Dear Mike,
Thank you for all of your efforts to keep the Islands Grapevine censorship free. Your commitment to free speech is very much appreciated, as is your courage in standing up to the bullies in this community. Keep up the great work!
“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” George Orwell
Elizabeth Chapman
Gossip
Speaking foul of a being not present
Makes the whole room stink
Everyone is uncomfortable
The more spewed
The worse the stench
And when they leave
The scent follows
Like a loyal dog
Who has rolled in shit
Letter to the editor
In appreciation of your open mind with regards to freedom of speech, I’m sending you a cheque to support the great work you are doing. Without freedom of speech, the world gets narrower and the light can’t get in. I look forward to your weekly paper.
Yours Truly
Judith Walmsley
Hornby Island
12 28 23 the first swim
We stood
drunk
in the dark pacific night
at the edge of a rusty red metal oyster fence
and the crabs scuttled by our feet in the pale blue green water
trapped by the oyster fence
I picked up one that was six inches across
admired its soft red shell in the dim light as it tried in vain to pinch me
laid it back down on the other side of the fence
and we strove forward
in our black underwear
diving into
the waveless sea.
the second swim:
the heavens raged
inch long pellets of rain
I summoned the gods,
“Come ye forth Ragnar,
Zeus,
Beelzebub,
Ronald MacDonald,
Medusa,
Ronald Ragan,
Donald Jay Trump,
all you fat bastards,
I will take on any one of you,”
and then dove boldly into an ice cold green wave
pulling myself out of the clutches of the dark sea
I turned and trotted back up the beach stairs to the hot tub
barely holding on to my soaking wet gaunch.
A Page of Island History
If you live on Hornby or Denman, odds are that in a drawer somewhere in your house is a cleverly folded piece of sturdy paper with a map of Hornby on one side, and of Denman on the other. Ads for local businesses sprinkled about, and a bit of island philosophy: The Hornby/Denman Visitor Guide.
Paper? How retro. But hey: No battery or reception problems, no trying to see the world on a screen smaller than your hand. And there’s history here: the Guide is a long-standing inter-island project.
It all started sometime in the mid-1980s, when Isaac Kramer of Bradsdadsland, Suzie Bishop from Sea Breeze Lodge, Karen Ross from the Thatch Pub, and Mike Comeau from the Denman General Store decided to pool their advertising resources. Other participants came forward and a single-colour, home-grown brochure was produced (on recycled paper, of course). Candidates for the byline included “Hawaii of Canada” and “Crown Jewels of the Gulf Islands”, but “Undiscovered Islands” won out.
Each island got one side of the Guide. The Denman map needed more space, though, so the front and back covers for the folded version fell on the “Hornby side” (as is still the case).
Eventually, Mike Comeau took on the whole project. Under his able leadership, and with the growth in our communities, the Guide flourished, gaining more advertisers and wider distribution. Every summer visitor seemed to be carrying a copy, and every island household had at least one, to use for the local business contact info it provided, plus the ferry schedule on the back. Somewhere along the line, “Undiscovered Islands” was dropped.
When Mike retired, Margie Gang picked up the baton.
In 2014, when Margie decided she had done enough, Donna Tuele and Gary Manzer on Hornby stepped up. They took the brochure modern, going full colour on good-quality print stock, with a professionally enhanced map.
In 2015, the Tuele/Manzer duo turned production of the Guide over to the Hornby Island Community Economic Enhancement Corporation (HICEEC), with continuing support from Denman Works. In 2017, in the interest of securing more revenue to help with the costs of adding another fold, the geographic boundaries were extended to include the seaside communities of Buckley Bay, Fanny Bay, and Deep Bay.
Before COVID hit, annual production of the Guide had reached 55,000 copies. Distribution of the brochures extended beyond the islands to BC Ferries and across BC. In 2020, out of respect for limiting visitation during COVID, the distribution was reduced. The Guide’s focus shifted to education of guests already on the islands.
COVID went from pandemic to endemic, and the Guide adapted once again. Now it provides information to people already on their way here—visitors receive a copy at the Buckley Bay Ferry ticket booth—and to those already here. Focused distribution has helped keep the advertising costs for our local businesses well below normal market rates, so ads are very affordable, and nicely targeted. The interesting ads, local contact information, island maps, Denman Events calendar, and the summer ferry schedule for both routes continue to make the Guide a “must have” and “must hold”.
After almost 40 years of production, the Guide has grown, but it remains responsive to the needs of those earning a livelihood, those visiting, and those living in our communities. Thank you to the advertisers for their contributions in keeping the Guide alive. It remains a living example of an island ideal: good neighbours working together for a common goal.
Submitted by Karen Ross, HICEEC
Publicly funded advertising has been cut off to me, and as a result I will not be able to sustain The Islands Grapevine (TIG).
My visitdenmanisland.ca website job was taken from me without cause, and I was removed from the board of DenmanWorks Economic Enhancement Society without explanation.
Why? Because there were some opinions published in TIG that some people didn’t agree with.
This is what’s happening. This is what a few people who control publicly funded ad dollars are doing to this free weekly paper that supports our communities and advertises local businesses. This is what they’re doing in the name of “community.”
The print version of TIG is now unsustainable and faces being shuttered. A small group of people with their hands on the levers of publicly funded advertising budgets, themselves paid by tax funded dollars, have decided that they alone have control of where those dollars are spent. And having cut TIG off for nearly a year now, it has pushed this thirty-two year old island institution and my livelihood, AND the jobs of the people who work here, to the brink. They’ve even been on social media saying it’s their intention to do so.
Before the pandemic, you could freely express views and submit them to TIG and nobody would bat an eyelid. Somehow we hit an issue so radioactive, so divisive, that it became, “I believe in freedom of speech, except for this subject.” The thing is, in doing so, some people granted themselves a license to treat anybody who disagrees with them as a bad person.
Believe me, I know of what I speak. Letters critical of my handling of editorial oversight were submitted to TIG. The only ones our readership haven’t seen were the ones specifically marked “not for publication.” I printed the rest to show I wasn’t censoring different viewpoints. The neutrality of the paper has been misperceived, and some of the dissenting views turned out to be true.
It’s a prime example of how censorship is problematic, why censorship is dangerous, and more dangerous than a few letters of dissent in a free local publication with a circulation of 1250 homes. Have I been wasting my time standing up for a principle that I thought was an accepted liberal democratic standard?
So many of you have expressed support for TIG privately. but the small group of people who control publicly funded ad dollars, who are paid by our tax dollars, are starving me out and killing my business. And they’ll celebrate TIG’s demise. Three times we tried to resolve this issue privately, and each time we have been rebuffed. The vast private support has sadly become meaningless. Unless the residents of our communities push back publicly, the printed version of the paper is dead.
I lay it at your feet, dear readers. The Islands Grapevine is your paper. If you want to save it, do something by saying something. You can write us a letter for publication, and/or you can write to those responsible for the public funding of local agencies.
CVRD General Manager of Community Services, Doug Demarzo ddemarzo@comoxvalleyrd.ca
CVRD Area A Director Daniel Arbour
reachme@danielarbour.ca
DenmanWorks Chair Anthony Gregson
denmanresource@gmail.com
We’re Hiring!
Teen Night Facilitator with DICES
– Mentor and develop relationships with teens every other Friday night from 7-10pm
– Have a strong understanding of fun and human nature
– Demonstrate reliability, maturity, and capacity for adaptive leadership. Must be over the age of 25 to apply.
Send us your resume by January 30th to dices.communityprograms@gmail.com
What? Open House
When and Where? Sunday, January 28th, Back Hall, 2pm – 5pm
Why? To hear and talk about proposed changes to Denman’s Housing Rules
Who? Local Trustees, Sam Borthwick and David Graham
That was a fun way to try and get your attention!
The first question I should answer: Is this a meeting of the Denman Local Trust Committee (DLTC)? Well, no, it isn’t, even though whenever two members of a Local Trust Committee are together, it could be considered a meeting. The difference on January 28th is Sam and I will not be making any decisions. We want to give you an opportunity to hear about recommendations for change which our Housing Advisory Planning Commission (HAPC) members worked on last year and presented to the DLTC in November. We also want to hear your comments, concerns and suggestions, so that when we are in a Public Meeting of the DLTC, we can discuss what we heard with our Chair, David Maude, and Planners Marlis McCargar and Narissa Chadwick.
As well as questions on housing and our local regulations, you might be curious about Denman’s local governing structure. The Islands Trust is unique to the Gulf Islands, found nowhere else in all of Canada! We can explain how the current bylaws regarding housing came about etc.
So pop by anytime between 2pm and 5pm, to meet us in a casual setting! Hopefully the snow will have melted and some early signs of spring are evident. Take this opportunity to get to know us both, have those conversations about the Trust and hear how it works, and get a head start on the next phase as we enter the community engagement part of considering what our Bylaws should look like with respect to housing here on Denman Island.
Such an interesting question to ponder: What is security? My hunch is that it is the same for most people. The ability to attend to our basic survival needs for food, clean water, clean air and shelter, of course. Then there are our needs for psychological security: the need for love, the need to belong, to feel safe, to have purpose, to make meaning of our lives, as well as to serve others. Western society’s cult of individualism puts that last need on the back burner, but we see it emerge time and time again in the event of a crisis. People pull together in extraordinary ways. They put their needs after the needs of others, they show generosity on unexpected and unusual levels; they share, support and cooperate. Like the Gazan doctor whose hospital was being bombed – although encouraged to leave and save himself, he stated that he did not spend 14 years doing medical training only to abandon his patients. “Who will care for them if I am gone? Do you think my life is more important than theirs?” he questioned. This level of service to others is surprising in Western society, not so much in other parts of the world where serving the collective is fundamental to being. He did not survive, but he had the security of knowing who he was and how he belonged in the world; he will be remembered as a noble human being.
Underpinning physical and psychological needs are our identity needs: we want to be secure to be able to be who we are as human beings. Those identity needs may be around gender, race, ethnicity, religion, ableness, and more. Identity needs drive much of our behavior, they shape our values and how they play out; they are generally non-negotiable. They just are.
One way of looking at it is this: our interests (needs, concerns, fears, hopes, expectations) drive our behavior. They change over time, depending on our situation. Interests, which might be physical/concrete, procedural or psychological, are based on our core values, which usually don’t change; they get laid down early on in our development. And our identity runs even deeper, it goes to the fundamental nature of who we are.
By imagining our physical world on the basis of outdated ideas of sovereignty and nationalism, we have narrowed our identity focus, shrunk it to borders and territories, and in so doing, we have lost sight of our common identity as humans on one small planet. We share many more similarities than differences with our global community.
We are in a time of great insecurity right now, because our world is changing so rapidly. On a primary level, are we struggling with issues of physical security in an age of climate crisis. Last year was the hottest year on record since 1850, when the age of fossil fuel-burning began. We saw record droughts, record forest fires, record floods. We learned that Canada is especially vulnerable to global warming and in fact our country is warming faster than one would “expect” of a cool, northern country. The “why” of this is carefully explained in a recent article by Gordon McBean, retired Professor of Geography & Environment, Western University (The Tyee, 16 January, 2023). We have major issues with affordable housing, with the cost of food, with clean air. We have a health care system that functions amazingly well for how under-funded it is. Our service of Empire and our capitalist economic structure have created unimaginable levels of inequality between rich and poor. All these issues relate to our physical security.
On the level of psychological security, our individualistic social structure has led to an unprecedented emphasis on autonomy as a positive value. Here’s a small example: instead of deeply valuing intergenerational connection & support, Western culture has asked: “Is your adult son/daughter still living at home?” While by no means all people feel this way, we have a near- epidemic of people living alone, both young and old, who are isolated and lonely. How well is autonomy working for them, as fundamentally social beings? It can be hard for us to ask for help. We are supposed to be able to do things on our own, to be self-reliant above all.
And then on the level of identity needs, many of us hold a deep connection to the idea of being Canadian. And how easily do we sit with that idea when that involves “freedom convoys”, embeddedness with the US military, our own military buying armed drones and angling for huge increases in spending? And now we’re angry not only at Russia, but China and India. Fear of others and unquestioning alliance with the American Empire does not add to our sense of security; in fact, it keeps us on edge and needing distraction from its overwhelm.
We can find security in our lives; it will involve changing our relationship to ourselves, our economy, our environment, our global community. We are at a crossroads of choice right now. Which way will we head?
(Next week: part 2)
