Unnatural Predators: A Play about Coastal Gas Link’s Pipe-dream
by Eartha Muirhead
Characters:
1. CEO of CGL 2. CEO of LNG Canada 3. CEO of RBC
4. CEO of TransCanada Energy 5. CEO of Kholberg Kravis Roberts and Co. 6. CEO of JP Morgan Chase
Scene One: January 2019: CGL Board Room, Vancouver CNTower, 3 pm
- Well my friends, welcome and help yourselves to a martini. We have had a heck of a hectic 2 weeks, eh? I can hear the protesters on the street heckling us and are shutting down our great country’s highways and railroads. But, Coastal Gas Link is not worried, of course. Can we hear from all our stakeholders today?
- Trudeau promised me and the rest of LNG Canada that the RCMP will clear the railroad tracks soon. Terribly inconvenient to live in a so-called democracy, eh?
- The Royal Bank of Canada and it’s members are confident that despite the slowdowns and economic downturns, the fall-out from the Indian protests will soon be forgotten by the media. Our CGL pipeline portfolio remains somewhat insecure but we will recover.
- TransCanada Energy and its shareholders want to once again thank LNG Canada, for choosing us to design, build and operate the pipeline from some godforsaken hick town in northeastern BC to our soon to be completed LNG terminal in Kitimat. Over the past seven years, we have
proven a solid reputation for blundering ahead into an economic political quagmire. COUGHING: I mean, we have reputable risk management teams working overtime.
- On behalf of Kholberg, Kravis, Roberts and Co. I have invested US dollars into pro-pipeline media propaganda, I mean, campaigns. We have run full page ads in all your major newspapers and will be pouring bribes, I mean, money into all relevant labour unions. We will also be bribing judges, I mean encouraging them, to ensure that injunctions will prosecute journalists as if they are criminals, whoops, I mean similarly as protesters, without free speech rights.
- Awesome, everyone. Coastal Gas Link has always put our faith in a team approach. Can anyone speak to our direct action work with the Indian Chiefs?
- LNG Canada has gotten consent from all the Band Council Chiefs and they have accepted all our bribes, I mean, they have succumbed to our revenue sharing agreements. You know what I mean…..
- All Aboriginals will prosper from this project, even though some are a bit on edge about oil spilling into the local rivers.
- Although the Morice River eventually feeds into the Fraser River, most people worried about broken pipelines live in Vancouver, where the Fraser is already a gross toxic waste dump.
- Wait a minute; KK and R owns 35% of this project now. Our US dollar is propping this project up big-time. I need to know that we are not going to lose a penny on this hare-
brained scheme. Our public profile could be tarnished if there was a spill. What are you doing to force, I mean, get fool-proof consent, sorry, I mean get buy-in, from Indian Chiefs along the pipeline’s path? SILENCE, YAWNING, NOSE-PICKING PREVAILS.
1. Phone rings and he picks it up. “Everyone please be quiet, it is the CEO of JP Morgan Chase…..Howdy Dude, I mean JP. I will put you on speaker phone.”
6. “What the hell are are you lunatics doing up there; anyways? Looks like anarchy is breaking loose all across the land; the country is being held hostage by a bunch of paid protesters and Redskins. Your polly-anna politicians have lost control of the Indian protests.
2. Calm down JP. We are figuring it out.
6. I lent you idiots 5 billion dollars and you have already spent 2 billion of it. My investors are worried. Chevron just sold it’s 1.6 billion share in the Kitimat LNG terminal. They say low global LNG prices and the civil unrest is spooking them.
3. Guys; BC just announced a 6 billion subsidy to LNG Canada. We are laughing all the way to the bank. Whoo hoo!!!
6. Maybe, but never trust politicians when it comes to money. How did you spend my 2 billion dollars?
5. Shit! I think I am going to bail as well. The Wild West just ain’t what it used to be.
1. No no no wait. I will give you a rough outline of where the money was well spent.
3. I have the spreadsheet right here. Bribes to Chiefs: 10
million, RCMP bribes 10 million, Sons of Odin: 1 million, Bribes to judges: 5 million, Campaign support for Jason Kenny and Justin Trudeau and John Horgan: 10 million, fake news and LNG propaganda: 10 million, Facebook trolls and infiltrators: 1 million……IS INTERRUPTED BY JP
6. Well, all I can say is our stocks fell by $200.00 today. Nervous stockholders make me nervous. Get those Indians off the railroad tracks or else. Put that in your Canuckian pipes and smoke it. HANGS UP.
4. I am texting our bioengineering department now to see if we can genetically modify a new virus and start a pandemic. That way, the Natives and the protesters will have to go home. I know, I know, another wild west pipe- dream.
1. Let’s take a 5 minute break. I will order another round of martinis.
Scene 2: Same day, On the balcony, 5 pm
5. Wow, the mountains on Vancouver Island are so beautiful. People in New York would die for this view.
- Look at the Orcas plowing through the Salish Sea. Yikes, the wind out here is unusually strong all of a sudden.
- How do you guys sleep at night when you know this pipeline could destroy rivers, this ocean and it’s animals?
2. I often have to take tranquilizers and sometimes when the stress gets really bad I snort cocaine. How about you?
5. I never sleep. I work 24/7…….. I feel like a predator
sometimes; making money off of resource extraction. But somebody’s gonna do it if I don’t.
4. My wife says I am a sociopath and is filing for divorce.
2. To 5: You should stay awhile longer. I could fly you up to see the starving polar bears, maybe see some Indians too.
1. (ENTERS WITH MARTINIS) Well team, I am proud of all our work today. This pipe-dream, I mean this pipeline, is going to make us GLOBS and GLOBS of money.
Just then a tornado from the Georgia Strait blows up to the 44th floor of the tower. With it comes a MURDER of Crows. They dive-bomb the CEO’s, steal their phones and the wind throws them off the edge of the baloney to the streets below, where hundreds of protesters are drumming around a campfire.
THE END.
All facts and figures are real except for the ones on the spreadsheet.
A Free Holiday Gift For Everyone on Denman and Hornby Island
by Dante Ambriel
During this pandemic, we had to close our gallery.
We missed seeing everyone and we missed the Christmas Markets.
We loved creating presents for our community members and their families.
So, this year we decided to send out a gift to all of you to wish you a very Happy Holiday and a Happy New Year from both of us!
Over the last two years of the Pandemic, Tashi and I have been playing a lot of musical instruments together.
This November, we decided to take the month and explore the idea of doing spontaneous duets.
The dramatic November weather became our inspiration.
The wind, the leaves, the water, the frost, the moon and clouds, all found their voices in these duets.
Over the month, we created beautiful, melodic – sometimes haunting – pieces, nearly one a day – playing as a duet – Dante on piano or harp and Tashi on violin or cello.
Each piece was recorded live, as it appeared spontaneously – without any rehearsal or any corrections – so that the fragility of discovery was maintained.
As the days went by we completed 28 duets.
We put them onto two CD’s and called the set The Genesis Moment.
So, we have created a 2 hour live concert of original music for your pleasure for free.
Please visit our new web channel address Everything Luminous on YouTube next week in order to listen to the free concert.
Tashi will also post the internet address on the Taystayic Open Bulletin Board on Facebook.
Also, the finished film of Dante’s award winning play Virtual Ecstasy will be available to watch for free on YouTube next week.
Google: Virtual Ecstasy DigiStagePlay Productions YouTube
A very Happy Holiday from Dante and Tashi at Flowing Art Studio!
Memoir of a Rural Sisyphus-Redux
Introduction
Memoir of a Rural Sisyphus-Redux
Bill Engleson
For a few years, I kept a diary of my inauguration into the Denman Community. This column, recently renamed Memoir of a Rural Sisyphus-Redux, will
extract a few of my observations from a dozen or so years ago and share them. Hopefully, they will have some modern times currency. Some will. Some will not. This one was written long before I discovered Pickleball.
Exercise-Before Pickleball
November 23, 2004
Have I talked about exercise? Well, apart from the chain-gang intensity of gardening that I have referenced, probably not. I must confess that I have never been an athletic fellow. I blame, well, no one really. Growing up in the desolate wasteland of my youth, I was not drawn to team sports. It may be now the way it was then…you were either a sporty fellow (or young woman) or you weren’t. I wasn’t. I did play a season of softball somewhere in my early teens. My church fielded the team and as I recollect, we regularly got our Christian clocks cleaned.
One year in high school, a basketball coach decided to form a team of over 6-footers. I went out but was miserable at it.
I attempted boxing as well somewhere in my dispirited teens. One errant punch in the belly of the Nanaimo pub that housed the Nanaimo Boxing Club and that was the end of my pugilistic foray. While there may be some pleasure to be had in hitting someone (and I’m still ambivalent about that notion) getting hit has absolutely no attraction for me, no matter what the Society for Masochistic Inclinations (SMI) have to say about it.
But, back to high school fitness. I recall we had to do a lot of running in those days. Huffing and puffing in the foothills behind NSSS. There were lots of places to hide behind bushes, stare at the sky and dream of freedom from teenage prison.
Over the years I’ve dabbled in brief exercise regimes. For a long time, I swam regularly but a lengthy interruption due to nasal surgery dried up that source of toning. Prior to selling our city house, I did a lot of morning walking. And I’ve always liked to bike.
But now, my inclination to lethargy is my biggest enemy. More later.
Postscript: These days, 2021 and moving into 2022, I play lots of Pickleball…in-between moments of delightful lethargy, now a friend of sorts.
Letter to the Editor
Dear Editor,
There are so many stories that are passed on, forwarded through on-line chats, often with little verification done. Here’s one from right here on Denman. At a private party I attended in mid October, a double vaxxed guest spread Covid to a large number of the others. One person even ended up in a coma. I have not been vaccinated as I did get covid in early July. The antibodies still in my system protected me. Why is there never any consideration in this vaxxed/unvaxxed debate about people who have their own antibodies? A third group. Given my recent experience it seems evident that survivors of covid are the safest people to be around. Vaccination passports give people a false sense of security and must be abolished.
Thomas Provençal
Letter the Editor
In reply to Phoenix Riting! in the last Grapevine
I believe that the public health requirements of proof of vaccination are really fair for the general public. See the letter to the editor in the last week’s Grapevine by Stephanie Slater.
Consider also, that without those requirements of vaccination, those of us at the greatest health risk – the elderly, people with immune deficiency diseases and children would be unable to go anywhere. I do think that this is unfair to the greatest number of people.
My own son is unvaccinated so I told him that if he is not vaccinated by the time I make it down to the U.S., I would not be able to even take him out to dinner and could only see him from a distance. He is going to get vaccinated because of a travel restriction where he wants to go.
Consider this, vaccination only gives the immune system a boost so it is safe. Also, you are protecting others besides yourself in being vaccinated AND, until we are all vaccinated there is very little chance of eliminating Covid19 from the world. This is how we got rid of polio and eliminated most of the childhood diseases that killed many. I, myself had whooping cough, measles and scarlet fever before I was 3 and consider myself so lucky to have made it to 83 years of age. Many didn’t survive those diseases.
SO, is it fair that I should be kept home and alone if the public health requirements were not in place?
Alisa Aiken
Support for Cancer Patients
Support for Cancer Patients
By Veronica Timmons
After I had a breast lumpectomy the doctor told me that it was cancerous. On hearing those words my brain shut down. Fortunately, my partner Alan remembered everything and even wrote notes. This kind of support was vital over the next two years of my treatment at the Cancer Care Clinic. I am truly grateful for the people in my life who give me comfort, who I can discuss hopes and fears with or who help me find medical information. This community is full of people who have made the journey so much easier for me but I recognize not everyone has this kind of support. The BC Cancer Agency has published that 1 out of 2 people will get cancer in the next ten years as the population ages so most of us will know someone with it. Fortunately, my type of cancer is 85% curable and I have always assumed I would be in that percentage. So far so good.
Sometimes you don’t know the right questions to ask. The doctors, wonderful as they were, just didn’t have time to answer all my questions. I was lucky that a friend gave me a book on breast cancer. I still had questions so I talked to an island friend who had had it. She told me about the DI Cancer Support Group and that Friday I went to a meeting and I’m so glad I did. There were twelve of us and Dr. Tetz. Each person spoke about their cancer, treatment and current health. Everyone in the group listened closely and gave their suggestions in a kind and helpful way. I joined the group and have found it very helpful and safe. We pledge that nothing we say will be repeated.
Once Covid struck the weekly Friday meetings at the Anglican Church moved to Zoom (Sundays at 11am). Not everyone has a computer or likes Zoom so we have decided to meet face to face on Friday, December 17th at 1:30pm in the meeting room at the Anglican Church. All covid rules will be followed. Please contact me for more information or to be put on our list – 335-1828 or vtimmons@telus.net.
Another support for cancer sufferers is the Farm to Family program. This volunteer program cooks nutritious frozen ready-to-serve soups, stews and casseroles every other Sunday (using as much Denman produce as they can). Meals are distributed at no cost to folks who need of this support. Contact the Better at Home program at 250-898-0245 to order.
Bronwyn Schuster: Let the eye breathe
If you are new and want to let everyone know you’ve arrived, you might try doing a mural, a big one, preferably on the side of a public building that can’t be missed. Bronwyn Schuster arrived on Denman just over a year ago. Thanks to Covid relief funding for artists from Arts BC in early 2021, the south wall of the Denman Seniors Activity Centre is now completely covered by what Bronwyn describes as her “love letter” to the Pacific herring. A first experience of the annual herring spawn was the inspiration, the colours of the milt-infused sea, and the passionate efforts to conserve a threatened natural wonder. Where there was a blank wall of cream-coloured cement blocks, a sea spirit now gracefully feathers a school of herring through their arms as they rise towards the moon against a luminous night sky. The composition commands the wall with a calm, rhythmic sweep in vivid, harmonious tones of purple, yellow, and russet red. It has a magical quality that owes something to the tales of Han Christian Andersen and the Danish folklore Bronwyn came to know as a child, strongly influenced by her Danish grandfather. “I think of the sea spirits as preserving and protecting what they are themselves a part.”
The mural was one of four designs submitted to the DSMS board, each quite different and equally assured, an indication of her imaginative range.
Bronwyn’s involvement with murals began at a 2017 Vancouver mural festival where training was offered to encourage artists to translate their art into murals. Murals have technical challenges of scale, architectural context, and materials, especially if they are outside. Scaling can be done several ways: by blowing the design up using projection, mapping to a grid, or just making your own map of reference points with freehand markings. The sheer size of the Activity Centre wall looks daunting in that regard. Fortunately, Bronwyn found that the cement blocks of the wall formed their own grid, with two pilasters, the full height of the wall, adding vertical references.
In her own words, the design is “graphically inspired” which is to say, the mural is a gigantic drawing. If so, Bronwyn’s approach to drawing itself is carefully considered, even, one might say, analytical, and not just a freehand riff. She says she draws at three different levels: figures, seen as shapes, tonal variation, and variation of line. She tries to achieve balance, and to create room for “the eye to breathe” orchestrating clear space with detail. This accounts for why the Activity Centre mural is so immediately comprehended, with a restful effect. As an ecological fairy tale, it is a highly structured graphical narrative.
Bronwyn comes to art through her parents. Her mother is a painter, her father created geometric art in his youth. She thought she might do other things with her life, but she was always drawing, and ended up taking a year of art education at the Swedish Academy of Realist Art.
The arts program was rigorously traditional, stressing the practical skills needed to produce figurative, “realist” art, without any academic dimensions (essays, seminars and what have you), on the model of the atelier. But she wanted the skills to do better portraits, one of her primary interests, so the program fit the bill. “It was not great for my creativity,” she recalls, but she got what she wanted and thoroughly enjoyed herself, even though it took her three or four years “to recover my voice.” She went on to study in Vancouver at the SmArt School, founded in 2011, to work with those art students, self trained artists, and working professionals who “find themselves stranded and looking for more.” There she worked on her illustration which she describes on her website as “a blend between magical fiction and everyday realism, sometimes infused with a dash of humor.”
Bronwyn used to do a lot of paintings “for their own sake”, displayed in galleries. The Denman Craft Shop has a few miniature paintings, and she is working on a series of alphabet illustrations using mermaids for each letter. Some of her Space Cat paintings went surprisingly viral on the net. But she also loves taking the requirements of others and conceptualizing them through art, the Activity Centre mural being an outstanding case in point. In Vancouver, she was making about half her income from design projects. Now she is training on game art, the conceptual realization of characters or objects in one dimension (such as board games) and 2-D where the technical demands are relatively simple. Sword-guns, antler-handled daggers with nasty blades – Bronwyn’s got what they want: imagination armed with a paintbrush. The big money is in 3-D games, but that doesn’t interest her right now.
We come to the inevitable question, Why Denman Island? Part of the answer is Eastend in SW Saskatchewan, on the edge of the Cypress Hills, which she describes as ‘a small town of five hundred people and a Tyrannosaurus Rex’ (and birthplace of famed author Wallace Stegner). Her parents moved there from Banff and Calgary. She loved the sense of community, of getting to know people (something not so easy in Vancouver, she feels), even if she is also perfectly content to simply go off on her own into the woods.
There is something more given Bronwyn’s folklore heritage. “I grew up,” says she, with a knowing smile, “in a pagan household.”
Bronwyn Schuster by Nel Robin
Occult Cowboy – Paladin of Justice
Herring Moon