2000 - Save the Stoltmann Wilderness and its 1000-year-old trees — Vol. 19, No. 03

The proposed 500,000 Stoltmann Wilderness is three and a half hours north of Vancouver. Western Red cedar and Douglas fir have been growing here for over a thousand years, but Interfor (International Forest Products) is committed to removing these ancient trees by any means necessary — including intimidation and violence. Read more to find out about the struggle to preserve this special place.

2000 - Help make Mt. Elphinstone a Provincial Park now! — Vol. 19, No. 02

The “jobs versus environmental protection” debate has been played out on the Sunshine Coast for years. But clear-cutting the forests of Mt. Elphinstone will only create temporary employment for the relatively few. Alternatively, setting aside1500 hectares of Mt. Elphinstone in a provincial park will protect the environment and create sustainable, long-term employment. Find out more about this biologically rich wilderness area.

Wilderness Committee 1999-2000 Members Report — Vol. 19, No. 01

This report covers the Western Canada Wilderness Committee’s on-going wilderness preservation campaigns and public education activities for the year 1999-2000. Indeed, your organization has been very busy. From the fight to preserve wilderness in Western Canada to Tiger habitat protection in India, the Western Canada Wilderness Committee continues in its dedication to protect the world’s last wild places.

1999 - Victoria’s Sea-to-Sea Green Blue Belt — Vol. 18, No. 08

By 2010 400,000 more people are expected to be living in the Capitol Regional District (CRD) of Victoria. Because of this anticipated growth, development pressures will be placed on Victoria’s green space and surrounding recreational areas. If accepted, a proposal to expand the park system within the CRD would help to maintain the vitality and natural beauty of the south Vancouver Island region.

1999 - The Fight to own B.C.’s Forests — Vol. 18, No. 04

The public interest and forest ecosystems will take a back seat to corporate profit if a government plan to “give away our public forest lands” succeeds. The logging companies are the direct beneficiaries of this obvious sell-out of public land. Not only will environmental concerns be trumped, the public will have little, if any, access to potentially 25 million hectares of privatized land.

Country music legend Loretta Lynn has been around the block a few times. I can identify with that useful cliché, except during my tenure at Douglas College it feels like I’ve been dragged around the block. As the end draws near for the two-year program in which I’ve been slugging it out, a growing awareness of having to get a job and get on with life is generating a palpable anxiety. I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. This past week was witness to a bizarre mixture of student meltdowns and instructor indifference. Combine this with boozy commiserating in crappy New Westminster bars and you’ve got an existential crisis resulting in questions such as, Who Am I? Where am I going? What have I done? Will I get a job? Can you lend me 20 bucks so I can have another drink? Loretta Lynn, God bless her she’s still around, knows how some of us feel. She knows what’s going on. She ain’t no dummy. You don’t get a voice like hers without doing time in the darkness.

“Have Mercy” is taken from an album called Van Lear Rose released in 2004. On this record, Loretta Lynn collaborates with retro blues-rocker Jack White. The result is a country album backed by humming electric guitars and a bass-heavy rhythm section. “Have Mercy” is about romantic longing, but the turn-it-to-eleven, rocking-out nature of the song suggests coveting on a more visceral level. Behind Loretta’s ballsy southern belle’s voice, Mr. White’s playing is pure raunch guitar and all sex. In fact, the song sounds like a striptease, but this time with a slighted lover performing for an indifferent audience. A momentary jazz detour only confirms the ready-to-go, “I’ll do anything for you baby,” sexual nature of the music.

The lyrics are an approximate reflection of the music too: desire on a monumental scale. In a voice suggesting the desperation of the slighted, Mrs. Lynn, however, never loses her sexy cool. “Have mercy on me baby/I’m down upon my knees/Have mercy on me baby/I’ll do just as you please…” But of course, the satiation she is crying for ain’t coming. All she can do is plead with her former lover using a variety of tactics, from bargaining, “I’ll put no one else above you;” rationalizing, “She’s got you hypnotized;” to downright begging, “I’ll do just what it takes.” Anyone who has ever been dumped before knows exactly what she’s talking about.

So how does all this relate to the final slog of school? As we are nearing the end, especially those of us are who are about to embark on an at times seemingly uncertain future, we can all stand to give and take a little mercy.

For the almost 20 years that they were a band, Guided by Voices created some of the catchiest, most hook-laden music that has ever been consigned to tape. Taking a decidedly low-fi approach to most of their recordings, GBV were prolific in creating one to three minuet bursts of guitar oriented pop and/or rock.

I think it was Pete Townshend that said something to the effect that the perfect pop song should be no more than two-and-a-half minuets long or thereabouts. Not only did GBV take that bit of advice to heart, they also took the entire sound that came out of England in the 60s – particularly that of bands such as The Who, The Kinks and Creation – and, well, ripped it off. But as they say, imitation is the highest form of flattery and GBVs homage to 60s Britpop is brilliantly realized in exquisitely crafted songs that happily acknowledge their influences.

Taken from their final album Earthquake Glue, “The Best of Jill Hives” is a good summation of what Guided by Voices was all about: two guitars, bass and drums and a singer who affects an English accent while singing.

Although comparitively slower than other GBV songs, “Jill Hives” immediately grabs the listener with a hook-driven rhythm section. Guitars join in and put down melodic layers over the easily danceable beat, but it is Robert Pollard’s affected voice that gives the song a certain compelling force. Reminiscent of The Who’s Roger Daltrey, Pollard’s vocal delivery tops off what is already a perfectly realized pop song.

Seemingly adding extra weight to his singing style, are Pollard’s characteristically eccentric and hermetic lyrics: “ Paid up weathered and type-o / Clad in gladstone watch him go / Swimming beneath the microscope /Hello lonely bless the nation.” Rather than be interested in providing word arrangements that make “sense,” Pollard seems to be more interested in strings of words that on the surface appear coherent and sound good together but are simultaneously completely and purposely obtuse. “I don’t know where you find your nerve / I don’t know how you choose your words / Speak the ones that suit you worse / Keep you grounded, sad and cursed / Circle the ones that come alive / Save them for the best of Jill Hives.”

Who is Jill Hives anyway and what’s this song about? Answering these questions is a waste of time. Like so many pop songs, what’s important isn’t meaning, but rather the combination of sounds and words.

Conversations In Tehran
By Jean-Daniel Lafond & Fred A. Reed
Talonbooks, 2006; 224 pp,; $19.95

If mainstream media accounts are true, then Iran is a country ruled by an irrational religious fanatic lording it over an equally irrational and fanatical population. The news feeds carried by CNN and Fox News are so predictable as to become clichés: crowds of angry men shouting “Death to America” while burning that country’s esteemed flag; Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s vaguely criminal mug questioning Israel’s right to exist. According to mainstream media, that Iran is part of an “Axis of Evil” is a forgone conclusion.

Surely there must be more to this poorly understood country than ashes of American flags and threats shrouded in nuclear ambitions. Fortunately, Conversations In Tehran by Jean-Daniel Lafond and Fred A. Reed completely and eloquently undermines the largely unchallenged assumption that Iran is a one-dimensional religious state. Concentrating on Iran’s recent past with an examination of its reform movement – generally begun with the election of Mohammad Khatami in 1997 – and its perhaps inevitable failure, Lafond and Reed clearly and dramatically present a diverse, complicated and complex nation on the cusp of breaking into the modern world.

Both expatriates (Lafond is from France and Reed is from the U.S.) living in Canada, the two men have created a piece of writing that captures the reality of the city, and by extension the country, of which they are reporting. Perhaps furnished with Lafond’s documentary filmmaker’s eye, the city of Tehran and its 10 million occupants are described in immediate and concrete detail: “To the east, an entire district of warehouses marches to the infernal din of trucks loading and unloading … The air stinks of sulfur, whistles with the hiss of welding torches, echoes with the roar of motors as they spew a cocktail of oil and gasoline fumes into the polluted air.”

Like a documentary film, Conversations In Tehran is presented as a series of interviews with the people involved in Iran’s reform movement. Lafond and Reed set up the scenes – occasionally providing a brief history lesson focusing mainly on the post-1979 Islamic revolution – but let their subjects tell their own stories. Through these interviews the reader is introduced to both the history and present condition of contemporary Iran – a situation that has been largely hidden from western awareness. With western mainstream media showing only the dangerous and close-minded men of a fanatical regime, to hear of a press once critical of Iran’s religious leaders, or to hear of established women’s movements based on hidden and complex networks of support will be, for many, forgivably surprising.

It is not for lack of support that the reform movement failed. The 1997 elections saw 70 percent of eligible voters cast ballots for reformist Mohammad Khatami. But the presidency of Iran is largely symbolic; real power lies with the mullahs who hover directly above the president. However, that such a large majority of voters would vote for change is an indication that Iran’s religious leaders’ choke hold on power is limited and perhaps growing weak.

The west would do well to keep this in mind.

Even though the excitement and adrenalin of Doug Horn’s cross-country mountain bike racing days are behind him, mostly, Mr. Horn is still a committed cyclist. He commutes five days a week in rain or shine and rips it up on the weekends. Perhaps it’s no surprise then, that Doug is a committed environmentalist too. When asked how he came about his green consciousness he easily answers, “a lot of it came from racing and the people involved.” Well it seems that all the riding he’s done and the people he has met along the way have influenced his current situation. After years in a high paying career, Doug is back in school learning about environmental building design.

Maybe it’s from all the hours on the bike, but Doug looks far younger than the 44 years he’s spent on this planet. And in that period of time he has had a variety of jobs – including a stint as a grease-covered, callous-handed rig-operator in Alberta’s now contentious oil patch. As an oilrig worker the money was good, but Doug knew he didn’t want to end up like some of his co-workers – hardened, alcoholic and old beyond their years.

Checking out of the oil patch, Doug checked into a computer technician program, and for the last 20 years he has been an information technology professional. The past eight of those years have been spent plying his trade at HSBC where, according to Doug, “the money was good to really good … if you wanted to make a ton of money you could. You’d work hard, but it was available.”

Easily then, Doug could have stuck it out at HSBC, earning both a high income and retiring comfortably. “It just came down to realizing that I didn’t want to get to the point where I really hated the job. I could see that was going to happen in a few years so I had to make a change.”

What gives? What’s here to be dissatisfied about? Here we have a person, who, for all intents and purposes, is successful by every social standard: he’s got money, he’s got security, materially speaking, he’s got it made. But for Doug, he needed something more than a paycheque: “I was continuously thinking, “What can I do to be working in something I’m much more passionate about? I really wanted to be involved in something that I could do seven days a week and I wouldn’t care – that I’d still enjoy.”

Doug started thinking about what he could do that would combine his environmental concerns with employment. “I was frustrated with people and the way the world is with waste and how it seems that no one gives a shit. So I got more involved with alternative energy and energy efficiency, specifically in construction. Then I thought it would be really cool to be working in that field.”

All that thinking took him on a bit of a journey – through the available literature on sustainable architecture and construction, to conferences on environmental housing design. “50 to 60 percent of energy we use goes into constructing and maintaining buildings. I thought if you’re going to make a positive environmental impact this seems to be an area where you can make a lot of difference.” Eventually, Doug found his way to the Architectural and Building Engineering Technology program at BCIT. As its name suggests, this two-year program centers on architecture and building science – the basic tools that will help Doug create energy efficient and environmentally sound buildings.

But all best intentions aside, our culture remains largely unaware of its wasteful and energy inefficient ways. As Mr. Horn notices, like many of us, “anytime anyone leaves their house, they get in their car and they drive. And it just floors me that people don’t ever think twice about it.” How are we, then, to deal with the problem of waste as it relates, in this case, to the internal combustion engine. For Doug the answer is easy: “double the price of gas.”

Which brings us back, circumlocutorily, to cycling.

It’s not surprising that Doug feels the way he does. Mountain biking, or any kind of cycling – whether it’s for thrills, or for commuting – seems to contribute to environmental awareness. For Doug, his awareness of how energy inefficient and wasteful we are as a culture compels him to ride his bike regularly. Mr. Horn might be an exceptional example of environmental commitment, but as he says, “people don’t have to change their lives that much to be more environmentally friendly. If enough people were to make subtle changes in their lives it would have a huge impact on planet.”

Riding a bike is a good start. You might have a good time as well.

Originally written by Leonard Cohen, “Hallelujah” has been covered by a host of well-known performers including Bono, K.D. Lang and Bob Dylan. But perhaps the most compelling version of the Canadian icon’s song is the one performed by Jeff Buckley from the 1994 album Grace.

Barely into his 30s when he died, Jeff Buckley, like his father Tim before him, was a talented songwriter haunted by an addiction to heroin. And like his father, he died a young man. At the beginning of what should have been a brilliant career, in 1997 on a warm spring night in Memphis, Tennessee, fully clothed, Jeff Buckley swam out over the Wolf River and drowned.

Hauntingly, Grace sounds like it was recorded underwater. Shimmering guitars and Jeff Buckley’s sometimes high-pitched, operatic voice, create a disorienting drug and alcohol induced soundscape. With only an electric guitar for accompaniment, he sings Leonard Cohen’s words seemingly in total opposition to the established poet’s masculine gravitas.

Both lucid and bleary like a drunk on a long walk home, Buckley’s guitar playing is sharply defined and yet carries with it the quality of narcotic dreams. His guitar comes to us in mesmerizing swells then is punctuated by clear individual notes pulled by fingers sure of the mark.

In a way, his style of playing compliments Leonard Cohen’s words. “Hallelujah” is furnished with clearly defined imagery: “Your faith was strong but you needed proof/You saw her bathing on the roof/Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you.” And yet its biblical references and romantic notion of the world are always out of reach – another dream, the memory of which makes the dreamer turn bitter after waking.

Even without Jeff Buckley’s haunting vocals and guitar, Mr. Cohen’s song is already a slow, harrowing examination of romantic love. With it’s real and simultaneously distant poetic imagery combined with Jeff Buckley’s ethereal musical style, this version of “Hallelujah” is both dream and nightmare.

Greener than Eden
By Michael Kohn
Cormorant Books, 2006; 253 pp,; $22.95

About a third of the way into Greener than Eden, Noah, the novel’s central character, gets punched out by the beautiful and mysterious Cass. This sudden act of violence is the point where Torontonian Michael Kohn’s novel about a gang of tree planters changes from a slog through various contrivances into a mostly enjoyable piece of writing.

As it turns out, violence, in its different manifestations – the punishment of physical labour, implied and outright threats, the brandishment of weapons, as well as outright fisticuffs – is a constant feature of Greener than Eden and provides a theme of sorts to its mostly episodic structure.

Escaping his problems in Toronto, slacker university student, half-committed activist and “ex-con” Noah Abramson signs on to work as a tree planter somewhere on the blasted heath of northwestern Ontario. Immediately, the reader is thrust into a wilderness scarred by clear-cut logging and populated by mostly young, and mostly male, tree planters who stoop and dig holes for, if they are “highballers,” up to 5000 conifer seedlings a day.

Greener than Eden starts in the middle of the action where Kohn vividly depicts a world of dirt, beat-up trucks, moose and blackflies. Noah and love interest Cass, whose lives intersect six pages into the story, are both on the run from bad situations. Similar to Cass and Noah is Guatemalan ex-patriot Aleron – on the run too, but from troubles far worse than anything a middle-class Canadian can have thrust upon him or her. In terms of character development, the novel focuses on these three; the rest of the story features less fleshed-out characters who come to the reader through occasional dialogue or a passing description.

In its descriptions, Greener than Eden seems to be operating on two levels: one favours a heightened poetic language, and the other is content with concrete realities. As much as the poetry sometimes succeeds – “I had to get farther out, needed to open up every pore, wanted wind in my ear” – it often rings hollow – “I drink hungrily from my canteen, and eat thirstily.” But when the language is stripped of the mediation of poetry, the narrative cracks like a whip. Specifically, in the novel’s portrayal of violence, its threat or its consequence, Kohn’s writing is immediate and visceral. In a scene where a hostile exchange between the tree planters and their redneck logger opposites takes place, the tension jumps off the page.

The violence portrayed in Greener than Eden seems to act as a kind of counterpart to the tree-bereft landscape in which Noah and his coworkers must earn a living. Environmentalists often make the argument that clear-cut logging is a prime example of man’s violent regard for the natural world. Is it any surprise then that violence should erupt in such a brutalized landscape?