coffee machine down
a hot cuppa Joe
so creamy and slow
the day starts to flow
my ideas can grow
morning brew calamity
inspiring insanity
I’m feeling the gravity
and revealing my vanity
I’ll pray to the gods
but I don’t like the odds
these second rate frauds
can’t compare to my pods
thomas p. hunterson
For Immediate Release
Tuesday August 6, 2024
Charter Denied: Compassion Club Ordered To Pay $3.2 Million
Victoria, B.C.: A Compliance Order from the Province of B.C. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xR1ffSvZNkRORyAvz6Tl0h3JpsT4lGOmN92tflWCK_0/edit, has been issued to the Victoria Cannabis Buyers Club demanding the non-profit society pay a $3.2 million fine by September 6, 2024, though a similar fine against founder, Ted Smith, has been dropped. The fines stem from raids conducted by the B.C. Solicitor General and Public Safety’s enforcement agency, the Community Safety Unit, on the VCBC in November 2019 and July 2020. Lawyers Kirk Tousaw and Jack Lloyd will be challenging the Compliance Order, but that will not stop the CSU from having another written hearing to determine if the directors of the society will be held personally accountable for $3.2 million.
While legalization has been beneficial for the general public, those who fought for their right to use this medicine have been left with an inadequate medical cannabis program that has never allowed storefront access. Patients continue to rely on the VCBC because limits on THC in edible products, restrictions on smoking lounges, high prices and the lack of information regarding the potential medical uses of cannabis products in recreational stores, are unacceptable. For these reasons, the 28 year old VCBC has defied the CSU and reopened after every raid, including a third raid in March 2023 for which a fine has not been issued yet. Soon after that raid, Tousaw and Lloyd filed lawsuits and injunctions against both the provincial and federal governments, though no date for that hearing has been set.
In her decision, Deputy Director of the CSU, Meghan Oberg, acknowledges that, “I have no authority in this forum to evaluate the adequacy of the medical cannabis regime.”(section 83) This is because the province amended the Cannabis Control and Licensing Act in November 2022 to add section 95.1, which removed the ability of defendants to argue constitutional matters. Even though the fines were issued in January 2022 and appeals immediately filed, Deputy Director Oberg concluded that section 95.1 can still be applied to the hearing, effectively snubbing the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. (section 34) B.C. is the only province where defendants cannot use the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in their defense if facing a cannabis-related administrative penalty.
There is little chance that the CSU administration will alter its decision after the VCBC files an Application for Reconsideration on September 6, 2024. However, all avenues of appeal within the Solicitor General and Public Safety Ministry’s jurisdiction need to be explored before taking the matter to a federal court for a judicial review. It is surprising that Deputy Director Oberg overturned her boss, Jamie Lipp, Executive Director and Director of the CSU, in his unprecedented attempt to essentially double-down on the fines by giving a second, equal fine to Ted Smith.
Legalization would never have occurred if not for the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as the proliferation of illegal medical dispensaries across the country eventually convinced the Liberals that the public was ready to accept cannabis as a legal commodity. Patients have fought for improvements to the medical cannabis program for decades in court after forcing Health Canada to create it in 2001. Since their inception, federal medical cannabis programs have failed to meet bare minimum constitutional standards and Health Canada has repeatedly lost in court. For example, when the bakery of the VCBC was raided in 2009, Tousaw fought to the Supreme Court of Canada, where he won a unanimous decision that made edibles and concentrates available to patients, though Health Canada responded with an unacceptably low limit on THC.
Storefront access to medical cannabis should be a cornerstone feature of Health Canada’s programs. Instead, homeless, poor and elderly patients are being systematically excluded and forced to pay high prices for low dosage products at recreational stores that cannot give medical advice or provide a safe place to consume their medicine. Recently the Legislative Review of the Cannabis Act: Final Report of the Expert Panel confirmed that,”…an important change to improve patient access to cannabis for medical purposes would be to allow patients to obtain cannabis products in-person from pharmacies.”(pg 68)
Stripping constitutional rights from patients to streamline administrative proceedings is an affront to democracy. Eventually this situation will get beyond the kangaroo court of Mike Farnworth, the Solicitor General and Minister of Public Safety, where a qualified judicial authority can rule on the many significant problems inherent in the federal and provincial government’s cannabis laws.
For more information contact Ted Smith at 250-415-1063 or hellovcbc@gmail.com.
Chill Out Angry People – Be in the Moment
Fiddle with a yo-yo on an abbreviated string over an illusionary pot. I’m panning for gold in an altered state. Spin it musically off the chi between my knees. Spin dips, and scatters what spilled. A cloud of golden missiles sprinkles the counter. Putting in time? Imagination meditations are laughably easy.
Explore the mysteries of mental illness by poking at the fringes. With a final windy spin to challenge gravity, the middle finger holds the yo-yo up in a lubricated state of impermanent stasis. It’s its form of restitution, and it’s rehabilitation from rudeness.
Meditation isn’t a literal translation of reality. Hum into the thickened air. Add rhythms to the undertones. The dirt below the carpets disappears. If a chanted mantra can recreate an old illusion, a fresh one can revise a genetic belief in an ill fated illustration. I’m uneasy doing this in public. It never works.
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Rays wash across furniture. Sunshine lands on a pot of yesterday’s freshly stewed coffee, atop a cold hotplate. The beam illuminates bits of bland goat cheese I bought to support the local goats.
Gaze about. What’s owned is basic and functional, with more than anyone should need. It’s okay to own stuff if it’s just stuff. Nor should a spiritual path necessitate giving away possession. Avoid dead ends stained by regrets. As such, what I wear is worn until it wears out.
With space to move about, let things be. Besides, this isn’t as messy as my imperfect kids’ bedrooms, with green furry clones stuffed in stashed lunch bags.
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Books are as sacred as the words between the pages. Furniture holds them off the floor. Once I absorb the heart of a page, what knowledge or pleasure to be gained is gleaned. Then it’s just a possession. I recycle the books at the free story library. The brittle diaries stick around, as I never know when to add sweet calories.
A shopping list sits in an obvious space. Short-term memory fades with age. I forget something, until it becomes long. Sometimes it’s too long. That said, I’m not yet at that age where the aged think only of a past they’re growing away from, as they shrink with age. If at all. If they can.
The wood stove, with loose tempered glass, guarantees ash. In spring and fall yellow pollen bothers my eyes. Moving in, I scraped off the dusty carpets, and threw down throw rugs. That made them happy. Then I juggled various shapes of furniture into a pretence of anarchistic companionship.
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The mementos from travel symbolize my reciprocity with life. The meaning of a few eludes me. But all of them provide comfort. Feng Shui responds to the negative aspects of clutter. But old fashion clutter is a familiar sculpture. It makes a home into a person.
Close my eyes and open my ears. A table of contents is covered in miscellaneous stuff. Otherwise, there’s a bent brass reading light by the affable madras chair, a dicey computer on a slivered slab, hanging candles and partial chimes, a webbed dream-catcher with glistening bugs, a thriving pregnant mother spider plant, and a Somali camel hair fly whisk hanging off a yellow buckshot shot roadside sign displaying a severely peppered six-point buck.
There’s also an altar on a concrete brick, with the blank Buddha Chess board on top. The pieces come from the Buddha market in Bangkok. They go where they want. In Zen chess, with meanings in the confusion, it’s up to me to encourage reconciliations out of the accidental inter-dimensional shifts.
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Open eyes. The scrabble board holds the last game in limbo. I lost to a woman with a longer vocabulary. The goddess knows more seven letter words. In rural life the fix was in for Yin to win. Alphabet magic, courtesy of the goddess. Didn’t lose by much. Would have won if I put stupid and idiot into words. But I dropped them from my vocabulary.
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Stroke a housewarming gift from a spirit realm. Got it at an i Ching revival gala in a Romany eatery. It’s David’s mighty Biblical slingshot! Authentic, it reeks to high Heaven. The deck is pieced together with bilge beams from Noah’s miniature model Ark collection. The hull is made of dark bark off a bonsai tree, and magic mushroom mill ends
It guards the companion seed trays on the pallets. Prior to our truce, the trays nestled under the futon. Courtesy of the cat’s affections, the sides are scarred. Trespassing crows can’t ruin what sprouts indoors. Otherwise, Old Moron nails the buggers in crab apple cross fires. But if one of the scheduled apocalypses prematurely arrives, I’d starve. Give me a bow, and I’d bag a bag worth of branches.
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As a back to the land grower, I’ve a blistered green thumb for the garden, pyromania for the wood stove, foul language for the plumbing. The world springs forward/falls back in season. But I’ve no interest in clockworks. Time here stands still. And no locks. Possessions, like a life, are transitory.
Eyes rove with my itinerant body. Follow the patterns on the Star Wars bedspread hung on hooks, with a patchy Chewbacca duelling with a pigmy Godzilla, armed with wet mops and toreador capes.
Lace curtains cover a rubber doll’s cot, with quadriplegic Barbie in a tracksuit. Thalidomide Ken, in mean biker gear, dangles upside down in the rafters on a slinky, in a wheelchair. There’s the aerated DT (Donald T.) voodoo pincushion, bent bashed nails in pallets, orphaned appliances rescued from a pyramid of sidewalk junk, counter top results of a spilled mustard topping, and scrap remains of an experimental Tandoori penguin.
The crystal glass skull is gone. Blown smoke circulated in swirls. It was always thinking. Typical stoner. Hollow head. Neurotic, or car sick, depending on the vortex. Gifted it to an ego who loved it more.
Wealth only offers prettier things to be kept under plastic, synthetics to shut out noise, and for the ostentatious, servants to ignore. I’ve a similar resistance to cascading commercials. It helps that the local options are repetitive whinny redneck country blather, with the singer suffocating on the song, bland trendy whiny Indy crotch music for junior high virgins, creep out electrical Jazz that sounds like falling glass furniture, Blues in a bathroom, and techno in the filling of a flushed toilet bowl.
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Outdoors, crows dance disco, while the ravens dance a sky ballet in the sky.
Indoors, the orange radio raised audible anarchy, before it broke. The imperfect green radio is stuck on the good news station. “No news is good news.” The red shell, turned on, has a nasal C&W rift from the Logjam Band: “Ah could smile. Had a joke on the tip o’ mah tongue that stretched fur a mile.” With a twang. Followed by the one about the gal who done him wrong. Cowpoke dials up the wrong number, and she’s never there.
Move the dial. Same guy. His AA nickname prison name puts him first on every list but love. Next station: “The Extenuated Thirty-Second Rap,” replete with page after page of disassociated thoughts. Followed by the singer who sings the blues about how to make a good friend into a rotten friend out of stale coffee. Glance up at the hot plate. Some songs sound better after the radio shuts up.
“You do it to yourself, you do, and that’s what really hurts.” Thom Yorke, Radiohead
Recently, there was yet another exercise in gaslighting the Denman Island community initiated by DIRCS Vice President and Barnacle contributor Chris Wardman, with slander and libel targeting The Islands Grapevine (TIG) on local social media. Wardman falsely blamed TIG for some offensive graffiti that was tagged on the new cement barriers near the Community Hall. Some other amateur “sleuths” piled on to the smears with even more false accusations. And once again, the Denman Island Bullytin Board “moderators” failed to uphold their own rules.
TIG has since been contacted by people describing their experience of receiving the “GRAPENews” stickers made by DIRCS President Eli Hason. Some of these were distributed by local player Megan Rose while she boasted of their origin. The intent of the stickers was to tar and feather TIG as a “FOXNews” right wing newspaper, when our regular contributors have an obvious liberal/left bias. It’s not only ideologically insulting, it mischaracterizes our principles relating to our editorial policies. Apparently, our letters to the editor have not been sufficiently censored for the tastes of the misguided cult that has targeted us. TIG has even printed letters to the editor critical of ourselves, and we unflinchingly support a free press.
Why the cowardice and anonymity, while they complain on social media and claim to be the victims of a campaign that they themselves have been covertly manipulating? At best, it is sophomoric and gutless, and at its worst, it’s legally actionable. They are constantly slandering a local proprietor, and it’s been going on for at least 18 months. We have the entire social media history screen-grabbed and documented, and we have witness accounts. Let them attempt to deny any of it.
These self described communitarians are projecting their own lack of integrity onto others, while perversely claiming their “altruism” and then clutching their pearls of victimhood on the Denman Island Bullytin Board. By gaslighting the Denman community, they have soiled their own reputations and whatever credibility they imagined they had, while only having themselves to blame for this exposure of their hypocritical antics. They need to apologize to the entire Denman community, and to TIG, for this publicly pathological nonsense they are putting everyone through.
Kai Gleusteen and his group, the Kaimerata will be spoiling Denman Islanders with a Chamber Music Concert Series on August 8, 9 and 10, this year based on the life and music of Richard Strauss. For those of you who don’t know who Kai is, Kai is an international award winning violinist as well as the concertmaster of the Orchestra de Gran Teatre del Liceu Symphony Orchestra in Barcelona, Spain. Kai will be joined by his wife internationally renowned pianist Catherine Ordronneau, Beth Root Sandvoss on cello, Dan Scholz on viola, Philip Manning on violin and Tori Lindsay on violin. In addition to Strauss there will be works by Erno von Dohnanyi, Ernest Chausson, Edvard Grieg and Gustav Mahler, all compositions written at the end of the 19th century, all brilliant and super expressive works. Kai does have a trigger warning for those thinking of going to the concerts: beware; there may not be a dry eye in the hall after the concert.
Margaret and I always look forward to the return of Kaimerata in the same way kids look forward to Christmas. We are so spoiled by the opportunity to hear these live performances of classical music by internationally renowned musicians, right here at home on our little island! At each concert, the pieces to be performed are preceded by a few introductory words from Kai, to provide background and context for the musical selections-This helps a Neil Young fan like myself to come away better appreciating the wonderful musical gift that Kaimerata is. Even for a seasoned classical musical concert goer like Margaret, there is always sublime music to be heard, and something new to be learned. In the past, Margaret has been known to skip out of her medical practice in Northern Alberta and travel 3000 kilometres round trip to attend the Kaimerata concert series.
We also love how friendly and approachable the musicians are; where else can one sit in on rehearsals and enjoy engaging conversations with such accomplished musicians after each concert? We heartily encourage others to take advantage of this fabulous concert series and to be delighted by this annual musical gift to Denman Island.
All concerts are in the Denman Community Hall.
Thursday, August 8th concert: “Turn of the 20th Century” at 7 pm
Friday, August 9th concert: “Hyper Romanticism” at 7 pm
Saturday, August 10th concert: “Exalted Expressionism!” is at 4 pm.
Tickets can be purchased individually for $25 per concert. A series pass for all three concerts is $70. Student tickets are $10 per concert.
For music aficionados there is a supporters pass available for $110. The pass comes with reserved seating and allows supporters access to all the rehearsals.
For more information on the concert series and to purchase tickets online please go to:
www.kaimerata.com
Tickets will also be for sale at Abraxas Books and Café, the General Store and at the door. No one will be turned away for a lack of funds.
Sunday August 4th, 10:30 – 11:30 (come a little early if you want to help with creating an altar) at the Community Labyrinth located at the Denman Island United Church and Gathering Place 4575 Denman Rd (top of Big Hill).
Lammas (Loaf Mass), Lughnasadh, is the ancient Celtic celebration of the first harvest. Falling at the beginning of August, midway between Summer Solstice and Fall Equinox, Lammas honours the first harvests of grain and the first loaves of bread made from it. As we celebrate this Old Way at our Community Labyrinth we will also be honouring the farmers, the food growers and food makers, the plants, the grains and the Elements which they combine and upon which their lives and ours depend. All life is Sacred.
You may wish to bring something from your own garden, a little grain or seed or fruit, the name of a food producer whom you wish to honor, something for the collective altar representing the Elements of Life: Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Spirit. You’ll know, and you will be welcome.
All are welcome. All spiritual paths, all genders.
The 18th annual Sonic Smorgasbord featuring the Baird, Black and White Trio is happening this Saturday night, August 3, at the Back Hall. With the imaginative Miles Black on piano, sax, flute, trumpet and maybe trombone, the inimitable Scott White on bass and the fearless percussionist, Roger Baird, the music of the spheres is the object. If you love music and are not encumbered by genres then you’ll be in good company and have an interesting time of it! Doors open at 7:30 and the music begins at 8 p.m. Tickets are available in advance at Abraxas Books and the General Store or at the door.
Sunday September first is the day of our Blackberry Fair here on Denman. All residents of Hornby and Denman are welcome to participate. All entries must be grown or made by the entrant. Get your entries to the Hall by 8:30. Hornby people had better stay over here with friends the night before!
Bring your best vegetables, flowers (3 stems of each type) fruit, herbs, preserves and baked goods to try for a prize. This event is sponsored by the Denman Island Garden Club and we will be giving out prizes and ribbons.
Start now to fertilize those flowers and select the best vegetables for side dressing and coaxing. Bring your best cleaned vegetables, prettied up flowers and other entries for judging. You want your entries to be uniform in size, shape and colour. Select produce with no blemishes. Those first place ribbons make great book marks!
The theme for the Parade this year is going to be Farmers, Gardeners and Ranchers. This is a great occasion to dress up cute kids and their pets for the parade. Hope to see you there!
Not in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that a refugee from Gaza would end up living with us in Vancouver, but that happened in February 2023. His name is Mohammed Al Zaza. Strangely it rhymes with “Gaza”, the city he called home that is now reduced to rubble. In August 2011, just before his fifteenth birthday, a bomb launched from an Israeli drone changed his life forever. He and his young cousin, Ibrahim, were playing soccer on the street when they were hit by a missile that destroyed their home. Ibrahim died from his wounds. Mohammed was sent to a hospital in Tel Aviv, where he underwent more than twenty operations to save his leg and arm as well as skin grafts for third degree burns, followed by a knee replacement and plastic surgery. There were days when he thought he would rather be dead. After almost two years he returned to his family in Gaza and managed to finish high school, but was in constant pain. Jewish Israeli friends who got to know and love him while he was in hospital in Israel helped him get to Turkey for further treatment. He could not go back to Gaza and spent five years in Turkey, mostly in hiding as he risked being deported to a refugee camp in Syria. He made two dangerous and unsuccessful attempts to get to Greece by sea. It is with the help of dedicated Israeli dissidents, members of the B’selem peace organization, that Mohammed eventually managed to apply for refugee status in Canada, co-sponsored by the Muslim Association of Canada and the Vancouver branch of Independent Jewish Voices. We have friends who belong to that association, and we offered to help out when they were looking for temporary accommodation for Mohammed on his arrival.
Sponsorship is about jumping the hoops of bureaucracy, painstaking time compiling documents, writing letters to MP’s, dealing with legal matters, and fund raising to satisfy Immigration Canada rules for a private sponsorship immigration. All of this only works with the commitment of people volunteering and working tirelessly behind the scene. It doesn’t end upon arrival of a candidate at the airport. Actually, it’s just the beginning of a long road to facilitate the adaption of a person who lived through hell. The follow up is equally tedious and complex while dealing with health authorities, medical and dental appointments, schooling, lodging and moral support. We were not part of the official sponsoring groups, but Mohammed stayed with us for eight months. This was followed by several weeks of hospitalization for another knee replacement, and a long recovery owing to a subsequent infection in his leg. Mohammed is now 27 years old and living independently in Vancouver. He has become a strong spokesperson for the people of Gaza, has made many friends, and is working valiantly to raise money to try to get some of his family out of Gaza, once that becomes possible.
Like us, Mohammed watches the news from inside Gaza on Al Jazeera. Seeing bombs and missiles systematically smashing buildings that he sometimes recognizes, destroying hospitals, schools, and camps where people were told to take refuge, witnessing the horror of seeing people desperately looking for safety, takes a toll on his spirit. His parents and all his large family (he had eleven siblings) are still in Gaza City, except for one brother who has not been seen since their house was bombed again (for the third time). They haven’t yet recovered his body from under the rubble. His wife and two young children are struggling to survive. The whole family had little resources to begin with, and now they have nothing. They are living on the street, under make-shift shelters, struggling to find clean water and enough food to prevent starvation. His parents do not have access to a phone. Mohammed managed to contact his father a few times through a friend, but communication is extremely difficult. On the last call, he heard that they are constantly suffering from Israeli military (IDF) intrusions, day and night, as they “mow the grass” in their sector. We all know now what this expression refers to, thanks to Israeli leaders like Netanyahu, Gantz and Smoldrich.
Mohammed is no supporter of Hamas, but he sees how the current treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere can only lead to more hatred. His goal now is to raise enough money to get his parents and some of his siblings out of Gaza, when that becomes possible. Yet they would leave with regret, as Gaza is their land, their home, and leaving is exactly what the Israeli government wants all the inhabitants to do. Mohammed is a gifted linguist, a polyglot. While in hospital in Israel he mastered Hebrew with the help of nurses, doctors and Israeli friends – one of our Israeli friends told us he speaks it better than many Israelis! Spending five years in Turkey gave him plenty of time to master Turkish too. He is is now a good communicator in English, and speaking at various meetings in support of Gaza. He has started courses at Langara College to improve his written skills and hopes to be able to study psychology, with the aim of helping other refugees who have experienced the kind of trauma he has lived through.
Mohammed is still getting financial and social support from Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) and numerous Jewish and Palestinian friends living in Vancouver. This is the other side of the social dystopia we are all facing: Jews and Muslims (and atheists who are neither, like us) enjoying each other’s company and solidarity in Vancouver. It has been inspiring for my whole family and our friends. Before getting to know Mohammed, my wife and I would usually look at the six o’clock news and recriminate about the state of the world, while feeling powerless. Often we would switch it off, to “save our sanity”.
The mass media both filter and enhance reality, confusing or even numbing our feelings and too often our judgment. It’s understandable and unavoidable. Mohammed’s presence in our lives changed this to some extent. During the months he spent with us, the Middle East crossed the threshold of our house with its dramatic historical background. The Gaza tragedy wasn’t only about October 7th. The Jewish Shoah and the Palestinian Nakba are two faces of the same human tragedy repeating itself over centuries. The international community seems to be paralyzed (or complicit), faced with the monstrous mass murder of 180 000 human beings (according to a British medical magazine, The Lancet).
One could understand why Mohammed, a refugee 10 000 km away from his home and family, struggling to survive in a totally foreign environment and initially on his own, would despair. In spite of this he is showing amazing resilience and still hopes that the future will be better for his family and his people. Ben Gurion’s mantra, “A Land without People for a People without Land” will have to be replaced by “A Land without Peace for People seeking Peace”, if humans wish for a future without conflict in that part of the world. Hate is powerful but difficult to sustain forever. This said, Mohammed is more optimist than I am. He is also still young. Given the living hell he has gone through, he has chosen to reject cynicism while remaining anxious about the near future. The alternative is despair. Mohammed has proven that he will never give up. In the meantime, he knows that strength is to be found in community support and solidarity, whatever our background. He has taught us a lot, and we are grateful – but worried about his future and that of his family.
Anyone who wishes to know more about Mohammed, or how to contribute to getting his family out of Gaza, check the link to Gofundme “Urgent Rebuiding Hope: Support mY Family in Gaza” and an article in the Tyee (Dec. 12, 2003), “How a Palestinian Injured in a Drone Strike Came to Canada”. https://thetyee.ca/News/2023/12/12/How-Palestinian-Injured-Came-Canada/
