” he adds.

Attempts to replace the bridge in recent years have been hindered by the City of New Westminster, whose residents see little to no upside to the traffic congestion the Pattullo brings into the downtown core and onto local streets. Plans for a six-lane replacement were met with fierce opposition from New Westminster residents, many of whom are now upset with increased gridlock as a result of motorists dodging tolls on the Port Mann crossing.

“We heard loud and clear that there are a number of concerns from the residents; many were concerned about traffic congestion, some about trucks, some about the livability of their communities,” Woodworth said of consultations, reminding that solutions need to be taken into account to ensure that not only are residents looked after, but also future improvements. “Whatever we do with the Pattullo Bridge, we have to make sure that it does not have a negative impact on possible future transportation projects such as [the] Stormont-McBride [connector],” a possible future roadway which would link the Pattullo and McBride Boulevard in New Westminster to Highway 1 at Cariboo Road, allowing motorists to link directly to the highway, and reducing congestion on local New Westminster roads.

Jaimie McEvoy, co-chair of the New Westminster Transportation Planning committee, notes that time has changed how traffic moves in the Lower Mainland, and ponders, “Does it make sense to rebuild a bridge that was placed in 1937, because back then Kingsway was the major highway ... does it make sense to build a new bridge [today] that connects to a city designed for horse and buggy, and that is a residential community?”

New Westminster residents have been vocal in their opposition to a new Pattullo, and would rather see the existing crossing be demolished without replacement, something that doesn't fly for commuters in Surrey or south of the Fraser.

“If you take that crossing away it would be disastrous,” states Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts. More disastrous could be the consequences of leaving the bridge as is for years into the future. The bridge's foundations are being worn down by the Fraser River, and the structure of the bridge deck is composed primarily of wood, which made the bridge susceptible to fire in early 2009. Parts of the bridge deck had to be completely rebuilt, as the crossing was closed for eight days.

The Pattullo was again closed in August of 2012 for a weekend, as the bridge deck needed re-paving, forcing commuters onto the Alex Fraser and Queensborough Bridges, as well as onto the original incarnation of the Port Mann.

TransLink has been hard-pressed to find a suitable solution for the two cities it directly connects, New Westminster and Surrey. Reports have recently come to light suggesting that even without a replacement bridge, the Pattullo may need to be closed in the near future and stay closed until a solution can be found.

“We monitor the bridge closely, and I want ev-

eryone to know the bridge is safe,” says TransLink strategic planner Bob Paddon.

Woodworth acknowledges the importance of replacing the bridge as soon as possible: “It's vulnerable to a moderate earthquake; it doesn't meet today's current roadway standards with respect to road widths and also to the curvature of the roads; it has poor pedestrian cycling facilities and connections, and these are all areas which we would like to improve with a new bridge solution.”

If a solution cannot be reached to unite all sides in agreement to construct and fund a new bridge by TransLink's deadline of fall 2014, Woodworth explains that TransLink “will be looking at rehabilitating components of the bridge to ensure it remains usable in the future.”

Upon opening in 1937, the Pattullo was intended to last 50 years. Seventy-five years later, a solution is needed for what to do with the aging and deadly span. The province and Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure opted to first replace the Port Mann Bridge, which opened in 1964 with an anticipated lifespan of 100 years.

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cap calendar CSU Elections To practice voting for the very-important upcoming B.C. elections, you should vote in the CSU’s elections and choose who you want to be your student reps. It’s like high school, except now they get paid money!

For voting times and locations, hit up Csu.bc.ca/elections.

Jeni LeGon: Living in a Great Big Way LeGon was the first black woman to sign a long-term contract with a major Hollywood studio, and has been in films like I Walked with a Zombie, Double Deal and Sundown.

In Living in a Great Big Way, she recounts her life story and working in a segregated Hollywood.

7 p.m., Vancity Theatre. Free.

Ellie Goulding Honestly, Ellie is a personal fave. She’s British, has an amazing vocal range, and makes really beautiful music. The first time I heard her rendition of “Your Song” I almost started crying. That’s right, that’s how beautiful it was. Check out our Arts section for an interview with opener St. Lucia.

8 p.m., The Commodore. Sold out.

Capilano Universe: Stroke and the New Promise of Neuro-Plasticity Vineet Johnson has been teaching at Capilano University since 2005, and has a wealth of accreditation to his name. In this Capilano Universe event, he’ll be speaking about strokes and the potential of neuro-plasticity to assist stroke survivors.

7 p.m., Gibsons & District Public Library. Free.

Vancouver Comedy and Arts Fest There are heaps of fantastic comedians in town this week for the Comedy Fest, which begins on Feb. 7. To make sure you don’t miss anyone you really love, use today to plan out your most hilarious festival, etc.

Various times and venues, until Feb. 17.

Prices vary.

It’s Dosa Monday!

Have you ever had a dosa? Me neither! But according to our Arts Editor Celina Kurz, they’re really good, gluten-free, and available for a super low price on Mondays! Yum town.

All day, House of Dosas. Cost of dosas.

Adam Green + Binki Shapiro Here’s what I know: Green is from Moldy Peaches, who I’ve heard of because of Juno (but apparently they don’t exist anymore??), and Shapiro is from Little Joy. They released a three-song EP, Fall, last year, and made some sweet music. I’m a big fan of unexpected duets, and this pair fit the bill.

8 p.m., The Media Club. $15.

Social Housing Now at VPL A new broad-based social housing coalition is launching a huge campaign that will force social housing to be an important issue in the upcoming provincial election. Head to this rally to listen to some amazing speakers and learn more about the social housing problem in B.C. 7 p.m., Downtown VPL. Free.

The Tenors Indulge in some wonderful harmonies and rich, deep notes coming out of some of the world’s most talented tenors. I feel like I would really enjoy this.

7:30 p.m., Queen Elizabeth Theatre. $70-$120.

Music of the Whole World: Strings Without Borders Experience for yourself what it’s like to create and perform intercultural music for world strings. Stringed instruments are probably my favourite kind, even though when I was a band geek I was always into the winds.

7 p.m., Downtown VPL. Free.

Alliance Winter Wo r k s h o p : Deconstructing the HST Everyone really hated the HST, but now I feel like we kind of got used to it? Surprise!

It’s going away again on April 1. Learn from the pros about how the HST works and what legislation has been put in place to ensure we don’t get screwed over when it kicks the bucket.

9:30 a.m., Alliance Board Room. $45/$75.

Vancouver International Boat Show I’m on a boat! I’m on a boat! Everybody look at me ‘cause I’m sailing on a boat!

Until Feb. 11, BC Place and Granville Island. $15.

Ra Ra Riot with Cayucas Ra Ra Riot’s creations feature emotive lyrics and wonderfully catchy melodies. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen their music videos, but I just watched one and it was reminiscent of movies I’d watch back in the ‘90s, which is awesome.

8 p.m., Venue. $17.

Langara Community Lecture Series: Growing the Local Food Movement Exactly what it sounds like! This lecture series is all about how taking action “transforms personal lives,” and really, it’s hard to hate on that.

12 p.m., Downtown VPL. Free.

Self-esteem through Self-discovery (for women) Self-esteem is a big deal! This workshop through Capilano’s counseling department will explore what exactly it means, with a special focus on the role of gender. It’s unique in that it’s only for women.

11:30 a.m., location TBA. Free.

Calendar@ c a p i l a n o c o u r i e r . c o m

Cap Cinephiles: Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

They’re finally showing a movie I know the real plot for and actually really like! Roger Rabbit combines live action with cartoons, and when I was a kid I remember thinking that was just about the coolest thing ever.

It’s also one of the best rides at Disneyland, fun fact.

5 p.m., Bosa Centre. Free.

Magik Spells/Nixie/Yes Bear Go take in some local music for a low low price! I don’t know about Nixie, but the other two are from Vancouver, which is a great city. Plus the Facebook even advertises “$3 Frieball” which I’m sure are quite tasty!

8 p.m., Electric Owl. $7.

Emeli Sande Cancelled Okay so here’s the deal: I bought tickets to see Emeli Sande knowing only one of her songs (the Top 40 one at the time, obviously), and her show was supposed to be like three months ago so I listened to all her songs until I knew them off by heart, and then it was postponed, and now it’s cancelled! So now I really like her and can’t even see her live! I just hope she’s okay, y’know?

Reggie Watts I just watched a great British film called Quartet and one of the cutest characters' names was Reggie and for a second I thought it was this Reggie but that’s obviously unrealistic.

10 p.m., Vancouver Playhouse. Sold out.

Withdrawal Period Are you unsure of that class you signed up for on a whim and are now seriously regretting/ risking failing? Withdraw (if you want)!

Last day is Feb. 15, online. Loss of money you’ve already paid.

Boeing-Boeing Okay so usually I can’t stand long plays, but this one is really good and super funny and will keep your attention even if you’re very restless like me.

Until Feb. 24, Stanley Theatre. Prices vary.

East Central Europe Summer Field School Looking for something to do this summer?

You should probably go to Europe. Now is your chance to apply for this field school, and travel to places like Vienna, Budapest, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Contact csylvest@capilanou.ca for more details.

Deadline for statements of interest is Feb. 28.

Grouse Mountain’s 24 Hours of Winter They mean the full 24 hours! Go skating, skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing and participate in a host of fun family activities all night long. That means potentially in the dark! Oh my. Including a special appearance by the Lorax!

ALL DAY AND ALL NIGHT, Grouse Mountain. Prices vary depending on what you do.

Get Together 2013 Yeah, see! Blueprint Events and Live Nation have created an event for Family Day! But it’s tomorrow so I don’t really know what’s going on. This concert will feature the likes of Above & Beyond, Hardwell, Morgan Page, Dyro and Dannic, who are all varying ages which I’m certain ensures their family friendliness.

7 p.m., Pacific Coliseum. $95.50-$128.50 (not very family-friendly prices!)

Canucks Superskills The first time I went to this thing was in high school and I was in hysterical laughter the whole time because I’d never seen hockey players do stretches on ice before, and let me tell you, it is quite a hoot!

12 p.m., Rogers Arena. Starting at $10.

Tomorrow is Family Day Family Day is tomorrow, and it’s our first one.

Funny, right? I’m pretty sure the only reason we have this “holiday” is because people wanted a “real” holiday in February besides Valentine’s Day. Well, it didn’t work, did it?

All day tomorrow, wherever you want. Cost of a family.

Lunar New Year: Lantern Making Workshop I love lanterns! I love lanterns even more since I fell in love with Tangled, which is a really great movie filled with love and empowerment. So yeah, let’s all make lanterns together!

1 p.m., Thunderbird Community Centre. $3.

Romantic Stanley Park: Amorous, Curious and Shady Sides Aw! Stanley Park is so cute! What a bunch of romantics! But with a “shady side”! Cool.

1:30 p.m., Stanley Park. Free.

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OPINIONS

Opinions Editor ×

Leah Scheitel

× opinions@capilanocourier.com

Peeing in Public

Gender-neutral public washrooms are worth debating Ben Last × Writer Over the years, the gender lines have blurred. Guys and girls have mixed, sharing characteristics of either gender at their own will. But with this change, our societal norms have not kept up, the most obvious example lying in the public washroom. And now, this old habit is ostracizing the transgender population, making them decide which gender they most identify with before they relieve their bowels.

The creation of inclusive bathroom facilities, which would be accessible to both men and women, has great potential to getting people out of uncomfortable situations. A dad running to the bathroom with his five-year-old daughter who’s about to pee herself doesn’t need to waste precious seconds debating whether it is appropriate to bring her into the men’s room, or, because of her age, attempt to go into the women’s bathroom and deal with what consequences arise.

The least that can be done is to create a safe space for everyone. Transgender people should be able to use the bathroom with the confidence that this is a safe space without the risk of being attacked either physically or verbally by weary bathroom users. In addition, inclusive bathrooms would have the added effect of cutting down on the long line-ups that each gender faces in public places, such as sporting events, bars and concerts.

Although inclusive bathrooms appear to be a good idea, this accessibility has some potential risks. Jordanna Harlington (her name has been changed) a woman with nearly 10 years of experience working in fields with trans-folk, has some concerns around inclusive bathrooms. Harlington

worries about dangerous men taking advantage of the vulnerable position women are in while going to the bathroom.

“Going to the bathroom is already a vulnerable position. I can only see dangerous situations or promiscuous behavior going on. If there were to be gender neutral bathrooms in a bar, I would want there to be a bouncer.”

Harlington argues that creating an inclusive bathroom will not make transgender people more accepted in society, but the opposite: transgender people will be segregated from cisgender people (those who identify their gender with the gender they’re born with) by creating this separate bathroom. Transgender people are being told they don’t belong to either gender, but in a separate category altogether. According to Harlington, this is the wrong idea and people should use the bathroom of the gender they identify with: “If you tell me you’re a dude, go to the dude bathroom.” When asked what she thought about transgender people being harassed in the bathroom, Harlington suggested laws around harassment need to be tightened, as well as more acceptance and awareness around transgender people.

Of course, not everyone is going to be happy with inclusive bathrooms. Some may find losing the privilege of a bathroom specifically reserved for their gender uncomfortable, that their privacy is being invaded. However, unless you’re using a locking door washroom, you don’t have much privacy to begin with.

Iris Yong Pearson, a community developer at PeerNetBC who has over 20 years of experience working in human rights and diversity, says: “I think that gender inclusive bathrooms should have existed way sooner than the conversation has started.”

“We don’t have gender specific bathrooms at home, why have them in public?” says Pearson, and she believes gender inclusive bathrooms would make transgendered people feel safe and accepted in society. This idea runs in a similar vein to Marina, a drag performer who believes “having gender inclusive bathrooms could open a lot of doors for transgendered people.” To appeal to the concerns for losing a private space, Pearson suggests having both a single washroom with a locking door for those who want more privacy, and a large washroom with multiple stalls, which could be deemed a multi-use washroom.

In regard to concerns about ostracizing transgender people by creating inclusive bathrooms, Pearson says, “I think if there is a gender on it, it’s already excluding. By putting a gender on the washroom, it inherently excludes a whole community of people.” Gendered bathrooms already violate human rights, specifically against transgendered people. Not everyone will be happy regardless of the situation, but the least we can do is create a space where everyone can go to the bathroom and feel safe.

All the bathrooms that are single rooms with a locking door, which identify as male or female bathrooms, such as in Starbucks, should be changed to inclusive bathrooms. It doesn’t matter what gender uses the bathroom if they’re a single room with a locking door, making it easier to make them gender-neutral. Many people use the opposite gender’s bathroom anyway because it’s available or it’s cleaner.

As for large inclusive bathrooms with multiple stalls and urinals, it can work: Guilty, a bar in downtown Vancouver, has a multi-stall inclusive bathroom. Vancouver has several self-cleaning inclusive bathrooms scattered throughout the city.

Pearson suggests if multi-stall bathrooms were to be introduced, that they be called “multi-use” bathrooms to indicate a shared space.

Inclusive bathrooms are a worldwide idea: Safe2pee.org, an organization whose goal is to locate alternative bathrooms for people uncomfortable using traditional bathrooms. The site gives locations of inclusive bathrooms around the world, and allows users to add businesses with inclusive bathrooms. Some of the cities with large numbers of inclusive bathrooms are San Francisco with 172, Las Vegas with 163, and Portland with 125. As of January, Vancouver had a mere 20 locations posted. Although it may only help in a small way, inclusive bathrooms will aid in the acceptance towards transgendered people and the acceptance of each other.

×× tiare Jung

Poor laws

City’s proposed increase for bylaw infractions are anything but fine Andy Rice × Staff Writer

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departmnt are unlikely able to afford paying it. But if they could, the experience of paying a $10,000 fine would undoubtedly be so traumatic for them that they’d be forever deterred from being homeless in public again. At least, that’s what the City appears to be hoping for.

The reality is, every single one of those people will, by default, have to opt for the alternative: 15 days in jail for non-payment. The amount of resources, money and time tied up in ticketing and jailing homeless people for sleeping on the streets could undoubtedly be put toward other more supportive initiatives to get them off the streets permanently.

Jail isn’t a home any more than an alley is.

Homelessness remains either way, making it apparent that jail isn’t the solution any more than maintaining the status quo is. Homeless shelters are currently over capacity and with this model soon prisons will be too. The city needs to deal with the root causes of poverty and homelessness, looking at the factors that lead to it, instead of creating an additional financial and ethical problem.

In a statement made in Nov. 2012, Robertson said himself that, “being homeless is not a crime.”

If that’s the case then it’s definitely time for his city’s bylaws to reflect that same sentiment.

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cities have begun to accuse city officials of “criminalizing their daily activities” in an attempt to push them out of sight. The issue is prevalent in Central Europe as well, where in Budapest, Hungary, sleeping on the streets is punishable by hefty fines or up to two months jail time.

Back in 2008, the B.C. Supreme Court struck down a City of Victoria bylaw that prohibited homeless people from sleeping in city parks after Justice Carol Ross deemed it “unconstitutional.”

The B.C. Court of Appeal affirmed the decision a year later, and since then, advocacy groups such as Pivot have been working to have Vancouver’s laws adjusted to reflect the decision. Resistance from the City has been ongoing.

The most recent homeless count was conducted by the City of Vancouver on Mar. 27, 2012. 1,602 people were observed to be homeless, with 1,296 of those listed as sheltered and 306 listed as unsheltered.

Using some basic math and some literal thinking, the idea appears to be fairly straightforward.

Simply raise the fine, wait for a warm summer night in the Downtown Eastside, have a heavilycaffeinated super-keener of a bylaw officer strap on a pair of roller skates and voila: $3,060,000 in easy income by the time the sun comes up. Go get ‘em, tiger.

It’s really too bad that the 306 individuals waking up to a ticket from the City bylaw

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Be it on Cordova or in Coal Harbour, on Gore or in Gastown, homelessness is a big issue in Vancouver. It’s a visible one as well, never failing to get mouths moving, opinions flowing and creative minds thinking.

Speaking of creative minds, a few at the City of Vancouver came up with a real winner earlier this month, one that almost made it onto the agenda for a Jan. 15 council meeting – that is, until people started voicing their opinions on the values of the bylaw.

In the proposal, which was set to be brought forth during a public hearing that evening, staff recommended a 400 per cent increase in fines pertaining to 42 different bylaws.

The hike would raise the maximum penalty from $2,000 to $10,000 for a variety of offenses, including illegal street vending, jaywalking and sleeping on city roadways.

With those things being frequent and often daily activities for those who are homeless, lowincome and homeless citizens are being pinned right under these bylaws. The lack of foresight by the City in increasing these particular fines, which fall primarily on a demographic already unable to pay them even at their current rate, serves only to

further discriminate and marginalize people and their circumstances.

The proposal was met with instant criticism.

The overall backlash caused Mayor Gregor Robertson’s office to remove three items concerning city land use, street vending and traffic from the agenda just prior to the hearing. Their discussion has since been postponed, pending the outcome of a court challenge launched by Pivot Legal Society against the existing $2,000 fines.

In an interview with the Georgia Straight, City Councillor Geoff Meggs was quick to point out that the proposed changes weren’t directed at the homeless specifically. He noted that the fine increase would cover a host of other violations as well, including illegal parking and advertising on the sides of buildings. “The staff argument is simply that there is no deterrent,” Meggs said, for a variety of infractions.

However, it’s almost impossible not to interpret a 400 per cent increase to a fine so easily and frequently assignable to a homeless person as a deterrent from homelessness itself. After all, the City of Vancouver has vowed to end street homelessness by 2015. If this is its magic solution then it’s not hard to see why such a strong public reaction occurred.

Similar laws and bylaws have been implemented in other cities, including Costa Mesa, California and Denver, Colorado. Homeless people in these

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We're second place!

Vancouver is one expensive housing market Carlo Javier × Writer Take a gander at The Globe and Mail’s recent report on Demographia’s 2013 housing affordability index. Vancouver remains as the second least affordable housing market in the world, only behind Hong Kong.

Now scroll down and have a glimpse at the ever-interesting comments section, but prepare to get struck by a torrent of negativity, led by a blame game where fingers are pointed at the city’s immigrated population.

Understandably, Vancouverites are not very pleased with placing as the second most expensive housing market in the world, and it’s not because they wanted to be first. But we’re already well aware that the finger-pointing won’t yield any victors. Despite the high-priced houses, we should not be placing the blame on Asian immigrants, but rather understand that Vancouver is a desirable place to live.

What becomes lost in the fray are the reasons for positivity – yes, Vancouver can be expensive, and it definitely has the penchant for weeklong downpours, but sometimes there are rainbows and sunshine.

Interestingly enough, the blame that circulates around the Internet is often directed to the emigrating people of Hong Kong, the number one least affordable city.

“In winter, the heart of downtown [Vancouver] is 30 minutes from the ski slopes. In summer, sun seekers crowd its beaches and seaside promenades.

And despite a rain-prone climate, it displays a perpetually sunny disposition. Consider it the supermodel of North American cities,” writes USA Today.

The maintaining of the high prices of houses in the city can be due to the investments of the ultra rich immigrants, but surely these aren’t done with ill will, and it’s not the only cause, either.

Users of The Globe and Mail’s web report

frequently commented about the abundance of rich immigrants, for colonizing Vancouver, and contributing dramatically to the upward trajectory of housing prices. Their arguments include families who establish ground but still hold firm connections with China or Hong Kong.

However, the Weekly Voice reports, “Data on the extent of the role that Asian investors have played in Vancouver housing prices is quite limited.”

Neither Demographia nor the Globe and Mail article mentioned, much less blamed, immigration as a leading cause of Vancouver maintaining its place as the second least affordable housing city in the world.

It should not be overlooked that Vancouver is an attractive place to settle in, and this isn’t just a mere opinion. People do want to live here.

For one, the city’s strong immigration – according to Statistics Canada, 52 per cent of Vancouver’s population do not have English as their native language – can always be seen in a much more positive perspective. The level of immigration in Vancouver speaks volumes about the city’s top qualities. Vancouver gets consistently ranked as one of cities with the highest quality of living in the world. In Mercer’s 2012 list, Vancouver came in fifth. and also as the highest ranked North American city. Mercer’s Elena Rodriguez told The Globe and Mail, “All four of the other Canadian cities that are on the ranking don’t have the kind of climate that Vancouver has, so obviously that’s a factor to consider.”

Mercer bases its rankings on a criteria composed of several factors that include: environment, health, transportation and economy, among others. In the Economic Intelligence Unit’s 2012 Global Liveability Report, Vancouver ranked third, behind only Melbourne and Vienna.

The Daily Telegraph writes, “Vancouver is a city unlike any other. Wherever I look, I see water or mountains – or both. And everyone looks so healthy.”

The Vancouver Sun reported that Walk Score, a Seattle-based company, ranked Vancouver as

Canada’s top walk-friendly city, factoring in the proximity of places to live with any and every amenities nearby.

This high quality of living doesn’t always equate to cheap living.

Currently, the average price of homes in Vancouver is at $620,000, coupled with the statistic that the median income in Vancouver is about $65, 000, these two numbers bring the city up to second in least affordable housing markets.

The opposite of this is not necessarily better. Detroit was named as the most affordable housing market, but the economy in Detroit is also depressed. In comparison, the top three, or rather bottom three: Hong Kong, Vancouver and Sydney, all have strong economies and high qualities of

living. Vancouver, it’s a cultural mix, surrounded by mountains and by an ocean. “...Vancouver is Manhattan with mountains.

It’s a liquid city, a tomorrow city, equal parts India, China, England, France and the Pacific Northwest. It’s the cool North American sibling,” as described by The New York Times.

With this many high-rankings, and a solid reputation as being a city that thrives with a high quality of life, it becomes more understandable why immigrant families want to enjoy life here. It’s almost like native Vancouver residents should be complimented by it. And they probably would be – if they weren’t so concerned about mortgage payments.

×× aaron Campbell

Size Totally Matters

Subway's Foot-Longs are Under-Performing Kelly Mackay

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A foot-long sandwich should be as advertised: exactly one foot long. Yet, a recent social networking explosion has revealed that Subway restaurants may have been short changing us for some time now. The global franchise has come under the critical eye, as their famous foot-long was busted for being not exactly 12 inches. Australian Matt Corby posted the picture on Subway’s Facebook page revealing the inchless sub, subsequently spreading global recognition and scepticism.

In an article by Global News, a spokesperson for Subway denied deleting the post on their Facebook page and claim to be: “Reinforcing policies and procedures in an effort to ensure our offerings are always consistent no matter which Subway restaurant you visit.“ Situations like these make people doubt what advertisers say, and give them a slimy reputation as liars. And people have reason to be cautious, as this isn’t the first time things aren’t exactly as they seem.

In 2008, reports surfaced that Splenda, the low-calorie sugar replacement, was not made from sugar, which is exactly what their “made from sugar” slogan wants people to believe. According to CBS, the sweetener is “nothing more than highly processed chemical made in a factory.”

While this may not come as a complete shock, the company still deceived its consumers, even going as far to say that their product was enhanced with vitamin B. Similarly, Kashi, a company that made a reputation as being “all natural” and can be found in the health food aisles at grocery stores, had a class action lawsuit slapped against them. It was discovered that their “healthy” products were “almost entirely synthetic and unnaturally processed ingredients.”

These are just two of a plethora of stories, where major companies and brands are exposed for under-performing, deceiving their customers, and having to pay large sums of money to rectify their mistake. Most recently, Taco Bell faced controversy over their supposed “seasoned beef,” which was revealed by an employee to feature an oat-based filler in the beef. How they handled the situation, and the lawsuits, was particularly interesting. In Chris Daitch’s article on AdAge. com, he says that since the uproar, “Taco Bell's corporate home page is 100 per cent dedicated to addressing the controversy sharing its beef ingredients, print ads and direct links to media relations.”

Not only did they fully embrace the opposition, but in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, Taco Bell President Greg Creed said, ”I'm not a food scientist. But what I can assure everybody is that every ingredient is in there for a purpose.”

In business, the golden rule is to make a

profit. That will never change. But the lengths that companies will go to make that profit need to be questioned. When they start lying to their customers about how their yogurt is specifically enhanced to help your digestive system (as in the case for Danon), that their chemical creation is more natural than sugar, or that their sandwiches are exactly 12 inches long, people have a right to be upset. We are taught to believe what we are told, and it’s disappointing when big companies take advantage of good faith to sell more.

People are upset with Subway. Twitter has featured posts such as: “I want a dollar back for every Subway foot long I've ever purchased. How dare you take an inch off of my foot-long?” since the video went viral. And some customers have decided to take legal action. Two unsatisfied frequent Subway-goers from New Jersey, John Farley and Charles Noah Pendrack, have hired a lawyer and want to take this situation to the high court. In an interview they had with Christianpost.com, they said they “visited 17 Subway sandwich franchises with not one sandwich measuring 12 inches.”

Naturally, the first thing for people to do is to test out the theory. Also in the Global story, there are images that people have posted of short and accurately sized foot longs. It seems as though Subway is fairly inconsistent in regard to the length of the sandwiches and, thanks to Corby, they can no longer get away with this

ridiculousness. Despite ordering one myself and finding that it was in fact its proposed length (much to my disappointment), one can only assume that they have tightened the belt on the footlong scandal.

This situation, like others similar to it, taught its audience to question everything and everyone. It will be interesting to see whether they implement change on the way they measure their bread or not. Who knows, maybe we’ll even see a measuring tape next time we go to order our foot longs.

Until then, take a scale for your quarter pounder, a measuring jug for your pint, and an inquisitive mind into Subway.

×× miles chic

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caboose Editor ×

Scott Moraes

× c ab o o s e . c a p c o u r i e r @ g m a i l . c o m

A Death Star, huh?

Carlo Javier × Writer Surprise! Surprise! How many of us knew that it’s actually fairly easy to get the attention of the White House? All you need is a petition with at least 25,000 signatures, and that’s it, you are then warranted a reply from the office. The petition can be for political, educational, or environmental reform. It can be about anything. In fact, the cause doesn’t even have to make sense; it’s a matter of quantity of supporters, over quality of invocation.

Take for example, the plea for the construction of a fully functional, moon-sized Death Star, as seen in the Star Wars series – the original trilogy, might I add. Yes, a Death Star, a space battle station, equipped with a planet destroying superlaser – the symbol of the Galactic Empire’s reign of terror.

Unsurprisingly, the White House rejected the petition, faster than the Millennium Falcon could make the jump to light speed. Yes, the White House’s initiative to give its citizens a way to directly communicate with them seems to be backfiring. Silly petitions such as this, no matter how unrealistic, have to be entertained – Paul Shawcross, the Chief of Science and Space Branch in the White House, did give a nerd-exciting response, however. One point of interest is the estimate that the construction of a Death Star would cost more than $850 quadrillion. How many zeros is that? I don't even know. Also, that is a rather precise number considering that the Galactic Empire probably didn’t even use dollars for their monetary system, we don’t even know how much their money equates to dollars. But some economics students of Lehigh University, Pennsylvania (Nerd County?), calculated the steel make-up of a Death Star, and came to that number. Terrifying as it might seem, it may even have been a school assignment. You know how batshit crazy economics profs can be...

Well, surely $850 quadrillion is enough to put a lightsaber through the heart of this

petition. And to add insult to injury, that $850 quadrillion doesn’t even cover the costs of shipping and handling the steel to space, the labour to do so, the construction of a hypermatter core that will power eight smaller-scale superlasers which will then amalgamate into that one planet-destroying weapon. And what about the storm troopers that will be manning the base? What about the labour jurisdiction issues that would arise concerning extra-terrestrial employment? And of course, shields to protect the thermal exhaust port, because we all know how the first Death Star failed.

The world complained enough about idle soldiers in the Middle East; I think that idle troops in space will be in for a similar reception. Maybe this American craze of militarizing the space is just getting more steam. Ever since then-Commander-in-Chief Ronald Reagan proposed his greatest “what the fuck moment” with the Strategic Defense Initiative (a.k.a The Star Wars Project), the Americans have been enthralled with the possibility of space warfare. We know they love kicking random ass. But really, who are they gonna fight? There’s no one there, who we know of. And if the time does come when extraterrestrial creatures come to invade earth, we all know Will Smith will save us, not a Death Star. The Outer Space Treaty of 1996 – yes, there’s an outer space treaty – clearly states that, “States shall avoid harmful contamination of space and celestial bodies.” Considering that there’s a vast amount of space…in space, who’s to say that no nukes and other types of weapons will be tested there? Just because we’re destroying our planet, doesn’t mean we have to destroy the other ones too. That would breach the sovereignty of the rocks and gases out there.

But most importantly, the Death Star petition speaks about the people. At a time when economic crisis is prevalent, shootings and reformations of gun laws are mass-broadcasted, the great disparity of the rich and the poor is more obvious, petitioning for a Death Star can be seen as a bit silly and wasteful. Indeed, Only In America!

It also shows that they’re forgetting the simplest detail. The Death Star was the prime symbol of the Galactic Empire’s power. It allowed them to cast fear all over the galaxy, and destroy Alderaan.

Is it not obvious that we’re a tad behind in terms of technology?

Maybe a petition for the use of lightsabers would’ve been a better start. Baby steps. Anakin needed them.

×× Arin Ringwald

“Mr. President, for the last time, we just don't have the money. And no, we can't print more. Or borrow from the Chinese. Or raise taxes. Realistically, it has to be shelved.”

ACROSS

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1 “Don't forget to kill Philip!”

2 “It's almost a shame to smoke it. It's like killing a unicorn...with, like, a bomb.”

4 “I don't like it. I love it. If I don't love it, I don't swallow.”

8 “Bueller?... Bueller?... Bueller?”

10 “I think you're all fucked in the head. We're 10 hours from the fucking fun park and you want to bail out. Well I'll tell you something. This is no longer a vacation. It's a quest. It's a quest for fun.”

13 “Tattoo on the lower back? Might as well be a bullseye.”

14 “Let’s show this prehistoric bitch how we do things downtown.”

17 “What is this? A centre for ants?”

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3 “A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies.

And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.”

5 “It’s so damn hot...milk was a bad choice.”

6 “But what about second breakfast?”

7 “I’m too old for this shit.”

9 “Not you, fat Jesus.”

11 “I just wanna go to the rooftops and scream, 'I love my best friend, Evan.'”

12 “Tina, come get some ham.”

15 “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

16 “I saved Latin. What did you ever do?”

18 “I've got culture coming out of my ass.”

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the caboose

caboose Editor ×

Scott Moraes

× c ab o o s e . c a p c o u r i e r @ g m a i l . c o m

Shotgun reviews

OF BRAWN AND PUPPIES Caitlin Manz

ROMANTIC COMEDIES Madeline Terbasket

MIDORI DAYS Thomas Finn Hearn

LIFESTYLE Scott Moraes

I’d like to thank you, muscle man, with your tight Lycra shirt, your protein-shake triceps, and your Vin Diesel sunglasses. I’d like to thank you because you never cease to bring me joy as you walk your tiny poodle (with its perfectly maintained fur) down the street, still trying to maintain every bit the über-man as you check me out. I do hate to break it to you, but while you’ve done your best to appear obnoxiously manly in every way, that little inoperative fru-fru by your side has actually managed to kill one thing in its life. I mean, you're seriously swaggering along, chain swinging, with your poodle dancing at your feet? The sad thing is, you’re not the only one. There are many of you “men” out there, with your well-groomed dainty dogs and low V-necks. You should start a club, and the guy who just walked by with the yorkie in the pink jacket will head it. Thanks for the laughs, but spare me the winks!

I'm 100 per cent sure that romantic comedies are to blame for my messed up view of love. I'm constantly searching for “the one” on the bus, in supermarkets and clubs. When I successfully find and capture a man, I transform my life into an indie rom-com. The worst part is, that I am not one of those girls that likes guys (they're mostly hilarious and gross). I was dancing with a random at a sweaty club. My pick-up line of the night was “you remind me of Hercules.”

Suddenly, he grabbed my hand and guided me to feel his pecs and derrière, presumably to show me how Herculean he really was. I played what I thought our rom-com would look like and all I saw was a “gym, tan, laundry” life. At this point I would rather be the quirky best friend and confidant than “leading lady.” Thanks a heap, Ryan Gosling.

I'm sure we have all heard the joke “a lonely boy's girlfriend is his right hand!” in one way or another. Japan, as it turns out, has come up with an anime where a girl literally becomes her secret crush's right hand. And that is Midori Days! The two form the stereotypical anime couple where the girl, Midori, is loud and obnoxious about her feelings toward the guy, and the guy, Seiji, is in denial that he loves her, acting like an asshole and wrapping her in bandages to hide her. The couple have to figure out how the hell they can live in this situation without being discovered (because that's more interesting to watch.) In all seriousness, it isn't a bad show. In fact, it's almost incredibly adorable – the problem is that it follows too many anime conventions.

Naturally this show isn't for everyone, but hey, what other show can you honestly say has a similar premise to this? Let's just enjoy the fact that there exists a romantic comedy about a guy who has a girl for his hand.

I've barely made it out of adolescence, and I have back and neck problems, and constant headaches. Mostly because I don't exercise at all and don't sleep much. Maybe too much Woody Allen has made me paranoid, but this may be a premature mid-life crisis. Mid-life! I could probably fix that by better employing those moments of acute boredom when doing the dishes feels immensely appealing. Instead of spinning in my chair, why not go for a jog?

Why not attempt a hundred push ups? Should I stop having chorizo and cheese sandwiches and instead have those horrendous hippieish alfalfa sandwiches and flax seed muffins? I know people who do all that. Gym, alfalfa, wheatgrass shooters, quinoa salads, carrot and celery stick crudités, and all that jazz. They look so good and happy. But they're not French. Neither am I, except I am, somehow. I love cheese, butter, cream and bread. And watching movies is more fun than jogging. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is I need a yoga-loving vegan freak to help me get my health in line with my age. My chorizo against your alfalfa. Bring it on.

BAD BOYFRIEND katieso.tumblr.com

by LEAH SCHEITEL FRIDAY MORNING CLASSES Should come with complimentary coffee FEBRUARY Everyone just LOVES this month

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TEXTING IN CLASS The only way to stay awake

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YOGA CLASS Home to the Accidental Fart FIRST DATES Always awkward. And usually the last dates HANDMADE BABY SCARVES Do babies even wear scarves?

SHIRTLESS ADAM LEVINE ON SNL Automatically makes Maroon 5 songs better MALE STRIP CLUBS Again. Love ‘em. 604.354.0343 GROUNDHOG DAY Bill Fucking Murray FUN. VS MUSE Fun wants to set the “night on fire.”

Enough said

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