It is largely agreed upon that acute calixvirus (commonly known as Stanley Cup Fever) is one of the most virulent pathogens observed in any first-world nation in the past thirty years (Burke et al, 2008). Yet, despite the disease’s high infection rate, unknown etiology, and increased prevalence in the Pacific Northwest, little attempt has been made by mainstream science to document the symptoms and spread of the pathogen.

Cases have been relatively rare since the disease’s most recent and widespread outbreak (in the Canadian city of Vancouver in 2011), however, the alarming spike in infections which unexpectedly began again on April 18 (a sudden surge in prevalence that has occurred only three times in NHL history) raises fears that this could constitute the beginnings of a pandemic of untold proportions, potentially greater in scope than the 1918 influenza pandemic, the 2003 SARS epidemic, and the 2009 Swine Flu epidemic combined.

This danger is chillingly real, as evidenced by the 2011 Vancouver outbreak. Owing to this danger, and the paucity of clinical data, Drunk in Vancouver scientists set out to document the pathology of the microorganism, with the hopes of one day developing a cure for this unique and terrifying virus.

Among the virus' early effects are the seizure and distortion of facial muscles. Oxidization of skin also may occur. Photo credit: Liam Hanham

DATA AND FINDINGS

While cases of Stanley Cup Fever have occasionally been observed in smaller numbers nationwide, it appears that, in recent years, the lush climate of the Pacific Northwest (in particular, the city of Vancouver) has emerged as the one best suited for the disease’s survival. In general, the demographic known as “Vancouver Canucks Fans” appears to be particularly susceptible to the virus’ effects, with an infection rate of nearly 90% amongst healthy subjects.

Acute calixvirus has four stages (known within the scientific community as “rounds”), with symptoms increasing in severity with each subsequent stage. Round 1 is relatively mild, resulting primarily in decreased productivity, a need to congregate in dark, crowded rooms, and an increased desire to vigorously strike the palms of others. By Round 2, symptoms increase in severity. Verbal skills are affected almost immediately, causing victims to lose their ability to form all but the most basic vowel sounds, reducing any attempt at speech to the phrase “Whoo!” (which affected individuals commonly use as an agonized attempt to communicate). By the time the disease reaches Round 3, it has severely impaired the functionality of those affected, to the point where all but the most basic tasks are completely neglected, save for criticism of Roberto Luongo. In some cases, the skin and hair have been known to turn a bright blue colour, perhaps as a result of reduced blood flow to the skin, brain, and reproductive organs. Round 4 is by far the deadliest phase of the disease, with symptoms that include acute insanity (reminiscent of the late stages of Syphillis) a need to wear a Vancouver Canucks flag as a cape (perhaps as some form of primitive folk remedy) and the irrepressible desire to cause widespread property damage and post the results to social media. Individuals from suburban areas appear to be especially susceptible to the virus, particularly those from locales accessible by bridge or tunnel, as do those with a predisposition to Adrenaline or Tapout t-shirts.

Photo credit: Liam Hanham

Controversial new research indicates that an interest in literature, cooperation, and basic human empathy seems to reduce symptoms amongst all test subjects. Some urban dwellers, particularly those in the area known as East Vancouver have managed to build up a resistance to the disease. While the exact reasons for this are unknown, it is currently presumed to be related to their wilful alienation of society.

The reason for the disease’s bizarre physical and neurological effects are unknown, however it appears similar in effect to the Olympic Fever Pandemic of 2010. Luckily, the rest of the country remains largely unaffected; for this reason, it is presumed that the Rocky Mountains provide an effective barrier against the spread of this highly pathogenic invader. Drunk in Vancouver pathologists currently have no concrete evidence as to how the disease is carried, but it is suspected that the most common form of transmission is simple palm-to-palm contact.

Lesions on the skin of an afflicted subject. Photo credit: Liam Hanham

SUPPLEMENTARY DATA AND DISCUSSION

There is no known cure for acute calixvirus. Victims have been observed ingesting large amounts of a foul, fermented beverage known as “Canadian” in an attempt to alleviate their suffering, however, in truth, the ingestion of these beverages only serves to increase the spread of the disease. As such, the CDC has ordered the early closure of all liquor and spirits vendors in the immediate area, in the hopes of slowing the spread of the disease. While there is little evidence to suggest that the virus will progress beyond Round 1 in 2012, scientists are nonetheless preparing a number of contingency plans.

To date, no vaccine has been developed. The only other effective treatments thus far have been phenacyl bromide and other lachrymatory agents (colloquially known as “Tear Gas”), which were used with great success during the disease’s most violent outbreak, less than one year ago (Quinn and Burke, 2011). The use of widespread public shaming as an inoculating agent has yet to be proven.

Curiously, within the Vancouver Canucks Fan population, there are particular individuals with full or partial immunity to acute calixvirus. Known colloquially as “Bandwagoners”, these individuals manifest a milder form of the illness, with symptoms that vacillate in severity, indicating the presence of natural serum antibodies. Within this particular group lies all hope for the future, and further study of their unique physiology is crucial in preventing the spread of this terrifying disease.

Photo credit: Liam Hanham

CONCLUSION

Though it has not yet been confirmed as “infectious”, acute calixvirus remains a serious threat to world health, and as such, requires immediate action on the part of global policymakers. Acute calixvirus has yet to be recognized as an official epidemic by the World Health Organization and, as of this writing, its outbreak has not effected an increase in their Pandemic Alert Level.

If the spread of this disease is left unchecked, there is no telling the extent of the global catastrophe that could occur. While Round 4 outbreaks are relatively rare, and although, despite a recent surge in infections, it seems unlikely that the virus will even progress to Round 2 in 2012, authorities have now seen firsthand the devastating effect of inaction on this issue. There is some speculation that the Cup itself may provide a cure, however, as of this writing, science has yet to find definitive proof, and, given the “at-risk” nature of Vancouver Canucks fans, authorities are instead contemplating the possibility of a cull.

Police prepare a weapon of last resort. Photo credit: Liam Hanham

- Edward Lear

On April 1st, 1968, a tall, bespectacled, 35-year-old former social worker named Joachim Foikis received $3,500 from the Canada Council for the Arts, in order to finance a unique, self-imposed mission unseen since Elizabethan England: the vanished tradition of “Town Fool”. Dressed in his traditional “fool’s motley” (a tricornered hat, handmade red-and-blue outfit, and bauble), he was photographed dancing a merry jig inside City Hall while lawyers, citizens, and the mayor himself stewed in impotent rage.

“When I read about it this morning, I saw red,” griped Mayor Tom Campbell, a notoriously humourless establishment figure despised by the city’s youth. “An old-age pensioner, who’s worked all his life for his country, gets $1,200 a year. Here’s a fellow who refuses to work and they give him a $3,500 young-age pension. Couldn’t we use it for public housing for senior citizens, retarded children, pensioners, deserving students?”

Image Courtesy of the Vancouver Public Library

The 35-year-old Foikis – who held two university degrees (one in economics from the University of Berlin, and the other in Literature from UBC), was already well known throughout the city for his off-kilter antics, his aim, according to interviews with The Sun and The Province, “to spread joy and confusion”, while at the same time to “mock the four pillars of society: money, status, respectability, and conformity.” He spent his days in the courthouse square, speaking with anyone willing to talk. He petitioned City Council to institute a “Fool Tax” (one cent per ordinary citizen, and two cents per politician). He held street parties for the residents of the Downtown Eastside. He attended the annual general meeting of the Architectural Institute of B.C. with a troupe of mimes and a loaf of bread. He purchased a wagon drawn by donkeys, and drove it up Cambie Street in the middle of rush hour. And, for his commitment to the ridiculous, he enjoyed a level of celebrity that transcended his surroundings, being profiled by The New York Times and The Globe and Mail, and finally finding himself in 1969’s Encyclopedia Britannica Yearbook. For three years – starting with his “coming out” at the city’s 1967 Canadian Centennial Celebrations (where he was threatened with a knife by a sailor who thought he was a communist) – he played the Fool, promoting discussion, drawing ire, and promulgating joy, before vanishing just as abruptly as he’d appeared.

“Vancouver’s Town Fool disturbs you,” reasoned a 1969 editorial in The Vancouver Sun. “He is warm and friendly, easy to talk to, almost always cheerful. Yet he challenges. Not only in what he says but by being who he is, he insults your rat race – the business of working for a living or for a reputation or to acquire things. Joachim Foikis has opted out with style. What he’s saying is that we’re caught up in the things of this world more than we want to admit to.”

“Foikis was well-read in the arts and philosophy,” explained a 1973 feature in Dick MacLean’s Leisure Magazine, “and could quote Spinoza as easily as he could quote Socrates, Alice in Wonderland as easily as he could quote Mother Goose.”

The Fool’s job, Foikis explained, citing ancient traditions from Egypt, Greco-Roman empires, and 14th-century Europe, “was to constantly remind the king he was not God – to keep him humble. The fool was on the bottom of the social order, the king was on the top – but they were identical. In medieval morality plays the fool was exempted from the last judgement – because he had already judged himself.”

It was a position that the husband and father of two decided on more or less impulsively, early in 1967, after wandering through a number of careers, from social worker to labourer, and partway through training to become a librarian.

“One day, about a year ago, Mrs. Foikis returned from a walk with the children and Joachim announced his decision ‘Just like that,’” reported The Province, in an interview with Foikis’ wife. “He was going to become the Town Fool, and without more ado, they roared off to town to buy some material for his costume.”

“Our needs are slight, so I can work for a year at a good salary, then take a year off to read,” Foikis explained, in a 1968 interview with Weekend Magazine. “It is foolishness that man should be the servant of money. Money should be the servant of man.”

Image Courtesy of "Weekend Magazine"

And so, Foikis began to spend time downtown, hitchhiking in each morning, and wandering the streets stopping anywhere that people would gather. He began a Fool of the Month contest, but soon gave up due to the sheer volume of mail he received. He arrived at a public meeting on education held at Point Grey Secondary School, and, despite having two university degrees, declared that education was “a waste of time”, and that the building’s doors should be locked forever. And, at the same time, his reputation grew, both locally, and across North America. He received an invitation to meet Secretary of State Gerard Pelletier (which he turned down). He was profiled on CBC, and received accolades from noted journalist Richard Needham. He appeared in The Sun and The Province on such a regular basis, that he now has two separate clippings files in the Vancouver Public Library.

“The biggest fools always get lots of publicity,” Foikis stated, nonchalantly, regarding his newfound celebrity.

However, not everyone shared the media’s love of the Fool. In fact, news of his Canada Council grant polarized public opinion, and drew considerable criticism from politicians, civic figures, and locals citywide. The grant was so contentious, that lawyer Peter J. deVooght sought a writ of prohibition to prevent the Council from awarding it at all.

“We have to get by on $1,200 a year,” griped Vincent Yates, president of the B.C. Old Age Pensioners’ Organization. “He’s too damn lazy to get a job and do some work.”

“Of course, the charge that the Fool is lazy and does no work is totally false and is based on a misconception as to the nature of work,” a 1968 editorial in The Sun argued. “The Fool goes to the young people and to the Indians on Hastings Street, not with lectures or charitable handouts or demeaning welfare payments, but planning parties and happenings to restore their lost sense of self-respect. Who is more enlightened, we or the Fool? [...]The fundamental objection to the Fool goes far deeper than the charge (which we have seen to be erroneous) that he does no work. It is based on an unreasoning fear and hatred of anyone who dares to ridicule our obsession with material goals. We tolerate – even encourage – people who speak scornfully of God or Religion, or Canada, or Love, but let someone poke fun at money and our penchant for status-seeking and the cry immediately goes up, ‘Burn his donkeys!’ Unlike the hippies, whom he superficially resembles, the Fool stands for imaginative involvement in the problems confronting society.”

Image Courtesy of "Weekend Magazine"

“The trouble with many people is that they can never reach a threshold for what they think are their needs,” Fokis responded in The Sun shortly thereafter. “They keep escalating their needs up and up, and they can’t keep up with them. I don’t want to spend more time than necessary making money. I want the freedom to study and philosophize.”

However, despite the discourse rampant in the local media, nothing could change the fact that, after a year of serving in an unofficial capacity, Joachim Foikis was no longer simply a fool – he was a fool with the blessing of the federal government. And, throughout 1968 and 1969, he continued his activities in earnest – staging a dance-party at the corner of Granville and Broadway (where he was arrested for disturbing the peace), embarking on a lecture tour of Ontario where he spoke on the nature of folly (where he was again arrested for disturbing the peace), purchasing musical instruments to host a musical “happening” in Pigeon Park for the city’s homeless, and, finally, unveiling his infamous donkey cart, bought from a farm on the Island.

“Downtown rush-hour motorists Friday were the first to experience coexistence between horse-powered engines and donkey-powered carts when Foikis went out for a test drive,” reported The Sun, on the affair. “They rested – sometimes after only a few hoof-clops – in bus zones, intersections, and in any lane they happened to be travelling.”

Foikis enraged motorists and baffled magistrates wherever he went (the cart’s maiden voyage was to the front steps of City Hall), often tying the animals up right on the sidewalk, and offering rides to anyone who asked.

“Take them up into the council chambers,” remarked a bystander, to The Province. “They wouldn’t know the difference.”

Council was, naturally, unimpressed, and magistrates, relying on a bylaw which prohibited the keeping of livestock within city limits, impounded the animals four separate times. On one occasion, according to Foikis’ own recollection, he was approached by a magistrate while attempting to hitch his donkeys back to the wagon, and (again) charged with disturbing the peace.

“Sir, your donkey is polluting my city.” the magistrate said, to which Fokis replied, “Sir, your city is polluting my donkey.”

Foikis began to drift closer to the fringes of society by the middle of 1969, abandoning his traditional fool’s motley for street clothes, and allowing his hair and beard to grow out until he more closely resembled the hippies with whom he had always been associated. His wife, tired of his seemingly endless wanderings, left for her native England, taking their two children. His grant depleted, he survived on welfare, staging happenings with less and less frequency, the novelty of his position beginning to diminish amongst the local population.

In his last recorded interview of the 60s, in December of 1969, Foikis seemed weary of urban life and of Vancouver, making mention of a desire to try “the poverty trip”, and, shortly thereafter, vanished from the city altogether. He spent the next 15 years in self-imposed poverty on Lasqueti Island, living off of the land, and – according to a report from The Seattle Times – with “Lyn, the sweetest of nymphets.” He finally resurfaced in Victoria, working as a clerk for the Ministry of Environment, and, from there, reports of his activities become even spottier. He is said to have appeared at Vancouver Public Library, demanding that his clipping file be destroyed, then returning several months later, pleased that it was still intact. He was reported to be simultaneously shy of the media (meeting reporter Jim Christy, he identified himself as “a friend” of Foikis’ and answered all questions in the third person), and eager to reappear (later consenting to a 1990 interview with Monday Magazine, where he outlined the highs and lows of his career). After this, all signs of Joachim Foikis disappear from the mainstream media. No articles contain his name, and retrospectives on his career seem to have slowed to a trickle. And finally, in 2007, at the age of 72, Joachim Foikis died – in a sad but fitting end, after he fell from a wall while dancing to a band in Victoria’s inner harbour.

“It was something to get outside myself,” Foikis concluded, of his career, in a 1968 interview with Weekend Magazine. “I was too introverted. But now I have met so many people. And I have helped quite a few in their folly, I think. The time will soon come when I will no longer be a fool. I would like to go back to my books. Maybe I would study at university again. Maybe there would be someone to take my place. There will always be a need for a fool.”

“This is a very sensitive community. You need to be pleasant. You need to smile. You need to tell them what you’re doing, and who you’re doing it for, otherwise they will shut you down and they won’t talk to you ever again. Understand?”

He’s dressed in plaid and suspenders, an outfit conforming to the theme of this year’s convention: “The Great White North”. Around him is chaos: lines sprawling across the lobby, tables being set up and furnished with antique printers, handprinted signs being taped to walls. Encircling the door to the main conference room, a crude igloo has been fashioned out of strips of painted cardboard. A Husky in a Mountie outfit strolls past. Two people nearby are wearing tails. An aging gay man with leopard ears and a rainbow maple leaf tattooed on his calf shouts “We have a lineup!”, and lets out a cheer.

Understand?

No, frankly. But, then again, that’s why we’re here, in the lobby of VancouFUR, the city’s first Furry convention, seeking the answer to one simple question: Exactly what the hell is a Furry?

The reason behind Aphinity’s cryptic warning is still something of a mystery to us (as was the extensive media vetting process we were forced to undergo at a Tim Hortons in Burnaby less than 24 hours ago). Drawn in by nothing more than the prospect of a chuckle and a colourful photojournal, our knowledge of Furries is limited to two simple facts:

1. They are a community who enjoy dressing up as, acting like, and celebrating anthropomorphized animals (read: animals with human characteristics).

2. It may also be a sex thing.

So, exactly what the hell is a Furry?

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

“Furries began in 33,000 BCE,” explains Star Wonder, during an afternoon workshop entitled Understanding Furries. “Evidence of this was found in cave paintings in Spain and France – images of humans with animal heads. They felt that these animals were their guiding spirits, and that it was a part of them, and who they were.”

Star Wonder and co-host Kuviare (whose collar and tail, he insists, are worn at school, home and work) explain the use of anthropomorphized animals in ancient Egypt, describing hybrid gods such as Thoth, Ra, and Anubis, and liken the modern movement to the Native American practice of invoking spirit animals.

“It’s a way to regain that connection to nature,” Star Wonder explains. “Going back to our roots. It’s a way of being comfortable with yourself, and with your sexuality and personality. When I was little, I would eat cat food, and go in the litterbox. I never told anyone, but I went in the litterbox.”

It becomes apparent that, questionable toilet-training notwithstanding, Star Wonder and Kuviare treat being a Furry as more than simply a hobby; for them, it’s a crucial part of their social and sexual identity, and the animals they’ve chosen are intended as an  extension of themselves.

“It’s like coming out of the furry closet,” Star Wonder explains, “in the same way you have to do if you’re gay.”

The pair make a point of detailing the difference between “Furry Fandom” and the “Furry Community”, noting (with the utmost seriousness) that there is a deep internal divide between those who simply enjoy anthropomorphized animals, and those for whom being a Furry is a lifestyle choice.

“We’re trying to get people to stop saying ‘Fandom’,” Star Wonder insists. “Fandom implies that you’re fond of it. But being a Furry – it’s all in your heart; it’s part of who you are.”

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

According to our hosts, less than 10% of Furries wear the full-body “fursuit” (a number reported as anywhere between 10 and 25% in independent studies), and even less don the infamous “mursuit” – a furry outfit with exposed genitals. While the pair carefully abstain from discussion of the community’s adult leanings, they make the point that notions of Fursuit intercourse popularized by the mainstream media are not only inaccurate, but, due to the likelihood of overheating, completely impractical.

“Nobody has sex in the fursuits,” Star Wonder says, gravely. “You would die.”

But, if only a small minority are “suiters”, virtually all have created a “Fursona” – which involves the creation of an animal identity, a name, and, in many cases, an elaborate backstory. No self-respecting VancouFUR attendee would be caught without a laminated tag hanging from their neck, featuring hand-drawn avatars above names like Silvermink, Indigo, and Fisk. While some are easily identifiable as canine or feline species, others have created hybrids to suit their needs (co-chair Coal Silvermuzzle, for example, identifies as a “folf” – a mixture of fox and wolf). Some, such as Kuviare, have multiple Fursonas, each with a different set of characteristics.

“A lot of people are nervous and just want to get a fursuit and be a part of the community,” Star Wonder concludes. “But they already are in the heart. You need to take your time to develop that persona. It can take days, months, or years.”

Star Wonder and Kuviare, it seems, are something of a pair of Furry Activists, pushing for acceptance and rallying against the persecution they perceive; one can easily imagine them talking of Furry Pride, or leading marches for Furry Rights. But, for all the talk of identity and spirituality, the question remains: exactly what the hell is a Furry?

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

Internationally, the community (or fandom, if you prefer) has existed since the late 1980s (its link to the cave paintings of 33,000 BCE remaining, as yet, unverified), born from a primordial soup of Star Trek Conventions, animated films, and DIY fanzines, and has grown to the point where Anthrocon (billed as “The World’s Largest Furry Convention”) brings close to $3 million annually into the Pittsburgh economy. Apart from conventions, the community exists largely online, in forums such as Fur Affinity, and through online role-playing games like FURRYMuck, and Furcadia (billed as “a magical world where the animals have learned to speak and walk upon two legs”). There is no accurate count of British Columbia’s Furry population, however “B.C. Furries”, the local discussion board, claims 970 members, and the convention itself has, on its first morning, already received 152 paid pre-registrations. By late afternoon, the event has expanded to several dozen attendees, circulating through the lobby, purchasing Furry-related merchandise in the “Dealer’s Den”, and spending time in the alarmingly-titled “Headless Lounge” (which, to our disappointment, is merely a place where overheated fursuiters can go to cool off). We pass a thrilling 45 minutes at a workshop entitled “Traditional Tailmaking”, learning the basics of crafting the perfect rear adornment – when it comes to sewing, we’re informed, medium tension is best, and, when attaching a tail to one’s belt (as is customary), it’s important to sew two loops, for increased “tail stability”.

“When I attach a tail,” our host explains, gravely, “I want a solid support system.”

We wander the convention for a further hour, exploring the Dealer’s Den, venturing upstairs to an area known as “Free Play” (which turns out to be less exciting than it sounds), and having a 10-minute conversation about photography with a chipmunk in a hawaiian shirt.

“This chipmunk got lei’ed!” he exclaims, chuckling, indicating the flowers around his neck.

And it’s then, shortly after attending a spirited game of fursuit musical chairs, that we encounter Mountain Blue Fox Joe.

Photo Credit: Liam Hanham

His costume, which is 25 years old (and one of five fox-themed outfits he’s constructed), is specially engineered and tightly-fitted to “dissipate the heat” (and is, according to Aphinity, “one of the best suits in the Fandom”). LED lights are contained in the tail, and the head itself features elaborate animatronics allowing it to snarl, blink, and move its ears – all achieved through the use of tongue-activated switches.

“Like they use with deep-sea divers, and astronauts,” he explains, proudly.

A self-confessed “Trekkie”, Joe claims to spend six months of the year operating a goldmine in the mountains of Alaska, working underground, a job he’s performed in isolation for 28 years. Joe has been building suits (“costuming”, as he calls it, before sheepishly adding “they keep correctin’ me”) for 25 years, first on his own, and then, much later, as part of the community. He insists that there’s no sexual element to the lifestyle, maintaining that his material is “all G-Rated”. Instead, he likens it to a religion, again relating the community to the Native American practice of utilising totem animals.

“It’s all, uh, it’s all clean fun,” he insists. “It’s like going to Disneyland every day. Basically. It is Disneyland. You become Disneyland. Every kid goes: ‘Daddy, I wish I could do that.’ So, I says: ‘Why are you wishin’?’ I says: ‘Do it! Make these suits! Don’t let anybody stop ya!’”

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

However, for all the talk of spirituality and identity (and Disneyland), it still doesn’t effectively answer the question: exactly what the hell is a Furry? There’s a party line of sorts here, a uniform portrayal of the community that contains more than a little spin, and isn’t entirely satisfying. As it turns out, there is another side to the Furry Community, a side not explored during the daylight hours, a side whose very existence is denied by people like Joe. And it’s a side we might never have glimpsed if, following our talk with Joe, we weren’t abruptly accosted by security.

“Oh, it’s only you,” the guard says, rounding the corner.

“What?”

“Oh, we were told there was media poking around, asking questions. We didn’t know it was just you guys.”

“Somebody called security on us?”

It takes only a moment to ascertain the culprits – a mink, a rabbit and a cat who passed only moments earlier, regarding us with suspicion – and only a further second to chase them down.

“Did you call security on us?” we ask.

They nod, nervous.

“Why?”

As they explain (speaking only on condition of anonymity), they disagree with the portrayal of their community being fed to us throughout the day by people like Aphinity and Blue Fox Joe, insisting instead that the heavily-downplayed sexual aspects of the community are not only present, but prevalent.

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

“Which is, I don’t think a lot of people want to say,” Rabbit explains. “As gets mentioned by some people: ‘It’s a teeny, tiny percentage of people for whom this is about sex.’ I think it is a significant percentage of people for whom this is about sex.”

“I feel like it’s the party line that it’s a tiny minority of people for whom it’s about sex,” Mink agrees. “I feel like there are a lot of them. I feel like the public image of Furries would be better if people kind of would own up to that, rather than being paranoid about it, and running around telling everyone it’s not about sex.”

“Of course, for some people it’s about sex,” Rabbit adds.

“Everything is about sex for some people,” Cat interjects. “So are shoes.”

Mink nods.

“But I feel like our public image would be better if we-”

“-stopped lying,” Rabbit interrupts. “I know there will be people who will be like: ‘Finally!’ But not everybody. And there are people who are absolutely not lying – it is totally not sexual for them, and they are deeply confused by those of us for whom it is sexual.”

The sexual aspect of the Furry Community, though by no means universal, is most visible in “Yiff” Art (Furry-related pornography), but also includes character-based role play, and the practice of “tying” – which, according to Star Wonder and Kuviare in the late-night, adult-only version of Understanding Furries, involves intercourse using manufactured genital covers shaped like the knot at the end of a dog’s penis.

“It has a very deep spiritual connection for some furries, myself included,” Kuviare explains. “To tie with someone is to mark them as yours, and to unify the connection.”

An instant later, he pulls out a laser pointer, and Star Wonder pounces, cat-like, attempting to chase it down.

“She can’t help it,” he chuckles.

We head for the exit less than 10 minutes later.

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

But, in attempting to reach the doors, we’re met by a storm of protest; dozens of people who want to talk, want to continue the discussion, want to tell their story; people who don’t care if we’re being pleasant, if we smile, if we tell them what we’re doing and who we’re doing it for.

So, exactly what the hell is a Furry? For all of the organizers’ paranoia, for all of the deep internal division, for all of their fears about public perception, for all the slightly unsettling realities of mixing cartoon characters and sex, Furries appear to be nothing more than a harmless community of social outliers, people who desire a grander, more exciting identity that their upbringing or their social status couldn’t provide. People who have discovered, within a community that is a bizarre mashup of other subcultures, a place where they can be gods and goddesses and celebrities in a way their regular life would never allow.

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

“A lot of people who fall into the ‘geek’ subset of people tend to gravitate toward stuff like this,” Mink confesses. “I think, for a lot of people who had issues growing up, it’s a bit of an escape to go online and interact with people they don’t feel are going to judge them.”

“Conventionally attractive people are already getting laid a lot,” Rabbit adds. “They’re succeeding really happily, trotting along through the average world. They’re much less likely to be looking for anything else.”

“You know what would make your article a lot more interesting?” Cat asks, as we begin packing up to leave. “If you figured out what species of animal you would be, and put that in your story.”

“Well, why did you choose your animals?” we ask, pointing toward Mink. “What are your mink-like qualities?”

He hesitates.

“You know… I don’t really know…”

“You look like you have very soft hair,” we offer.

Mink sounds touched.

“I do have soft hair,” he replies, grinning. “And I like fish.”

With that, we depart into the rain, leaving the Furries behind. On the SkyTrain home, we find ourselves examining those around us, wondering what their species might be – what their grander, more exciting identity might entail. The skinny, bearded fellow in the 80s high-tops. The greying, bespectacled older woman in high-fastening corduroy pants. Mink. Rabbit. Ocelot. Musician. Athlete. Journalist. Gods and goddesses and celebrities.

Exactly what the hell are Furries?

1. They are a community who enjoy dressing up as, acting like, and celebrating anthropomorphized animals (read: animals with human characteristics).

2. It may also be a sex thing.

Oh, yeah, and if we were going to be an animal, it would be a fox, combined with a duck, combined with a female sheep.

Figure it out.

[Editor's Note: The original version of this story ran with an incorrect spelling of "Aphinity".]

- RJ McDougal, BC Real Estate, 1911

Last year, the average price of a detached home in Vancouver passed $887,000, triggering groans from locals, and renewed worries about overseas property speculation pricing the average homebuyer out of the market. With mean house prices rising by 10-15% per year, average prices that, when compared with income, now exceed those in New York and London, and Vancouver bearing the distinction of being one of the three least-affordable cities on the planet, real estate, speculation, and affordability are topics on the lips of activists, politicians and locals all over town.

So how did it get this way? What changed? When did overseas ownership take over the market? How did Vancouver go from being a city where one could reasonably expect to purchase a single-family home, to the most expensive city in the country?

The reality is, nothing’s changed. Contrary to the cozy little myths about inflated land values and foreign ownership started in the 80s by mainland China, the factors that fuel the city’s vibrant real estate market are actually little different than they were 100 years ago. In fact, if it weren’t for the global property market, there may never have been a Vancouver in the first place. The only difference is, back then, the speculation that transformed the tiny logging village of Granville into a bustling metropolis was coming from entirely different places: the United States and Europe.

The Early Years

James Quiney's Real Estate Office, circa 1920. Image Courtesy of the Vancouver Archives

In 1887, only a year after incorporation, Vancouver had 12 grocery stores and 16 real estate firms. The city’s first mayor, Malcolm McLean, was a real estate agent. But, in the late 1870s, before the arrival of the CPR, land in what is now downtown Vancouver sold for approximately $1.00 an acre. Previous to that, the West End itself was granted to  Englishmen Samuel Brighouse, John Morton and William Hailstone for a total of 116 pounds (a sum thought to be so exorbitant that it earned them the nickname “The Three Greenhorns”). However, by 1886, with the announcement that Vancouver would be the home of the CPR’s coveted Western Terminus, property values skyrocketed, and suddenly a lot near Granville and Dunsmuir was selling for $400. By 1893, a lot in the same area sold for $1,100, and, by 1900, an adjoining lot went for roughly $4,250. Incredibly, by 1912, – at a time when wages were roughly 50 cents an hour, and a tailored suit cost less than $40 – a lot in the very same area was worth $725,000. Property speculation was so rampant that, when the first CPR land auction took place in 1886, (the railway was granted large tracts of land in exchange for extending their Western Terminus) Vancouver CEO Harry Abbott realized with dismay that speculators “had seized upon all the best sites without any intention of putting up buildings.” By 1889, proceeds from the sale of granted land in Vancouver had made the CPR more money than in all other company towns across the country, combined.

“Better chances for investment were never offered,” reads an 1870s advertisement in The West Shore, out of Portland, Oregon. “Lots that can now be bought for a few hundred dollars will beyond a doubt be worth as many thousands within a year or two. Investment of only a few hundred dollars will yet return fortunes to those that have the foresight to realize the future in store for this place.”

Growth and Crisis

By 1912,  the market was an orgy of borrowing, spending, and inflation, a place where real estate fever had even hit those who could least afford it; according to a 1912 survey conducted by the Ministerial Union of British Columbia (entitled “The Crisis in BC”), during a single week in October, more than 40% of the land-purchase applications received were from working-class people. Vancouver had become a place where, according to novelist Bertrand Sinclair, the common man would “go without lunch to make payments on plots of land in distant suburbs.”

Construction, circa 1953. Image Courtesy of the Vancouver Archives

In fact, so great was the influence of the real estate industry on the development of Vancouver that it influenced the names of many well-known streets.

“During that land boom at the turn of the century, American speculators bought large tracts of land in the area of Ninth Avenue and Westminster Road,” Anne Broadfoot explains, in her history of the Greater Vancouver Real Estate Board. “To promote sales, they decided to upgrade street names, so in 1909, Westminster Road became Main Street, and ninth [sic] Avenue became Broadway – familiar names found in many major centres around the world, so bound to appeal to the cosmopolite. News reports of the day show that it worked, because all the land sold quickly.”

However, the prewar boom was not to last. Between 1913 and 1915, following the U.S. stock market collapse, and resultant worldwide depression, Vancouver’s real estate bubble burst for the first (and possibly only) time; suddenly, commercial rents declined by 50%, and ordinary working people, no longer able to meet their obligations, defaulted on their loans. The city of South Vancouver went into receivership. The market was decimated. In fact, there is one recorded instance of a corner lot on Cambie and Broadway being listed for $90,000, and eventually selling for less than $8,000.

Even though the Depression took longer to affect Vancouver’s real estate market than it did the rest of the province, construction slowed to a virtual standstill. This, combined with the sudden influx of unemployed men and women seeking refuge in its neighbourhoods ensured that, by the time servicemen were returning from overseas after the Second World War, the city was being affected by a severe housing shortage. Even the creation of the Vancouver Housing Registry (started during the Depression with the intention of encouraging homeowners to rent empty rooms to prospective tenants) couldn’t completely solve the problem, and, faced with little other choice, people began to crowd into existing buildings. The crisis eased only slightly throughout the 1950s (fuelled by the continued demand for single-family homes) and, through it all, prices continued to rise.

“It may be, also, that to achieve a truly low-cost home in this high-priced time we will have to spread the repayments over a far longer period than the terms accepted today,” complains a Vancouver Sun editorial from 1958. “Housing costs are high, but we can’t afford to throw up our hands and say we can’t afford to build many more houses until costs come down again. In a city growing as fast as ours this would be the counsel of stupidity and despair. We must have more homes and we must have them at prices people can afford to pay.”

The Condo Boom

Though housing price increases in Vancouver continued to outpace the national market by a substantial margin (in 1967 alone, according to property assessments, the value of lots for single-family dwellings increased by 25-35%), there was one crucial factor that would change the face of city real estate forever: apartment living. Before 1966, it literally wasn’t possible to own your own apartment; you either owned the entire building, or you rented from someone who did. Apartment buildings, viewed as a terribly downmarket option, were exclusively rented, usually only a few stories high, and were generally built outside of the downtown core. It was only with the enactment of the Strata Titles Act in 1966 that it became possible for British Columbia’s apartment owners to subdivide their properties into individual units for sale, thus allowing for multiple owners. Today, 99% of the downtown population lives in apartment buildings. However, even in the 60s, downtown highrise living was still considered a revolutionary idea, one which would take time to catch on, and would require massive changes to existing zoning bylaws.

Plans for Apartment Development, circa 1960s. Image Courtesy of the Vancouver Public Library

“Downtown zoning should be changed and great apartment towers should rise above stores,” a 1966 article in the Province suggests. “If thousands of people had their homes downtown, they would both extend the daily ‘life’ of the city and reduce its traffic problems.”

In 1958, 75% of all housing starts were declared as single-family dwellings. By the mid-1960s, apartment construction outnumbered house construction by 2 to 1. Suddenly condominium living was so popular that apartment owners began rushing to convert their rental stock into 99-year leases and selling them to buyers. However, it wasn’t long before speculators got involved in this lucrative new market. In fact, the problem became so pronounced that, following a report made to council, the city of North Vancouver requested a provincial ban on any such sales, and both Vancouver and Burnaby put a moratorium on all rental-lease conversions. The report, prepared by a North Vancouver land agent, estimated that close to 25% of all condo sales in the city were being made to speculators. The report details one incident of a suite purchased in May of 1973 for $38,500 and sold for $42,000 later the same day.

Though Vancouver enacted a lease conversion freeze in 1973, and provincial programs such as MURB (the Multiple Unit Residential Building program) were enacted in hopes of encouraging developers to construct purpose-built rentals, cries about the city’s lack of affordable housing remained on people’s lips. Accusations of developers abusing MURB are evident in many of the papers of the day, as in the case of the False Creek developments in the 1980s – with word of developers building condos for tax breaks, and then selling the units to wealthy speculators.

Map showing the history of Urban Development in Vancouver, circa 1963. Image Courtesy of the Vancouver Public Library

“Many of the suites are expected to be rented out by investors,” reports a Vancouver Sun article from 1982, regarding the development. “A $100 million False Creek apartment project will soon become a refuge for many of the city’s wealthy – and a renter’s rights spokesman calls it ‘typical’ of lower mainland development.”

“There’s no shortage of expensive apartments,” comments Tom Lalonde, of the Greater Vancouver Renters’ Association, in an interview with the paper. “Developers have used the MURB program as an example of affordable housing, (but) MURB has never given anybody affordable housing.”

Even Pennyfarthing Development spokesman Ian McBean admits, when interviewed, that “the project falls well short of the False Creek apartment goal of one-third high income, one-third medium income, and one-third lower income, but added: ‘Construction costs and land costs are extremely costly. It would be economically impossible to do that.’”

Land of Destiny

“Like the European Union, Vancouver is crumbling, not along ethnic lines, but among the owns and owns-not,” an article in this week’s edition of the Vancouver Courier reads. “Globalization, in the form of foreign investment, may help chase an entire generation of native-born residents from the city and deny other immigrants a chance at home ownership. Remedies are scarce. But returning property to people who live, work and raise families here seems like a good start.”

There’s no debating that Vancouver is the most expensive city in the country. And, it’s possible to argue that that part of its value is the result of speculative investment. However, contrary to the views expressed by newspapers such as the Courier (Mark Hasiuk’s article asserts that “it began in the 1980s, when waves of Hong Kong residents including members of the business elite, wary of communist China’s pending takeover, poured across the Pacific, gobbling up property with converted HKDs”), this isn’t a recent phenomenon. People from all over the world have been investing in Vancouver for more than 130 years. In fact, Vancouver was a real estate investment before it was even incorporated as a city. The factors that draw investors today are no different than those that brought the European settlers of the 1870s; simply, that Vancouver is a desirable place to live. As the first few generations of Vancouverites bought, sold, swapped, and developed, and realized the desirability of their new city’s climate, location, and resource wealth, the land took on incredible value unbelievably quickly.

And we’ve been bitching about it ever since.

“We live in the land of destiny,” RJ McDougal wrote, in 1911. “In the land of wealth where, though gold is not idly picked off the rocks or from the pavements in the streets, it is just as surely gained from the platted acres and twenty-footers around us. One day an artisan may put the scanty savings of a lifetime into a tiny holding out among the evergreens, and on the morrow almost, he is building city blocks from the proceeds thereof.”

Her laugh is a pleasant, high-pitched hiccup, like the pop of a soap-bubble. When going into details, her voice betrays a vague, youthful discomfort. But, when discussing her eighteen-month stint as a Vancouver-based phone-sex operator, (fittingly enough, over the phone) the writer and aspiring filmmaker is surprisingly frank, exposing a grounded attitude toward sexuality that contrasts with her vocal quality in a way that verges on uncomfortable – especially when she gets to the parts about pedophiles, reptile fetishes, and men who have an insatiable urge to compare their penises to McDonald’s french fries. For a little over a year, Christi (who has since retired from the business) was one of a dying breed, part of a vast, decentralized network of independent contractors, voices speaking from the darkness all across North America, most working from home to satisfy the increasingly specialized needs of an ever-shrinking list of clients.

“It was about 95% weird stuff,” Christi says of her former career. “The thing is, if you just want to have regular, vanilla phone-sex, you can probably find that somewhere for free on the internet. It’s a lot harder to find someone willing to indulge your dinosaur fantasy. That, you have to pay for.”

Unsurprisingly, since the proliferation of the internet and the advent of the webcam, the phone-sex industry has seen a substantial decline worldwide; once the only option for anonymous, long-distance erotic services, it now plays host to a number of what could be euphemistically called “niche” markets – requests too bizarre, improbable or criminal to be achieved through live video streaming.

“The vast majority of the big companies, they go to independent contractors (as in women who work from home),” Christi explains. “They don’t go through a call centre. Even the call centres work off of a website that is used mostly by independent phone-sex operators. It’s called Niteflirt.com, and you can set up a line for free.”

There’s virtually no way to tell how many phone-sex operators work and live in the city of Vancouver. The city issues no business licenses specific to the profession, and the decentralized nature of an industry that now, ironically, gets most of its clientele from the internet, as well as Niteflirt’s commitment to anonymity for both caller and operator, makes it impossible to track. Even finding Christi was maddeningly difficult. In the end, it was only possible thanks to her maintaining a Twitter feed under the moniker of “Night Operator”, oftentimes updating it as she was taking calls, reporting on some of her stranger customer interactions; the feed gained some widespread popularity only days after she set it up.

Unusually for a phone-sex operator, Christi began her career at a call-centre: a small, second-floor office buried deep within a mini-mall somewhere in Burnaby, with little inside but a few desks, phones, and some computer equipment, and no other sounds beyond the gurgle of a coffee-maker and the occasional click of the keyboard.

“I was hired because, apparently, I sound twelve on the phone,” she recalls, her voice rich with sarcasm. “I went to the interview and had the worst interview of all time, because I thought it would be funny, and then got hired anyway.”

As the sole employee working the night shift, Christi was responsible for answering calls to nearly 200 separate phone numbers – everything from Ebony Princesses, to Retired Hookers, to Fat Girls and the Pregnancy Line (“If these guys bothered to read reviews,” her Twitter feed jokes, “they would realize that I’ve been pregnant for well over a year”) to the Ignore Line, where, as the name suggests, callers get off on the idea of paying to be dismissed.

“I think my favourite call was from this guy who was super into small-penis humiliation,” she recalls. “That was a really popular line. His thing was that he wanted to be forced to drive to McDonald’s to buy french fries to compare his penis to. And, I didn’t know what to do, so I told him to wear a dress. I don’t know where he found the dress, but he definitely did drive, and I figured out where he was based on the radio station, because he’d left the radio on, and I told him that he had to buy a Kid’s Meal instead of a regular meal, and he did. Then, he bought the Kid’s Meal with a girl’s toy, and it was one of those Barbies – and, keep in mind, he’s just gone through the McDonald’s drive-thru in a dress to buy french fries to compare his penis to in the parking lot – but when I told him to put the Barbie on the dashboard, so it would look like it was looking at him, he told me that was too embarrassing. I thought it was funny that the Barbie was the catalyst. It was okay if a real live person saw him, but the Barbie? That was too much.”

And this isn’t the first time a penis fixation comes up amongst stories of Christi’s callers either. Other client requests included the aforementioned dinosaur fantasy, men with a fetish for married women, and, in one instance, a 70-year-old man with an unusual desire for penile enlargement.

“For four-and-a-half hours, [he] wanted to role-play the process of buying penis-enlargement pills over the phone,” she laughs. “We were on the phone the entire time, and then he would be like: ‘And now I’m hanging up, and now I’m calling you back and giving you my testimonial.’ The amount that he ‘grew’ from the pills changed every single time.”

Despite the popularity of some of the lines, the Burnaby call centre showed signs of unsustainability. The pay was $12 per hour. The operators earned no additional commission, even if tips were paid by grateful clients. During the day-shift, two operators worked side by side, while the third had custody of a small, private room in the back. And, as Christi describes, by the time she arrived, the business was already taking desperate steps to cut costs.

“The boss also was a phone-sex operator,” she explains. “He would just pretend to be a girl on the phone, in his little office. It was a terrible [impersonation], but often guys aren’t paying attention; as long as you’re saying what they want to hear, they don’t really care if you’re a dude, I guess.”

Then, less than two months into her employment, Christi’s boss vanished without paying his employees.

“It wasn’t as bad a situation for me as it was for the other girls who worked there,” she explains. “I was the only white girl who worked in the office. I was the only one who had gone to college. One of them had three kids, and was still working part-time at McDonald’s so she could get food for her kids at the discounted price; not paying them was really, really messed up.”

So, Christi went independent, setting up her own accounts, and taking over clients from girls leaving the business.

“I definitely made less once I went independent,” she muses, “but I was taking a lot fewer calls. Because, instead of 200 lines coming to me, I had 30-40. They were usually cheaper, because, the lower the cost of the line, the more frequently people will call [...] A lot of girls who decide they don’t want to do phone-sex anymore will have already built up a clientele,” she explains, “so they’ll either give other girls their [Niteflirt] account, or they’ll sell them. And, I knew some girls who had accounts that already had built-in people. And ratings. Because, on the website, you can rate on a 1-5 system, so if you have higher ratings, you’ll get more calls, and can charge more.”

However, by this time, certain dark realities had already become apparent. The fact is, in a business driven so far underground by market pressures and technological advances, phone-sex operators are servicing an ever-shrinking clientele, and, even to the most grounded and liberal of contractors, the desires of those remaining customers are often uncomfortable, unsavoury or downright horrific.

“The first call I ever took was, to date, the worst one I ever took,” Christi explains. “It was from a dude who chose the ad because it reminded him of his seven-year-old daughter. I had to sit there for 20 minutes. It was my first call ever, and I was still in the office, and our boss had told us: ‘No hanging up, no matter what,’ and so, after the call, I went into his office, and said: ‘What do I do in that situation?’ and he said: ‘Well, you act seven.’”

According to Christi, pedophile fetishes were among the most common: by her estimation, every second call or so. “As soon as I started working on my own, I just started hanging up as soon as that sort of thing came up,” she explains. “There were some people who would want the same thing every week, and there were some people who were escalating. And, you can tell ‘Oh, this isn’t going to end well.’ Sooner or later, they’re not going to want to just talk about it on the phone. And there’s nothing you can do because it’s a totally anonymous system.”

After roughly 18 months (many of the later ones only part-time), and for a number of reasons, Christi decided to end her association with the phone-sex world. She expresses no regrets for her time spent in the industry and, in fact, encourages others to try it as a means of earning extra money. She has logged her experiences online, told her family and friends, and even taken calls with friends in the room.

“I was surprised,” she laughs. “No one seemed upset when I told people that was what I did. Most people were like: ‘Oh! I didn’t know that was still a thing! That’s awesome.’”

So, is the phone-sex business truly a thing of the past, an industry nearing extinction? Or will it be carried by the small but enthusiastic community that continues to support it, in spite of the thousands of other options, interactive and otherwise?

“There’s always going to be an audience for phone-sex,” Christi points out, “because there are things where it’s physically impossible for people to act that stuff out in real life, like the dinosaur thing. If they see that on a webcam, they’re going to be able to tell: ‘That’s not a real dinosaur!’”

Either way, you’ll never look at french fries the same way again.

The Vancouver of 1886 was an uncultured place, an industry town with a frontier sensibility; saloons operated 24 hours per day, the city’s first brothel had opened the same year as its first elementary school, and, as ample photographic evidence suggests, local children were regularly encouraged to spend their playtime with bears. The largest employer in the area was the Hastings Mill, and the city – a rude assemblage of shacks and businesses built along a single, thin strip of road – was populated by loggers, prospectors, saloonkeepers, and families from surprisingly diverse backgrounds. However, thanks to some behind-the-scenes maneuvering by a quiet syndicate of landowners, the CPR was convinced to extend their western rail terminus from the proposed site at Port Moody, triggering explosive growth within the tiny townsite of Granville (as it was then called), and, in the process, making everyone in the syndicate fantastically rich.

Vancouver was incorporated on April 6, 1886, and elections were scheduled to take place less than a month later. A notice was nailed to the trunk of the Maple Tree outside the home of Jonathan Miller – also the city’s courthouse, jail, and customhouse, with political hopefuls encouraged to submit their names. The election was, at first glance, an incredibly one-sided competition; on one side: Richard Alexander, city pioneer, entrepreneur, manager of the Hastings Mill, and one of the men who had delivered the original Incorporation Petition to Victoria. On the other, Malcolm MacLean, a real estate agent who had lost his fortune in a Winnipeg Real Estate bust, and who had lived in Vancouver for less than three months. Alexander had a lofty social position, and excellent connections. MacLean couldn’t even afford to run a campaign. At first, Alexander’s ascent to the mayoralty seemed certain, due in large part to the fact that he was the only candidate intending to run. But Alexander had grown out-of-touch and pompous during his time running Hastings Mill, and, in the weeks prior to the election, his employees, frustrated by exceedingly long hours and poor treatment, set out to challenge his candidacy.

“The loggers were sore on Alexander—not a little bit either,” recalls city pioneer and early constable J.T. Abray, in conversation with archivist J.S. Mathews. “Well, as they were going to run Richard Alexander for mayor, I thought we ought to have someone to oppose him; the arrangements had all been made for him to run for mayor. So I saw Angus Fraser, and Simon, his brother; both these men were loggers, and the loggers did not have much use for Alexander; very little use. So the two Frasers and myself went around to Abbott Street. The three of us went around to Abbott Street where MacLean had a little real estate office, and interviewed him. I made him acquainted with the two Frasers and they shook hands, and I asked him if he would run for mayor.”

“MacLean said, ‘Why, I have no dollars for an election.’”

“I replied, ‘We have a few dollars; if you’ll make up your mind to come out.’”

After some consideration, MacLean (known as “Squire” due to his kindly countenance and prematurely white hair) agreed to run,  and in the weeks to follow, emerged as a legitimate contender for the mayoralty. At the same time, Alexander’s woes were on the rise when, days before the election, Hastings Mill employees went on strike, demanding an 8 hour workday. Alexander, apparently oblivious to the effect of his actions, refused, and threatened to replace the striking labourers with Asian and First Nations workers.

“The men would have none of it,” city pioneer and strike mediator W.H. Gallagher recalls, “and when we went to Mr. Alexander for our second interview, and gave him the men’s answer, he replied that he would just engage a few extra Indians and Chinamen, and it was then that he made the remark, ‘Canadians are only North American Chinamen anyway.’”

Malcolm MacLean

This remark would prove to be catastrophic for Alexander; his rivals, mindful of the anti-asian sentiment that permeated Vancouver at the time, began the political mudslinging almost immediately, and it wasn’t long before the mill-owner’s exasperated remark was well-known all over town.

“You see those opposed to Alexander had nothing ‘on him,’” Captain Jackman insists, “so they had to get something to use as election propaganda; there hadn’t been any Council, so there hadn’t been any ‘misdeeds’; nothing to quarrel about; nothing to hold an investigation on; so they were short on election propaganda; so they worked up the ‘North American Chinaman,’ and the election was fought on that.”

By the time election day arrived, tensions were high. Despite the “North American Chinamen” scandal, the question of who was to become Vancouver’s first mayor was far from answered, and both camps were prepared to do whatever they could to emerge victorious. Adding to the tension was the utter disorganization of it all; there was no voters list. No registration. No way to know if anybody had voted twice. And, as many early citizens would later note, both sides took full advantage.

“Did you ever hear how we got the first vote here?” J.T. Abray asks Mathews, in a 1936 interview. “Everybody who had a lease had a vote; well, everybody that had a lease of $5.[...] I had a restaurant on Columbia Street, where the old City Hotel was. Upstairs I had thirteen boarders—remember, thirteen roomers upstairs. Then I had a shack on Hastings Street, next to the present Woods Hotel—right between it and the present City Hall; it was only one room, but I made it into four leases; so with the four leases in the shack and thirteen roomers at the restaurant I had seventeen leases, and a lease entitled you to a vote. It did not matter who you were; you could not let a day like that pass without voting.”

“One man had a lease to a portion of a building on Cordova Street,” recalls another city pioneer, “and came down to vote with the lease in his hand and voted on it. Mr. MacLean’s committee persuaded him to leave the lease with them; it was drawn up in the usual form with a space for the name, and I think fifty men must have voted on that lease. After one man had voted, the next voter’s name was written on a slip of paper and pasted in the space on the lease where the name appeared, and so continued until there was a tier of slips, and they were removed, and a fresh start was made.”

Midway through the day, a ship arrived from Victoria with a band on board, bearing banners supporting Alexander, and playing “Hail to the Chief”. However, shortly afterward, events began to turn ugly at the voting station, with the arrival of Alexander’s mill employees.

R.H. Alexander

“Soon after that the Hastings Sawmill people collected together their Chinese employees and sent them up to vote,” W.H. Gallagher recalls. “It was perfectly legitimate, they were bona fide residents; there was no law against it; there was nothing you could say why they could not vote; it was open voting too, and mighty little qualification necessary; no voters list. The Chinamen—and their pigtails—came on up Hastings Road, lined on both sides with bushes, came on up in twos and threes, some on the road, some on the two-plank sidewalk. Then someone shouted, ‘Here’s the Chinamen,’ and that started it. There were a lot of navvies around Granville for election day; rough customers from the railroad gangs and bush fellers from the C.P.R. clearing, and they shouted at the approaching Chinamen, and began to move towards them. Then one or two of the Chinamen decided, I suppose, that they did not like the look of things, and that they did not want to vote anyhow, and turned around; then one or two more came to a standstill, the rest came on up, until there was a little crowd of them, standing, and the white men advancing towards them. The white men shouted at the Chinamen and the Chinamen turned tail and ran.”

By the end of the day, 499 citizens (all of them white men – women had not yet been granted the franchise) had cast their ballots, and MacLean, the underdog, stood victorious by only 17 votes. Alexander’s supporters screamed their outrage, and MacLean’s camp jubilantly paraded him around town in a rented vehicle, before retiring to the Sunnyside Hotel to make their respective speeches.

“MacLean spoke first,” recalls pioneer George Schetky, “and made some nice remarks, thanked them, and spoke the usual post-election pleasantries. He was well received, and stood back. Then Alexander appeared, and said bluffly and bluntly, ‘Well, I am defeated; it was a case of might against right.’ Then you should have heard the boos.”

The win was viewed as a decisive victory for the “new” Vancouver, a triumph over the colonial interests that had shaped early Granville townsite, and a step forward for the common people (though, the fact that MacLean, and much of the first council was heavily associated with the CPR seems to have been largely ignored). MacLean went on to serve two terms as Mayor, declining a salary (even after losing his entire fortune a second time in the fire of 1886) and, despite his lack of experience, left the city with all manner of infrastructure and amenities, including sidewalks, bridges, a waterworks system, electric lights, and a fire department (though the fire engine would not arrive in time to save the city from burning to the ground). Embittered, Alexander never again ran for Mayor. However, he remained active on the city’s economic and political landscape, being elected to city council in the election of 1887, and later chairing the campaign to elect his friend David Oppenheimer to the mayoralty. He helped establish the Vancouver Board of Trade, and later held the unusual honour of being appointed Peruvian Consul to Vancouver. Both MacLean and Alexander lived the remainder of their lives in the city they had, in their own ways, helped to build. Alexander died in Seattle in 1915, visiting a son. MacLean died at the age of 50, in 1895, only weeks after being appointed stipendary magistrate for Vancouver. His obituary in the Vancouver Daily World described him as “a warm-hearted, liberal-minded gentleman, and possessed magnetic qualities that compelled affection.”

It started when I was 13, shortly after my first wet dream, as I was growing the scraggly teenage moustache that I thought would transform me into the Errol Flynn of R.M. Grauer Elementary; I saw my first episode of “Seinfeld”.  You know the one I mean: the one where Jerry and Elaine have that conversation, and he discovers that, over the course of their relationship, she “faked ‘em all”?

After seeing that, I was terrified. Was this normal, I wondered? This “faking” business? And, when the time came, would I know the difference between a real orgasm and a mere simulation? Could I go my entire life being a terrible lover, and never have any idea? Did orgasms exist at all, or had women just been faking them for thousands upon thousands of years, ever since the very first Caveman hopped on top of the very first Cavewoman, and she grunted out the very first CaveGasm? Before I really understood what an orgasm was, I was already being confronted with the possibility that the whole thing was a bigger hoax than Armstrong’s moon landing.

Years passed in this terrifying fashion.

Any time I came into contact with a woman, I was on alert for signs of deception.  When kissing, did her moans of pleasure sound forced, or artificial?  During a session of moderate-to-heavy petting, did her muscles tense and relax at the appropriate intervals? The level of scrutiny was intense.  I was like an 18th-century coal miner, eyes fixed on that canary, on the lookout for any sign of trouble.

Luckily, during my teen years, my contact with women was infrequent at best – helped along in no small part by a shocking lack of coordination, and a complete inability to speak in anything but vowels to a woman I didn’t know.

However, when I was 18, and living away from home for the first time, I met Laura.  Full lips, blue eyes, porcelain skin…  and, she was attracted to me (a development that certainly aroused considerable suspicion at first), but, by that point, sexual frustration and fears of dying a virgin forced me to put my reservations aside. And, one night, after a session of light-to-moderate petting, she turned to me and said: “God.  One of these days, I’d really love to have you inside me.”

I chuckled, and tossed my hair in what I hoped was a roguish and charming fashion, then quietly excused myself to the bathroom to have a panic attack.

I couldn’t have sex with a woman.

Certainly not one I liked.

I had no idea what I was doing.

And, in that instant, I felt the clammy hand of my old fears come to rest on my shoulder: What if she faked it?

I felt woefully unequipped to deal with the situation.  She was a couple of years older than me, and sexually experienced, and I’d never even had sex before, no matter what I told myself, or how many magazines I had in my drawer.

I lived in fear.

Each night, she would unknowingly terrorize me with her vagina, and each night, I’d have to come up with some excuse to get out of it, lest I be expected to perform sexually.  I felt like I was betraying anyone who’d ever owned a penis. So, I decided to learn as much as I could, as quickly as possible.  I talked to everybody I knew.  I read every filthy internet post I could find.  I took books on anatomy out of the library.  I gave myself a crash-course in sexual education, determined to provide this girl with the greatest orgasm of her sweet, young life.  And finally, after an intense week, when I felt that I could no longer use cunnilingus to keep her at bay, we finally did it.

I watched her eyes.  Her facial expressions. She seemed to be enjoying it. And, so, I kept going.  She pulled me closer, grinding my hips against her.

This is awesome, I thought. I am awesome.

“Oh,” she said, “that feels fucking amazing.”

Sounds genuine, I thought. Not Shakespeare, but genuine. Or was it?  “That feels fucking amazing” wasn’t particularly original. In fact, it seemed to be one of those fairly standard coital epithets that one could toss out, willy-nilly, whenever space needed to be filled. But was that her style?  If she was faking it, would she draw from prepared lines of dialogue, or would she go unscripted, like “Curb Your Enthusiasm? No way to be sure. Just keep your eyes open, I told myself. Focus, man.

Focus.

Then, the strangest thing began to happen.

A twitch, at the base of her legs.  Subtle at first, and barely perceptible.  Simultaneous were the tiny breaths, with the barest hint of sound, that were escaping her, as if she were some kind of large, gaseous vacuum cleaner left on the reverse cycle for an extended period.  Steadily, the twitch rose, up the muscles of her legs, followed by a slow and subtle arch of the back.  Then, as the twitching and shuddering reached its peak, and the breathy gasps hit a crescendo that would have made Beethoven proud, she uttered two words that seemed as though they’d been trumpeted down from heaven itself:

“I’m Coming.”

There was no way.

There was no way she could pull of an act this complex. The twitches.  The moans.  The rising groups of muscles.  It would be like rubbing your stomach and patting your head at the same time. She’d have to be the Meryl goddamn Streep of horizontal performance.

I am amazing, I said to myself. I am Hercules. I am Batman. My penis was running version 2.0, and nothing was going to stop us now.

And then, her eyes opened, and suddenly my startled manhood was being squeezed and prodded by muscles I didn’t even know existed, and she was screaming “Yes! Yes! Fuck, yes!”

And then it was over.

I lay back in total triumph.

Then, she rolled over, smiled, kissed my shoulder, and said: “Nice work.”

I grinned, and rolled onto my stomach.

“Thanks.”

“Now, it’s your turn…”

My eyes went wide.

Holy shit.

I hadn’t anticipated this.  I’d been so busy focusing on her, that I’d completely forgotten that there was ever anything else.  So, sweaty, exhausted, and entirely unprepared, I climbed back on board. I could do it.  I was Hercules, goddammit. Or Batman.

But, as I began blithely humping away, I started to feel like a combination of a mechanical bull and a meat tenderizer, and with mounting panic, I felt my exhausted manhood slowly deflating.

It was a macabre scene. It was as though I was repeatedly stuffing a roll of lunch-meat into a toaster-oven.  As minute after agonizing minute ticked by, I began to hate my penis. You miserable bastard, I thought. What did I ever do to deserve this?  You’ve sat around for months and months, living the good life day after fucking day, and when I actually need you, when I’m actually using you for the one thing you were made for, you’re going to exhibit the dumbest series of design flaws since Windows XP.

And, the minutes ticked by.

By now, we’d been at it so long, she just looked uncomfortable, and it was getting late, and, to top it off, I was really fucking hungry.  I just wanted the nightmare to end.  All I wanted to do was read a book, chow down on a veggie and quinoa salad, and forget the whole sordid, sorry little adventure had ever happened.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

I could salvage this, I thought.  I could just tell her it wasn’t going to happen.  Maybe another time.  Sure. That would work. And I could have my membership in the Man’s Union revoked, and my penis confiscated. So, given the circumstances, and the hour, and my desire for quinoa, I did the only thing I could think of:

I faked it.

“The city did not burn,” recalled early resident W.F. Findlay, in a 1933 interview with archivist James Skitt Mathews, “it was consumed by flame; the buildings simply melted before the fiery blast. As an illustration of the heat, there was a man (driving horse and wagon) caught on Carrall Street between Water Street and Cordova Street; man and horse perished in the centre of the street. The fire went down the sidewalk on old Hastings Road, past our office, so rapidly that people flying before it had to leave the burning sidewalk and take to the road; the fire traveled down that wooden sidewalk faster than a man could run.”

That nobody had seen it coming would be an understatement. Though, why they didn’t is another matter entirely. News that the C.P.R. planned to extend its Western Terminus into the tiny logging community had given rise to an explosion in population and a frenzy of construction, and by the summer of 1886, the city was a literal tinderbox of planked streets, fallen trees, and closely-grouped wooden homes.

“The best way to describe Vancouver as I first saw it on 25 May 1886 is to describe it as a whole lot of fallen trees,” explains George Allen, early Vancouver businessman, “cut down, tumbled over one another; there were no streets. Save for a few buildings around Water and Carrall Street—Water Street was of course planked between Carrall and Abbott streets, bridged as it were over the hollow of the shore; there was nothing else. There were a lot of shacks of rough lumber around.”

Artist's Rendering of the Great Fire. Image Courtesy of the Vancouver Archives.

The fire itself was idiotically preventable. At the time, the West End was simply dense forest, and, in preparation to build homes for the growing population, gangs of workers from the CPR had been tasked with removing trees and brush from the area. And, while felling the trees was dangerous, difficult work, involving hours of strain with saws and axes, the gangs quickly discovered that removing the underbrush was much easier if they simply set it on fire. Now, why setting a large, uncontrolled brush fire right next to a gathering of closely grouped, wood-and-tarpaper buildings on a breezy day in the middle of summer didn’t strike the clearing crews as hazardous is a point lost in the mists of antiquity. But, at any rate, at roughly 10:00 in the morning on June the 13th, a fire set in the C.P.R lands (only embers to begin with -it was Sunday, and no work was being done) was suddenly struck by powerful winds, and grew to an unmanageable size. Locals joined in to keep it contained, though they failed to take the threat seriously, even breaking for lunch before it had been subdued. And, by 3:00 in the afternoon, when the firefighters returned from their break, the flames, fanned by more high winds, had flared completely out of control. The speed and ferocity of the blaze took Vancouverites entirely by surprise. And, as George Allen reports, no one was more surprised than the wife of the city’s Fire Chief.

“Mrs. Pedgriff [wife of Fire Chief Sam Pedigriff] was in her bath when the alarm of fire came that Sunday afternoon,” Allen recalls. “I ran and knocked on the bathroom door with all my might, and told her she would have to get out, and get out quickly. Perhaps I should be more truthful if I said that Mrs. Pedgriff was in her little cabin at the back of the store, having her bath. She answered back that she was ‘in her bath.’ I told her it did not matter what she was in, she would have to get out, and quickly too, or she would be burned up. Then, and not until then, did she come out.”

Minutes later, the city was an inferno. Homes, offices, sidewalks, even the planked streets themselves were aflame. Locals took refuge in wells, inside buildings, or leapt from the Hastings dock to escape being burned alive. The heat was so intense, the bell at St. James Church melted into slag.

“I secured our books and money—payday was nearing—but there was not much time,” W.F. Findlay recalls. “I had been in our little office but a few moments when I saw through the window a rabble of people running by. They were coming down Hastings Road from the direction of the Deighton House, Gassy Jack’s place. I went out on the road, walked up towards Gassy Jack’s, but by the time I got there the Sunnyside Hotel across the street was a mass of flame, and before I could get back to the office I had just left, that was on fire too; I had not even time to save clothing [...] I waded out into the harbour at the back of our office, between Carrall and Columbia streets now, with hundreds of dollars of pay money in my pockets, and nearly suffocated. The heat was so intense that we had to stoop down almost to the surface of the water to get our breath. There was a current of cool air close to the surface of the water we were standing in, between the heat and smoke and the surface of the water; we breathed that, and it saved us.”

Survivors, the day after the fire. Image Courtesy of the Vancouver Archives

Less than twenty minutes later, the winds died down, but by then, only a handful of buildings remained. As the afternoon turned into evening, survivors were pulled from the harbour, and, at the behest of Mayor Malcolm MacLean, assembled at the foot of Mount Pleasant.

“The fire was at midday,” Archivist J.S. Mathews recalls. “That night all Vancouver lay black to the bare earth except where, in the distance from the foot of Mount Pleasant hill (Main Street) where the refugees had assembled under His Worship the Mayor awaiting food from New Westminster, the blackness of night was pierced with little lights in the distance, the small fires on the hill beyond, now downtown Vancouver, burning themselves out; just little glow worm lights against the dark background of gloom.”

Word of the city’s destruction quickly reached New Westminster, and, by midnight, food and supplies had begun to arrive. As former Alderman W.H. Gallagher recalls:

“Some thoughtful New Westminster woman had prepared some sandwiches, just fried eggs between bread, but with it was a little note which feelingly said she regretted it was very little, but was all she had. Sane, sensible woman, whoever she was; how pleased she would have been had she seen what her little mite accomplished for those splendid men. The sailor man who got the note turned and faced the east, raised his hand in an attitude of supplication, and offered the most beautiful prayer for New Westminster and its people, imploring the Almighty never to let them be in such distress, and asking the Lord to reward them a hundredfold. You do not expect that sort of thing from a rough sailor, and in the middle of the night.”

And, as Gallagher explains, by morning, a space had been cleared in one of the surviving buildings, where the process of collecting and identifying the bodies had begun.

“It was never known, and never will be, how many lost their lives,” he continues. “Of all the remains found, three only, those found at the corner of Hastings and Columbia streets, were recognisable by their features; then, too, we made an effort to keep the number as low as possible. Three bodies were taken out of a well down near St. James Church on Cordova Street East; at the time, there were some shacks down there. They were evidently husband, wife and little daughter, and must have been strangers, saw the fire coming, rushed away, and seeing a well, jumped into it. There was three or four feet of water in the well, and their clothing was unharmed by fire, but their faces were livid; the fire had, apparently, swirled over the well, and they had been suffocated, not burned. They were well dressed; the lady had gloves on her hands. It was the gum and pitch which made the fire so terrible, so fierce, and created a black, bitter smoke more smothering than burning oil.”

L.P. Eckstein, Barrister's office, the day after the fire. Image Courtesy of the Vancouver Archives.

Most people had only the clothes on their backs (even Mayor MacLean had lost all his possessions and both his properties – neither insured), and had nowhere to sleep and little to eat, however, in the face of the blaze which had levelled the city, a determination had emerged amongst the survivors. Before the ashes had even stopped smouldering, buildings were being raised to shelter the citizens of Canada’s newest city, and within five weeks, Vancouver was a bustling port city once more.

“McPherson put up a big barn of a place opposite Pat Cary’s on Hastings Street. I remember his sign, ‘RAISED FROM THE ASHES IN THREE DAYS’,“ recalls city pioneer G.H. Keefer. “The day after the fire, I saw a burned out hotel keeper selling whiskey from a bottle on his hip pocket and a glass in his hand, his counter being a sack of potatoes.”

Less than two months after Vancouver was incorporated, it had burned to the ground. Less than twelve hours later, the rebuilding had begun.

- August 2005

It started when I was six; watching Pamela Martin blink under the bright lights of the newsroom, I became so fixated on that unconscious process that, for three hours, I couldn’t concentrate on anything else. By the time I was nine, it had transformed into a continuing irritation that usually struck before bedtime; windows had to be checked and rechecked, thermostats repeatedly consulted to ensure they were in the off position. The simple task of saying goodnight to my parents had to be executed in a perfect, routine fashion, or I’d be driven from my bed ten minutes later by an anxiety too pervasive and formless to grasp, to say it all over again. Two months before my nineteenth birthday, it went full-blown, and, by 2005, I hadn’t had a single moment free from physical anxiety or intrusive thoughts in four years. While my peers were concerned with going to school, traveling, getting drunk, and chasing girls, my days were spent doing nothing but clawing for the shallowest, most desperate breaths, dreaming of one day being able to catch one -just one, free of the crushing panic that pressed down on my chest from the second I woke up until the second I went to sleep.

Self-Portrait, circa 2005.

Medically, it’s known as Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. The DSM IV (the diagnostic manual for Mental Disorders) defines it, in the driest possible terms, as “recurrent and persistent thoughts, impulses, or images that are experienced at some time during the disturbance, as intrusive and inappropriate and that cause marked anxiety or distress,” combined with “repetitive behaviors or mental acts that the person feels driven to perform in response to an obsession, or according to rules that must be applied rigidly”.

“Recurrent and persistent thoughts” meant four years of desperate subsistence. Four years of missed job opportunities and squandered friendships, of lying to every person I knew about how I was doing, hoping each night that the next morning would bring deliverance. A return to normal. “Marked anxiety or distress” meant years of feelings that churned my stomach and left me wrapped around the toilet, retching until my guts burned.

Every day, I’d tell myself to toughen up. Figure it out. Get on with my life. And as I told myself this, I watched everything around me fall apart. By the summer of 2005, a four-year relationship had fractured. My job was suspicious of all of my sick-days. I had to move back in with my parents. It was around that time I first thought about ending it all. Not in the clumsy, cry-for-help fashion, and not out of any sort of angst or existential despair. It was a practical decision, or so I thought; after four years, I’d stopped seeing the point. “This is life,” my journal read. “This is every day.” And, whether it was cowardice, intelligence, or stupidity that kept me from doing it, I couldn’t tell you. But the shock of considering suicide led me to wonder, for the first time, whether something might be wrong. And still, I dreamt of one day catching that single stupid breath. Thought about it with the same enthusiasm I’d once reserved for fantasies of lottery wins and celebrity hookups.

One day it could happen, couldn’t it?

One breath, I thought. Just one.

Close to a million British Columbians are directly affected by mental illness each year. That’s 20% of the province. That’s three times as many people as suffer from diabetes. Four times as many as suffer from cancer.

In a single year, more people in British Columbia are dealing with mental illness than live with heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s, dementia, AIDS, stroke, and diabetes. Combined. And, while BC’s mental health care programs were once among the most integrated and effective in the world, they are now in need of a desperate overhaul.

“In the nineties,” explains Darrell Burnham, Executive Director of Coast Mental Health, “people used to come to Vancouver to visit, and they would see basically the best, most integrated mental health system in the world, and, it had area-specific mental health teams, they had a common philosophy, they had good psychiatric services out of the local hospitals, they had access to longer-term treatment options at Riverview Hospital, they had an array of community-based services like Coast, they had supported housing. I mean, they had wait-lists for supported housing, but they weren’t miles long. [...] They had some really innovative elements. And since the mid-nineties, the demand has increased, and supply of those types of services has been static.”

Riverview Hospital's West Lawn Building, abandoned since 1983. PHOTO CREDIT: Liam Hanham

B.C. currently devotes 8% percent of its provincial health care budget to the treatment of Mental Health and Addictions. That’s the highest in the country. However, Canada itself ranks close to the bottom of the list of first-world countries when it comes to mental health spending; below the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, Australia, and even the United States.  And, though the burden of untreated mental illness on the economy and health care system is estimated in the tens of billions, and, despite dozens of recommendations from provincially-commissioned studies, supreme court judges, the United Nations and the WHO, and even in spite of an admission by former premier Gordon Campbell himself that the deinstitutionalization of Riverview has been a complete failure, there don’t appear to be any significant policy changes in the making on the Federal, Provincial, or Municipal level anytime in the foreseeable future.  The result is a province-wide system that is as uneven as it is fractured, with heavy support for certain disorders, and virtually none for others.

“If you get diagnosed with cancer in B.C., you’re likely to be treated within five days,” Burnham laments. “You’re likely to be plugged into the treatment recovery process in five days, and you’ll be layered with the best  support to get that disease under control, treated, cured. If you get diagnosed with a mental illness – first of all, how long will it take to get diagnosed? And then, how long will it take for you to get the best resources to actually help you recover? It’s a huge gap. If you go to the hospital with a heart attack, you get the best care. You go into the hospital because of a psychotic experience because of mental illness, you go to VGH, and you end up in the worst ward in the hospital. You get treatment, but you often get discharged before you’re well, with no follow-up component. The parallels are terrible.”

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is a disease of nagging doubts: A housewife hits a bump in the road, and spends the next hour circling the block to make absolutely certain she didn’t hit anyone. A straight college student glimpses his roommate in his underwear, and suddenly needs to prove to himself that he didn’t feel even the tiniest glimmer of arousal. A middle-aged man uses a public restroom, and, for the rest of the day, washes his hands over and over, because, damn it, they just don’t feel clean. Intrusive thoughts tend to fall into specific categories (known as “spike themes”), with the majority being about germs, violence, or sexuality. The thoughts themselves are often quite common; we’ve all looked at someone we’re not necessarily attracted to, and had a random sexual thought. We’ve all stood at the top of a tall building and imagined what it would feel like to jump. The mind is an idea machine, constantly generating thoughts and impulses; some of them we agree with, others, we find ridiculous, unusual, or repulsive. And, while you might consider those things for a second, a minute, an hour, I couldn’t stop thinking about them for four straight years. Where the average person can dismiss an idea they don’t understand, a person suffering from OCD can’t. These thoughts become trapped in a feedback loop in the brain, with the response being anxiety, and a fanatical need for certainty. In the mind of the sufferer, certainty equals relief; if they can just make absolutely sure that they aren’t gay, aren’t infected with HIV, aren’t secretly planning to smother their newborn in their crib, then their fear will vanish.

West Lawn in different times, circa 1915. Image Courtesy of the Vancouver Archives

My own spike themes sat most often in the region of Sexuality and Relationships – consistent, pervasive fears that I might secretly be gay, and worries that the love I felt for my girlfriend at the time wasn’t entirely sincere. As Dr. Steven Phillipson explains in his revelatory article, “I Think It Moved”, this form of obsessional doubt is extraordinarily common (in fact, it’s just as likely that a gay OCD sufferer will be tormented by fears that he’s secretly straight), and is, in his words, one of “society’s favourite spikes to enable.”

“With the vast majority of OCD spike themes the unreasonable and irrational nature of the spike is generally obvious,” Phillipson explains. “The major difference is that with these two spike themes one does not generally think of OCD as an initial consideration. As a result, most persons with these spike themes generally have a long and painful history of seeking and obtaining fruitless guidance from others in a effort to bring a reasonable resolution to these seemingly legitimate issues.”

Why my spikes revolved around Sexuality and Relationships is something I’ve never totally understood. But, as I later learned, it doesn’t really matter. Because ultimately, it’s not actually about sexuality. It’s not about violence. It’s not about cleanliness. It’s about certainty. It’s about a need to prove the unprovable. The mechanics of obsession are identical no matter what the content is. The thoughts themselves could actually be about anything.

“The predominant distinguishing variable,” Phillipson continues, “which can help determine the difference between a legitimate conflict and an OCD sufferer’s torment, is the felt need and anxiety experienced by the sufferer to gain an immediate, definite, and conclusive resolution to the question.”

It didn’t stop there. Sometimes, I became so fixated on the physical sensation of anxiety that I’d drive myself straight to a panic attack. Once, I spent four days reassuring myself that I hadn’t been possessed by the devil. I knew I was acting in this ridiculous way, but I couldn’t stop it. It was like spending years in the first four stages of grieving, without ever reaching stage five: Anger, denial, bargaining, depression. Repeat.

As far as I knew, the only way to find relief was through Absolute Certainty.

I just couldn’t find it.

“Mr. Donaldson reported a long history of obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviours dating back to his childhood. He explained that when he was younger, he engaged in numerous checking behaviours (eg. checking the heater of windows a certain number of times before going to bed) and superstitious behaviours (eg, he would have to say goodnight to his parents in a certain way and if he did not do it correctly, he would have to do it again. His OCD symptoms decreased through his adolescence, but flared up in November 2000, and have gotten more severe since. [...]
He reported that he spent considerable time focused on his obsessions, resulting in severe interference in his life. Although he tried to resist the obsessions, he had little control over them.[...]
Given Mr. Donaldson’s openness to psychological interventions, previous successful experience with cognitive behavioral techniques for managing his OCD symptoms, motivations for treatment, good insight, and lack of comorbid psychological conditions, prognosis is cautiously optimistic.”

- Intake Evaluation, from an interview conducted by Rami Nader, Ph.D, on October 24, 2005

In the fall of 2005, my parents sensed that something was wrong and scheduled an appointment with my GP. As a result, I was given a referral to the UBC Anxiety Disorders Clinic, the only government-funded treatment option in the province.

I waited three weeks to hear from them.

Four.

At the end of the second month, I made a phone call, and was told that the facility had a wait list in excess of five years. There was also the chance that I’d be unable to receive treatment at all. The woman on the phone used the phrase “no guarantees”. Shortly thereafter, the clinic closed its doors forever, to be replaced by the Operational Stress Institute, a publicly-funded program which deals with instances of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Canadian Police and Military Officers. Currently, there isn’t a single provincially-funded option available within the City of Vancouver specifically for individuals with anxiety-spectrum disorders. And, considering that, of the 900,000 individuals affected by mental illness provincewide, 400,000 of them are suffering from an anxiety disorder, this leaves few real options: either take one’s chances with a VGH Outpatient Team, explore a few group-based options run by non-medical personnel, or pay $160 per session for psychotherapy at a fee-for-service clinic.

“The [UBC] clinic doesn’t exist anymore, because UBC decided that we don’t have anxiety disorders in BC,” explains Dr. Charles Brasfield, his voice layered with sarcasm. Brasfield is the former consultant to the UBC Anxiety Clinic, as well as former Clinical Associate Professor in UBC’s Department of Psychiatry, and the province’s only psychologist/psychiatrist. “VGH had a pretty good outpatient program for difficult anxiety disorders and personality disorders; a dialectical behaviour therapy program,” he continues. “It was discontinued last year. The DBT program now at UBC is entirely private. You can access it, if you have, you know, $3,000.”

Brasfield is also the founder of the North Shore Stress and Anxiety Clinic, the only cognitive-behavioural option in the province for individuals with anxiety-spectrum disorders. The operation employs two psychiatrists, 16 psychologists, two nurses, and takes in close to one million dollars per year. Brasfield is an affable, intelligent, soft-spoken fellow, who divides his time between the North Shore, and remote First Nations communities in BC’s North, where he is involved in outreach work. Brasfield’s expertise is formidable, and, according to him, while the treatment of anxiety disorders is never easy, the process is less mystical than many would believe.

Self-Portrait, circa December 2006.

“Panic Disorders, we can deal with in half-a-dozen sessions,” Brasfield explains. “Specific phobias, about the same. They’re simple for us- we’ve all done this for years. We know how it works. We know what the pitfalls are, and what actually helps. Chronic anxiety disorders -PTSD, they’re all about 8 months or so.”

My own psychotherapy program lasted 6 months. The clinic’s approach involves a combination of medication and cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), which, as the name suggests, deals with treatment on two fronts. On the cognitive side are number of homework assignments called Thought Experiments, meant to challenge faulty ways of thinking (known as Cognitive Errors), and shine some light into the quiet, private, muffled hell you’ve created for yourself. To contest the assumption that every thought is true and meaningful, a patient is made to record everything that passes through their brain for thirty minutes, and afterward rate its importance. As a challenge to the superhuman amounts of harm you’re afraid of causing, (the harm I imagined causing my girlfriend, for example, was near-catastrophic) you’re made to imagine and document the worst-case scenario of your fears on a chart.

It all leads toward the understanding of a single idea: that thought you had? The one that disgusts and terrifies you? That one you’ve spent days, weeks, years avoiding, or explaining away, or neutralising through compulsions?

It could be true. And there’s no way you’ll ever be sure.

The first day I uttered those words – the first day I wrote them up on my laptop, printed them, and posted them prominently on my bedroom door – was the first day in four years that my life made any sort of sense. Granted, it was a perverse and horrifying kind of sense, but it was something.

It could be true. And there’s no way to be sure.

There’s no cop-out, there’s no brush-off, there’s no attempt to soften the blow.

It’s called Acceptance, and it’s stage five.

The behavioural component of CBT is pointed toward the same goal, but it’s an altogether different beast. While Thought Experiments address the psychological, subtly forming new neural pathways, Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is the therapeutic equivalent of a punch in the guts. Rather than avoiding fears, it forces the sufferer to confront them head-on – not just once, and not just for a second, but for an hour each day, until finally, through the process of habituation, those stimuli no longer provoke an anxiety response

You work with a therapist to create an Exposure Hierarchy: a list of potential triggers, ordered according to their potential for anxiety. Sufferers then subject themselves to these triggers, paying close attention during the process, and noting their body’s anxiety response on a scale of 1-10. Once a stimulus no longer causes anxiety, it is retired.

Although I had to make several (one for each spike theme), mine started off tamely enough:  say “I’m Gay” out loud. Watch a television show with a gay main character. Write a breakup letter to your girlfriend. Punctuate it with actual failings or issues. Read some homoerotic literature. Eventually, it moved to soft-core erotica. Naked pictures. Reading my breakup letters out loud. And finally, weeks and weeks of the most explicit gay porn imaginable. Acts that would make legitimate homosexuals blush. Picking the most unattractive photos I could find of my then-girlfriend, and putting them in frames nearby.

Riverview Hospital. PHOTO CREDIT: Liam Hanham

Anxiety spikes are sadistic creatures; they grow and change as time passes, evolving to fit the freshest of insecurities. And, as a result, there’s an attitude that begins to develop during the early stages of ERP; an idea equally quiet, and equally sadistic. After so many years of being a slave, you begin to get a sick thrill out of your own suffering. You can watch yourself go through some of the darkest moments of your life, but, as you watch, you begin to, in a small way, relish the pain. Thrive on it. Because you realize that through it comes relief. Recovery. Management. Because, for the first time in your life, you’re not running from your fear. You’re not avoiding it. You’re walking straight toward it. You’re looking it square in the eye, and even though you’re sweating bullets, and even though you want nothing more than to turn and bolt, you don’t even slow your step.

Instead, you open your arms, smile, and say “Bring it On.”

You’ve trained yourself to be so at peace with your own uncertainty that, if someone were to ask you about the content of your obsessions, you’d no longer have a definite answer for them.

If someone asked whether you really loved your girlfriend, you could say “Maybe”.

If someone asked whether you were gay, you could say “I don’t know.”

Funny to think that, after all that time, the ultimate expression of your liberation could be nothing more than a shrug of the shoulders.

Helen Keller once said “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”

I left psychotherapy in May of 2006, and, in the five years since, thanks to the tools developed there (not to mention some medication to even out the physiology), my disorder has been more or less managed. Of course, there are still rough days – days where I feel like I spun the wheel in some random genetic lottery, and came out as a colossal fucking loser. But there are also days when I feel nothing but gratitude that I found treatment at all. That I wasn’t born fifty years ago, to be condemned to Riverview for a life of Insulin Shock treatments. That I don’t live in BC’s north, where there is zero support, few services, and the only option is to move away or die. That I had a decent-paying job and supportive parents who could help me come up with the more than $3,600 that private treatment cost. Not everyone is so lucky.

I met a girl recently, through mutual friends. She was the first “fellow” Obsessive-Compulsive I’d ever encountered, and, when we met, she was entering her second decade of symptoms. Naturally, I made mention of medication and CBT, and, though she listened, it wasn’t information she was ready to hear. Instead, she told herself to toughen up. Figure it out. Get on with her life. And as she told herself this, she watched everything around her fall apart. For her, it took a visit to the emergency room to put things into perspective. But, when she picked up the phone to figure out what to do next, I’m honoured that she called me. Thanks to that discussion, she’s now in CBT, and, after more than ten years, on the road to managing her symptoms.

There are close to a million British Columbians affected by mental illness each year. Of that million, 400,000 are affected by anxiety disorders, and 75% of them will never seek treatment of any kind. Some of these people have no options. Either due to addiction, or poverty, or simple circumstance, tens of thousands of people in this province will need assistance, and they won’t get it. Some will have that chance. And those people need to know that there is a future. Need to know that, at the end of the road, with a lot of work and a lot of money, there is recovery. There is relief. There’s a breath. There’s the reality that, one day, you’ll be looking back, and realize you did something that millions of people everywhere have never done: you looked your worst fear square in the eye, and you didn’t back down. You laughed in the face of your tormentor. You faced the single greatest challenge of your life, and you beat it. And, what’s more, you can beat it again. It’s knowing that you have the tools to manage yourself. That you know yourself more intimately than most people you’ve ever met will ever know themselves. That you’ve been to the edge of your fear and come back again, and that, if you’re willing to put in the work, you need never fear a single damn thing ever again.

The only liberation is uncertainty, and the only solution is acceptance.

Or maybe it isn’t.

There’s really no way to know.

They don’t wear plaid. They don’t play indie-rock. They rarely rehearse. They perform two or three times a week, at everything from Children’s Festivals to house parties to Farmer’s Markets. They’ve been known to busk on Granville Island by day, and then, that same night, pack venues like The Biltmore and The Waldorf. With their over-the-top aesthetic, onstage antics, energetic presence, and  infectiously enjoyable songs in genres ranging from swing, to folk and bluegrass, to samba, “folk cabaret” quartet Maria In The Shower have, for the past five years, managed to inject some much-needed fun back into the city’s music scene. The band – comprised of Martin Reisle, Jack Garton, Todd Biffard, and Brendon Hartley – have, hands-down, the best live show in Vancouver, a show that is as much theatrical as it is musical, and their diverse instrumentation, including accordion, trumpet, upright bass, guitar, and drums (and has included a saw-player, a bicycle wheel, and, on several occasions, a classical orchestra) draws crowds from all over the city.

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

“It’s not uncommon for us to play more than once in the same night,” says Biffard, sitting with Garton and Reisle, and discussing the band’s philosophies over beer and burritos at Bandidas Taqueria. “About once a month, we’ll do two gigs a night. Once, we did three gigs in one day.”

“I think that performing in front of people utilises areas of the brain that can’t actually be rehearsed,” Garton adds. “You could rehearse your face off, but you still can’t practice certain key elements of being in front of an audience. So, keeping those muscles toned and flexed is an important thing.”

But, as they quickly explain, the reason for such a frenetic performance schedule is financial as well as creative.

“It’s all of our jobs,” Reisle explains. “This is how we survive, basically.”

“We also do things like the Santa Claus Party at the Roundhouse, where we’re playing for kids, or the Rally Against Climate-Change,” Biffard continues. “So, we show up at places where people who see us play at The Waldorf would never expect. But, in fact, those little gigs really help fill the pocketbook, and they help us in the ongoing challenge to stay inspired.”

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

The band has a catalogue of over sixty songs, most written by Reisle and Garton, with forty that stay in regular rotation. And, with a body of work that includes songs in virtually every major genre, Garton, Reisle, and Biffard heartily agree that classifying Maria hasn’t always been an easy task.

“The industry wants to streamline [music genres], because it puts it in terms they can sell,” Garton continues. “They’re trying to project what kind of market they can expect, and what kind of returns they can expect. We don’t have that pragmatic of a business approach. We’re more of a crap-shoot[...] We’re not trying to have ‘a sound’. It’s not a melting pot. We serve the personality of each piece as best we can.”

That the band has a commitment to the unconventional is difficult to deny. And, their commitment to the theatrical is equally as evident when looking at their stage show: Garton, decked out in brightly-coloured shirts, ties, jackets, and hats, regularly performs his trumpet solos atop Hartley’s doublebass.  The four of them have, on occasion, performed in full mime makeup. Reisle typically wears a full tuxedo, tailcoat, and bowler hat.

“I want to look as stodgy and 18th-Century as possible,” he grins.
And, as Garton explains, this aspect of their performances has always been a conscious choice.

“You can’t get around the fact that you’re there in front of people,” he notes. “You can either do something about it, or you can’t. And it does have an effect. The modern aesthetic seems to be an anti-aesthetic. In the 2000s, even all the biggest bands are just playing in jeans and t-shirts onstage[...] We said: ‘Oh, my God. We’ve got to go back to circus and vaudeville, because their approach to performance was very much about visual cohesion. There was a concept, and they had a lot of flare to it.”

“You should have been at our meeting,” Biffard groans. “They were disagreeing about specific textiles.”

“Well, I don’t want to look like a chesterfield,” Garton protests. “Brendon does want to look like a chesterfield. But, I want to look like a chessboard. Brendon doesn’t want to look like a chessboard.”

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

Maria in the Shower has been in existence for roughly five years, and, by everyone’s estimation, it  came together entirely of its own accord.

“It wasn’t really very planned at all,” Garton admits. “It just came together.”

After meeting briefly at a poetry reading the year before, Reisle and Garton began performing as a duo at a local coffee shop, for tips. These early performances eventually led to a biweekly gig at Cafe Montmartre, (where the name was suggested by a friend) and the beginning of their collaboration with Biffard, who showed up at the venue one night by chance.

“They didn’t have a plan to make a band,” Biffard says. “They would have just kept playing the two of them if we hadn’t run into each other that night[...] These guys had sort of a co-repertoire, and I found a way to fit into that. And Brendon, he sort of did, too. Having that gig was quite instrumental in us finding our feet.”

However, according to Garton and Reisle, the defining moment in Maria’s early history came during a show performed in the abandoned basement of Garton’s soon-to-be-demolished university home. After unscrewing boards from the windows, lighting the interior with candles (which Garton admits was “a big fire hazard- though, actually not the biggest fire hazard that was going on”), and inviting a number of friends and acquaintances, the pair performed for more than two hours, entertaining their audience, and even, at one point, stopping mid-song to serve tea from a nearby camp-stove.

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

“Our last song of the night,” Garton remembers, “was one where we decided – it was a new song, it was one we’d written just for the show, and we had this chorus where – remember that we’d just led everyone into this random house, and sort of left them there – and we decided to play the last chorus of this song continuously until everyone got so uncomfortable that they left.”

According to Reisle’s recollection, the refrain went on without stopping for more than two hours.

“At first, people were dancing,” Garton remembers. “And then they were laughing. Then, they sort of got confused. Then, they were laughing again, and then people started dispersing throughout the house, and then it just devolved.” He grins. “I felt like that was a pretty definitive moment.”

“It was really something special,” agrees Reisle. “We’ve gotta keep doing this.”

“It was something where we could try crazy, weird stuff out. And, that spirit has continued all the way along.”

“In different degrees, but, yeah. It has different waves of its presence.”

“A lot of what we’ve been doing recently has been trying to curtail a little bit of the ‘What the fuck?’ aspect to it, so that we can turn it into a sustainable career. So that we can continue an element of that ‘What the fuck?’ aspect over a longer period of time.”

Reisle nods.”I think the sustainable What The Fuck is My Favourite.”

Maria in the Shower plays the Rickshaw Theatre on April 16th, as part of the Artswells Fundraiser. Tickets are available at http://www.ambigarts.com/

Their newest album ‘The Hidden Sayings of Maria in the Shower’ is now available for digital download at www.mariaintheshower.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By day, they take your order in restaurants. They do your occupational therapy. They design graphics for your websites, and teach your children to play the piano. And on the second Tuesday of every month the performers of Guilt & Co.’s Pandora and the Locksmiths effectively bare it all – combining vintage striptease, go-go, singing, comedy, and live music with a classic aesthetic to create one of the most raw, energetic, and refreshing evenings of burlesque in Vancouver.

“I think the thing is, we all needed an outlet for the training that we had,” says Nicky Ninedoors, one of the show’s co-founders. “We needed a big, sparkly, ridiculous outlet, and we came to burlesque for that.”

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

Since their premiere in September 2010, the Pandora collective, which also  includes performers Miss Fitt, Carole Brunette, Delilah Dare, bassist John Bews, pianist Sean Bayntun, drummer Trevor Grant, and trumpet player Alison Gorman, has been a hit with local audiences and has brought new life to a night when bar and restaurant business in Gastown is typically slow.

“That first night, we had to turn away sixty people,” recalls founding member Carole Brunette, “and I think they [Guilt] were immediately impressed because we were increasing their sales by something like 300%. And we were filling up the place on a night when the rest of Gastown was quiet and asleep.”

The shows, which run about two hours, revolve around a loose theme, and are organized and programmed entirely by the eight members of the collective — each of whom brings more than ten years of experience and training to the stage. As they explain, the placement of each number is given a great deal of consideration.

“One of the things that Burgundy [Brixx, co-founder of Kitty Nights, and grand dame of the local burlesque scene] teaches, and that she teaches so well, is this idea of tension and release,” Nicky Ninedoors explains. “That’s really important, not just in a number but over the course of an entire show. If we look at what numbers we’re doing in a set, they’ll need to go in a certain order to build that tension. It’s singing, dancing, and then, finally, burlesque,” she says with a wink. “It’s that idea of tension and release. Each show has multiple burlesque numbers. And who doesn’t like multiples, really?”

Every number is backed by four musicians and a singer, making Pandora one of the only regular burlesque evenings in Vancouver to employ a live band. The arrangements for each number are worked out by the musicians and tailored to the needs of the performers.

“That’s the best thing about live performance,” Miss Fitt explains. “You can’t count on it always being the same. And that what’s great about having a band: it gives you that flexibility to work with the musicians and the singers, and sometimes things come out of that that weren’t originally intended.”

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

“Absolutely,” Ninedoors agrees. “For instance, the trumpet player isn’t always going to play the same solo, and that change might affect, say, how you take a glove off. It adds this level of improvisation to every single one of our numbers.”

“I think that the truth is, we all [improvise],” Brunette agrees. “I think I can quote Burgundy Brixx in saying that it’s important to leave room for improvisation in everything. And with our art form it’s most important to have a structure mainly about when things are going to come off, because you need to keep in time with the music. But, in between those moments, there’s a lot of room for play and it’s important to keep that, otherwise things can become a little too flat.”

At the time they founded Pandora and the Locksmiths, all four of the principal performers were already familiar faces in the local burlesque community, having been involved with a number of the troupes already in town. Vancouver’s burlesque scene is one of the liveliest in the country, and for Vancouverites interested in the art form’s revival there are dozens of options to choose from: the frenetic hilarity of Screaming Chicken Theatrical Society, the punk-glam of Sweet Soul Burlesque, and the mainstream appeal of Kitty Nights. Since the launch of Pandora and the Locksmiths, the community has put their full support behind the enterprise.

“I think, in general, it’s a very supportive community that we’re in,” Ninedoors says. “I mean, there are big burlesque competitions and conventions that happen. Last year, I went to the Burlesque Hall of Fame weekend in Vegas, and the vibe that you get when you see another burlesque performer in the hall or the elevator is very much ‘Hi! How’s it going?’ You’re like sisters. It’s like: ‘Hey! You find glitter in your bathtub, too!’”

“Overall, since Burlesque became a part of my life, it’s been the most empowering and supportive community I’ve ever been a part of,” Brunette adds. “It shows us that we do not have to be cookie-cutter. We do not have to be any one thing, to be ‘burlesque’. It’s about any woman, in any size or shape, being empowered and loving herself, and being creative, and being allowed to express that.”

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

“I think the best thing about burlesque, in my experience, is that it caused me to view myself differently, in such a positive way,” Miss Fitt recalls. “I was on a cheerleading team when I was in my early twenties, [...] and it was the most unhealthy environment I’ve ever been in, because I learned in that world that I had to look a certain way to be of value. But burlesque completely- it was this light that came on, the first time I saw it. I saw these women — and they’re all beautiful women, but they all have a different style and a different look — and I was so inspired. The more I did the whole burlesque thing, the more I realized that these are real women doing this. It was just such an important lesson for me. It broke through all these barriers.”

“I struggled deeply, deeply with self-esteem, and with body image issues when I was younger,” Brunette adds. “I’ve grown and learned to appreciate my body, but I still struggle here and there. Every one of us will deal with it, probably to some extent, forever. I dealt with eating disorders when I was thirteen. I was in ballet and I wanted to be a ballerina [...] I dabbled in anorexia. I dabbled in bulimia. I never looked in the mirror and saw somebody who was beautiful. And a couple of years after taking my clothes off onstage for fun, I realized that, for the first time, I was comfortable in my bikini.”

“I think it’s something that every burlesque performer has to work for,” Nicky Ninedoors concludes. “When I first got into it, I had little to no self-worth, and I was in need of a change. [...] It completely took me out of my skin, and made me into who I am today. Burlesque changed my life.”

But for all their discussion of empowerment, not a single performer wants to see their name in print. This, as they explain, has nothing to do with personal shame or regret, but rather with the possibility of some lingering social stigma.

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

“Ultimately we are old-school strippers,” Ninedoors explains. “More acceptable than exotic dancers, but it’s sexuality, so there is an implicit level of taboo to what we do.”

“I consider myself a performing artist specializing in burlesque,” Miss Fitt adds. “The motivation behind my performances is to use my dance and singing skills [...] to promote a sex-positive and empowering form of artistic expression. I am proud of my art [...] and there is no conflict between what I believe and what I do on stage. There is, however, a potential conflict when I am interviewing for a job. At this point, paying rent as well as advancing in my other professional career is equally as important to me, so I don’t want to put myself in a position of losing out on employment opportunities due to peoples’ misunderstandings or disapproval of what I do onstage.”

In spite of any potential stigma, Pandora and the Locksmiths continue to enjoy a capacity audience for each and every performance. And, surprisingly, by Nicky Ninedoors’ estimation more than half of the attendees are women.

“I’d say 60% [of the audience is female],” muses Ninedoors. “Most of the men who come up to me after a show are there to tell me that their wife loves me. It’s such a safe and non-competitive environment. We’re not after men. We’re not trying to seduce someone. We’re seducing an idea. We’re seducing an audience. But, with Burlesque nowadays, it’s predominantly women in the audience. Because it’s not just about women taking off clothes. It’s about women taking off fabulous clothes.”

“I think it puts women into a really good light,” Miss Fitt concludes. ”It puts them in a positive, empowered light, and I think that men and women can really appreciate and respect that. It’s just really inspiring to see somebody, no matter what their shape and size, exude that confidence. It’s such a fierce expression of feminism and femininity.”

Pandora and the Locksmiths is presented on the second Tuesday of every month at Guilt and Co, in Gastown. In addition, they will be performing an evening of Burlesque and entertainment at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre on Feb. 19, at 8pm.
Tickets available at www.stealthedeal.com/vancouver

After five years of flying below the radar, Sarah Harmer is back.

And, the 39-year-old singer, songwriter and activist proved that it was well worth the wait when she entertained a laid-back but appreciative audience this Saturday at the Commodore Ballroom.

Harmer and her 5-piece band, only three performances into their 2011 tour, were relaxed and gracious as they moved through a diverse array of musical offerings from Harmer’s extensivecareer, including material from each of her studio albums, and a fair helping of the best-known songs from her critically-acclaimed solo debut, You Were Here.

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

Though, after a Christmas break, and a half-decade since the release of I Am A Mountain, Harmer admitted that, perhaps being back on the road again might take some getting used to.

“My fingers are already hurting,” she joked, early in the show. “I thought I was semi-pro.”

“Suck it up!” shouted a voice from the crowd.

“You’re right,” Harmer replied, laughing. “Tonight, I’m going to feel the pain for you people.”

What’s most exciting about Harmer as a songwriter is her steadfast refusal to be tied to any specific style of music, and, as a result, her 90-minute set moved seamlessly between folk, country, out-and-out rock, and vibrant pop. She and her band (which included a pregnant keyboard-player) seemed equally comfortable in any genre, and even lent their expertise to several cover-songs. In fact, one of the evening’s more amusing moments came courtesy of Harmer’s cover of Vancouver native Oh Susanna’s “Home Again”; halfway through the second verse, she began mixing up lyrics, only to stop, and look out at the crowd with wry embarassment.

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

“Didn’t I just sing that part?” she asked. “Shit-balls. Sorry, Susie. I’m feeling the hometown pressure.”

The crowd, which was a fairly even split between twentysomethings and fiftysomethings, took some time to warm up, and, throughout the evening, they were, for the most part, low-key (with the exception of the three girls in the left-hand corner who were thrashing so hard, it would compete with even the most rabid Lamb of God fan).

The only real complaint about the evening lay in LiveNation’s choice of venue. Harmer and The Commodore seemed an awkward fit, with her diverse audience and variety of song-styles being a far better fit for The Vogue or The Orpheum, or anywhere else where middle-aged people could sit down. The bars remained mostly empty, and, as amusing as it was to watch three bartenders attempt to clean the same glass, they all could have cashed out well before ten. By the midway point, the boomers were getting restless, and it was only the timely appearance of “Basement Apartment” (which, with the audience singing along and cheering, was the best-received number of the evening) that rejuvenated their flagging spirits.

The evening closed with four back-to-back encores, and, whether she was “feeling the pain” or not, Harmer brought a warm and energetic performance to Vancouver fans who haven’t had a chance to see her in far too long.

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

For those unfamiliar with the foul-mouthed, sex-obsessed, LA-based Glam Rock quartet, and their particular brand of music-comedy that’s as much Spinal Tap as it is Eddie van Halen, Wednesday’s performance at the Commodore would have been a surprising sight indeed. But, for their legions of fans, many of whom arrived dressed in their glam-rock best, the show was nothing short of hysterical.

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

After only a few minutes of listening to their major-label debut FEEL THE STEEL, it becomes abundantly clear that everything about Steel Panther is firmly tongue-in-cheek: from their wardrobe (which forces even the most hardened David Lee Roth fan to stifle a gag) to their music (95% of their catalogue is about sex, and feature such lyrical bon mots as “You’ll be screaming my name when you sit down to pee”) to their stage presence (each member sports a greasy wig and impressive eye makeup, and bassist Lexxi Foxxx has an industrial wind machine placed to his right to ensure that for every minute he’s onstage he maintains a windswept look).

Both musically and conceptually, Steel Panther is committed to every ridiculous 80′s cliché. Over the course of their 60-minute set, frontman Michael Starr, guitarist Satchel, bassist Lexxi Foxxx, and drummer Stix Zadinia turned out an energetic and enthusiastic performance, whether it was thrashing away at ridiculous, Bon Jovi-inspired anthems like “Fuck All Night (Party All Day)”, “The Shocker”, or “Fat Girl (Thar She Blows)”; screeching through a heavy-metal cover of the Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way”; discussing the dark side of backstage groupies (“It’s a pain in the ass when you fuck as many girls as we do”); or giving the audience helpful tips on sexual health (“Condoms are for losers, man. Besides, you can’t get herpes twice.”). The group even debuted a new song from their upcoming album, which featured inspiring and educational lyrics such as:

“Hit her in the shitter,
Treat her like a critter,
Fuck that lady right!”

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of a Steel Panther show is that, despite an unflinching commitment to the juvenile, every member of the quartet has the musical chops to pull off exactly what they’re making fun of. When Michael Starr screeches through “Asian Hooker”, you can imagine him holding his own against Bret Michaels or Steve Perry. When Satchel decides to rip an eight-minute guitar solo, (featuring a section that sounded suspiciously like “Flight of the Bumblebee” done entirely with hammer-ons), you’re amazed that he can pull it off.

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

This goes a long way toward explaining the group’s surprisingly diverse appeal; Wednesday’s crowd included hipsters, aging metalheads, young professionals, suburbanites, and even a few hyperthyroid goons who looked as though they’d somehow gotten themselves lost on the way to UFC 124. Despite such a demographic divergence, though, the clear highlight of the evening was the band’s rendition of their best-known hit “Death to All But Metal”, which whipped the crowd into a surging, chanting frenzy and, as is clearly often the case at a Steel Panther show, featured a healthy dose of audience nudity. Steel Panther is well known for their hearty endorsement of exhibitionism, regularly bringing female audience members onstage to dance topless, and chanting cries of “Show us your tits!” after virtually every song.

Given their commitment, stage presence, command of the audience, technical skill, and overall hilarity, it’s little wonder that Steel Panther has played four sold-out shows in Vancouver in the last two years; though, by some accounts, Wednesday’s show may have been a slightly tamer outing than their previous Commodore appearances.

“Last time they were here, the chicks showed off their cootches,” sighed one disgruntled audience member at the end of the show.

Apparently, you just can’t please everyone.

Even with eight-minute guitar solos.

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

But with a producing resume that features albums and demos for more than fifty local artists (including Hannah Georgas, HeyOcean!, and Juno Nominees Carmen and Camille), a second full-length album nearing completion, a tour in the works, a schedule that includes at least three ongoing projects for local artists, a position as one of MusicBC’s Board of Directors, and his own compositions regularly appearing on network television, songwriter/producer/musician Winston Hauschild has something of a quiet empire on his hands. Working from his cozy Main Street studio and deftly applying his talents as a producer, multi-instrumentalist, and businessman, Hauschild has managed to capture the Holy Grail that eludes a great many Vancouver musicians: making a living.

“I was always interested in making records; and I was always interested in the production of records, and interested in what made them sound the way they sounded,” he muses in his affable, off-hand manner. “I just had myself a little recording setup, and one day somebody said to me, ‘Would you do some demos for me?’ After doing that, I found that I really enjoyed being involved with somebody else’s work. I started putting myself out there, asking, ‘Hey, does anybody want some demos?’ And then I started to get so busy doing those that I was able to quit my day job and do it full-time. Then, those demos morphed into doing full records; and people liked the work, and it was getting critical acclaim, and I thought, ‘Hm, maybe I’m half-decent at this.’”

Born Ryan Hauschild in Summerland, BC, Winston is no stranger to the music scene, having played in a number of bands in the Okanagan region, settling for a time in Kelowna before finally making the move to Vancouver in late 1993.

“When I lived in Kelowna,” he recalls, ”I played in a band called Middlesex, and we were doing pretty well. Any big act that came through Kelowna, we opened for them… We opened for The Village People,” he notes with a wry grin. “But you have to go to a major centre to be part of a scene. I mean, Kelowna’s got a great music scene, but once you reach the pinnacle of that scene you kind of have to move on.”

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

With the release of his debut album, Passengers, Hauschild was brought to the attention of local critics and ranked next to Hot Hot Heat and The New Pornographers as one of the top local acts of the year. His songs — catchy, melodic indie-pop layered with dense harmonies and combined with musical and production prowess — are the stuff of music supervisors’ dreams. As a result, more than half of Hauschild’s recorded material has been licensed for major television shows, among them PainKiller Jane and CBS’ ’The Ghost Whisperer’.

“It’s the new radio,” he says of licensing. “Ten years ago, you’d make a record and try to get it on the radio. This was for two reasons: because you wanted to get royalties, and because you got exposure. Now people seem to be leaning more towards TV and film for that same purpose. As artists, we generally submit a lot of our stuff to music supervisors and pitch them for all different shows. We’ll say, ‘I think this song would be really good on this or that.’ It’s all about contacts. For me, it has taken quite a few years to get to know the people who do it. And I’m at the point now where I’m actually able to start pitching artists that I produce. I have this guy in LA, and he’s always looking for new music. He’s saying to me, ‘Listen, if you’ve got anybody you’re producing that you want to submit, just do it.’ It’s a great way to make money. It’s a great way to get your music out there.”

Hauschild’s own album, slated for release in spring 2011, is still untitled. There has been no shortage of ideas, though: among them, “What’s Your Fucking Problem?” (after the track of the same name), or, after an impromptu exclamation by Hauschild’s longtime collaborator and sometime co-producer Shawn Cole, “Jesus Karate”.

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

“When we were getting sounds for the record, we came across this drum sound that was just so amazing,” Hauschild grins, “and Shawn was just so excited that, instead of saying ‘Jesus Christ’, he just shouted out ‘Jesus Karate’. And that just became the catchphrase through the rest of the recording process.”

Having been involved in Vancouver’s music scene for more than ten years, working and playing alongside a number of the city’s heavy-hitters, Hauschild is overwhelmingly positive about the progress the community is making.

“I think it’s really coming around,” he says enthusiastically. “Five years ago, everybody was complaining that Toronto had such a camaraderie amongst the bands, [with] artists banding together to create this great community. I think, in the last five years, we’ve created a really exceptional community here in Vancouver. People like HeyOcean!, Said the Whale, and Dan Mangan, these people all know each other and there’s a sense of teamwork now. Everybody’s helping one another out. Everybody’s friends. No one’s untouchable.”

He smiles.

“Aside from that, there’s all this great work coming out of Vancouver. There are bands here making great records. It’s becoming a real industry. I think it’s really just Vancouver’s time.”

Whether as a writer, artist, or printmaker, Pierre Coupey can’t help but infuse his work with intense passion. Each piece is a visceral explosion of emotion and experience, embracing ideas as diverse as beauty, inspiration, violence, and death. And his newest solo exhibition, Between Memory and Perception, which opened on the ninth of September at Vancouver’s Gallery Jones, is a breathtaking continuance of that fact.

The exhibition, which runs until the end of September, drew a large crowd that included all manner of notable personalities (including Vancouver Art Gallery Director Kathleen Bartels), and, as stated in the Exhibition Notes, each painting “emerges from, and celebrates, a relationship to poets and poetry.”

“So much of my work is allusive,” Coupey remarked, during an interview at his West Vancouver home, “well, allusive, and elusive. Many of my pieces are inspired by literature; certain poems and stories.”

Photo: Jesse Donaldson

Given Coupey’s lengthy career as both writer and artist, this pronounced link between literature and art seems inevitable. In addition to being the veteran of more than 25 solo exhibitions, both in Canada, and abroad, he is also a noted writer, poet, and editor, having founded The Capilano Review, and co-founded The Georgia Straight. Throughout the exhibition, the art/literature relationship is explored in a number of different works, at times ranging between overt (many of the pieces have what appear to be letters or characters somewhere on their surface), and subtle (at least two of the pieces being inspired by noted Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca, murdered by Franco’s Falangist Regime in 1936). But, perhaps two of the most moving tributes are those dedicated to the master poet Robin Blaser, who passed away in 2009. While the tones throughout the exhibition are, for the most part, muted and heavily regulated, creating a unified palette of rich browns, stark whites, and cool greys,“Riverbank II (for RB)”, is an explosion of colour and passion that stands in perfect contrast to the rest.

“Blaser’s work is important not only to many of us here,” Coupey explains, “but also to contemporary language and thought period… his poems awaken a new wonder at the richness and beauty and mystery of this world, what he would call ‘astonishment’ –– the work of his imagination has been an inspiration to many.”

Yet, despite his lengthy career, and current success, Coupey is frank about his beginnings.

“My first studio was in the basement of my parents’ house in Montreal,” he recalls, with a mischievous smile, “much to their chagrin. My father had always been a great supporter of artists. He had a number of quality pieces, and there was always art around. But my parents, who had seen firsthand how difficult life could be for artists, didn’t want that for me. They refused to buy me any art supplies. So, I began working in secret, and made my own paints out of pigments mixed with shoe polish. And, because I had no canvas, I would steal shelves from the basement cupboards, and paint right on the wood.”

He chuckles. “It only took a few months of those disappearing before they realized what was going on.”

After graduating from McGill University, Coupey went on to study in Paris, first at Academie Julian, and later at the legendary Atelier 17, under the tutelage of noted printmaker Stanley William Hayter.

“Hayter was a crazy man,” he recalls, “but he was like no other teacher I’ve had. He was always interested in your work, even your doodles. He’d look over your shoulder, and give you ideas on how to transform the doodles, and learn something from them. And he was a firm believer in development by transformation. He never taught you how to etch a plate, or wipe a plate. You just did it, maybe three, four times a day, and learned through the process of repetition.“

This exhibition is Coupey’s second at Gallery Jones, and the first of two scheduled for 2010. The enthusiasm of those in attendance was palpable, and bordered on infectious (in one particular instance, the stark relief on Coupey’s “Screen I” was so pronounced and intriguing, that it compelled person after person to stroke its surface).

However, despite this success, and the fact that several pieces in the series have already been sold, Coupey dismisses any suggestion that his work is done purely for popular or commercial appeal.

“I think part of being an artist is having the ability to define your own responsibilities. I certainly wouldn’t prescribe any. As far as I’m concerned, my biggest responsibility is to my own imagination. We’re all conduits. Art preceded me, and it’ll be here long after I’m gone.”

Between Memory and Perception is open to the public between Sept. 9th and 30th at Gallery Jones.

Photo: Jesse Donaldson

]]> http://thedependent.ca/life-and-culture/art/coupeys-work-between-memory-and-perfection/feed/ 0 http://thedependent.ca/entertainment/vancouver-zombie-walk/ http://thedependent.ca/entertainment/vancouver-zombie-walk/#comments Wed, 25 Aug 2010 19:51:11 +0000 Jesse Donaldson http://thedependent.ca/?p=727 Video Feature]]>

Another Dependent “Serious” Newscast – the Vancouver 2010 Zombie Walk.

Today, within the city of Vancouver, The Georgia Straight is unquestionably an alternative media establishment. Reaching close to 600,000 readers, its pages offer everything from music and theatre reviews, to opinion and lifestyle pieces, to, occasionally, hard news. But despite its status as a cultural mainstay, the Straight of today, with the vast bulk of its pages dedicated to event listings, advertisements, and an extensive Classifieds section, is very different in both aesthetic and intention from the Straight that first appeared on the streets of Vancouver back in the spring of 1967.

“It was fuelled by large amounts of idealism,” explains Pierre Coupey, one of the paper’s founding editors, “the idea was to give voice to an anger against establishment values, and their assumption of power. The opposition was crying for a voice. It was, in the beginning, opposed to private ownership, and was designed to be a collective to fight for social justice.”

A meeting was held at 883 Hamilton Street, the home of Rick Kitaeff, on the 2nd ofApril, 1967, to discuss the aims of a free press. Among those in attendance were early Straight contributors Rick Kitaeff, Stan Persky, and Peter Hlookoff, “People’s Poet” and activist Milton Acorn, and current owner/publisher Dan McLeod.

According to Coupey’s early manifesto, The Georgia Straight was intended to be a collective enterprise, with a floating editorial board. Printed on a weekly basis, it was to provide an alternative voice to the heavily anti-youth and anti-hippie sentiment that was then being espoused by the Vancouver Sun and Province. The name itself was allegedly chosen by McLeod for the free publicity it would garner, since local radio stations often issued gale warnings for “the Georgia Strait”. Each member of the group donated whatever money they could for the first issue, with the largest contribution, according to Coupey, coming from Milton Acorn, who contributed his entire Veteran’s Pension cheque, a sum of between $200 and $250.

“Milton was essential to the start of the Straight,” Coupey recalls, “and more the inspiration for the paper than anybody else.”

Photo Courtesy of Vancouver Public Library Archives

The first issue hit the streets in May of 1967, with a cover price of ten cents. Early releases featured articles on police persecution, a how-to guide for growing marijuana, an article called “Help Stamp Out Little Old Ladies”, and cartoons such as ‘AcidMan’, whose hallucinating hero was pictured with genitals on full display. Predictably, the paper caused quite a controversy when it first appeared, and, consequently, there wasn’t a printer in town who would touch the second issue. It was banned on the streets of New Westminster, where vendors responded by selling the paper anyway, in open defiance of police. In the ensuing two years, the fledgling publication was subjected to intense police harassment and legal trouble; between 1967 and 1969, the Georgia Straight and its contributors were charged with one count of “inciting to commit an indictable offence” (for the marijuana article), 27 counts of obscenity, and one count of criminal libel for awarding Magistrate Lawrence Eckhardt the “Pontius Pilate Certificate of Justice.”

“At one time I had an escort of two or three police cars following me on a regular basis,” Coupey recalls, “we were always getting tickets and being pulled over for minor infractions. Rick Kitaeff fought most of that in court and won; he got more tickets than all of us.”

Finally, In October of 1967, the Straight’s business license was suspended by then-mayor Tom Campbell, on the grounds that it contained obscene material.

“It’s a filthy, perverted paper,” said Campbell, in a statement to the Vancouver Sun, “it should not be sold to our children.”

Coupey, now an accomplished Canadian writer, visual artist, university instructor, and founder of the influential West Coast literary magazine The Capilano Review, speaks frankly about the effect of the suspension.

“As any advertising executive knows,” he grins, “any publicity is good publicity. After the suspension, the Straight became notorious. We were emblematic of the struggle for free speech, and the result was that it sold like crazy. Being forced underground was the best thing that could have possibly happened.”

By the end of 1967, the Straight’s circulation was well over 60,000 per issue. They regularly published a column called “Heads Busted”, which dealt with the details of drug arrests. They printed articles on how to avoid police harassment at protest actions. On one occasion, they even published the home address of well-known and despised undercover Vancouver Police Officer Abe Snidanko, (immortalized by Cheech and Chong as “Officer Stedenko”) necessitating his transfer to another department. During this time, many Straight contributors, including McLeod, lived in a large house on 16th Avenue, operating the paper, and living as part of a close-knit community.

Photo Courtesy of Vancouver Public Library Archives

After 1970, the Straight’s legal and financial troubles eased, but despite its growing success, internal conflict plagued the publication. In the early 70’s, The Straight’s offices were taken over on three separate occasions; once by a group of female contributors who published an all-women’s issue, once by a group of gay-rights protestors, and once by members of the paper’s own writing staff. In January of 1972, a collective, comprising a large majority of the Straight’s writers and editors, took over their Powell Street headquarters in an attempt to “liberate” the paper.

“We wanted to make the paper a collective, which meant that if you worked on it, you owned it,” explains former Entertainment Editor and rock critic Rick McGrath, “McLeod refused. He basically said: ‘See these papers with my name on them? Too bad.’”

The collective occupied the Powell Street offices for over two weeks before McLeod obtained a court injunction to have them removed.

“The basis was economic,” McGrath continues. “Basically, we wanted to get paid. For the last eight or nine months I was there, I didn’t see a nickel. But McLeod, at the same time, had a distribution company. And, he was making all this money distributing these American magazines, and rock newspapers, and he was also distributing pornography. Well, of course, it finally dawned on some people that the money from the Straight was being siphoned off into this distribution company, and at the same time, we weren’t getting paid. It didn’t bother me so much, because I was making money as a teaching assistant, but the other guys, it was killing them. And, they finally said: ‘okay, enough of this’.”

Coupey, for his part, supported the Collective, having left the Straight in late 1967 (along with co-founders Peter Hlookoff, Milton Acorn, and Rick Kitaeff) for much the same reasons. Although the first few issues of the paper had remained true to the Floating Editorial Board policy (“Subject to Change Without Notice”, the masthead read), by late 1967, all mention of this body had vanished, replaced simply by Dan McLeod’s name, listed as “Head Editor”. Coupey, along with contributing editors Peter Hlookoff, Rick Kitaeff, and Milton Acorn, became concerned at this apparent violation of the Straight’s original policy, and, in late October of 1967, forced a meeting with McLeod to discuss the issue.

“It was always difficult to communicate with McLeod,” Coupey recalls, “it was tough to have a dialogue, because he was so talented at being inarticulate. But, by that point, he had assumed an attitude, with the Straight, quoting from Louis XIV: ‘L’Etat C’est Moi’.”

As they soon discovered, this attitude was at least partially justified; McLeod had opened the Straight bank account under his own name, and, at the end of 1967, unbeknownst to the other founding editors, created Georgia Straight Publishing Limited with himself as the owner, giving him full legal claim to the paper and all of its assets. Hlookoff and Coupey were appalled and chose to resign their posts, even after McLeod offered them each a 25% share in the paper. Among the early staff, a great deal of controversy still surrounds Dan McLeod’s ownership of the Straight, with former contributor Korky Day, going so far as to call the action “theft and betrayal”. McLeod, however, had a different opinion, stating in a 1972 response to the collective’s allegation, that: “the paper, and the community it serves are more important than the staff, and if that paper folds, it is the community which will suffer most. I believe it is quite possible the paper will fail under collective ownership, and this must not happen. I never wanted to own the Straight, but I’ve always felt very strongly that the Straight, or a paper like it, MUST survive. I have never found, though I wish I could find one, an alternative to single ownership which would ensure the survival of some kind of free press in Vancouver.”

Close to 40 years later, Coupey is moderate in his reflection on the circumstances of the split.
“I don’t think he had any devious intent at the start. I don’t think he planned to rip anybody off. In the beginning, we were all acting in good faith. The disappearance of good faith on his part was something that followed.”

Photo Courtesy of Vancouver Public Library Archives

Despite the actions of the collective, and the appearance of several other underground newspapers, such as The Western Gate, Terminal City Express, and The Georgia Grape (produced by Collective members), the Straight’s local influence continued to grow. By the mid-70’s, however, the underground press scene in Vancouver had all but died out, and the Straight was beginning to founder.

“The paper was in big trouble,” claims former editor Rowland Morgan, in a comment posted on rickmcgrath.com, “The Georgia Straight when I edited it was in transition between being a busy collective in its prime and a commercial listings free-rag in its latter decadence (with one progressive article glued on to the front to maintain cred). It still had subscribers and sold copies out of machines on the street and was not a “controlled circulation” freebie. Sales were pretty much dead in the water.”

According to Morgan, by 1976 the Straight was down to sales of fewer than 2,000 copies a week, was operating at a loss, and would have “closed, and would be forgotten” if it hadn’t been subsidized by a sister publication known as the Vancouver Star.

“The Vancouver Star was a sex newspaper in the days when sex was still controversial,” explains Morgan. “We sold these classifieds for good money, in addition to which the massage parlours all advertised, and the paper’s street sales were brisk. The Vancouver Star made a tidy profit, and McLeod used its revenues to keep the Georgia Straight afloat until he could succeed in switching it to a freebie listings rag.”

In October of 1982, the very first free issue of the Straight arrived, solving its circulation issues by relying on its scores of advertisements and classifieds to support the paper. Since then, The Georgia Straight has gone on to become an unqualified financial success. It has won dozens of Western and National Magazine Awards, including Magazine of the Year. McLeod himself has won at least two Lifetime Achievement Awards (including one from the Jack Webster Foundation), for his “contribution to journalism in BC”, and in the process, has made himself a millionaire.

“The Straight died as an underground paper,” McGrath muses, “McLeod essentially reinvented it as an entertainment handout, and now, that thing is a goldmine. There’s really nothing to it. Just some typesetting. It’s simple, easy, fast. You can always tell how successful a paper is by looking at its classified section. And, the Straight always had those listings of what was happening, what was on, and now, if you want to know what’s going on in Vancouver, it’s the only game in town. The other media don’t even try to compete with them anymore.”

So, how is it that a counterculture news-rag that once ran stories like “ShitPower Gives Birth to ShitCar!” goes on to become an alternative media institution?

“Basically, the Georgia Straight became an entertainment rag for two reasons,” McGrath concludes, “it sold papers and it sold papers. When I was there we always printed more if I had a good interview to run. The political stuff appealed to a much smaller audience -probably the guys who wrote it.”
As to the current state of the Straight, both Coupey and McGrath are skeptical.

“The goal was always to raise the bar for investigative journalism in Vancouver,” Coupey says, “rather than raise the bar, the Straight has chosen to keep it about the same, or, in some cases, lower it. It was intended to be an opposition to the Establishment, not to become the Establishment.”

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They own a condo in Yaletown.

They pay a mortgage.

They have two dogs.

On Sunday, they have brunch with the family.

And, every other weekend, they travel to a secret location in the suburbs to engage in a mutually-enjoyed pastime: having sex with other couples.

They are part of a growing number of Vancouverites – teachers, doctors, lawyers, and others – who have discovered the hidden, and often misunderstood world of the Lower Mainland’s Lifestyle community. “I don’t want to just come out and say that there’s a trend toward this kind of thing, but it’s supported by the numbers,” says Eve, co-founder of Club Eden, a Lower Mainland Lifestyle club. What started in North America in the 1940s as “Key Clubs,” and would later became known as “swinging” or “wife-swapping,” “Lifestyle” is the blanket term for a number of different ideas and behaviours, from traditional full-swap “swinging” to voyeurism and exhibitionism, to threesomes and bisexual exploration.

“Currently, Eden has close to 10,000 registered members, and I’d estimate that, in the four years we’ve been open, more than 12,000 people have come through our doors,” Eve explains. “With Eden, I’d like to think that we’ve taken the whole ‘swinger club’ concept, and turned it completely inside-out. We like to think of it more as a place to realize your fantasies. If you’re a swinger couple, then it’s a swinger club. If you’re a voyeur, it’s a voyeur club. If you like dancing in lingerie, it’s a lingerie party. Of the couples that come to Eden, I’d say about 40% of them full-swap. The rest are into other things.”

A private-members’ club with tasteful decor and high ceilings, Eden hosts two adult parties per month. Prospective member couples must submit a photograph, pay a membership fee, and sign an exhaustive contract before being granted entry. Downstairs is a bar, dance-floor and DJ, a place for couples to meet, flirt, and enjoy a few drinks in one another’s company. Upstairs are several curtained areas for single or multipartner interactions, a voyeur room with a small pane of glass embedded beside the door, an orgy area replete with cushions, and even a sex-swing on one edge of the expansive balcony.

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

But, as Ben, Jennifer, and Eve all maintain, despite the popular conception, sexual encounters within the Lifestyle Community are far from a free-for-all. “People still have this conception that it’s this place where you walk in, there are mattresses on the floor, you throw your keys in a bowl, and go upstairs with somebody, whether you want to or not,” Eve notes. “But the truth is, it’s nothing like that.” In fact, during sexual encounters (known within the community as “play”), couples operate within strict rules of etiquette, with each set of rules differing slightly from couple to couple. “When you go to a club scene, there are couples at all different levels of play,” explains Chris Winchester, who, together with his wife Christina, has been involved in the Lifestyle for more than five years. “And there’s all this lingo that goes with that. Some say: ‘oh, we’re soft swap,’ ‘we’re full-swap,’ or, ‘we’re girl/girl,’ ‘boy/boy.’ There are so many different possibilities.”

On their first night, new members are discouraged from playing with others. Club ambassadors, known somewhat cheekily as Friends With Benefits, are available to answer any questions or address concerns. Because, as experienced couples will attest, for newcomers, figuring out their own set of rules is not always an easy process. “Jealousy is the biggest thing,” says Ben, “but really, it doesn’t exist. And it’s only in the first few seconds of your first experience that you realize that. Jealousy is all tied into the idea of someone else winning over you, or beating you. But if you’re in a situation where they don’t have the ability to beat you, then there’s no sense in being jealous.” Jennifer agrees: “The number-one way of avoiding jealousy is just simply checking in with the other person. And, not checking in for the sake of checking in, but actually wanting to. It’s up to everybody to be mindful. You’re not so lost in the situation that you become unaware of everything around you. You’re still in a relationship. You’re going into this with your life-partner.”

For Ben and Jennifer, the journey to becoming a Lifestyle Couple was not necessarily a simple one. Nor did it happen overnight. “We started our relationship being very: ‘oh, let’s not talk about our exes; let’s not talk about other experiences,’” says Jennifer. “It was very much up on a pedestal, and it spiralled into a very fast moving-in-together, and a very fast marriage, and an equally fast breakup. From meeting, to marriage, to breakup, it all happened in the space of about four years.”

After spending more than a year apart, they reunited, reassessed their priorities, decided that their relationship was worth fighting for, and, after much deliberation, decided to give Eden a try. “That first night, nothing happened,” Ben admits, “Jennifer had very much been the driving force behind going in the first place, but when we got to the club, I was like, ‘hey, this is all right,’ and she was suddenly very panicked about the reality of the situation. It had seemed okay as a fantasy, but all of a sudden, the fact that it might actually happen was really shocking to her, and she ended up in the kitchen crying, because everything had suddenly just become so real.” Jennifer laughs, and says, “well, yeah. You show up and there are 35 couples there. That’s 70-odd people, and most of them are experienced Lifestyle couples…we just sat back and thought: ‘what are we doing here?’”

“When we left the club that night, it was a pretty quiet drive home,” Ben remembers. “We kind of said, ‘well, that was interesting,’ and then we made sure everything was cool, and then went, ‘it’s not for us right now.’ And it was almost a year before we went back.” But, after a year’s hiatus, Ben and Jennifer returned to Eden, and, after participating in an evening of Couples Speed-Dating, engaged in a soft-swap with another couple that same night. Since then, they have attended roughly two parties per month, as well as hosting their own. If it seems unusual that Jennifer was the driving force behind her and her husband’s entry into the Lifestyle, there is considerable evidence that shows this to be less than unusual. As the website for the North American Swing Club Association attests, “sexual and social assertiveness on the part of women at swing parties and other swing activities is not only acceptable, it has come to be expected.” In other words, the community is essentially driven by women. “Back in the 60s,” Ben notes, “it used to be called wife-swapping, but, these days, it’s more like husband-swapping.”

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

According to research provided by the North American Swing Club Association, roughly 15% of couples in North America have incorporated swinging behaviour into their relationship on at least one occasion. This is in stark contrast to the mere 2% and 3% recorded back in 1975 and 1983. Part of the reason for such a drastic jump in numbers may be due to the legal status of swinger clubs in Canada. Until 2005, Lifestyle clubs like Eden were considered “common bawdy houses,” defined as “a place used or frequented for prostitution, or for the purpose of acts of indecency.” Unfortunately for Lifestyle clubs, since the 1960s, “indecency” has lacked a clear definition in the Criminal Code, and is defined simply as “a general average of community thinking and feeling” (Dominion News and Gifts vs. The Queen, 1969). However, in December of 2005, a 7-2 Supreme Court decision rewrote the definition of indecency, labelling it instead as behaviour “confronting members of the public with conduct that significantly interferes with their autonomy and liberty, predisposing others to antisocial behaviour, or physically or psychologically harming persons involved in the conduct.” As Chief Justice Beverly McLauchlin noted at the time: “harm, or significant risk of harm is easier to prove than a community standard of decency.”

The decision overturned the convictions of several Lifestyle club operators in Quebec, and left the door open for dozens more to open across the country. But, as Ben and Jennifer note, the social stigma against the Lifestyle is still very present. “Some people come to the club, and won’t use their real names,” Chris admits. “There are people that have pretty sensitive jobs, or who are part of really conservative organizations, and there’s still this mindset where it’s: ‘if anybody finds out about this, I might lose my job.’ It’s the same thing that sometimes happens in the gay community, that people have to keep this part of their life a secret, and it’s so unfortunate.”

“Part of it is religious conditioning,” he continues. “We’ve met couples at Eden that were devoutly religious. And it’s a big adjustment for them. Because, how can you keep going to church if you’re openly disregarding so much of the Bible? How can you lead your church choir on Sunday, if, the night before, you were at Eden?”

When asked whether they feel comfortable sharing details of their sex lives with family or friends, the answer for each couple is a firm “no.”

“In a lot of ways, swinging is the new gay,” Chris Winchester muses, “because when you bring it up, it’s kind of like you’re coming out of the closet to your friends. It’s the same thing that happened – and still happens to people in the gay community. People say: ‘Oh, you’re gay. Well, you must be telling me because you’re hitting on me.’ It’s the same thing with us. People will go: ‘oh, you’re hitting on us,’ and it’s like, ‘no, not necessarily.’ We’re actually pretty picky.”

Despite the potential societal backlash, both couples agree that the benefits of the Lifestyle far outweigh the drawbacks. As Ben explains it: “Once you enter the Lifestyle, it’s sort of like being single again, except that you’ve got this partner in crime. You go on the prowl together. You’ve got a wingman. In fact, you’ve got the ultimate wingman. Because of life, because of long hours, like any couple, our sex lives drop off at some point. But then, we’ll go to a club night, or go to a party, and spend our night enjoying ourselves together, or with other people, and then, for the next three weeks, we’re just fucking like rabbits. Because we’re both so turned on by one another. It’s such a great way to charge our sex lives. It’s something we’re doing for one another.”

In a 2000 study conducted by Dr. Curtis Bergstrand of Bellarmine University, 60% of couples surveyed said that swinging improved their relationship, while only 1.7% claimed that it had detracted from it in some way. In addition, Lifestyle couples rated themselves as happier, with 59% of respondents describing their lives as “Very Happy”, versus a surprising 32% in the rest of those surveyed. And, with a recent Georgia Straight sex study showing that the majority of both males and females in Vancouver are having sex four times a month or less, with 22% of females and 28% of males in Vancouver admitting to having sex outside of their relationship in the past year, Ben, Jennifer, Eve, and the Winchesters remain convinced that discussing the Lifestyle is more important than ever. “The Lifestyle is something that should absolutely come up in any relationship,” Ben maintains. “Then, whether or not you act on it is up to you. People are always fascinated by Jen and I, because we’re not this stereotypical swinger couple…We have jobs. We have friends. We have normal conversations. Sunday, we go to brunch with Grandpa. We’re normal people. We just party different.”

“People think, sometimes, that you’re just born into this, and that you pop out ready to do it, but that’s really not the case,” says Jennifer. “It’s a choice you consciously make. It’s a process. And looking back, we can say, ‘well, if we’d known this, or we’d known that, we might have had a less bumpy road,’ but sometimes there are things you don’t expect until it happens. And we’re still learning.”

“To me, ‘Lifestyle’ is just a word,” Eve adds, “the ‘Lifestyle’ part of it isn’t so much about the sex. Sometimes that’s there, and sometimes it’s not. It’s about the mindset of honesty and communication.”

When asked if there are any additional benefits, Ben and Jennifer both crack a smile.

“You ever been blown by two girls at the same time?” Ben asks. “That’s a fucking benefit.”

For further information on The Lifestyle, visit Eve’s blog at www.sugarspiceandsexadvice.com

I suppose it’s only fitting that one of my first forays into the world of online journalism should end by spending an afternoon with a trio of gay nuns.

Indeed, how I came to be seated in a Moxie’s on Davie Street at five o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, beside three men in whiteface, habits, and seven-inch heels is still something of a mystery to me.  It’s not exactly the first thing that comes to one’s mind as one is munching on one’s first few bites of ‘Special K’ in the morning, but, one of the most important elements of living in a major city – especially one as diverse as Vancouver, is being open to new experiences, however unusual or foreign they may seem.  And so, when a friend suggested I join him at the Veiling Ceremony for something called the Sisters of the Abbey of the Long, Cedar Canoe, I jumped at the chance.  In fact, I considered it my civic duty to join him.  It was fresh.  New.  Exciting.  In the spirit of adventure, abandon, and raw experience.

Besides, all my other friends were busy.

It certainly didn’t seem to matter at the time that I had no idea what a ‘Veiling Ceremony’ was.  At the risk of sounding completely culturally retarded, I’m just going to go ahead and admit that, until I met them, I had no idea that there were such a thing as gay nuns.  But, as it turns out, Sister Ethica Slüt, Sister Merry Q. Contrary, and newly-veiled Sister Hyde N. Sikh LostofBling are the creators, founders and – at present, sole members of The Sisters of the Abbey of the Long, Cedar Canoe, a charitable and protest organization dedicated, through the use of humour and high camp, to highlighting important social issues.  The abbey itself is based on a San Francisco organization known as the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, who rose to prominence during the early days of the AIDS Crisis, promoting safe sex, and becoming one of the first organizations to hand out condoms and safe-sex pamphlets at a time when nobody else was doing so.  Their members, worldwide, are primarily – but not exclusively gay men, and since their inception, have inspired scores of imitators and independent organizations around the world; their mission: ”To expiate stigmatic guilt, and promulgate universal joy”.

During a ceremony in a lavish apartment in the West End, in the presence of close to a dozen witnesses, the inductee was asked to kneel, repeat a ritual pledge, and bow their head as the new veil was added to their headpiece. In fact, the process virtually mirrored the one under which actual nuns are veiled, although with more precarious heels and slightly more exciting underwear choices.

Add to this the fact that each headdress was constructed out of an old athletic supporter, and you have a ceremony that even the Anglican church might have trouble approving of.

As the afternoon progressed, I watched the sisters engage in “Bar Ministry” (a practice that looks, to the secular eye, an awful lot like regular, everyday flirting), recieved a ‘Sparkle Bindi’ in the middle of my forehead(as I understand it, meant to open my Third Eye through the cunning use of glitter), and found myself in a lengthy conversation with an enchanting chap who had, by all accounts, recently recieved a tattoo on his perineum.  I was also the recipient of a ‘Genital Blessing”, a highly theological and deeply hallowed ritual which consisted of Sister Hyde N. Sikh hurling a handful of glitter in my face, and then spending the next sixty or so seconds casually fondling my junk.

I’d like to think that, overall, I’m a very good sport; however, after having recieved my tenth or eleventh consecutive Genital Blessing in under twenty minutes, I began to feel considerably less blessed about the whole affair.

“You can feel mine instead,” Sister Hyde offered, taking my hand.

I declined, as quickly and politely as I possibly could.

He giggled, then spent the remainder of the next half-hour attempting to fondle, grope, and caress, until I assured him that, no matter how much glitter he had left in the container, my gonads were feeling quite blessed enough.

Honestly.

The things I go through for the sake of a good story.

That being said, the sisters themselves, and the community with which they have surrounded themselves, is a tremendously exciting and vital one.  These are people unafraid to take chances.  Unafraid to provoke, or promote their cause.  Unafraid to be different.  Unafraid to express themselves however they see fit.  These are people brimming with life, charity, and good cheer, and, even watching them on one of these early outings in the West End, in the first few months of their organization’s existence, it was clear that, wherever they went, their enthusiasm was infectious, and they left nothing but joy in their wake.

And, for anyone who’s interested, the sisters did say they were recruiting.

I considered it for a moment, but that eyelash glue always gives me the worst rash.

Interested parties can contact the Sisters at www.YVRsisters.ca

OCCUPATION: Director/Teacher/Acting Coach

BASE OF OPERATIONS: Austin-Tuck Studios, Suite 503, 68 Water St., Vancouver

Mel Tuck has taught in universities and technical institutions across the country, including Ryerson, CDIS, and the University of Alberta. His former students include many of the best-known Canadian actors of this generation, such as Eric McCormack, Molly Parker, Nia Vardalos, and Barry Pepper, as well as the majority of acting instructors in the city of Vancouver. Tuck has been an actor, an educator, and the director of more than 200 pieces of theatre from coast to coast. He has weathered the rise and fall of the Gastown Actors’ Studio, the collapse of which put him through bankruptcy and back again.

Now, after a rich career of over forty years, Mel Tuck remains an authority when it comes to the education and development of actors of all ages.

What’s your philosophy on teaching actors?

Ever since the film industry came along, here in Canada, the whole process of teaching acting has changed. Before, the emphasis was always on characterization, the idea of neutralizing yourself, and trying to bring out character. But since the film industry has come into the picture, basically, you’re being forced to deal with who you are. A lot of actors don’t like that, and will say: “I don’t want to be me. I want to be somebody else. Do I have to do it that way?” Well, no, but you’d better find some way. Your way.

The thing is, in this industry, they’re going to judge you by what they see walking through the door. Whether you’ve got skill, or ability, or whatever, they’re going to judge you primarily based on your appearance. So, you have to become very aware of that, and what it means. The point is, you have to free yourself from any idea of perfection. It’s irrelevant. I have no idea what that word means. What is, is. Truth is truth. Art is art. And, if you’re sitting there in a scene, thinking, “I have to feel something here,” well, maybe, maybe not. Because, if you don’t, then what do you do?

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

My very first teaching assignment was while I was still a student. I was twenty-three, and suddenly my mentor, Tom Peacock at the U of A, asked if I would teach a class while he was away. I got a few acting jobs at The Citadel while I was still in school. I was an Equity member before I even graduated, and I was an ACTRA member about ten seconds after that. And, when I graduated, I was the only student in the class. It didn’t start off that way. Either people dropped out, or they were kicked out, but by the end of it, it was so bizarre, because it was just me.

Somewhere around 1972, I was in Toronto, and things were getting a little tight for me, and I wasn’t getting as much work as I used to, so I went to Ryerson, and applied for a job as a director.  I had a decent amount of teaching credits, and teaching/directing credits at that point, so they hired me. Then the guy who was the director of the acting program quit, and said to the chairman, “hire this guy.” And they went along with it, even though I had all these other commitments, like making a TV version of Freedom of the City and playing Hamlet. From that time forth, I went out on fewer auditions, but nothing was coming, and the teaching thing just became what I was doing. I have to admit, in all fairness, I really liked doing it. It was fun, and I was having a good time. I mean, some of the people that I was the boss of were twice my age.

I stayed there for 13 years, before I finally said, this is it — I can’t do this anymore. I’d had arguments with the administration, many times over, mostly about students that they thought needed to be eliminated from the program. With Nia [Vardalos, producer and star of My Big Fat Greek Wedding], it was like the final nail in the coffin. I remember saying to them, “If you get rid of this girl, I’ll quit.” And she quit. So I quit. For me, it was, and still is, a matter of integrity. I can’t do something badly, or do something that I can’t put my faith in. If I’m asked to teach something that I don’t believe in, I don’t know how to do it. So I had to leave.

Shortly after you came to Vancouver, you founded the Gastown Actors’ Studio, which is known for some of its famous graduates.  Can you lead us through the rise and fall of that institution?

The original idea was to have something in place for working professionals, somewhere they could upgrade their skills, and work out, like going to the gym. And, at the same time, we started the Studio Theatre over at 34 Powell. At that point, when that started, Gastown went wild, and suddenly became huge, and I wasn’t all that involved in it anymore, because my energy was directed toward getting the theatre going. And I was having problems with my brother, who came in, and was supposed to be Mr. Moneywise, but he wasn’t. He worked there for two years as the general manager.

Photo Credit: Jesse Donaldson

I mean, he was qualified.  He was a Chartered Accountant, as well as having a B.A., but he’s got — problems. He took a hunk of money, and ran off, and he ended up in Japan. I had a sense that something was going on. I kept saying, I have to know the details of what’s going on here, and he never told me. He would take the money when it came in from the students, and he’d just spend it. He would buy drinks for everybody at the bar. $6000 worth of bedroom furniture. Stuff like that. As far as what was really going on, I don’t think anybody really knows. It was a mess.
And when I finally took a look at what he’d done when the full-time program was initially set up, it was ridiculous. The ratio of students to teachers was, like — we had ten students that first year, and he had ten teachers. We had two or three financial people come in after he left, and they said, “this full-time program is the way to bankruptcy.” Then, one day, the government decided that we weren’t an educational institution anymore, and suddenly we had to pay back all this GST. We were accredited, but we weren’t an educational institution. Go figure. There was all this confusion over whether or not we fit into a specific system, and that’s always been a problem for the arts. I’ve been to court twice now, all the way up to the Supreme Court, and they always seem to like me and think I’m smart, but they never rule in our favour.  Because they don’t understand what we do, and no matter how hard we try to explain what we do, the whole process of creativity isn’t something you can quantify.

Since then, we’ve had to sort of climb out of that hole. But now, nine years later, we’re free and clear, and we’ve got our credit rating back — but it was insane.

What’s coming up?

I’m directing a show called Collected Stories. I got to a point recently where I’d been through a couple of messes, and been involved in some shows that were not an easy process, and I thought, “forget it. I’m not going near any of this ever again.” But then, I got a call from a student, who was looking for a director, and this was something I’d always wanted to work on, so I said, “okay, I’ll do it. But I’m just directing. I don’t want to produce this thing.”

I think it’s a wonderful piece. I think it’s important for people to see, because it’s about mentorship, and, ultimately, everybody’s had a mentor. We’ve all had somebody who wasn’t related to us, and was important in our development. The play is about writers. It’s about a mentorship that becomes a competition, and ultimately culminates in a betrayal. And, when that final scene hits, there are no conclusions drawn. You, the audience, are left to draw them on your own. All the information is there, and it allows us to realize that, sometimes, we have to come to terms with both sides of an issue.

Now, I understand that a great deal of the people currently teaching acting in Vancouver are former students of yours. Can you give us a rundown on who they are, exactly?

Ben Ratner, Michelle Lonsdale-Smith, Kate Twa, Nancy Sivak (very briefly), Linda Boyd, Martin Cummins, John Cassini, Debbie Podowski, Peter Bryant. They’ve all studied with me for various amounts of time.

You’ve also taught or directed a number of Canadian celebrities. Who are they?

Oh, God. Well, the most famous of those is probably Eric McCormack. Then, there’s David James Elliott, who was on JAG. Barry Pepper, Molly Parker, Nia Vardalos, Martin Cummins, Nick Lea, Ian Tracey from Da Vinci’s Inquest and Intelligence, and Jared Keeso, who just finished playing Don Cherry in Keep Your Head Up, Kid.

COLLECTED STORIES runs from April 14-17, and 21-24 at PAL Theatre in Vancouver. Mel Tuck welcomes students and auditors to his class, and can be contacted at 604-681-0709, or by email at melatuck@hotmail.com