JUNE 3 – 10 / 2021 | FREE Volume 55 | Number 2781
HOUSING CORRECTION?
Prices fall below assessments
BULLDOZER BISHOP
UBC reviews honorary degree
THE BEER ISSUE Sarah Polkinghorne is one of a few female brewmasters in B.C.; plus, harassment scandals, cooking with suds, and summer brewskis
HOLOCAUST SURVIVAL
•
SOCIAL HOUSING
•
TALKING STICK FESTIVAL
NEWS
UBC to reconsider honorary degree given to ex-principal
CONTENTS
June 3-10 / 2021
7
COVER
Black Kettle Brewing’s brewmaster, Sarah Polkinghorne, discusses her career path as her industry grapples with an abuse scandal in the U.S.
by Charlie Smith
By Charlie Smith Cover photo by Todd Duncan Studios
4
NEWS
Green councillor Pete Fry says that people with moderate incomes are being shortchanged by Vancouver’s definition of social housing. By Carlito Pablo
11
ARTS
Zahida Rahemtulla’s experience housing refugees led her to write a play called The Frontliners, which will be featured at the rEvolver Festival. By Steve Newton
e Start Here
Kamloops Indian Residential School students and staff two years before John Fergus O’Grady became principal in 1939. Photo courtesy of Indian Residential School History & Dialogue Centre.
T
he so-called Bulldozer Bishop will come under greater scrutiny as a result of the discovery of 215 Indigenous children’s bodies on the grounds of the now-closed Kamloops Indian Residential School. Bishop John Fergus O’Grady was born in 1908 and became an ordained priest of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate in 1934. From 1939 to 1952, he was principal of Kamloops Indian Residential School. In 1967, he was appointed as the bishop of Prince George, a position he held until his retirement in 1986. That’s the same year UBC awarded O’Grady with an honorary degree. At the time, the university praised O’Grady for his “vision” and because “he seized on the opportunity to make education more accessible to local communities in the Interior and to do so in a way which would bring the native and white communities closer together”. Now, UBC is rethinking this honorary degree as a result of “community concerns”. “The issues raised are deeply upsetting and we take them seriously,” UBC stated on its Twitter feed. “UBC’s Senate will be reviewing this matter immediately per our processes and policies relating to honorary degree recipients.” According to a 2001 UBC master’s thesis by Kevin Edward Vincente Beliveau, O’Grady was principal of St. Mary’s Indian Residential School in Mission from 1936 to 1939. Beliveau wrote that O’Grady “oversaw Kamloops Residential School when it had Canada’s largest residential school population”. On May 27, the leadership of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc revealed that the 2
THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT
children’s remains were detected on the former school’s property by ground-penetrating–radar specialists. “To our knowledge, these missing children are undocumented deaths,” Kúkpi7 (Chief) Rosanne Casimir stated in a news release. “Some were as young as three years old.” There were also 50 documented deaths at the school, which is on the traditional territory of the Secwépemc people. There’s no indication yet about the children’s identities or when they were buried in unmarked graves. The Kamloops Indian Residential School was built in 1890 and closed in 1978. It was operated by the Catholic Church’s Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate from 1893 until 1969, when it was turned over to the federal government to be run as a day school. O’Grady also had a short stint as principal of Cariboo Indian Residential School in 1952 and 1953 before he became “Provincial of all English-speaking Oblate priests in Canada”, according to Beliveau’s thesis. He did not examine or speculate on allegations of physical or sexual abuse in residential schools. However, a UBC honours history paper, written by UBC Okanagan student Jenna Foster in 2010, raised the issue of abuse at the Kamloops Indian Residential School. Foster’s research focused on the period from 1935 to 1965. “Many students experience great mistreatment at the school,” she wrote. “One particular abuse most hidden at the KIRS was sexual abuse. Sexual abuse at the KIRS could be underrecorded due to the shame
JUNE 3 – 10 / 2021
see page 4
10 9 5 15 14 8 12 12 13 6 14
ARTS BEER BOOKS CLASSIFIEDS CONFESSIONS FOOD I SAW YOU MOVIES MUSIC REAL ESTATE SAVAGE LOVE
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3
NEWS
Fry says definition of social housing creates harm
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by Carlito Pablo
ancouver councillor Pete Fry says that the city’s definition of social housing doesn’t translate to affordable homes for many people. The Green councillor noted that this is the reason why he continues to push for a new meaning, so everyone knows it’s about affordable housing. “The definition is problematic and it needs work,” Fry told the Straight in a phone interview. To illustrate his point, the councillor went over the city’s definition. The term refers to an entire development, wherein 30 percent of units are for residents who cannot afford market rents and the rest of the 70 percent are rented out for as high as the market can bear. To qualify for the 30 percent of the units, a household should have an income at or below the so-called housing income limits or HILs determined on an annual basis by B.C. Housing. HILs vary from city to city, and for 2021, the HILs for Vancouver are as follows: $55,500 for a one-bedroom unit or studio; $67,500, two bedrooms; $78,000, three bedrooms; and $83,500, four bedrooms. Using 30 percent of income as a standard for affordable housing, a housing income limit of $55,500 for a one bedroom or studio translates to a monthly rent of about $1,387. “We know that the median income for a single person in Vancouver is close to $40,000 a year,” Fry noted. “We’re not really meeting that basic kind of affordability metric through the definition of social housing right now.” The City of Vancouver has an official profile of social indicators for 2020, which is based on the results of the 2016 federal census. The document notes that the median from page 2
associated with it and privacy of the students. “Male and female students were both subjected to sexual abuse; however, there is more testimonial evidence that female students were more likely to be sexually abused,” Foster continued. “Many girls grouped together in order to avoid sexual abuse.” Foster’s research was highlighted in a UBC news release in 2010. “Often it was like I was researching two totally different historical events,” she said at the time. “Newspaper articles cast everything in a very positive light, portraying it as an act of benevolence—a gift to the First Nations people. But First Nations people did not see it as a positive experience. Some of their personal testimonies are heart-breaking and were very hard to read. Horrible things happened.” O’Grady’s nickname, the Bulldozer 4
THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT
personal income in the city is $39,000. Again using the 30 percent measure for housing affordability, anyone earning an income of $39,000 should pay only $975 for a one-bedroom unit or studio. The city’s official profile also provides a picture of income distribution in Vancouver. Starting from the botton, the document notes that 10 percent of households have annual incomes ranging from zero to $15,000. Next, 13 percent earn $15,000 to $30,000, 16 percent make $30,000 to $50,000, 14 percent bring in $50,000 to $70,000, 16 percent earn $70,000 to $100,000, and 30 percent make $100,000 or more. The continuing controversy over the definition of social housing has echoes from similar concerns over how the City of Vancouver defines terms such as “affordable rental housing”. In 2014, a B.C. Supreme Court rendered reasons for judgment on a petition by the West End Neighbours Residents Society.
The group questioned a city policy that granted numerous incentives to developers of so-called affordable rental housing. At the time, the city’s definition of affordable rental means monthly rents starting at $1,443 for a studio unit, $1,517 for a one bedroom, and $2,061 for two bedrooms. The city maintained that these are affordable rates because they cost less than buying a home. Justice Susan Griffin noted that the residents group, which was represented by lawyer Nathalie Baker, argued that the city was “in error in defining ‘affordability’ in relation to home ownership”. “The petitioner argues that the word ‘affordable’ must mean below market rates for rental buildings, not below the cost of home ownership…,” Griffin wrote. Moreover, the city could have simply used the term rental housing instead of affordable rental housing. In the end, Griffin dismissed the petition, ruling that the “petitioner’s position
falls into the category of criticism of Council’s political choices”. On June 2, 2020, council approved Fry’s motion, directing staff to report back with a proposed new definition of social housing. Fry’s motion also instructed city planners to “consider alternatives that refer specifically and only to non-market affordable rental or co-op housing”. It took almost a year before council received feedback in the form of a memo from Gil Kelley, who was then the city’s top planner. Kelley is no longer employed with the city. In the memo dated March 5, 2021, Kelley identified “several issues” that may arise from council’s directive to “explore a narrower definition”. This means “all the units in the building would be affordable to households with income levels that are not sufficient to find acceptable housing in the private market”. Kelley cited as one example concerns from the “community housing sector that a narrower definition of social housing could result in a reduction of development applications for new non-market housing”. This is because applications may “not meet the narrower definition at the outset of the project, even if the development might qualify for additional funding to deepen affordability later on”. “Partners noted that new non-market housing might be able to proceed under a narrower definition of social housing when significant senior government funding is available to fund deeper levels of affordability,” Kelley also wrote. In the interview, Fry said that Kelly’s memo was “basically saying, ‘Well, it’s complicated.’ ” “I still believe that there’s more work that could be done,” Fry said. g
Bishop, came from his desire to expand the Catholic Church’s residential-school system. This was reflected in the following passage in a 2012 Georgia Straight article by Laura Robinson regarding former Vanoc CEO John Furlong’s employment at a Catholic day school in Burns Lake. “Bishop John Fergus O’Grady, who oversaw the diocese, made sure, during lobbying trips to Ottawa and Victoria, that his 13 schools (he built nine in just four years) received government top-ups for every Native student registered. He and Father Gerard Clenaghan (who regularly flew to Dublin to recruit Frontier Apostles and priests) lived well. O’Grady loved to dress up in buckskin and moccasins and tell stories to big-city North American Christians about ‘half-breeds’ and ‘little Indians’ so he could leverage more money for his empire.
“Added to donations were government payments to the diocese,” Robinson continued. “The more First Nation kids O’Grady registered in Catholic schools, the more the government paid and the more he could feed his diocesan expansionist dreams—but he didn’t waste money on teachers’ salaries. O’Grady beat the cost of hiring trained teachers by inventing in 1956, along with Father John Brayley, the Frontier Apostolate: a labour force of Christian volunteers, often recruited from Ireland, whom he referred to as the ‘Catholic peace corps’.” According to the Busy Catholic blog, O’Grady “set up a construction company that included a glass factory, a sash and door factory, a cement block factory, and a trucking and bulldozing firm”. Beliveau’s thesis included detailed information on how O’Grady oversaw the finances of Prince George College,
which was founded in 1956. “The school lay on a foundation of a carefully constructed ethos, the sacrifices of hundreds of lay volunteers, and the involuntary financial subsidies provided by Aboriginal students from approximately 1960 to 1989,” Beliveau wrote. Prince George College was later renamed O’Grady Catholic High School. It closed in 2001, “citing both financial difficulties and a lack of local parental support,” according to his thesis. O’Grady was succeeded as bishop of Prince George by Hubert Patrick O’Connor, who resigned in 1991 after being charged with sexual assault during the 1960s. He was convicted in 1996 on two counts. O’Connor was later acquitted of sexual assault on a student while he was principal of the Williams Lake Indian Residential School in the 1960s. g
Coun. Pete Fry’s motion last year asked staff to report back with a new definition of social housing, but the city’s former top planner, Gil Kelley, responded that this would result in fewer applications.
JUNE 3 – 10 / 2021
BOOKS
Surviving the Holocaust: a Vancouver family’s story
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by Charlie Smith
ancouver businessman and musician Joe Gold says that his father, David Goldenberger, often told him that if he must make a decision to go right or left, always go right. It left Gold feeling baffled, but his father, also a Vancouver businessman, was insistent about this. “He said, ‘Don’t even think about it. Go right,’ ” Gold recalled in a phone interview with the Straight. It was only when Gold wrote his new book, Two Pieces of Cloth: One Family’s Story of the Holocaust, that he realized what his father meant. When Goldenberger entered the Auschwitz concentration camp on April 17, 1944, he encountered SS physician Dr. Josef Mengele. He was called the Angel of Death for performing gruesome medical experiments and for choosing which inmates would die in the gas chambers. Goldenberger was selected to go right, which meant that he avoided the fate of millions of European Jews and instead, became a slave labourer. “Every time somebody went right, it meant life,” Gold said. “I imagine that’s why he said that to me.” The book tells the stunning story of his parents, who both survived the Holocaust, and some of their relatives who didn’t. Each chapter is told in the voice of either Gold, his father, or his mother, Aurelia, ending when they came to Canada in 1948. Gold attributes his father’s survival skills to his keen intelligence, resilience, ability to read people, and a great deal of luck. “What I learned from my father’s experiences is that you can always start up again and be successful through hard work, determination, and faith in yourself but also faith in humanity,” Gold declared. Goldenberger married Aurelia in the Slovakian spa town of Piestany in 1941. They lived together in a Jewish neighbourhood in Bratislava, just as it was being “Aryanized”. That resulted in a German businessman taking majority control of the family textile business, keeping Goldenberger on as a general manager even as local authorities ramped up
David Goldenberger, son Andrew, and wife Aurelia posed for this photo in 1943, a year before the Germans occupied Hungary; Two Pieces of Cloth author Joe Gold was born after the war, in 1947.
anti-Jewish measures. The couple decided to escape to Hungary via train in 1942—a perilous journey because at any point they could have been arrested. They made it to Budapest thanks to a kindly Jewish passenger, who took them to a hotel. After they were taken to a police station for questioning in May 1943, Aurelia went to live at a hospital, pretending to be Christian for the rest of the Second World War. Their first son, Andrew, was born that year, when all Jewish males of working age were forced to join labour batallions, resulting in Goldenberger being sent to eastern Hungary. He was able to return to his family months later. But Goldenberger’s problems intensified after German troops occupied Hungary in March of 1944. He was required to register, along with all other Jews, and that’s how he ended up in a putrid cattle car headed to Auschwitz, in Poland. What happened to him over the next 14 months was utterly horrific. He was then transferred deep into Germany, to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, as the Allies closed in on Hitler. When troops liberated his camp, Goldenberger weighed a skeletal 65 pounds. Rather than risk typhus, he left the camp instead of
waiting for the Slovakian guard to arrive. He was given two pieces of cloth when he arrived in nearby Hanover. Goldenberger eventually made his way to Prague, where he received a telegram informing him that his wife and son were alive in Budapest. “He told me many times that if he didn’t have a wife and a child, he doubts that he would have made it,” Gold said. “He had that drive to see them again and to help them, not
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to leave them alone if they survived.” The executive director of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, Nina Krieger, told the Straight by phone that her organization has developed a plan to mail copies of Two Pieces of Cloth to its members, accompanied by an invitation to donate to the VHEC in support of its annual campaign. She expressed deep admiration to Gold, his wife, Karen, and their friends and family members for agreeing to match every donation up to $30,000. In addition, Gold has offered to contribute 50 percent of the proceeds from the first two weeks of online book sales to the VHEC. “We’re really grateful for their generosity,” Krieger said. Gold said that writing Two Pieces of Cloth affected him deeply, making him feel depressed for a period of time. “It was very difficult, and you become a witness to the story,” he stated. “And my feeling is that anybody who reads the book also becomes a witness to the atrocities that were done.” g
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5
REAL ESTATE
Vancouver homes selling below assessed values
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by Carlito Pablo
ntil quite recently, the sky has been the limit for many home hunters. One often hears about bidding wars breaking out, buyers making offers without conditions, and selling prices going over the top. It’s no surprise that real-estate markets in Greater Vancouver, Fraser Valley, and across B.C. set new record highs in March and April 2021. However, economists and analysts have noted some signs of cooling down. Some recent sales in Vancouver, the prime market in the province, seem to indicate that the market isn’t as white hot as it used to be. Selling prices for these properties fell below both their asking prices and 2021 assessed values. One example is a single-family home in the wealthy neighbourhood of Point Grey in the city’s West Side. The one-and-a-half-storey residence sold on May 10 for $2.2 million. Based on tracking by real-estate site Zealty.ca, the selling price came 7.9 percent below the asking price of $2,388,000. In addition, the selling price for the seven-bedroom, two-bath home was 1.1 percent below its 2021 assessment value of $2,224,900. Another example is 3294 Prince Edward Street in East Vancouver: the twostorey detached home sold on May 4 for $1,185,000. Zealty.ca tracking showed that the selling price of the five-bedroom, one-bath residence was five percent below the property’s 2021 assessment of $1,247,300 and 1.2 percent below its listing price of $1,199,000. The Straight asked Vancouver realtor and market observer David Hutchinson what’s going on.
Vancouver will likely be less than April and March tallies. In a mid-month report, the Vancouverbased realty agency predicted that sales may come “in the range of 4,500” units, which still indicates an “extremely busy” market.
Some sales are now down to earth – realtor David Hutchinson
This small home at 4188 West 15th Avenue in Point Grey sold for 1.1 percent below its 2021 assessed value of $2,224,900 and 7.9 percent below the asking price of $2,388,000. Photo by Google.
“Current sales activity seems to suggest that the Vancouver real-estate market has finished its trajectory to the moon,” Hutchinson said. Although market activity remains elevated, it may no longer be up in the stratosphere. “The market may be headed back to Earth,” Hutchinson said. To illustrate, the Sutton Group–West Coast Realty agent cited other examples of Vancouver properties that sold in May 2021 below asking prices and assessment values. One of them is a one-storey-with-basement home at 4380 Miller Street in East
Vancouver. The five-bedroom and threebath house sold on May 13 for $1,265,000. Zealty.ca tracking showed that the selling price was 6.2 percent below its asking price of $1,349,000 and 15.6 percent below its original tag of $1,498,000. Also, the selling price was 5.5 percent below the property’s 2021 assessment of $1,338,000. There are other examples as well of May 2021 deals for condos and townhouses that sold below listing prices and assessed values. “Some sales are now down to earth,” Hutchinson said. Meanwhile, Dexter Realty has forecast that May 2021 home sales in Greater
“Truly rarefied air when looking at the month of May,” Dexter Realty partner and economist Kevin Skipworth wrote. In April 2021, realtors in Greater Vancouver sold 4,908 homes, marking the highest total on record for the month of April. In March, 5,708 homes were sold, setting the highest numbers on record for the month of March. Also in March this year, realtors across B.C. sold a total of 15,073 homes, notching a new record for best monthly sales in the province. That volume beat the previous provincial record of May 2016, when realtors across B.C. sold a total of 13,482 homes. In the Dexter Realty report, Skipworth noted there is the “possibility of some balance returning in the market”. Skipworth mentioned that “multiple offers are still a strong occurrence, albeit in some cases less offers than we’ve been seeing before”.g
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BEER
Female brewmaster takes indirect route to the tap
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by Charlie Smith
hen Sarah Polkinghorne applied to become the head brewer at Black Kettle Brewing, her first interview occurred over Skype. That wasn’t a surprise to Polkinghorne, a Port Coquitlam native and graduate of the brewmaster and brewery operations management program at Niagara College Canada. But then the North Vancouver craft brewery asked her to create her own beer— something she had never experienced before while seeking work. “I actually developed a recipe when I was interviewing for this job,” Polkinghorne told the Straight by phone. “For the second interview, we made the beer. It got me the job.” A year later, her Interview Beer is one of the beverages available at Black Kettle Brewing. “It’s delicious,” she said. “It’s the one I drink the most.” Polkinghorne is one of a handful of female brewmasters in B.C. The list includes Dogwood Brewing founder Claire Wilson, Julia Hanlon of Steamworks, Nicole MacLean of Twa Dogs Brewery, Heather Kilbourne of Salt Spring Island Ales, and Erin Dale of Barkerville Brewing Co. Polkinghorne didn’t originally intend on becoming a brewmaster. She obtained a bachelor of science in chemistry at the
Black Kettle Brewing hired Sarah Polkinghorne as its brewmaster after she created her own beer during a job interview—the beverage is called the Interview Beer. Photo by Todd Duncan Studios.
University of Victoria before being hired as an analyst and later a laboratory technician at Maxxam Analytics (now Bureau Veritas). After a stint with a mining company, Polkinghorne became a quality-assurance technician at Coca-Cola’s plant in Richmond, later moving into a similar position at Northam Brewery in Kamloops. “That’s when I fell in love with craft beer,” Polkinghorne said. “I had been working in quality assurance in beer for six months. I started doing a bit of home brewing and I really liked it because I got to use my science
skills I already had. I was able to make up recipes, which uses your creative side.” She decided to enroll at Niagara College Canada—then one of only three brewmaster programs in the country—because it had a brewery on campus. The Kwantlen Polytechnic University program opened its brewery after she had decided to move to Ontario. At Niagara College Canada, Polkinghorne learned in her first year how to brew her own recipes in a five-hectolitre system. In the second year, she was given an option between two styles of beer to make. She
chose a smoked hefeweizen. “If you can brew on a small system, you can go and work at a big brewery,” Polkinghorne said. “They only get fancier and more automated.” In 2019, a Brewers Association survey in the U.S. found that women filled 37 percent of nonproduction and nonservice staffing positions in the craft-brewery industry. However, only 7.5 percent of the female employees were head brewers, in comparison to 54 percent who were brewery service staff. Polkinghorne is a member of the Pink Boots Society, an international organization that encourages women to advance their careers in brewing through education. It does this through fundraising for educational scholarships. In that spirit, Polkinghorne created a Pink Boots 2021 Hop blend, with $1 from every pint going to the society. “It has been out for three weeks now,” she said. So what sets Kettle Brewing apart from its many competitors, including nine on the North Shore? “We focus more on traditional-style beers and making things we like,” Polkinghorne replied. “We have a mix of North American style, the hazy IPAs, and also traditional stouts, like bitter West Coast IPAs. And, of course, having a female brewmaster sets us apart.” g
U.S. craft whistleblower prompts local response
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by Charlie Smith
he craft-beer industry markets itself as hip, artisanal, and forward-thinking. But over the past month, many U.S. companies had to fend off accusations that they were back in the Stone Age in their treatment of female employees. The human-resources bomb was detonated by a Massachusetts brewer, Brienne Allan, through a simple question. On her Instagram feed, @ratmagnet, she asked women to share stories of sexism in the beer industry. This came after her credentials were questioned. What followed was a torrent of responses that named names and led to several resignations, including that of San Diego–based Modern Times Beer CEO Jacob McKean. Evil Genius Beer Co. co-owner Trevor Hayward reportedly stepped down from the Philly Loves Beer board. One former brewing industry employee in the San Francisco Bay area told Allan that she had endured levels of misogyny beyond what she’d seen in any other profession. Another wrote of an older, married coworker offering her a lift home, then driving down a dark side street, where she was assaulted. “He choked me to the point of passing out and ripped out some hair as I was flailing to flight back,” the woman stated. “I was scared and decided it was better to pretend to go along with it, so as he’s ripping my pants off I asked him to get a condom and it’ll be fine.” As the man went to his trunk, the woman fled and called the cops. “He spent the next few weeks threatening
Brewer Brienne Allan drew a huge response by asking women to share tales of sexism in her industry. Photo by Notch Brewing.
me and pressuring me to drop the case,” she wrote, before naming his South Dakota bar. There were scores of other tales of sexism and abuse. “I thought maybe it would die down, and it’s just getting worse,” Allan, former leader of the Pink Boots Society’s Boston chapter, told the digital-media company VinePair last month. “I don’t know how to really handle it right now.” The Pink Boots Society advocates on behalf of women in the industry. “Over the past few weeks, over a thousand accounts of sexism and harassment of women in our community
have demanded bravery, compassion, and collective action from us all,” the society’s president, Jen Jordan, said in an online message to members. “Many members have taken the lead by creating safe space events where women can share their experiences. Resources are being collected and shared on the local level to support members, or any women who needs help.” The stories of sexism reached such a crescendo in the U.S. that the executive director of the B.C. Craft Brewers Guild, Ken Beattie, posted a message on his organization’s site saying that it is “on a mission to create a safe workplace across the country for our industry”. According to Beattie, this showcased how the industry has “failed its core purpose of taking care of its people while doing business”. The guild’s board applauded the courage of those who have spoken out on the @ratmagnet account. In a phone interview with the Straight, Beattie said a great deal is being done to change the culture of the industry, enhance workplace safety, and introduce standards of reporting. This month, for example, there will be a survey of employees in craft breweries across the country. “You can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you are now,” Beattie said. “Hopefully, that will establish the benchmarks that we need to provide the education and resources moving forward.” He also said that at the guild’s conference in February, Ontario-based beer-industry diversity consultant Ren Navarro see next page
JUNE 3 – 10 / 2021
THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT
7
BEER
Cooking with beer? It’s not that weird
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by Martin Dunphy
ne undeniable fact about beer is that a lot of Canadians drink it. About 80 percent of us throw back alcoholic drinks on a regular basis, and about 57 percent of those drink beer, with wine numbers close behind. And although many people are aware of wine’s role in complementing and elevating the experience of fine dining—including its use in sauces, reductions, and desserts, for example—fewer of them seem to understand the major role that beer can play as an ingredient in many dishes. The fact is, just about anything you can cook with wine can also be cooked with beer. And, as with wine, part of the pleasure involved is consuming varying amounts of that component during the cooking process. Beer’s versatility as a liquid ingredient means that it can be used in lots of different ways. Look through any beer cookbook and you will probably be surprised at the range of dishes the ancient brew helps bring to savoury perfection. The taste of different kinds of beer, naturally, needs to be taken into account when cooking. Some are savoury and even heavytasting; others are light and almost sweet. Still others, such as hop-heavy brews like IPAs, can impart a bitter taste. But beer’s natural hoppy bitterness is pretty well balanced by its malted sweetness, generally speaking, in most commercially available brands. The craft-brewing revolution that swept Canada during the past two decades, though, has helped introduce hundreds of variations on the dear old theme, and beer connoisseurs now gaze at, sniff, sip, and swirl beer with the same expert intensity as the most devoted oenophile. Aromatics and flavour profiles for different kinds of beers can include descriptors such as fruit, spice, florals, coffee, chocolate, smoke, and any number of words you might previously have thought should be restricted to wine tastings. It is therefore best, probably, to think in simpler terms when starting to cook with beer.
Not only can you cook with beer as an ingredient, but with beer-can chicken, you can use the partially filled can as a cooking tool to keep the bird moist and vertical. Photo by Yinko/Getty.
One of the first things to remember is to cook with beers you like, just as with wine. If you enjoy the earthy, slightly bitter, and robust taste of ales, educate yourself about which dishes you might like that flavour to be a part of. That could mean substituting beer for water or stock in your favourite stew, chili, or soup. (Stouts and porters are definitely in this category.) The lighter, crisper taste of lager (like Pilseners) might go well in a batter for shrimp or with fish and chips, even as a glaze for poultry or in cooking shellfish. Beer also has a place in baking and is used in many different breads (especially in combination with various cheeses), muffins, biscuits, and even crackers. It can impart a nutty, toasty taste, and the carbonation
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THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT
JUNE 3 – 10 / 2021
helps as a leavening agent to give cakes (even pancakes) a fluffier, lighter mouthfeel. It also keeps things like cookies fresh and soft for days and can add complex and deep flavours to baked sweets. So, where to start? Well, our favourite brews are already pretty much inextricably linked in our minds with backyard barbecues, picnics, and camping. It’s not too much of a stretch, then, to start thinking about how that combination of malted barley, yeast, hops, and water can improve the flavour of whatever you might be throwing on the grill. That means adding beer to meat marinades, barbecue sauces, brines, or as a braising liquid for meats that are finished off over the coals. Beer-can chicken is a method of barbecuing poultry that looks as weird as it sounds. Its aficionados, though, swear that upending and balancing a chicken by inserting its stuffing cavity over an open and partly filled beer can and cooking it in a capacious barbeque renders its meat as moist and flavourful as any cooking technique ever devised. One great thing about beer-can chicken is that the vertical cooking position ensures even browning of the crispy skin on all sides, as with a rotisserie. (Note: because of possible contamination by plastic linings on some beer cans, it is advised to switch to a can that you can be sure is made of nothing but metal, or use one of the many commercially available substitute “cans”, usually with a drip tray.) g
from previous page
was a guest speaker. In addition, a local company, Jalipeño, conducted workshops on inclusivity and diversity. “The industry is welcoming and a safe place to work, but minorities may not think that because it generally tends to be a white male–dominated area, historically,” Beattie said. One B.C. group, Diversity in Brewing, is dedicated to supporting more inclusion by amplifying the voices of BIPOC and LGBT industry workers on its website. A self-described “queer beer drinkin’ shark from the East Coast” posted a guide to LGBTQ2S inclusivity for breweries, listing 11 pieces of advice. They include using genderneutral language when addressing patrons, respecting identities and pronouns, and offering to work with queer groups or individuals in the area to promote the brewery as a safe space. But a Simon Fraser University PhD student who studies craft industries, Benjamin Anderson, remains skeptical. He told the Straight that although he expects many workplaces to improve, long-lasting change will only occur when abusers are rooted out of workplaces. To date, he noted, virtually all craft breweries have avoided becoming unionized. “It seems to me that the industry is doing what an industry does at this point, and that is kind of insulating itself from critique,” Anderson said. “That doesn’t mean that good won’t come out of it.” According to Anderson, brewers and brewing assistants tend to have the most positive things to say about their working environments—and they very often tend to be white males. “But when you talk to someone who works in packaging or who works in service—somebody who is a bartender or wait staff, that kind of thing—you get a very different story.” The B.C. industry’s Me Too moment came last summer when another Instagram account, @NotOurP49, highlighted mistreatment of employees at the Parallel 49 craft brewery in East Vancouver. Since then, the company has gone out of its way to send a message that it has changed its ways, even stenciling the company values into the bar for everyone to see and hiring Navarro to offer guidance. “Front-of-house staff will be taking part in a session with the Vancouver chapter of Good Night Out, a volunteer society ‘committed to building community capacity to prevent and respond to sexual harassment and sexual assault in all sectors,’ ” the company stated on its website. As part of his research, Anderson has heard narratives of abusive workplaces from about 10 to 12 craft-beer workers in the Pacific Northwest. None of them are employed by Parallel 49. “I haven’t been able to talk to anyone who works there,” Anderson said. “It’s a little shuttered up, especially because I’m a recognizable name at this point.” g
BEER
Summer perfect for embracing fruit in cans by Mike Usinger
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As the West Coast rains subside for a month or two, there are plenty of local craft beers that capture the joy of loading up at an Okanagan fruit stand or raiding the neighbour’s strawberry patch.
f wet West Coast winters are all about gloriously thick oyster stouts, German doppelbocks, and peat-smoked porters, then summer is for keeping things light. While you won’t go wrong with Red Truck’s Baja Bound Mexican Lager or Andina Brewing Company’s Totuma Kölsch, that shouldn’t stop you from fully leaning into the season. And a great way to do that is by reaching for beers that bring to mind some of the greatest things about summer: shopping for peaches, cherries, and apricots at Granville Island, stopping at Okanagan fruit stands, and raiding your neighbour’s crabapple tree and strawberry patch in East Vancouver. The following beers are all perfect for the hopefully, hot, muggy, and forest-firefree times ahead. Break out the shorts and flip-flops, pop a top, and climb into the hammock. The rain is about to go away for a couple of months. Make the most of it because the oyster stout can wait.
SUPERFLUX ORANGE CREAM FOUNTAINBIER
You know how sometimes—which is to say most of the time—you’ll take home a beer simply because it sounds amazing. And how, despite a label that promises something redolent of Arizona snake venom, Manila clams, or Voodoo chocolate-banana donuts, it tastes like Pabst Blue Ribbon, only less hipster-cool? The brilliance of Superflux Orange Cream is that it’s not only the colour of orange pop, but it tastes like a three-way between a Jones soda, Creamsicle, and crisp Pilsner that someone has melted a tangerine
Jolly Rancher in. Walk, don’t run, to the East Van brewery with the best label art in show business, because Superflux Orange Cream will make you wish that the summer of 2021 never ends. And given the kind of year it’s been—again—that’s truly saying something. BACKCOUNTRY BREWING LOUD NOISES!
A drunk man—Robert Pollard of Guided By Voices in case you’re curious—once noted that liquor stores were basically candy stores for adults. That line of thinking holds true for the Backcountry Brewing tasting room. Along with Shannon Falls and the Stawamus Chief, the award-winning brewery is as good a reason as any to say goodbye to overrun Vancouver for the day and head up the Sea-to-Sky, the windows rolled down, and the Gun Club’s Fire of Love cranked on the stereo. Those of the opinion that there’s no such thing as too out-there when it comes to beer have plenty of options to choose from at Backcountry, including the mangococonut-lime sour Mine Goes to Eleven and Boy That Escalated Quickly (a blackberryraspberry, and, yes, marshmallow sour). We’re making room in the car trunk next week for a flat of seven of Loud Noises!, a banana and passion-fruit sour that goes deliciously heavy on the Chiquitas. Yes, some candy stores are better than others. STANLEY PARK BREWING FRUIT STAND MIX PACK
Few fruits are more polarizing than, well, everything in the melon family. Somewhere out there there’s someone who doesn’t
find watermelon, honeydew melon, golden Langkawi melon, sprite melon, and cantaloupe disgusting. To include any, or all, of those atrocities in a fruit salad is to instantly pollute the grapes, pineapple, oranges, and durian. Big props then to Stanley Park Brewing for its Melon Wheat Ale, which is floral enough to please fans of the Cucurbitaceae family, but understated to where it’s perfectly drinkable for the rest of us. Along with an equally delicate Sunsetter Peach Wheat Ale and Mango Wheat All, Stanley Park’s Melon Wheat Ale is so light it almost seems like a seltzer. At 4.8 percent ABV all three beers pack a decent punch though, which is to say after two or three the last thing you’ll feel like doing is mowing the lawn. And, when summer’s here, there’s zero reason to feel guilty about that. FUGGLES & WARLOCK CRAFTWORKS KIWAMI PLUM SOUR
All right, let’s admit: as much as you’re normally loath to leave Vancouver in the summer months, right now you’d give whatever’s left in your overdraft to get on a plane. Anywhere would be great— New York, London, Paris, Munich, or even Munich, North Dakota. But most of all—because you’ve just finished watching Lost in Translation, Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Akira, and Godzilla—you want to go to Tokyo. More importantly, you’ll do that even though it means bailing on the West Coast during the only three-month period of the year where it doesn’t piss rain like the first two hours of Seven. Until dreams come true, Fuggles & War-
lock’s Kiwami Plum Sour will transport you to a better, most exotic place—hello Shibuya!—with a wheat beer that packs a pleasingly tart kick. A word to the wise: the last thing you want to do is leave your six pack, f lat, or shipping container sitting out in the summer sun. Kiwami (a Japanese word which translates to “extreme” in English) is brewed with fresh plums, which necessitates the beer being refrigerated at all times. The way the weather often goes in these parts, that probably means you can leave it on the balcony until the first week of August. POWELL BREWERY SOUTHERN BELLE
As much as this will enrage the more patriotic Canadians among us, God Bless America. Sure, the United States has its problems— Trumpism, gun violence, and the continued existence of Ted Nugent—but it’s also a shitton of fun. Hands up if you’ve been lucky enough to spend an afternoon lounging on an expansive front porch in Savannah, Georgia, with Willie Nelson on the stereo and the smell of honeysuckle hanging thick in the air. Powell Brewery Southern Belle takes its inspiration from one of the most magical regions of America, with classic peaches and cream providing the leaping-off point. Pilsner, wheat, and oat malts are used to create a Berliner weisse-style beer, with peaches, apricots, and vanilla added on the back end. Cue up Django Unchained, crack open a soft pack of Marlboro Lights, and pour a Southern Belle for a taste of all you’ve missed out on by avoiding the American South—porch swing optional. g
JUNE 3 – 10 / 2021
THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT
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ARTS
Embodying Power opens needed space for healing
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by Charlie Smith
his has been a colossally emotional week for millions of Canadians as they absorb the news that 215 Indigenous children were buried in unmarked graves at the Kamloops Indian Residential School. This May 27 revelation from the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc has once again driven home how devastating—and deadly—colonialism was to Canada’s First Nations. This is far from the first such horror story to emerge. In 2019, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls delivered a damning final report, Reclaiming Power and Place, describing what happened as “genocide” and delivering 231 Calls for Justice. However, not many Canadians will read a document this large. So Native Earth Performing Arts, Nightwood Theatre, New Harlem Productions, and the Cultch have teamed up with Indigenous artists to present 12 audiovisual works created to respond artistically to each chapter. It’s titled Embodying Power and Place. “We have different Indigenous artists from coast to coast to coast with all different backgrounds and different lived experiences,” Native Earth Performing
The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls was a response to relatives’ pain; now artists have offered an interpretation of its report. Photo by Amanda Siebert.
Arts artistic director Keith Barker told the Straight by phone. According to him, the common denominator across all of them was an understanding that they could be next. The production, which will be streamed at the Talking Stick Festival’s Summer Sojourn, offers these artists space to express their response. “It wasn’t necessarily about feeling the weight of the report but how can we engage people with what is being spoken about?” Barker said.
Each of the pieces has a director and visual component, according to Nightwood Theatre artistic director Andrea Donaldson. The project was the brainchild of playwright and theatre director DonnaMichelle St. Bernard, artistic director of New Harlem Productions. St. Bernard unveiled the first iteration of Embodying Power and Place at Ontario’s Groundswell Festival in November. The version at the Talking Stick Festival will feature
creators Janet Antone, Reneltta Arluk, Tara Beagan, Yolanda Bonnell, Darla Contois, Deborah Courchene, Aria Evans, Eekwol Lindsay Knight, Jessica Lea Fleming, Falen Johnson, Émilie Monnet, Yvette Nolan, Michelle Olson, Natalie Sappier, jaye simpson, and Aqua Nibii Waawaaskone. Donaldson told the Straight by phone that these artists can encourage empathy in others and help bring about transformation. “We have to keep creating acts of engagement and empathy,” she added. “That’s one of the powerful things we can do.” Barker pointed out that all of the directors and the sound designer were Indigenous and either female or nonbinary. Multimedia interpretations and the artwork were also done by Indigenous creators. Margo Kane, artistic managing director of the Talking Stick Festival, told the Straight by phone that it’s “marvellous” to see so many women stepping forward to do something so powerful, artistic, and necessary. “We need to hear from our artists to heal and to come together,” Kane said. g The Talking Stick Festival’s Summer Sojourn will stream Embodying Power and Place on demand from Thursday (June 3) until July 1.
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THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT
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ARTS
The Frontliners finds a home at rEvolver Festival by Steve Newton
Burnaby playwright Zahida Rahemtulla’s experience helping Syrian refugees find housing in Vancouver gave her the inspiration for her second play, The Frontliners. Photo by Marjo Wright.
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hile attending New York University Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, Burnaby-born Zahida Rahemtulla learned to speak Arabic, a skill that paid off when she moved back to B.C. She became a frontline worker helping Syrian families resettle in Vancouver, a job experience that had such a profound effect on her that she ended up writing a play about it called The Frontliners. “It seemed like every Arabic speaker in Canada was employed at that time across many different cities that were resettling families,” Rahemtulla says on the phone from her home in East Vancouver. “So although I’m not a native Arabic speaker, I had a chance to also help out. I worked on that resettlement and then I stayed in the sector.” It was after she wrote her first play, 2018’s The Wrong Bashir—a mistaken-identity comedy about the Ismaili community in Canada—that Rahemtulla started thinking back on her time working with the refugees and began formulating The Frontliners, the first draft of which was created at the 2019 Arts Club Theatre Company’s Emerging Playwrights’ Unit. Set in January of 2016, when Canada was resettling the first wave of its 25,000 Syrian refugees, it’s about three frontline workers whose lives are shaped as they struggle to move families out of an East Van hotel. (The play is being presented in an online reading at this year’s rEvolver Festival, performed by Francis Dowlatabadi, Adrian Neblett, and Jaspreet Saund.) “Together, they all kind of handle the chaos that was the frontlines at that time,” explains the playwright, who just turned 29. “I think it was well documented on the news about the excitement around that time and how behind the scenes there was so much going on, with all the problems of trying to find people houses during the housing crisis. Journalists were so interested and Canadians were making donations and sponsorship groups were showing up at the hotel. It was a very busy place.” While she had always enjoyed reading
and it’s definitely different. But it’s nice to still have the chance to develop work during the pandemic, however you can.” The Frontliners is scheduled to be presented as a full-blown production by the Playwrights Theatre Centre in September of 2022 as part of its New Play in Development Prize, and Rahemtulla is thrilled about getting it in front of a live audience. Her last in-person theatrical experience was seeing Donna-Michelle St. Bernard’s Sound of the Beast at Rumble Theatre in February of 2020. She is also working on short fiction, and now that the plays are more developed, she’s going back to a children’s novel that she’s been trying to work on for a while.
Her philosophy, she says, has always been, “Try not to be afraid to start.” “As a writer, it’s real easy to get scared of the blank page,” she says, “and so I think one of the hardest steps to take is just to start. The road to developing a play and writing something without really knowing what’s going to happen with it can be rocky and can require putting blind faith in something when you have no idea what will happen with it. But I try to just say, ‘Okay, just start and see.’ ” g The Frontliners will be read live via Zoom on June 6 at 2 p.m. (Pacific time) as part of the rEvolver Festival. Registration is free, but donations are encouraged.
As a writer, it’s real easy to get scared of the blank page. – Zahida Rahemtulla
and writing growing up, Rahemtulla never expected to become a playwright. She only started writing plays four years ago before enrolling in the SFU Writers Studio’s fiction program. As an emerging playwright, she was happy to kick off her career with a comedy and then follow that up by taking a shot at drama. “I rely a lot on humour in both plays,” she points out, “because with hard issues— and especially in some of the conversations we’re having more of these days—it’s so much easier to hear when you use humour. But one of the things that one of my playwrighting instructors quoted was that, ‘The difference between a drama and comedy is that at the end of a drama the characters don’t get what they want.’ “In The Frontliners, some of the characters end up sad,” she adds, “and it’s not tied up neatly as the comedy way, but I think there’s more room then for some of the complexities that you want to show about society.” Rahemtulla admits that she has no clear idea how The Frontliners—directed by Mercedeh Baroq, with dramaturgy by Davey Calderon—will come across in the Zoom format. “My first play was a bit more action-oriented,” she explains, “and I think this play is a bit slower in some ways than that one, so I guess I’m maybe a little bit worried about how that will carry across on Zoom. I had one Zoom meeting of my other play, JUNE 3 – 10 / 2021
THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT
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MOVIES
Indigiqueer women discover romance in Querencia
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by Craig Takeuchi
h, to be young and in love—although many a love story has been told time and time again, there remain many matters of the heart that have not yet found their way on to screens. That’s particularly the case when it comes to Indigiqueer tales, which have been rendered almost invisible in mainstream media—and a new Vancouver-shot series hopes to change that. Querencia, an eight-episode comingof-age web series by writer-director Mary Galloway, chronicles the blossoming of a romance between two young Indigenous women who attempt to bridge the gap between their differing cultural backgrounds
Abe (Mary Galloway) and Daka (Kaitlyn Yott) find love in the new web series Querencia.
and the complexities of their identities. The traditional, shy, and closeted Daka,
> Go on-line to read hundreds of I Saw You posts or to respond to a message < I WAS WAITING BEHIND YOU FOR A VACCINE
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MAY 29, 2021 WHERE: NORTH VANCOUVER I’ve never used this before, I couldn’t help myself to post this. You were in front of me in line to receive a vaccine. You’re dressed in all black black leather backpack, short brown hair and blue eyes with some tattoos on your arms and sunglasses sitting on your head. I was wearing a red shirt, jeans and sandals. I have no idea why I felt the need to do this, if it happens that you see this, would love to go for a drink.
LIVIA CAFE (PATIO)
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MAY 28, 2021 WHERE: LIVIA CAFE - Commercial Drive You were sitting outside of LIVIA Cafe with 3 friends (2 female, 1 male and a dog) I was waiting for my coffee, wearing a Jean button up. Thought you were gorgeous, we should grab a lunch sometime.
STANLEY PARK HOT BIKER WEARING INDIAN MOTORCYCLE JACKET
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MAY 28, 2021 WHERE: Stanley Park
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We were both cruising through Stanley Park this evening. My friend and I locked eyes with you several times. I’m the blonde, you single?
DANIELLE
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MAY 19, 2021 WHERE: Yew Street
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You said “Hi” to your workmate sitting on a patio on Yew Street. We caught each other’s eye. Join me for a drink on said patio?
LOCKED EYES ON MAIN...
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MAY 28, 2021 WHERE: Main Street
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BUNTZEN LAKE TRAIL
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MAY 26, 2021 WHERE: Buntzen Lake
Walking on the sidewalk. I thought I recognized you but then our glance locked in! We both continued on in opposite directions. I then realized I forgot something at home and turned back. By then you had a coffee and were taking your seat at the coffee shop. I waved from across the street. It was a very unusual experience at our age. I am 99% sure (now) we do not know each other. I am single. Are you?
I was running on the Buntzen Trail Loop and saw your super energetic dog first and then came upon you you said hello and smiled a bright and friendly smile that caught my attention. Later, I drove by you in the parking lot and I regret not stopping to introduce myself. I’d love to see that smile again...
ROBIN AT HYDE 2011
I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MAY 25, 2021 WHERE: Hornby at Robson
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 13, 2018 WHERE: The Hyde, 2011. Also King George Before That. Well you saw me. Tall comedian, went to the same high school. Your a metallurgist of sorts and served drinks. Made a point to approach my clueless ass. If there was something I should have known, a cue or something. I should always know bluntly, some times I am so in with my emotional security I wouldn’t know a sign if it was neon and over the head. The dates only go back to 2018. It was July 13 2011.
THE LUCKY PUPPER THAT GETS WALKED BY THE ONE WITH GLASSES
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MAY 18, 2021 WHERE: Third and Balsam I have seen you several times around 4th and Kits walking your beautiful doggo and I like you. That is, I'd like to get to know you. I saw you and said “hey it's you.” as I looked up. I was talking to the pup. ;) then I said “and youuu with the glasses!” I was not talking to the doggo. You waved this hello wave and smiled and I went back to carrying letters to mailboxes. It was a good day.
THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT
JUNE 3 – 10 / 2021
own yearning to see Indigiqueer stories on-screen. “Growing up, I had no one who I could look to on-screen that I felt wholly connected to,” she said. “I hope that this show gives our Indigiqueer young adults something to turn to, to connect with, and to feel like they belong.” Galloway and series producer Jessie Anthony (Brother, I Cry) won the APTN/ imagineNATIVE Web Series Pitch Competition in 2019 and also received further funding from the Canadian Film Academy’s Telefilm Talent to Watch to expand the series. In time for Pride Month, the series launched live on the APTN lumi site on June 1. g
Cathy Yan’s Pigs delivers lightly absurd comic drama by Kevin Ritchie
ROBSON SQUARE
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You were crossing Hornby street in a summer dress with a slit up the right side. You had curly hair. You were with your husband but it didn’t matter. It’s a long shot but if you happen to read this I’d love to do more than walk by.
STYLISH TALL GIRL
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MAY 23, 2021 WHERE: Main Street
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You were in a plaid shirt and jean vest. I was in a short sleeve blue shirt. You liked my hands. We didn’t get to make plans and go for coffee. You hugged me and ran away. I am interested in more hugs. I hope you see this. I want to have another hug.
3RD BEACH SHACKLETON FAN
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MAY 16, 2021 WHERE: Third Beach
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You: an HBR listening, Endurance reader enjoying a sunny Sunday, May 16th at third beach. Us: a couple next door, who had just read the same book. We're both interested in getting to know you better and hearing more about the book. Drop a line back if you are too.
Visit straight.com to post your FREE I Saw You _ 12
played by Kaitlyn Yott (Charmed), has left home for the first time and moved to Vancouver. In the city, she pursues her dreams of becoming a professional dancer and has to audition against stiff competition. Through a dating app, she winds up meeting the urban and out-and-proud Abe, portrayed by Galloway (whose acting credits include Ruthless Souls, Fire Song, and Never Steady, Never Still). Abe, a struggling musician who lacks a connection to her cultural heritage, is ready to leave her past relationship behind as she and Daka, despite their differences, follow the stirrings of their hearts. Galloway explained in a news release that the idea for the series arose from her
In Dead Pigs, Vivian Wu, here in robe and hair curlers, plays a salon owner who resists pressure to sell her home, even though her brother desperately needs some cash to pay off gangsters.
MOVIE REVIEW DEAD PIGS
Starring Vivian Wu, Yang Haoyu, and Zazie Beetz. In Mandarin, English, and Shanghainese with English subtitles. Streaming at VIFF Connect to June 24
d BIRDS OF PREY filmmaker Cathy Yan’s feature debut is getting a virtualcinema release four years after debuting at Sundance. Inspired by a real incident involving pig carcasses dumped in a river near Shanghai, Dead Pigs is a lightly absurdist comic drama in which characters are heightened to match the ostentatious trappings of Chinese capitalism.
The movie exists squarely in the traditional-versus-modern tension that forms the thematic underpinning for many recent Chinese films, with Vivian Wu (Away) playing a salon owner who refuses to sell her family home to make way for a Gaudí-inspired development. She’s also being pressured by her pigfarmer brother (Yang Haoyu), who needs to pay off gangsters. Yan’s script gradually connects the dots between a handful of seemingly disparate story threads, but the uneven tone between the earnest younger characters and kooky old folks never quite gels. Dead Pigs is like a mood board of atmospheres, tones, and ideas, but it struggles to find the emotional core behind its bluntforce metaphors. g
MUSIC
I M U R exorcises its demons with My Molecules by Breanne Doyle
Behaviour” features alt-pop artist Mauvey, who spits out the last verse through a rap, making an already wicked track inspire a feels-so-good-to-be-bad emotion in a listener. Other standouts include the addictive love anthem “Case of You” and “Himme Right,” the sexiest track on the album, bursting with harmonizing, vibrating voice lines and explicit lyrics. Then there’s the band’s favourite, “Spent”, which was, according to the Blige, “the one that produced the most tears” in the recording studio. Lyrics that read like page after page of diary entries—accompanied by the album’s heavy bass, layers of smooth harmonies, and purring synth—create a cinematic ambience to My Molecules. I M U R has created a vibe
that works equally as well to set a mood in the bedroom as it does to make you cry in the car. The album, which is sure to find a place in summer-night driving playlists and nightclubs alike, is a masterpiece of selfreflection. Each track is so clearly forged from both personal and musical discovery that it’s hard to imagine what My Molecules would sound like if the band hadn’t put their all into the album. “It’s our whole heart,” Lea says. “There’s nothing less than our whole heart that’s into this.” g My Molecules is out June 25. Preorder the album at https://ffm.to/mymolecules.
Oranges, Orange Popsicles, Orange Crush, Annoying Orange, orange paint, and Mr. Orange from Reservoir Dogs are just a few of I M U R’s favourite things. Photo by Sterling Larose.
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f you’re prone to overthinking at all, you probably spent the past year in lockdown (with nowhere to go and no one to distract you) doing a lot of brooding and obsessing over basically everything. Well, so did I M U R, only they were doing it in a recording studio. My Molecules is the fourth project (after two albums and one EP) by the self-proclaimed “genre-bending make-out music” trio, made up of lead vocalist Jenny Lea, producer-guitarist Mikey J. Blige, and producer and multi-instrumentalist Amine Bouzaher. Influenced by Lea’s past with substance abuse, her exploration in sexuality, and a near-death experience, My Molecules is ferocious, candid, and shockingly intimate. Sitting down with the Straight over a Zoom call in I M U R’s North Vancouver recording studio, Lea says the album felt a lot like taking “moral inventory”. “I think our past albums have also been pretty self-aware and introspective, but I do feel that the pandemic shifted things to a different level,” Lea says. “I think that we all had to spend a lot of time, just like the rest of the world, kind of sorting our own shit out.” The band’s members had been separated for four months due to COVID-19 (the longest they’d been apart in five years), so by the time they met up in the summer—in the new recording studio Blige had built in his basement—the band was, not surprisingly, “juiced up” with inspiration. “When we came back, everybody had these wild new perspectives,” Blige says. “It was like we were completely new people.” Instigated by the pandemic’s isolation, My Molecules explores every side of Lea’s
There’s nothing less than our whole heart that’s into this. – Jenny Lea
past, layering textured beats and sultry harmonies with themes of grief, relationships, and addiction colouring the lyrics. Tracks like “Sad Girls Club” explore the deep lows felt in insecurity, opening with the desperate confessional lyrics: “I got issues that I fight I lose/Caught in my feelings, I try, but not dealing/Never learned to cope, so I turn to dope/I fall from the reeling, stuck watching the ceiling/I am paralyzed. Is this my demise?” The song ends with a sad understanding: “Only a matter of time/You’ll turn around and realize I’m too much for you /Better off without.” Then there’s the ferociously passionate “Worst Behaviour”, in which the song introduces a character who not only owns up to their bad habits but actively decides to give into them. Built around long, low piano keys played slowly to build tension, and with a punchy beat, the track features lyrics like: “They’re testing my patience/I’m getting frustrated, ready to brawl Fuck it, I’m shameless, I’m on my worst behaviour.” “Worst JUNE 3 – 10 / 2021
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13
SAVAGE LOVE
Golden Rule gets in the way of secret perving by Dan Savage
b BI GIRL, EARLY 30s, in an open relationship with a man. A question of ethics. Say I’m on the apps looking to hook up with women. I’m upfront that I’m in an open relationship and looking for casual fun. I have no intention of trying to leverage these dates into threesomes with me and my boyfriend. But it turns my boyfriend on to hear about fun I have with other people. Would it be wrong to let my boyfriend come sit, anonymously, in a bar where I’m meeting a date? I’ll ignore him. He won’t stare or approach me and my date; he’ll just get a thrill out of being there. On the one hand, I assume most women wouldn’t be into this scenario. So that’s a reason not to do it. But on the other hand, they
Scan to coonfess
wouldn’t know. I realize this depends on actually executing the plan with discretion, but that seems doable. Thoughts? - Seeking Perspectives In Ethical Dating
Permissible Secret Perving test (which I unpack at length in an upcoming book)—it passes the PSP test so long as the other woman doesn’t know your boyfriend is there and never finds out your boyfriend was there—but it fails the Golden Rule test. Meaning that this probably isn’t something you would want others doing unto you and therefore isn’t something you should do unto others. So Jesus thinks you shouldn’t do this, SPIED, and I think… Well, I don’t think
This passes my
The Georgia Straight Confessions, an outlet for submitting revelations about your private lives—or for the voyeurs among us who want to read what other people have disclosed.
Simple as that I honestly cannot stand people that use big confusing sounding euphemisms and subjective clichés. It’s hard to understand what the they’re saying half the time. Try speaking to me in clear, plain simple English and maybe I’ll have way more respect for you. Stop talking like a politician.
I’m never using a fry pan to cook bacon ever again I had a breakfast dinner tonight with Costco’s Bacon hash browns and a few eggs. I decided there isn’t enough bacon in the hash browns so I cooked a pack of bacon in the oven for the first time ever. I was truly amazed with how the bacon came out that I will be ditching the frying and instilling this new method moving forward.
Praise the rich I hereby confess that I like rich people! They leave free nice stuff outside their houses so plebs like me can get nice things. If it were me I would try and sell it on craigslist even if it might only get me $20. But rich people don’t need to do that, so they just put it outside. Praise the rich!
Didn’t mean to But I secretly fell in love with my best friend. Now it’s gone from being delightful and supportive to awkward and painful.
Unfazed I can’t remember the last time I picked up a newspaper. I lost interest in reading the same old depressing and boring stories: gang and drug turf wars, cops catching and releasing the same “known to police low lives” and local politicians who’ve fallen from grace and fail miserably. None of this stuff fazes me anymore. Not in the least.
Visit 14
THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT
to post a Confession JUNE 3 – 10 / 2021
you should. That’s too strong a word. But I definitely think you could. b I’M DATING SOMEONE 13 years younger than me. He’s a monogamous man and I am not a monogamous woman. We’ve been monogamous due to the pandemic but with the explicit understanding that we won’t work out in the long term due to our different opinions on monogamy. I will be vaccinated soon, but I don’t want to break up with him after I get the hots for someone else. That seems like a dick move. My lizard brain tells me that if he would explore nonmonogamy he’d come to the conclusion that it’s a good approach. Should I put on my big-girl pants and break it off? - Rip Off The Bandage Albeit Nicely
to end it after finding someone else you wanna fuck—or before—but you will need to give this guy a heads-up before you fuck someone else. And who knows? He may be willing to give nonmonogamy a try once the pandemic ends (perhaps one-sided nonmonogamy, e.g., you’re free to sleep with other people and he’s free to remain monogamous to you), ROTBAN, just as you were willing to give monogamy a try while the pandemic raged. He’s significantly younger, but I assume he’s an adult (he is an adult, right?) and, as an adult, he’s free to make his own choices. Your only obligation is to ensure he has all the information he needs to make a fully informed choice.
You don’t have
b I’M A RECENTLY separated 42-year-old straight male. I’m Internet dating for the first time, and I met an awesome girl who makes me laugh, makes me playlists on Spotify, and is just generally amazing. Of course, there’s a glitch: I’m not attracted to her. I tried, but I think the romantic relationship needs to end. She has mentioned several times in the last couple of months that I treat her better than anybody she’s ever dated. (Apparently,
Bi hookup while boyfriend watches? Dan says maybe. Photo by LanaStock/Getty Images.
cooking dinner, occasional flowers, and returning texts puts me head and shoulders above everyone else?) My question: how do you break that kind of news to someone without looking like an asshole? - Anxiously Hesitating Over Looming End
Speaking of expectations… You’re a newly separated man and you’ve only been seeing this woman for a couple of months. If her expectations were reasonable and she kept them in check, AHOLE, then she knows the odds were stacked against something long-term. She’ll still be sad about the relationship ending and she might think you’re an asshole for ending it—she might actually need to think you’re an asshole to cauterize the emotional wound (so don’t argue with her if she calls you an asshole)—but if you didn’t make any premature declarations of undying love, AHOLE, then she’s unlikely to think you’re an asshole forever. And looking on the bright side, she may be less likely to put up with guys who don’t cook, don’t come through with flowers, and don’t respond to her texts in a reasonable amount of time after being with you. g Follow Dan on Twitter @FakeDanSavage. Email: mail@ savagelove.net. Website: www.savagelovecast.com.
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