What difference does it make?

July 25, 2024

Your children haven’t been in school since October 8th last year, when the bombing started. Soon after, you all had to leave your homes because of it. Like your grandparents who came to Gaza in ‘48, you left with only the clothes on your back. You brought your cell, but it was useless without any place to charge it. You went south according to directions because Rafah in the south was said by Israel to be a “safe zone”. It was a walk of 25 miles because you live in the north of tiny Gaza and Rafah is on the southern border with Egypt.

You walked with many thousands of others – in fact, 2 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million population are now displaced from their homes – so it was chaotic and terrifying with your young children in tow, not knowing what to expect or when and if you’d be able to get back home. The incessant sound of drones, the bombs dropping, and missiles raining down seemed never- ending.

Eventually, you and most of your family made it to Rafah. Others went missing or you learned were killed in the bombing. You were provided a tent in a UN camp, but Israel then did bomb Rafah and a huge fire erupted in your tent camp, burning people alive and killing many.

Netanyahu first described it as a “terrible mistake”; now Israel’s giving some other reason.

You have to leave the Rafah camp and are now on your way back to your former home. The roads you walk are littered with rotting corpses, the stench is over-powering. You just got your period but there are no stores anymore, so you can’t get supplies. Besides, the banks have been bombed, so you can’t get any money. Your husband has not been able to work, but then the school he taught in has been bombed, so there is no school anymore.

Everyone is hungry all the time. Several of your children need medical attention. They have the distended stomachs of the malnourished, but there are no hospitals or clinics anymore. They have all been razed to the ground. There is no clean water, no sanitation, almost no food, no electricity, no shelter to speak of, no way of knowing which of your neighbours and relatives are alive or buried under the rubble. It is very hot in Gaza right now. Your children are not sleeping very well and they are tired all the time (and so are you), they cry a lot and they want answers from you. You have no answers to give them. You are living an ongoing nightmare.

You eventually get back to the area of your home and find that there is no home anymore. In fact, there is no neighbourhood; it has all been flattened by bombs. Where will you go? How will you survive?

You heard someone said that the World Court is going to decide if you have a right to be free from Genocide. Apparently it would be misleading to suggest they will rule on whether or not a Genocide is actually being committed. Does that mean that Palestinians in Gaza actually might not have a right to be free from Genocide?

How do those words matter? What difference does it make?

We Need Both Outer Work And Inner Work To Truly Free Ourselves

July 25, 2024

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

JUL 22, 2024

Whenever I talk about the importance of inner work with this stuff I’ll get people dismissing it as self-indulgent navel gazing nonsense and a distraction from the outer work of actually changing our material circumstances, but really nothing could be further from the truth. To have a consistent discipline of inner work is to take responsibility for your own psychological bullshit instead of spreading it around in ways that hurt the people near you and make the world a worse place.

It is absolutely true that the world and the cruel systems which guide it urgently need to change, and it is absolutely true that much of the suffering and mental illness we see in our society is due to the material, financial and psychological stress that people are placed under in this sick capitalist dystopia we find ourselves in. But that doesn’t mean you get to shirk your own adult responsibility to do the hard work necessary to bring the unconscious mechanisms of your own suffering and dysfunction into consciousness where they can be healed.

The truth is that even if you could snap your fingers and magically transport us into a socialist utopia where we are no longer ruled by tyrants and everyone has what they need, people would still find ways to make themselves miserable and would still act out their unconscious woundedness on the folks around them, because that’s just what the human mind does at this point in our development as a species. You see evidence of this all the time in the self-destructive behaviors and abusiveness of the rich and famous despite their having all their material needs taken care of.

So, as well as it might play in some circles, it’s just not good enough to blame all our suffering on the system. Doing so just encourages people to keep masturbating their inner wounds on everyone around them instead of growing up and doing the hard, uncomfortable work of becoming a conscious human being.

And conscious human beings are what we’re going to need if we’re going to win this thing. We’re never going to be able to bring about the actions necessary to topple the empire and create a healthy world if we’re still being whipped about by unconscious forces within us caused by early childhood trauma, maladaptive coping mechanisms, unhealthy belief systems and inaccurate assumptions about our reality and our experience, like the overwhelming majority of humanity is right now. Hell, if we were handed a perfect utopia today we’d destroy it in a matter of weeks just out of our own internal chaos and restlessness.

It’s actually often the people most interested in fighting the world’s evils who are most in need of inner work and discipline. It’s just an unfortunate fact that activists are frequently some of the most unconscious and irresponsible people you’ll ever meet, often using their rightful opposition to injustice and systemic abuses to hide all varieties of inner dysfunction and act out their inner demons on the people within their own faction. Most of the internal feuding you see on the western left is nothing other than garden variety drama addiction, trauma reenactment and attention/approval-seeking masquerading as Very Important Discourse about a hot social justice issue or the correct understanding of Marx or whatever.

Just as we all have a responsibility to help create a healthy and truth-based world, we also all have a responsibility to develop healthy and truth-based minds. We can make up any number of excuses for our failure to do so, or we can suck it up and do the work. This gives us the necessary inner stability to directly face the empire’s cruelty even in nightmarish hellscapes like Gaza, and it lets us move far more effectively in the world because we’re being guided by truth and compassion instead of flying blind guided by nothing but our own inner wounds.

I won’t tell you what kinds of inner work you should do because only you can know what will work best for you, but I will tell you that becoming a conscious person with a serene and harmonious mind takes a lot of work, a lot of consistent dedication, and a lot of courage. What matters is your intention to uproot any untruth and disharmony within yourself, and a sincere curiosity about where such things might exist within you.

As individuals none of us have the ability to single-handedly uproot all the unkindness and falsehood in our world, but we can each as individuals uproot the unkindness and falsehood within ourselves. And by doing so we make the world a kinder and more truthful place by just that much, because we tended the little plot of land we were given—our own personal slice of the human plight—with care and responsibility.

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Waldo the Walrus

July 25, 2024

Waldo the Walrus (this is part of a series of short stories based on a fictional supportive housing building)

Alvin looked at his computer screen while he worked at a sleeve of skinny French fries and took random bites from a filet of fish and swigs from a fountain pop. Alvin knew this food wasn’t good for him but it did fill an emotional hole in his psyche taking him back to all the times his old man took him to McDonalds after Alvin got in trouble at school and later with the law.

As Alvin downed the last mouthful his reverie was interrupted by a booming voice.

“BY ODIN’S LEFT EYE I AM A WARRIOR AND I AM MORE THAN WILLING TO DIE ON THE BATTLEFIELD AND BE LIFTED UP TO VALHALLA WHERE VIKINGS WHO DIE IN BATTLE GO. I WILL CHOP MY ENEMIES DOWN LIKE AN OLD OAK TREE!”

It was his tenant Waldo, going into one of his rants. He took one more sip of pop and slipped out from behind his desk with his work cell phone and keys and went to investigate.

“BY THE HAMMER OF THOR, GOD OF THUNDER I TOO STRIKE THE FEAR OF DEATH INTO ANY UNFORTUNATE FOOL WHO WOULD DARE OPPOSE ME AS I AM WALDO THE WALRUS, I AM WALDO THE WALRUS, KOO, KOO, KA CHOO, KOO, KOO, KA CHOO!”

Alvin followed the noise to George Road, where he could see Waldo splayed out, his back on the boulevard, his arms and legs moving as if he were trying to make a snow angel out of the patchy grass while he railed.

“Waldo, you can’t be yelling out here like this.” Waldo stopped moving and turned his large head to see where Alvin was.

“Squire Alvin, what can I do for you?”

“Stop yelling.”

“But I am channelling my Viking family and the Norse gods, my people.”

“Sure Waldo, but you scare the crap out of people when you do this and people call the police. Remember the last time you started this chanting stuff on a city bus and they took you to jail?”

“Yes, I recall that sad day when I upset the peasants.”

“Exactly, we don’t want to upset the peasants.”

“But they are only peasants.”

“Waldo, you know we don’t want to upset our neighbours here. There is nothing they want more than to get rid of us. This is the kind of thing they bring up at town hall meetings. Can you please get off of the boulevard and come back to the Jolly Rancher?”

“Okay…” Waldo stood up and dusted himself off.

“Did you know Alvin that Dr. Dick has assigned this new mental health team to come and clean my suite tomorrow. Apparently they do not want me there while they molest my personal effects.”

“I had forgotten all about that Waldo, is the thought of them in your place causing you stress?”

“Immensely.” Waldo nodded while twiddling his thick puffy dirty fingers on his broad chest.

“Are things still really bad in there Waldo?” Waldo was silent. “Do you still have an infestation of bed bugs and cockroaches? Did you ever use any of the bug sprays I gave you?” Waldo hung his head down. “You haven’t brought home any more dead things have you? No more fish or raccoons?” Waldo smiled and appeared to be amused by the question.

“I was convinced I could bring that catfish back to life.”

“I will be honest with you Waldo, I know I should help you clean but I can’t handle the smell of your place and frankly I’m terrified of somehow bringing parasitic insects home. My wife would kill me.” Waldo grinned. Alvin followed Waldo to his apartment. Waldo opened the door. The stench of garbage and rot caused Alvin to stagger backward. “SNORT!” Alvin snorted hard and choked as a small amount of filet of fish rose in his throat in the form of boiling hot acid reflux. He attempted to hold his breath as he entered. They were greeted by a giant replica of Darth Vader, who had a small army of dolls behind him. There was Thor with his hammer, Spiderman, Batman, Superman, Medusa with her head of snakes, a number of well dressed Barbie dolls, a couple of Ken dolls, a four foot Ronald McDonald and a wide variety of garden gnomes that Alvin suspected Waldo may have stolen from people’s lawns. Waldo’s window sills were thick with the carcasses of dead brown German cockroaches. Roaches scrambled along the yellow stained walls. The door was open and Alvin could see the bathtub was covered in a dark brown film of dust. A halo of drain flies twirled in a timeless circle above the tub. “Ahhh…” Alvin jumped when a large cockroach fell from the ceiling above him and bounced off of his left cheek. He watched in awe as it scuttled under a battered old dresser. “Okay, that’s enough for me Waldo.” Alvin put his hand over his mouth and marched back to the office.

Alvin fretted about the state of Waldo’s apartment while he sat behind the desk. He knew he would be blamed, even though he’d had no training in how to clean up such a biohazard. He believed someone as ill as Waldo should probably be in a hospital setting but that was true of most of the Jolly Ranchers. He’d read that in Finland, a country rated as the happiest in the world year after year, a supportive housing unit of comparable size would have a doctor, a nurse, a social worker, maintenance staff and would adhere to the four pillars of harm reduction. But he wasn’t in Finland. He didn’t look forward to the mental health team that was showing up to deal with Waldo’s place and was concerned with being judged. He’d book off sick but he was out of paid sick leave and he needed money to pay off an infinite number of debts including his giant mortgage.

At eight the next morning Alvin observed a white government health authority sport utility vehicle pull into the parking lot of the Jolly Rancher. Four people got out of the vehicle each holding disposable coffee cups. They made their way towards his office door. Alvin trotted to the door to greet them and flung it open. “Good morning!”

“Good morning, we are here to check on our client, Waldo Anders,” replied a tall thick boned woman with shiny waxy pocked skin and dyed blond hair. “I’m Noreen, that’s Trish, Lisa, and Noel.” Everybody smiled. Alvin realised he had left the office door unlocked as Emma McGrath came marching in. “I really needs a coffee now!” The coffee pot huffed away on a table. “You know we don’t open until nine, Emma.” Alvin tapped the imaginary watch on his wrist. “You let these fuckers in,” she sneered.

“Emma, you have to go.”

“This is bullshit!” She slammed the door. Alvin rushed over to lock it.

“She’s a bit of a grump,” said the smiling young woman named Trish. “Yes, Emma can be challenging.” Alvin gave a nervous smile. “What can we expect?” Asked Noel. He had streaks of flaming red in his mop of fuzzy white hair which made Alvin think of Cherry Garcia ice cream. He was a mildly plump man and had very small soft reddish hands sticking out the sleeves of his thick blue turtleneck sweater. Alvin detected a British accent. “Waldo is a dumpster diver who collects things from dumpsters while he gathers containers to recycle for deposit.”

“A binner,” said Trish, her excited grin showing a fine set of healthy white teeth.

“Yes, that’s how he makes some extra coins but he’s also been known to bring home dead animals, once he even dragged home an enormous catfish. He also has bed bugs and cockroaches.”

“How did you let this happen?” Noel sneered. Alvin bristled.

“We can’t stop him from bringing home whatever he likes. He has his own entrance and it is independent housing. Waldo is under the tenancy act and has all the rights and freedoms that go with that.”

“Does Waldo have a substance abuse issue?” The dark short portly woman named Lisa asked. “No substance abuse issue that I am aware of which is very unusual for most of the Jolly Ranchers. Just about everybody who lives here has a dual diagnosis.”

“Dr. Dyck had Waldo Anders sign a waiver that gives us complete freedom to toss whatever we feel should be tossed.” Noreen waved a blue piece of paper at Alvin who smiled and nodded. “He’s the suite on the corner of the building?” She asked. Alvin nodded. “Let’s do this team.”

Alvin watched them don their hazmat suits out in the parking lot. They were laughing and high fiving. He observed them on surveillance cameras as they entered Waldo’s suite. Waldo left shortly thereafter carrying garbage bags over his thick shoulders.

After about ten minutes Alvin watched as the entire mental health team came from Waldo’s suite. Trish was twirling wildly while trying to peel off her hazmat suit. Noreen and Lisa were trying to help her. “THERE ARE FUCKING COCKROACHES EVERYWHERE IN MY SUIT! THEY’RE CRAWLING ALL OVER ME! GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!” Tears were running down her face. Noel was vomiting into a white bucket.

The office door was open, in case the team wanted to check in on their way out, but Alvin was greatly relieved when he saw them drive away.

A month later Waldo was evicted. He’s been homeless ever since.

Shucking Oysters: Watch Your Step

July 25, 2024

[Trigger Warning: The following may cause Blunt Word Trauma injury.]

From the obligatory safety announcement on the ferry to written warnings on literally everything, we are obsessed with safety. “Stay off the rocks.” Highways of safety cones. “Loose gravel.” Trucks with pulsating lights. Every institution claims safety as one of its core values. Perversely, this obsession with safety makes people feel more insecure, not less. How much safer are you really? And how much safer do you feel?

Frank Furedi wrote in The Paradox of Our Safety Addiction, that “paradoxically the achievement of unprecedented levels of physical safety has coincided with a heightened sense of insecurity.” What started out as liability issues are now insecurity complexes. The constant pursuit of a Utopian vision of a harm-free world does little to help people feel secure.

This safety fetish makes us less aware, less alert, less sharp and lazy in body and mind. It convinces us that safety must always be the top priority – the almighty first principle. We are continually warned about the physical dangers that lurk everywhere. And that risks and unknowns are always bad things – stifling exploration, creativity, discovery, and the beauty of getting lost. Being this safety obsessed is not healthy. Furedi eloquently wrote that “it is not the actual fear of death but rather the fear of life that preoccupies the 21st-century Western imagination.”

And if that’s not all, we have emotional injury, that can leave a person “damaged for life.” Yes, sticks and stones may break our bones, but words can really hurt us. Emotional harm is limited only by the imagination, and as everyone knows, the imagination can come up with pretty much anything to make a point.

But what kind of danger and harm are we talking about? When a warning is real like “this plastic bag is not a toy” for instance, we can all agree on the danger. The real problem, is when the dangers are imagined, or exaggerated, or fabricated, or manipulated.

In The Coddling of the American Mind, Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff discuss the unintended consequences of “safetyism” – the idea that people need to be protected, rather than exposed to challenges. What began as a focus on physical safety has evolved into hyper protection from everything, including emotional safety which doesn’t tolerate anything that could trigger psychological trauma.

Atlantic staff writer, Jill Filipovic, wrote on her blog that a piece of conservative legislation was “so awful it made me want to throw up.” A commenter asked for an eating-disorder trigger warning. Filipovic posted a link to a funny photo compilation, another commenter said it needed a trigger warning because the “pictures of cats attacking dogs looked like domestic violence.”

We should all be driving with “Big Baby on Board” stickers and wearing ear muffs. Actually, stay off the road, it’s dangerous out there. As Furedi wrote, “our society has become infantilized, with fewer people having much experience or concept of real physical dangers and many now convinced that safety extends to their thoughts and feelings, which must not be infringed.”

In 2015, a feminist college student group in the UK, banned clapping at their conferences. The group claimed that the act of clapping could “trigger some people’s anxiety.” The alternative? Jazz hands – wave your hands silently in the air – to show approval and create “a more inclusive atmosphere.” Today, you never know what might trigger anxiety. Knitting? Coughing? It’s all about YOU not IT.

We are constantly walking on free-range eggshells, afraid of saying the wrong thing, out of fear we will be called out by the unruly local mob on social media. Anything and everything can be misconstrued regardless of intent. Haidt and Lukianoff warn that “in today’s culture of safetyism, intent no longer matters, only perceived impact does, and thanks to concept creep, just about anything can be perceived as having a harmful – even violent – impact.”

I am not saying emotional safety is bad, keeping others safe from harm is virtuous, but, as Haidt and Lukianoff wrote, “virtues can become vices when carried to extremes.” Have we evolved in a good way because of this? Adults now need safe spaces and trigger warnings in case words and ideas put them in danger, stifling any hope of real dialogue. Conceptions of trauma and safety are used to justify the incessant helicoptering and coddling of children; brainwashed to be afraid of everything (except those f*cking gadgets).

Kids need to fall on their heads and bump into things. It’s part of childhood. And then they become less fearful and coddled adults. We can not gentrify our existence. We can not homogenize ourselves. How do we learn anything if our crucial life experiences are being withheld or hidden from us in the name of safety?

Ben Simpson wrote that there “is a difference between throwing someone a life preserver when they are in danger of drowning and barring them from getting into the pool at all.’’ What if we shifted the conversation from the risk of doing things, to asking what the risk is of not doing those things?

Polly

July 25, 2024

Denman ART Studio Tour – August 17 & 18

July 18, 2024

Denman ART Studio Tour – August 17 & 18, 2024 from 10am to 4pm

The incredible talent on display in this year’s island-wide studio tour will include 12 stops and can be done in one day. Here is what you will be delighted with:

unique, organic shaped, textured pottery pieces from Shirley Phillips at Lilac Sun Pottery (3311 Denman Rd),
mixed media contemporary acrylic landscape paintings on canvas and abstract improv drawings on wood panels and bound sketchbooks from Tachi at Abraxas Books Arts and Café (1071C Northwest Rd),
bright and vivid paintings in oil and watercolor, tapestry and rug weaving, hand-spun local wool and pottery from Sudasi Gardner at Gallerie Deya (3888 Northwest Rd)
expressive acrylic and mixed media paintings on board and canvas from Lisa Geddes (6351 Gladstone Way),
functional to museum quality pieces’ pottery from Gordon Hutchens at Gordon Hutchens Pottery (4031 Wren Rd),
a set of photography called 365 days away including landscapes and close-up photographs taken while traveling in different countries and exotic islands from Claire Debleu, L’Atelier de Claire at the Earth Club Factory (3806 Denman Rd),

natural fibre dolls and other toys, scrappy fabric toys and art, recycled bicycle parts jewelry, watercolor arts and linen clothing for all ages from Olena & family, Sparrow’s Nest Arts at the Earth Club Factory (3806 Denman Rd),
acrylic or oil paintings, stained glass and mosaics, and ceramics from Linda Adair at the Linda Adair Art studio (5265 Lacon Rd),
watercolor and acrylic paint, woodworking art, fabric and hand printed lino cuts from Jayne Fogarty and Peter Smallwood at the Standing Stones studio (5300 Lacon Rd),
fibres, felting, upcycled clothing, spinning, playful and practical things from Christine O’Neill at The Caboose (4661 East rd),
wearable talismans from fine silver from Brianna Getz at the Moth and Moon studio (1745 Corrigal Rd),
acrylic paintings on canvas, barn board and wooden cut outs, cards, and clay works in a wide range of sizes and materials from Lynsey Paterson (1661 Dalziel Rd) and
wild, sacred and magical paintings and ceramics from Angelika Forray at the Wild Sacred Magic studio (1551 Pickles rd).

Thank you to all the artists who are currently hard at work to offer us an amazing week-end of Art!

This event wouldn’t have been possible without our generous sponsors:

- Denman Island Homes, Jordan McDonald, Local Wizard, REALTOR® Oakwyn Realty Ltd. – Jordan@denmanislandhomes.com
- Terry-Lynn Hemmerling Yoga

-SURE Copy Courtenay

Denman Water
The Denman Island Tea Company
Denman Craft Shop
Denman Island General Store
Abraxas Books and Café
Coastal Arts Academy
Atlas Café Courtenay

Download your map and mark your calendar now for this summer holiday highlight showcasing the arts on Denman Island!

Denman ART Studio Tour map (denmanstudiotour.blogspot.com)

Shucking Oysters: A Hornby Dystopia

July 18, 2024

Hornby Island, synonymous with being the summer playground for the rich and famous, is an affluent island featuring seemingly endless beaches, quaint historic buildings, gorgeous wineries, cute farm stands, and high-end art galleries.

For some visitors, Hornby Island is a place to inhale the fresh sea air before blowing off steam, shelling out $1,500 for a daybed on Big Tribune Bay, or vying for an on-air cameo by dining at Sea Breeze Resort during the shooting of the upcoming season of (just begging for a typo) “Hornby Housewives.”

But, for many residents, the island is hallowed ground, existentially worlds away from the cacophonous urban centres of Vancouver, Victoria and beyond. This is why Hornby Islander’s have never allowed their bucolic enclave to be accessed by anything greater than a two-lane road.

So, when the owners of the Vancouver private night spot, Mansion, which has played host to Christie Clark, Ryan Reynolds and Pat Corbett-Labatt, mayor of Port Hardy, announced its intention to take over the Hornby Island Resort, the news unleashed a major backlash. For one, it’s a particularly spiritual area on Hornby, just a stone’s throw from the ferry and seaplane terminal and across from the Lambert Channel Convention Centre.

Just up the road, the historic campsite, Bradsadsland, was purchased by business magnate, Jim Pattison. Today, it boasts a Five Jib Restaurant with lounge, a grocery complex, hotel, and an EV car dealership. “We pick the clientele for the restaurant and lounge,’’ said Pattison Group spokesman, Colton Conille. “Our doormen choose by the way they dress. We don’t want people coming in the evening wearing shorts. We want to bring back elegance.’’

Fashion-wise, many new stores have opened in the Hornby Village Mall, including LA based Grey/Vin, the British royal favourite ME&ME; and the classic tailored brand Veronica, loved by Justin Bieber and Kevin Falcon.

Los Angeles fashion line Liberaltine is doing an activation this season at charming Swanky Fibres, where Oscar de la Buya has just co-opted the third floor, and Josie Osbourne and Gwen Stefani have been known to pop in. You can find everything from a couture dress to beautifully curated hostess baskets.

Ford Cove, another centre of activity, boasts a 200-slip marina village, shopping, dining, and hotel. Partnering with Stonedboat Vineyards and Summerhaze Winery they offer Jazz nights under cabanas with ever-flowing bubbly.

The Galleon Beach neighbourhood has become more desirable lately, particularly with the new Hornby Island Canoe and Kayak Club at Grassy Point. Beyond canoes and kayaks, the Club rents out Seabobs, Electric Surfboards, Fliteboard Hydrofoils, and Jetskis. Down the road, tucked in at Hidden Beach, the Salish Oyster Bar, is famous for their Salish Caesar, made with Islands Spirits distillery vodka, Hornby Island hot sauce, farm fresh horseradish, Hornby cocktail sauce, and topped with a Phipps raw oyster.

Little Tribune Bay Estates and Marina, is not just for big boy toys. You can rent a 12-foot Sunchill Floating Lily Pad or Floating Carpet Pad for the day, which are perfect for entertaining guests or spending quality time with friends and family in the middle of the bay.

This season, Sea Breeze, a family-run boutique hotel on 13 acres, recently launched Summer Breeze Spa, where you can indulge yourself in the ultimate “Hornby Nirvana,” a full-body exfoliation with Cortes Island sea salt and Lasquiti karma oil, a lymph-system deep pate rub to “open” your body before the Sandpiper Stone massage, followed by a full body wrap with Komas black clay. It all ends with an application of nettle lotion, at which point you may very well have reached a state of Hornby nirvana.

Getting to Hornby has always been a challenge, but Brazen, which offers speedy seaplanes and helicopters to dodge the ferry traffic, also offers a more leisurely route by luxury motor coaches from Victoria, Nanaimo, and Comox. Not only roomier, they are also outfitted with cashmere blankets, motion-cancelling reclining seats, curated dopp kits and a fully stocked bar. Morning riders will be served breakfast courtesy of Sizzle, the juggernaut backed by Constance Schwartz Torbid and Stevie Nickie. Best of all, you can bring your pups.

Dogs are notoriously spoiled on Hornby. Indulge your pooch with swimming lessons and massages courtesy of Morgan Jerow in Sandpiper; a doggie truffle menu at Pop Up Bistro Chien Chaud at Whaling Station, and even regular “Yappy Hours” around the neighbourhoods. This summer, mobile vet, Dr. Sasha Bressler, is opening a dog sanctuary, Wag Wellness Centre and Pet Boutique in the Strachan Valley, providing red hydrant therapy and sound baths for the canine set.

Wellness is big on Hornby for humans, too. Salon Ronaldo Louis at Ford Cove, a favourite of Sonya Fursteneau, Lisa LaFlamme and Justin Beiber, has added lymphatic drainage and microcurrent facials; and a new spot called Blue Sea Spa has opened on Anderson Drive, offering such slimming techniques as Cryo T-Shock therapy, the Icoone machine and fat analysis.

Not to be outdone, a major wellness club, opened up in High Salal. With an initiation fee of $45,000 and a lifetime fee of $350,000, the HI Life Club, has social aspects, like its annual spot prawn champagne kickoff party. It also offers sports, such as pickleball and lawn bowling, as well as cold plunges and decompression chambers.

Beyond the glamour, Hornby is a quaint island beach community overflowing with hospitality and charm. T+L positively gushed: “with its wild, natural spaces as well as its pockets of urban charm Hornby is a top global destination.”

Green Wizardries: Egg Salad, the Long Way

July 18, 2024

Earlier this summer, my husband gifted me a bunch of fertile eggs and asked me to incubate them. I have an old incubator and got it set up. An incubator needs to be set up a day before you put the eggs in so you can get the humidity levels right and get it up to temperature.

I have a thermometer inside the incubator and can adjust the temperature up and down by spinning a little handle on the top on the incubator. Once everything is just right in the incubator, I marked my fresh, fertile eggs with an X on one side and an O on the other in pencil. Ink might contaminate the eggs so we don’t use ink. I placed the eggs in the incubator, all showing the same symbol.

Every hour or two, I would open the box up and turn all the eggs. I would roll them forward for X’s an backwards for O’s. This is because eggs have something like tendons that hold the yolks in place. If you roll your eggs in only one direction, the tendons eventually break and the eggs are no longer viable.

If this seems like a lot of extra work to you, well, it is! I rolled the eggs about eleven times a day and twice at night around 2 and 5 am. Something, possibly a Great Chicken Spirit, kept waking me up at night and this took a heavy toll on my sense of humour. I was very happy to enter the lock-down phase on day 18. The eggs must be left in position for the next three day as the babies will get into the correct position for delivery and get ready to break out.

Even before the chicks hatch, they begin to peep. Once the first one hatches, the other babies get the idea and come soon after. They chip their way out of their shells with a special egg tooth and slice off the top of the shell and kick their way out. The hot breeze of the forced-air incubator dries them out and I ended up with 17 beautiful, golden, fluffy chicks.

The eggs came from our flock of Buff Orpington chickens. These are lovely, old-fashioned golden birds that are dual purpose. That means they are good egg layers and also a good roasting bird. They are big chickens and heavily feathered thanks to some ancestors of the Cochin variety of chickens.

Unfortunately, the Buff Orpingtons used to be great moms but a failure to breed for good mothering and an over reliance on artificial incubation means they now have the mothering instincts of a brick. Which is why I got stuck doing their job for them. I am considering getting a couple of Cochin hens as they still make great mothers. Both the Buff Orpington and the Cochin breed of chickens are currently endangered.

As they are rare birds, they sell for a lot of money. I could have bought some fresh chicks from Rochester hatchery in Alberta for $15 a chick. My 17 chicks would have set us back $255 plus the environmental cost of shipping the tiny fellows by air. It really is easier on the chicks to hatch them yourself and spare them the trauma of being shipped.

Once the chicks were nice and dry, we put them in a 3′ by 4′ box with a heat lamp, food and water. We feed them unmedicated chick crumble and a daily treat of a hard-boiled and mashed duck egg and a bowl of finely chopped dandelion greens. The little guys are doing very well and will replace the oldest hens in the flock later this year.

We know which year our hens were hatched as each year has a differently-coloured leg band. The new little hens I just reared will be ready to lay next spring and should lay quite well for three years. After that, they make excellent stewing hens. Grocery store chickens have no real flavour as they are obscenely young and trying to stew them results in something like a pot of glue.

About half the new birds will be cockerels and we will raise them for roasting. This means they will get the best of food, especially a lot of garden greens. This is one of the reasons I cultivate dandelions as they are a super food for chickens.

Chicken fat should be a bright-orange colour and if it is white, that means the bird you are eating is unhealthy from a disgusting and inadequate diet. The meat of such birds is not much good to anyone as are commercially-produced eggs.

The yolk of a good egg should be orange, even veering towards red. Some friends of ours say when they break one of our eggs in a pan that the sun is shining. The pale, yellow yolks of other eggs shows you they have almost no nutritional value. This is why we tend to make egg salad the long way. It is simply the better way.

International Criminal Court

July 18, 2024

The focus of this Court (ICC) is on individual responsibility and accountability. It was created through The Rome Statute, a Treaty adopted in 1998 to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity and Genocide. It was an important step in the development of international law.

According to Jamil Dakwar, Human Rights Head for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Adjunct Professor at NYU & Hunter College, NY, the trials of individuals from Bosnia and Rwanda involved separate War Crimes Tribunals that were ad hoc, that is, not permanent institutions. There was a need to create a permanent court of last resort. The main point of the ICC was to deter and fight those getting away with international war crimes, which many countries are either unable to unwilling to prosecute. (5^th June ,2024)

Canada was the 14^th country to sign on to the ICC, in December, 1998. The ICC now has 124 member countries, a substantial majority of the world’s states. Dozens of states are not members, however, including China, Russia, India, the US, and Israel. They don’t recognize its jurisdiction.

ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan, KC, a British Barrister elected by ICC States parties in 2021, has recently announced that the ICC is seeking arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, and for three Hamas leaders. Khan has to be convinced that there is reasonable ground to believe that these individuals have committed war crimes. The matter is now in the Pre-trial Chamber, where a panel of 3 judges from the ICC will decide if warrants should be issued. A prosecution by the ICC also cannot go ahead if the individuals in question are being held to account by their own country. Israel, says Dakwar, has a history of creating commissions of inquiry, right back to the Sabra/Shatila massacres it committed in Lebanon in 1982, and the lethal attack on the Mavi Mavara, first Gaza Freedom Flotilla in 2010, but these commissions didn’t involve any serious investigation of war crimes. So the ICC has stepped in this time.

Jurisdiction for the Court is based on Palestine’s admission to the ICC in 2015, when the UN recognized Palestine as an Observer State. At that time, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas leader (against whom an ICC warrant is currently being sought for October 7th) wanted to involve the ICC after 2014’s “Operation Protective Edge’, when Israel attacked Gaza, killing 2200, mostly women and children, and injuring some 30,000 others.

The warrants against the Hamas leaders are based on the horrific October 7 attack on Israel. The warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant are based on Israel’s ongoing deliberate starvation of Palestinians in Gaza, and the intentional withholding of humanitarian aid to victims of Israeli violence. It’s important to note that Netanyahu will be the first Western leader to be indicted by the ICC. This is significant, as the ICC has been criticized for only arresting alleged war criminals from former Yugoslavia or African countries.

The arrest warrants mean that if any of these men venture into a country that is a member of the ICC, they are subject to immediate arrest, followed by trial for the crimes with which they are charged.

According to Gideon Levy, Israeli Journalist with newspaper Ha’aretz, this is a moment the whole elite in Israel is afraid of. This is no longer just about the UN and its prosecution of the State of Israel for “plausible genocide”; it is now personal and these men are concerned about themselves. They can no longer travel without risk of arrest. They will be “wanted men” and that is a game-changer.

Stephen Zunes is a Professor at University of San Francisco and expert in US foreign policy & human rights. He says the US is very hostile to the ICC and in fact during the Bush 2 years, passed a law authorizing an invasion of The Hague if the ICC applies its jurisdiction to the US. Could it be that the US was/is concerned that some of its leaders might be indicted? Names like Henry Kissinger, Dick Cheney & Donald Rumsfeld come to mind when speculating as to why the US didn’t sign onto the ICC when it was formed in 1998. Zunes points out (Inside Story, Al Jazeera, 3^rd May, 2024) that Israel is a very small country, not a huge one like Russia. (There was an arrest warrant issued for Putin in 2023.) The US may well be the only western country these men can safely travel to, if under indictment. As well, he considers that indictments may increase the possibility of sanctions against Israel by trade unions, the human rights community, etc. The political impact could be quite significant, affecting Israel’s economy, which was already down by 20% last quarter of 2023. Israel (pop. 10 million) is short several hundred thousand workers, having banned all West Bank Palestinians from working in “Israel proper” since October 7^th.

Zunes says the whole Gaza War becomes far more controversial within Israel with indictments like this, and Israel will feel some impact. As Palestinians and many Israeli activists* tell us time and time again, Israel needs the international community to insist that it change course and accept the necessity of two peoples living in equality, with justice and freedom for all, before peace and security will come to the region. They can’t do it alone.

*Such as Amira Haas, Ilan Pappe, Jeff Halper, Gideon Levy, Zochrot, Breaking the Silence, Combatants for Peace & Boycott from Within.

Letter to the Editor – Alan Morinis

July 18, 2024

I am writing to correct an error in Sally Campbell’s otherwise informative article on the international courts. She misquotes the findings of the International Court of Justice in response to South Africa’s petition about alleged genocide in Gaza. The court did not rule that South Africa had a “plausible case,” as Campbell states, but that Gaza Palestinians had a plausible right to be protected from genocide.

This is not just splitting hairs. Twisting that ruling to claim that the ICJ found accusations of genocide against Israel to be “plausible” is actually false and contorts the court’s intent. The President of the ICJ at the time of the ruling, Judge Joan Donoghue, has clarified that “the court decided that the Palestinians had a plausible right to be protected from genocide and that South Africa had the right to present that claim in the court. It then looked at the facts as well, but it did not decide – and this is something where I’m correcting what’s often said in the media – it didn’t decide that the claim of genocide was plausible.”

See https://www.ejiltalk.org/implausible-confusion-the-meaning-of-plausibility-in-the-icjs-provisional-measures/ for clarity on what “plausible” means to this court, which is very different from what Sally Campbell claims.

Alan Morinis

Hornby Island

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