Vol. 5 Issue 15

JUN

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THE

2013 MEETING DEADLINES SINCE 2009

/05/

CFS SHUTS OUT REPORTER

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MASTHEAD

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The Runner

June / 26 / 2013

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THE

Sunscreen, summer classes and bears! (Oh my!)

The Runner is student-owned and operated

by Kwantlen Polytechnic University students, published under Polytechnic Ink Publishing Society Arbutus 3710/3720 12666 72 Ave. Surrey, B.C, V3W 2MB 778.565.3801

www.runnermag.ca Vol. 05, Issue no. 15 June 26, 2013 ISSN# 1916 8241

EDITORIAL DIVISON Coordinating Editor / Matt DiMera editor@runnermag.ca / 778.565.3803

Students were advised to keep calm and remember their best bear behaviour after a black bear was spotted on campus on the morning of May 21. Campus security was made aware that the bear had wandered onto the Surrey campus after a tip was called in around 7 a.m. The bear was spotted multiple times, meandering around the courtyard near the Cedar building, before making a quick get away from the patio at GrassRoots Cafe. While students should not be concerned for their safety, they have been warned to not approach the bear if it’s seen again, as it could be easily scared. Remember, Winnie is probably more scared of you than you are of it; be sure to give it lots of space. If students see a bear on campus, they should call security immediately at at 778-578-6312.

Let me sleep in for five more minutes ...

Culture Editor / Max Hirtz culture@runnermag.ca / 778.565.3804

The Kwantlen Student Association (KSA) executive committee voted last month to move their weekly Friday meetings from noon to 2 p.m. Gaurav Kumar, the KSA’s director of finance, prefaced the motion by saying that the usual noon start time was too early for him.

News Editor / Vacant

“Can we meet at two o’clock?” he asked. “Because it’s hard for me to get up.”

news@runnermag.ca / 778.565.3804

Perhaps the KSA should consider lobbying the university to ban morning classes.

Production Editor / Roland Nguyen production@runnermag.ca / 778.565.3804

Media Editor / Kimiya Shokoohi media@runnermag.ca / 778.565.3804

Assistant News Editors / Sarah Schuchard / Sasha Mann / Chloe Smith Associate News Editor / Brian Evancic Associate Opinion Editor / Hannah Ackeral

CONTRIBUTORS Sarah Orlina, Jaclyn Sinclair

From the other side of the phone Despite half of its members being away on business in another province, the Kwantlen Student Association (KSA) executive still met via teleconference on May 31.

Director of student services, Christopher Girodat, and director of external affairs, Richard Hosein, were both away attending the Canadian Federation of Students’ 63rd semi-annual general meeting in Gatineau, Quebec. Though there was no business conducted on behalf of their portfolios, Hosein reported “reaching out to different members of government” on behalf of students, and Girodat promised his report on the meeting would be “riveting.”

Cover Photo. Roland Nguyen

BUSINESS DIVISION Operation Manager / Victoria Almond office@runnermag.ca / 778.565.3801

THE

RUN

NER ROUND-UP

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The Runner

June / 26 / 2013

NEWS Consumers

Regulator eliminates three-year cell contracts Cell companies argue changes may lead to higher prices.

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JACLYN SINCLAIR

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The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) recently announced a new code of regulations for Canadian wireless providers. The changes include reducing the length of cell phone contracts to two years maximum, elimination of cancellation fees, and limited extra fee charges for data and roaming data. The code also requires that customers be supplied with a clear, and easy-to-understand contract. These changes will be in effect beginning Dec. 2, 2013.

The CRTC is responsible for moderating broadcasting and telecommunications in

Canada. It came up with the new regulations due to feedback from Canadian citizens, with the expectation that these changes will address the concerns of Canadians and encourage competition within the wireless market.

Phil Norris from the Federal Bureau of Competition said that the bureau gave two main recommendations for the CRTC’s new code; to eliminate contract cancellation fees and to make it mandatory that contracts be easy to understand and supply customers with all the information they need to in order to make the right decisions for themselves. “ Clarity and transparency in wireless contracts is essential to enabling consumers to make informed choices concerning their wireless services,� said Norris in an interview with The Runner.

The Federal Bureau of Competition gave the CRTC a response to its working paper for this new code back in February. In its response, it stated that cancellation fees prevent competition and suggested that they be eliminated. It also supported the plan to reduce the length of cell phone contracts and to cap extra data fees.

Extra data charges will be limited to $50 per month and international roaming data charges will be limited to $100 per month.

The new code also states that Canadians will be able to unlock their cell phones after 90 days, or immediately if they have bought their device outright. This means that customers will be able to switch service providers at any time with the device they already have. In the past, customers were unable to

transfer their devices over to other service providers without either finishing their contracts or paying large fees.

The three largest service providers in Canada, Rogers, TELUS, and Bell, have all stated that they already have some of the regulations in place. Though, some have warned that shorter phone contracts will lead to steeper cell phone bills.

According to the CRTC, the new code was formed to maintain the high economic success of the wireless market. The wireless market brings in about $20 billion per year.

To maintain this, competition within the market is valuable . The code will attempt to maintain competition, while also eliminating some of the frustrations of consumers.

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EDITORIAL

The Runner

June / 26 / 2013

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CFS

Canadian Federation of Students media policy does a disservice to students Group shuts out student journalist, citing past conduct.

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BRENDAN KERGIN CUP NATIONAL BUREAU CHIEF

TORONTO (CUP) — Hundreds of thousands of students send money to the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) but know little, if anything, about what the CFS does or how it does it. Most of the federation’s decisions are made at their semi-annual general meetings held in May and November of each year.

As per tradition, Canadian University Press (CUP) applied to represent the student media and keep CFS accountable for the meeting occurring May 30 to June 2, but the primary journalist put forward was turned down.

According to CFS policy, the organization’s national executive is free to pick and choose media representatives attending: “Standing Resolution 36 Media Presence At General Meetings The National Executive shall have the authority to extend invitations to the media

to attend workshops and/or plenary sessions at national general meetings.

Members of the media shall not have speaking privileges in any of the sessions at which they are permitted to attend.”

CUP has an Ottawa bureau chief tasked with covering national affairs relevant to students, including the CFS. This year the position is being filled by the University of Ottawa’s Jane Lytvynenko, a former news editor and writer for the university’s Fulcrum newspaper. Lytvynenko was Ottawa bureau chief most of last year as well, covering the CFS’s fall general meeting.

While there were discussions with Adam Awad, CFS national chairperson, the week before the meeting, Lytvynenko was told she could not attend only the morning of opening plenary, despite applying three weeks in advance. The decision came from the national executive who followed Standing Resolution 36 on media accreditation. They cited Lytvynenko’s conduct during the November

2012 meeting as the reason for barring her.

No complaints had been made to CUP about Lytvynenko’s behaviour before CUP applied for her to attend the recent meeting, nor did the CFS give any conditions under which Lytvynenko would be approved despite being asked. CUP found out after the meeting there is an unpublished deadline for media accreditation applications because the National Executive needs to approve the journalists on an individual basis.

The CFS did grant accreditation to Adam Feibel, editor-in-chief of the Fulcrum.

Lytvynenko was unable to attend the entire meeting and asked Feibel to substitute her for a few hours on Sunday. Feibel couldn’t attend at all because of unforeseen circumstances.

CUP does not publish often in the summer, instead using it to prepare for the year ahead, like most students. Many campus papers stick to publishing only online during the spring and summer semesters. A lot of reporters are on vacation or working summer jobs.

Except for a select few staff, there is next to no one covering post-secondary news for either CUP or its members when there aren’t many students on campuses. In the face of being short-staffed, CUP is still committed to covering an event that could potentially have an effect on individuals across Canadian campuses.

To deny, at the last moment, the one local staff member representing the largest media organization covering student issues in Canada has damaged the relationship between the organizations and left students in Canada without an unbiased insight into the operations of the largest student group in Canada running off students’ funds.

While the CFS retains the right to bar whomever they wish from their meetings, exercising that right without a list of tangible reasons is less than transparent. Regardless of who applies to the meeting next November, it is CUP’s hope the CFS will rethink its stance on media and transparency.

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The Runner

NEWS

June / 26 / 2013

CFS

National student group shuts out reporter

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SASHA MANN

ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR

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A journalist critical of Canada’s largest student organization was barred from attending their national conference late last month.

The Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) told Jane Lytvynenko three hours before the beginning of its semi-annual general meeting on May 30 that she wasn’t able to attend, on the basis of her alleged conduct at the CFS meeting last November.

The CFS is a national organization, founded in 1981 as a progressive coalition of student unions. The main purpose of the group is to lobby both provincial and federal governments on social issues and tuition fees. The organization’s history has been full of controversy, leading to a polarization of student unions into pro-CFS and anti-CFS factions.

The Canadian University Press (CUP), the organization where Lytvynenko works, is a coalition of Canadian student papers.

If she had been allowed into the CFS meetings, her reports would have been available to student papers across the country.

With Lytvynenko disallowed from reporting on the CFS meetings in Ottawa, no reporters were able to fill her position. Another reporter had been approved to cover one day of the four day meeting, but a family emergency kept him from attending.

There were no reporters at the CFS annual general meeting, where major financial and policy decisions affecting universities

across Canada are made.

CFS chairperson Adam Awad sent the email to Lytvynenko which refused her entrance to the meeting. It was a brief message. Awad didn’t explain the details of Lytvynenko’s conduct in the email.

In the weeks leading up to the conference though, Awad had spoken with the national bureau chief of CUP, Brendan Kergin, and made his issues with Lytvynenko more clear.

In Kergin’s recollection, one of the major issues the CFS had with Lytvynenko regarded her freelance reporting for Macleans.

On Dec. 10, Lytvynenko wrote an opinion piece for Macleans titled “Has the Canadian Federation of Students lost its way?” It was sharply critical of the CFS’s conduct at its November 2012 AGM and took issue with its campaign to ban bottled water.

The problem with the article from the CFS’s perspective was that Lytvynenko hadn’t told the members who were vetting her that she was going to freelance about the meetings. CFS has a strict media policy, which says all reporters must be accredited by its national executive committee. It approved Lytvynenko last year on the assumption that she was reporting for CUP and not any other media outlet.

Lytvynenko was approached by Macleans On Campus after attending the CFS conference and since then she has continued to write for it. “I maintain that it’s my right to freelance as a journalist,” she said, in an interview with The Runner.

Kergin says that in his conversations with Awad, a number of other issues were raised.

One was fact-checking. Awad said some of the facts in Lytvynenko’s tweets and in her Mcleans piece were wrong. Kergin notes that he wasn’t contacted about this issue until a week before the 2013 AGM, not last November, when the article and tweets were written.

Another issue was with Lytvynenko attending the closing plenary, but not the workshops. Lytvynenko says she works a full time job, and could only book time off for one day.

“As soon as I went to the hotel where the AGM was taking place, I was told that I was ‘sensationalist’ for not attending those workshops, which kind of struck me as an unpleasant statement to say the least,” she says.

Kergin believes the criticisms were vague and seemed to be easily surmountable. He says his phone conversations with Awad were amicable. After Kergin said he and Lytvynenko would try to make sure the same conflicts didn’t arise again, Awad gave Kergin the impression that Lytvynenko would approved as a reporter.

But then, at 2:00 a.m., on the night of the AGM, Kergin received an email from Awad, saying Lytvynenko was barred from attending. At 11:30 the next day, as she was preparing to leave for the meetings, Lytvynenko received a similar message.

The one issue that Awad did specify in that email was related to Lytvynenko’s Twitter use during the last conference. Lytvynenko says that CFS communications officer Ian Boyko vetted her Tweets during a CFS meeting last November. CFS took issue with this accusation.

Lytvynenko says that Boyko, who was sat at a media table with her, read her tweets and told

her ‘this sounds too much like commentary, don’t tweet like that.’ She says the CFS denies this.

Lytvynenko’s allegation that the CFS tried to censor her follows a pattern of people making similar claims.

In 2008, three former members of the CFS wrote a condemnation of the organization, saying it was broken beyond repair. The article, which appeared in the Simon Fraser University newspaper The Peak, said that CFS insiders are asked to spy on dissenting members. All three authors of the article said they had been asked to report to staff on anyone who held an anti-CFS position. They said the paid staff of the CFS keep themselves in power through “maniacal and paranoid control over individual student unions.”

Lytvynenko’s criticism of the CFS was considerably more mild. Reflecting on her ban though, she maintains that the CFS made the wrong decision.

“Barring a journalist based on previous behaviour and being unable to change their mind, or unable to bring up these issues when they happened last November, is extremely frustrating,” Lytvynenko says.

“CUP is the biggest association of student press in North America and we were very disappointed that the CFS, who’s the biggest student organization in Canada, made that decision, knowingly made that decision.

“And we really hope that they reconsider in time for their next meeting in November, because I remain the only CUP representative in Ottawa.”

The CFS did not make a spokesperson available for comment before press time.

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EDITORIAL

The Runner

June / 26 / 2013

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Kwantlen

Diversity Cycling4Diversity rides through Kwantlen campus

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CHLOE SMITH ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR

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Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) hosted a tour stop of Cycling4Diversity on May 22, as a part of four day celebration of B.C.’s multiculturalism from May 21 to 24.

After each team member told an anecdote of their time with the campaign, KPU repre­ sentatives presented an award to founders Ken Herar and Sarina Di Martino Derksen on behalf of the University for their efforts.

Cycling4Diversity was founded by Herar and Derksen in 2011. Herar says that his ex­ perience as a journalist invested in his com­ munity factored into starting the organization.

“I’ve been a columnist for the local paper for 18 years. I’ve been hearing and seeing that our cultural communities are getting more and more apart from each other in terms of how we live and interact with each other. Whether it be in our neighborhoods, workplaces, our sporting events, we’re not connected, we need to get back to being connected and more in­ volved mainstream activities,” he says.

The main focus of Cycling4Diversity ac­ cording to Herar is to create “activities that encourage intercultural dialogue.”

Cycling4Diversity stopped at a number of schools on their tour, all between elemen­ tary and post-secondary.

Herar says the experience interacting with children was the most rewarding because “sometimes kids get it when adults don’t.”

With regards to KPU Herar says he would like to expand on the connection be­ tween the campaign and the university. “We would love to sit down with Kwantlen stu­ dents and plan something out with our team where we can bring exposure, maybe do a ride in the Surrey area.”

Ride for diversity lacks depth Tolerance and inclusion must become second-nature.

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THE RUNNER EDITORIAL

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On May 22, the third annual Cycling4Diver­ sity bike tour made a stop at KPU’s Surrey campus, where they received a donation from the university and presented a speech promoting their cause.

The bike tour is founder Ken Herar’s re­ sponse to the UN’s World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development, and this year involved 23 stops over four days.

The effort and dedication put in by Herar and his team is admirable, and the goal of cre­ ating an inclusive atmosphere throughout B.C. communities is one that should be adopted by all Canadians. Whether or not a bike tour of el­ ementary schools is the right gimmick to make that goal a reality is what makes Cycling4Di­ versity a questionable venture.

Firstly, what sort of diversity is Herar pro­ moting? Diversity has become a buzzword that generally means the inclusion of only select groups, which unfortunately seems to be the case here. The emphasis of the speech given on campus was the promotion of racial and religious inclusion, which is an impor­

tant part of diversity but not the sum of it.

Diversity is not limited to skin colour or religion, it also refers to age, sex, orientation, ability, socio­economic status, and education, to expand the tip of the iceberg. By focussing on only one dimension of diversity, Herar erases other marginalized groups.

The exclusion from discussion reinforces the idea that other diversity issues are ei­ ther less important or nonexistent, which is counterintuitive to Herar’s over­all message.

The vagueness of the message is not helped by the form in which it takes. The Cycling4Diversity blog does imply that some stops did receive talks focussing on a broader definition of diversity, such as a speech made at Langley Secondary School by Terry Stob­ bart who is 80 per cent deaf in both ears.

However, it appears as though Stobbart only spoke at that one stop, whereas the variety of ability in the KPU community was not addressed at all when the bike tour made an appearance on campus.

The idea of a bike tour is a flashy idea that generates easy attention, but it means that only the select few participating get to experience the full message. Otherwise, audiences are treated to small snippets that

only hint at a bigger picture.

Similarly, the tour made stops at cultural centres, such as temples, where only those riding in the tour were able to actual experi­ ence cultural diversity first hand. For those riding, this seems like a great, personal expe­ rience but, it has the same effect as looking at your neighbor’s vacation pictures. Sure, you can appreciate that they stepped out of their comfort zone and tried something new, but it has no impact on your life.

Lastly, the tour leaves those who attend­ ed one of their stops feeling like diversity is an event. While the aim is to promote long­ term acceptance and friendship among peo­ ple from different backgrounds, this setup makes diversity seem like something you need to set aside a specific time to actively work towards. Instead of a one-day event, a more effective approach might be to put a program into motion that would talk about diversity regularly, so that tolerance and in­ clusion become second nature.

Other cultures wouldn’t feel as “other” if they were acknowledged on a daily basis, instead of only on special days where we are asked to remind ourselves that they exist. 

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The Runner

June / 26 / 2013

NEWS

Pride

Pride parade marches through heart of Abbotsford

Members of Kwantlen Pride (right) and local high school students (left) attend the first Pride parade in Abbotsford on Saturday, May 25, 2013.

Matt DiMera/The Runner

Event attracts 500 attendees to the province’s Bible Belt.

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SARAH SCHUCHARD

ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR

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B.C.’s Bible Belt witnessed the emergence of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) community last month. On May 25, around 500 people participated in Abbotsford’s first ever Pride parade. The parade began on the drizzly Saturday at the Matsqui Recreation Centre, ending at the Abbotsford’s Civic Plaza.

Mayor Bruce Banman spoke to the crowd at the plaza emphasizing the need for all members of the Abbotsford community to feel safe and secure. The event was hosted by the Fraser Valley Youth Society (FVYS), and organised by John Kuipers, the FVYS coordinator.

Along with a barbeque and the speech from the mayor, there was also a screening

of the documentary She’s A Boy I Knew by filmmaker Gwen Haworth.

In 2008, as a response to the Abbotsford school district threatening to pull the Social Justice 12 course, which taught civil rights, students petitioned to hold a Pride parade.

But, according to coverage by Xtra, there was not enough support from the Abbotsford school board and council to hold the parade.

Instead of holding the pride parade in 2008, it was renamed the Social Justice Rally and took place on December 6 of that year.

The Social Justice Rally, Abbotsford’s first attempt to raise awareness for LGBT diversity was co-organized by Kuipers the then-president of the University of the Fraser Valley’s Pride Society.

Katherine Palmateer who is currently studying social work at University of the Fraser (UFV), and a previous vice president

for UFV Pride says, “[The rally for Social Justice] is what really opened Abbotsford’s eyes to that fact that there’s so many different diverse communities out here including the lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans community, and that people are here, they live here it’s there home as well and they have a right to fit in and belong.”

Palmateer is also heavily involved in fighting for diversity in the LGBT community of Abbotsford. Along with working for the Abbotsford community services in the diversity education program, she was also founded a grassroots organization called the anti-isms movement group. A group formed on the purpose of promoting diversity and fighting ageism, sexism etc., according to Palmateer.

Members from PFLAG, a support group for family and friends of the LGBT community, also joined the parade. Aiden McK-

enna, a member of PFLAG and participant of the parade says, “I am pleased as punch because my son grew up here, but he didn’t come out the whole time that he lived here because he really wasn’t all that comfortable in this area. I am his proud mom.”

The parade was littered with different diverse groups from the LGBT community, as well as allies from The Lighthouse Church, which displayed a sign saying “We’re sorry for what the church has done to the GLBT community.”

“I think it takes a lot of courage for this crowd to come out and do this, and to do this in public in this community because there’s still a lot of resistance to issues around sexuality and equality, so it takes a lot of courage for these young people to come out and for that I applaud you,” says Wanda Lane an officer with the Abbotsford Police.

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OPINION

The Runner

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June / 26 / 2013

Canadian blood agency makes superficial policy changes Tokenistic policy still homophobic and patronising.

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SASHA MANN

ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR

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Canadian men who have sex with men previously faced a lifetime ban on donating blood. If they had sex with a man even once since 1977, they were ineligible. A recent policy change by the Canadian Blood Services (CBS) allows gay and bisexual men to donate blood, as long as they haven’t had sex with a man in five years.

For celibate gay men, this change is progress. For those that do have sex, the policy that went into effect on May 22 is tokenistic and ultimately damaging.

Both the old and the new policies perpetuate the same myth: men who have sex with men are dangerous. When the Canadian Blood Services put forward its outright ban of gay blood donation in 1989, it was in response to the then-little-understood AIDS epidemic. One of the many misunderstandings of AIDS spread during the ‘80s led to it being labelled as a gay disease. This is a harmful myth that refuses to dissipate.

As Africans in Partnership Against AIDS (APAA) reports, there are as many women infected with AIDS worldwide as there are men. It is most commonly spread through heterosexual sex.

We now know AIDS has nothing to do with being queer. CBS’s attempt at a more tolerant policy simply highlights how they continue to rely on stereotypes rather than facts. In 1989, banning all men who had sex

with men from donating blood was perhaps an unwise policy, but it could be partially excused by ignorance. But the time for that excuse has past.

CBS’s new policy is just as homophobic as the lifetime ban was. Yet, news outlets present it as a mild victory for gay rights.

Under the current system, a man in a monogamous relationship with another man — where safe sex was practised — would be ineligible for donating blood. A more promiscuous person who wasn’t a gay or bi man would at least be considered. Of course, promiscuity doesn’t necessarily lead to contaminated blood and negative myths about promiscuous people should be countered. But even so, the number of sexual partners a person has is a better indicator of their eligibility for blood donation than their sexual orientation.

Then there are the implications of abstinence.

The idea of queer abstinence falls scarily close to the religious right’s notions about homosexuality. The same hateful groups that called AIDS the “gay plague” when it was first discovered, now suggest that gay men either force themselves to become straight, or practise celibacy for their whole lives. For a gay man in a fundamentalist Christian landscape, being celibate is the only way to be accepted or respected.

CBS takes a similar approach with their policy. The inference is that gay sex is fundamentally unsafe, that it takes years to recover from the risks.

To attempt to support their institutional-

ized homophobia with data, blood donation regulators must resort to short sighted analysis. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has the same lifetime ban policy that CBS had until now. The FDA supports the ban by stating that men who have sex with men have the proportionally highest rates of HIV. This may be true, but the statistics fail to take into account high levels of queer poverty and marginalization, which means less access to condoms and safer-sex materials as well as higher rates of sex work.

Disease rates among queer people, especially queer youth, is a societal problem.

The FDA and Canadian Blood Services try to avoid that problem by imposing even more discrimination.

Perhaps blood donors — all donors — should have to be celibate for three weeks before giving blood. That way, accurate blood tests could be taken without the risk of error. As long as a person is disease free, they should be able to donate blood through the Canadian Blood Services. It’s that simple.

For those removed from the queer community, the lift of the ban may seem like a small, practical step towards a more inclusive world. In reality, it’s a slap in the face.

Gay blood donation raises important issues affecting queer people: marginalization, poverty, safety and stigma. It’s these fundamental issues we should be focusing on, not celebrating a hollow victory.

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The Runner

CULTURE

June / 26 / 2013

Music

Local Music Apollo Ghosts final show at the Rickshaw

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Kate Reid swaps studio for schoolroom

Photo courtesy Kate Reid

The Canadian musician talks about her Queer Across Canada tour.

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CHRIS YEE CONTRIBUTOR

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Is it just coincidence, or is there something about teachers-turned-musicians that turns them into eye-catching presences? Sometimes it’s simply in service of a good time (Gene Simmons and KISS’s flamboyant live shows come to mind), but just often, such artists tend to be part of a bigger statement (think of Peaches and her gender politics).

Folk singer and LGBT advocate Kate Reid certainly fits the latter bill — at least if you go by the biography on her website, which describes her performances as “fiery” and Reid herself as a “flame-haired banshee.”

But there’s something special happening with Reid: she’s leaving the folk clubs and festival stages behind (albeit temporarily) and returning to the classroom.

After moving from her hometown of Ayr, Ontario and graduating from university in 2000, Reid taught in the Interior before moving to Vancouver in 2005 to pursue a fulltime career in music.

A year later, Reid released her first album, Comin’ Alive, and she’s come out with

three full-length LPs since then. During that time, Reid has played numerous folk festivals across Canada and the United States, and the anticipation is high for her forthcoming album Queer Across Canada, which comes out June 8 at a release party at the Rogue Folk Club.

Though her music has always been about her experiences as a queer woman, Reid takes the awareness-building aspects of her work to another level with Queer Across Canada. Drawn from a series of interviews with queer youth and families, Reid says the album was originally inspired by the experiences of an acquaintance’s daughter, who found her family situation difficult to explain on the school yard, facing bafflement and mockery from her peers — and worse still, her teachers.

But Reid turned adversity into a teachable moment about diversity, and there’s no bitterness now — some of the aforementioned classmates even sang in a choir for Queer Across Canada. In a similar didactic vein, Reid is also releasing an accompanying educational kit for use in classrooms in September, and she recently finished a six-week school tour in her native Ontario where she

held workshops with students across five school districts in the province.

Ontario’s impressionable schoolkids aren’t the only ones learning about diversity in September: Reid herself is hitting the books at UBC’s Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, where she will be working toward a Master’s degree with a special focus on queer activism, advocacy, and music.

“I chose music first,” she said, when The Runner asked whether she thought of herself as a musician or an activist.

It comes as no surprise, then, that Reid’s musical work has mostly been well-received — indeed, as her website’s biography goes, across “all persuasions.”

“I’ve played some pretty big festivals in Canada because of the content [of the songs],” Reid said of her oeuvre — though she admits that “it straddles the line between people liking it and really not getting it.”

Thankfully, those moments seem to be few and far between.

Reid is currently working with filmmaker Carla Sinclair on a documentary about her music, Heal Myself, slated for a 2014 release.

CHRIS YEE CONTRIBUTOR

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On May 10, I saw the Apollo Ghosts for the last time. They, along with their brethren in Vancouver’s do-it-yourself music community, were the soundtrack to a good portion of my university years. Projecting a genial effortlessness, the Apollo Ghosts’s brand of punk-tinged power pop was accessible without being inoffensive, sweet without being cloying. But it was the Ghosts’s humility and deep connection to the local DIY scene that made them special — though it helped that they were very competent musicians, their music good enough to move a blogger from Brooklyn, Ryan Catbird, to start a record label just so he could put out their debut album and to be nominated for the Polaris Music Prize.

Success (however moderate) never got to their head, though, and their good nature and talent carried them through five years, three full-lengths and innumerable performances. But with day jobs and other projects competing for the Ghosts’s time — frontman Adrian Teacher is, well, an elementary school teacher, as is drummer Amanda Panda, while guitarist Jay Oliver and bassist Jarrett K. play in other local bands — the ride couldn’t last forever. When they announced their last show, I made sure I wouldn’t miss seeing them off that night.

The Apollo Ghosts always were great at including the audience in their performances, and their last show was definitely no exception. Among other things, the Ghosts had invited an audience member, who won a contest on CiTR radio, to perform Landmark’s “Why Can’t I Be The Man on Stage” with the band.

The Ghosts’s set list was packed too, with the band seemingly playing their whole discography, from their last LP, Landmark, through to old favorites from Mount Benson and Hastings Sunrise, their debut, along with a handful of singles. The Ghosts played encore after encore until the very end, when they played tender renditions of some of the first songs they wrote, Hastings Sunrise’s “Shadow Boxing Bruce Lee” and “Dobermans.” Nobody wanted it to end, but it had to. One thing was certain: it was a heck of a way to go out.

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CULTURE

The Runner

June / 26 / 2013

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Movies

Sex, space and Shakespeare

Reed Diamond and Nathan Fillion star in Joss Whedon’s film version of Much Ado About Nothing.

A brief look at the history of Shakespeare film adaptations.

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JON TURNER CONTRIBUTOR

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With geek darling Joss Whedon’s version of Much Ado About Nothing coming soon to theatres, it’s easy to forget that seeing half the cast of a cult sci-fi TV show perform Shakespeare is far from the strangest thing that’s happened with the Bard’s beloved works onscreen – hardly surprising, since there are over 400 filmed adaptations of his plays.

Lurid with nudity, Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books is just one of myriad bizarre adaptations of The Tempest – which, due to the unusually metatextual nature of the play, isn’t altogether surprising. The stormy play has been filmed in a wealth of abstract variations, from the neo-Freudian sci-fi favourite The Forbidden Planet to Derek Jarman’s tastefully homoerotic 1979 version, which involved a scene where Caliban is breastfed by his naked mother. Prospero’s Books, however, is somehow even more lurid, ambitious, and psychosexual. Many of the characters are depicted naked, with quick cuts between symbolic naturalistic imagery and shots of urinating cherubim. The aging

John Gielgud, of Pink Floyd – The Wall fame, plays the titular wizard, who happens also to be the narrator and writer of the events onscreen. Utilizing a variety of cinematic and theatrical styles, from mime to animation, the film blurs the lines between author, creator, and performance, while still remaining faithful to the haunting, oneiric qualities of the original text.

On the slightly less adventurous side, there is Chimes at Midnight, Orson Welles’ hodgepodge distillation of the history plays, which is remembered mostly for Welles’ own iconic performance as Falstaff. Welles himself strongly identified with the cowardly knight (he considered the film one of his best), and his self-aware portrayal suggests a certain wry resignation towards life and mortality usually reserved for Shakespeare’s protagonists. Shot on a shoestring budget, Welles still managed to film some incredibly exciting battle scenes. In the famous Battle of Shrewsbury sequence, grim, steel-eyed men on horseback peer through the fog at their enemies, made near identical by the blackand-white colouration, and the clarity of the editing ensures that no mace-dent goes unnoticed by the audience.

Perhaps feeling bored by swords and castles, Richard Loncraine decided to transpose Richard III’s medieval setting into an alternate 1930s Britain, with Ian McKellan portraying Richard as an ambitious, pencilmoustached fascist. Locraine’s heavy borrowing of the Third Reich’s visual aesthetic for costume and set design lends the age-old story a chilling, contemporary quality absent from Laurence Olivier’s brilliant yet by-thebooks 1955 version. Similarly, legendary director Akira Kurosawa relocated King Lear to the warring shogunates of pre-Restoration Japan in his historical epic, Ran. The most expensive film produced in Japan at that time, Kurosawa took an entire decade to personally storyboard every shot, and the director’s meticulous attention to colour is gloriously borne out by the film’s numerous, sprawling panoramas of yellow and red armies.

And while there’s a litany of faithful film adaptations to choose from, including Kenneth Branagh’s leg-numbingly unabridged Hamlet, Franco Zefferelli’s titillating Romeo and Juliet, and Roman Polanski’s horrific Macbeth, there are dozens of films whose Shakespearean influence is more homage than sheer recital. Disney’s The Lion King, for ex-

ample, is a quadrupedal Hamlet, and Heath Ledger’s heartthrob vehicle 10 Things I Hate About You takes most of its comedic cues from The Taming of the Shrew.

But perhaps the most enduringly popular adaptation of recent times has proved to be the showy, bombastic spectacle of Baz Luhrman’s Romeo + Juliet, which changes the aristocratic power struggle of the Capulet and Montague families into a conflict between rival business operations in pseudo-contemporary Verona Beach. Among other insightful changes, the film modifies Mercutio’s enigmatic Queen Mab speech from a rambling paganistic proselytization to a loving ode to MDMA. Complimenting Luhrman’s frantic editing and obsessive visual detail are two strong performances by Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes who owe much of their current careers to the success of this film.

It’s not much of a shock to discover that the work of a man who understood humanity in unparalleled depth would be represented onscreen in such a dizzying variety of styles, contexts, and moods. Yet, one wonders if the Bard could have predicted a version of The Tempest set in outer space, or with a cartoon lion in place of Claudius.

W : runnermag.ca

The Runner

June / 26 / 2013

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The Runner

June / 26 / 2013

W : runnermag.ca