by Pamela Post
 Scoffing at the notion that fashion is only for the rail-thin, Barb Wilkins and Lorna Ketler have made their mark on the tony Main Street boutique strip with Bodacious, a shop catering exclusively to voluptuous women who love chic clothes. The curvaceous cousins share with Pamela Post their take on female body image, the power that comes with loving yourself, and their call to women everywhere to “take up some space”
They finish each other’s sentences in the manner of a long-time married couple. But Barb Wilkins and Lorna Ketler are cousins, not romantic partners—though they do say being in business together for almost nine years has been like a marriage.
Their path to business success has been unorthodox. They started from scratch with next to no capital, no formal business training—just a whole lot of passion and chutzpah. You could say they were bold and audacious. Bodacious, in fact.
Bodacious is more than just the name of their successful Main Street clothing store. It’s who they are—and who they would like to invite other women to be.
“We don’t use the term ‘plus size,’” Barb says emphatically. “We carry from size 10—which is not a plus size—up to size 24.”
“Yeah,” says Lorna, “we like to say it’s a store that celebrates your curves.”
“Exactly,” says Barb. “Bodacious is not about size; it embodies an attitude more than anything else.”
And attitude is a quality these two curvy cousins have in abundance.
Now in their early 40s, they grew up in rural Chilliwack in modest means, spending every Sunday at their Mennonite grandmother’s house where all the aunts and cousins would congregate. Lorna and Barb always had a special bond.
“We were a couple of barefoot little kids back then, running around the country. We were always interested in the same things. I remember going through Lorna’s trinkets, saying, ‘Ooh, I love this pendant.’ She’d say, ‘You have it.’ When we got older, we’d be in each other’s closets all the time, trying things on, swapping clothes.”
They both left the country life but took separate paths for many of their adult years. Barb ran a daycare/preschool on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive and followed her passion for music, cultivating her “grunge” edge by singing in a band. Lorna moved to Victoria and worked in the non-profit sector.
But when the grown-up cousins got together, they’d go right back to their old love of playful fashion and visiting vintage and consignment stores, looking for the perfect thing and having fun doing it.
“But we had some really frustrating experiences,” says Barb. “I remember us hitting 30 and realizing our body shapes weren’t exactly what we thought they would be, and maybe we’d put on some weight over the last 10 years, but still wanting to dress in a fun, fabulous way—and being completely flabbergasted at realizing nobody was catering to us. Here we were, finally with a little money in our pockets, going into stores, and there was nothing that fit us, and [we were] feeling offended by that. What was our option—Cotton Ginny?”
“Barb and I started talking about it,” continues Lorna. “Like, what would be our dream shopping experience? How could we do it better?”
Lorna had some retail experience running a thrift store for a non-profit. She made a failed bid to take it over, and that “failure” gave her and Barb the impetus to hatch a new vision. Bodacious was born as a small consignment store at Main and Broadway in 2000.
After a year, they decided to move entirely to selling new and locally designed clothes. They found a new location on Main at East 28th and reopened Bodacious in its new incarnation.
Eight years later, the store has all the sophistication that you would expect from a couple of Main Street fashionistas. It features their own Bodacious designer line: elegant signature wrap dresses, tops, and tunics in lusciously soft fabrics that can be mixed and matched. They use bamboo and other green and sustainable materials.
Their signature Bodacious jeans were featured in New York’s In Style. Being contacted by the star-maker magazine was a watershed moment for the two former consignment gals. “It was like our ‘Oprah-call’ moment,” the two laugh.
As the business has flourished, so has an ongoing dialogue between the two women and their customers about female body image.
Lorna says working for women’s groups in her 30s changed a lot of her own negative self-talk. “I had never been surrounded by strong feminist women before. These groups showed me I could love myself, love my body the way it was. I learned a different language around talking about my body and about talking to women. At first, we just wanted to have a store with great clothes that would sell well, make women look good, a store that will be fun to shop in. But then we had all these women come in, talking about how they hated their bodies. We started—gently—challenging them, and having those conversations.”
Barb and Lorna admit they’ve staged a few “self-loathing interventions” in the store, when they overhear women debasing their bodies in the change rooms or using language they think women need to discard.
Barb remembers one woman coming in, taking a garment off the rack, and saying, “This is huge!”
“And she was like a size 14. I came up to her and quietly said, ‘You know, there are a number of women in the store larger than you who wear this size. It’s not “huge”—it’s just a size. In fact, that’s my size.’ She said, ‘Oh, but you look great,’ and I said, ‘Thanks, so do you. But let’s not call it huge. It’s just a size.’”
They’ve become a hit on the speakers’ circuit, talking to business groups and fashion schools. For a year, the cousins led the local Ladies Who Launch group, where women with business dreams put their ideas into an “incubator” and are guided and mentored by other women.
“In that group, we learned that women often have a different way of running a business than men. And women often have a different definition of success,” says Barb. “For example, women multi-task, and for some of them success means being able to pick their kids up from school or being able to work three- or four-day weeks.”
Work-life balance is a value the bodacious cousins share. They’ve had opportunities to open up additional stores in other cities but have decided that being on planes all the time is not in their business or life plans.
Barb has a close friend, a young mother, living with cancer right now. “I am able to give her one day a week. I tell her, ‘Monday is your day. What do you want? What can I do for you? What can we do together?’ And I’ve come to realize that’s something in my ideal world that I always want to have—one day a week I can give to someone else.”
What’s more, they’ve become ambassadors for the rights of women to love themselves unconditionally—even during their playtime.
“Last summer, Barb and I went swimming every morning at Kits Pool. It was great. And I noticed in the shower afterwards, we would be showering off, naked, and sometimes little girls would look at us. And I said to Barb, ‘I almost feel like I’m doing a public service here. How often do these girls get to see a naked woman’s body that isn’t airbrushed or perfect?’”
Such incidents were the inspiration for a recent article Lorna wrote on the Bodacious blog, titled “The Right to Bare Arms.” In the piece, she laments how so many women hate their arms, suffering through hot summers covered up. She recalls how a customer broke into tears, so happy she had found an outfit that showed her arms—and knowing she looked good. “She said, sobbing, ‘It’s been years since I showed my arms!’”
“We want to see girls and women, regardless of their size, walk down the street, wearing fabulous clothes they love, with their heads held high,” says Barb.
“I’ve been in stages of my life where I’ve tried to make myself ‘smaller’ by being a ‘smaller person.’ It doesn’t work. And it doesn’t feel good. Occupy your own space. Take up some space.”
 It’s About Time
The modelling industry has long been dominated by the breastless waif (think Kate Moss), the impish gamine (à la Twiggy), and even—egad—the drugged-out “junkie” (remember those Calvin Klein ads?).
Brittney Fisher, 24, is none of these things. But the Vernon native is one of the 10 top semi-finalists in a nationwide search to find Canada’s strongest, most self-assured, and “proud-to-be-plus” model. (Women less than a size 14 did not make the cut).
The winner of Canada’s Plus Size Model search will be announced March 18 at LG Fashion Week in Toronto. She will get a one-year modeling contract, a $2,500 shopping spree, and a chance to be the signature model in a company’s ad campaign. (Perhaps even for Calvin Klein? In a fashion-forward move, the design house introduced a plus-size line of its iconic jeans and other separates in 2007.) plusmodelsearch.com
Pamela Post is a Vancouver journalist and broadcaster who has learned to embrace her vertical space.
The making of Vancouver's first lady
by Rebecca Ephraim
It is now time for Amy Robertson to step out from her husband’s ever-expanding shadow into the full sunlight—a place where her quiet power and personal strength will meet the responsibilities and opportunities that have been thrust upon her with Gregor’s election as mayor. And although she’s ready to take on her new role, in this exclusive interview, she shares with Rebecca Ephraim her angst around being the best she can be.
Part of Amy Robertson’s charm is her self-doubt. I don’t mean the kind of nagging “am I good enough” or “smart enough.” She’s plenty that. It’s more like, “Will I ever be able to use my new role to give Vancouver everything it deserves?”
Her humility around this is endearing. The woman is salt of the earth. The good South Bend, Indiana, kind. She’s serious and pensive, with a soft spot for helping out however and whomever she can. The kind of woman you’d want on your side—or at the very least, on the side of your city.
I interviewed Amy in mid-December at a rare and defining moment: at the intersection of powerful changes conspiring to force an almost complete overhaul of her life. A stay-at-home mom facing empty nestdom, cobbling together a personal life for a workaholic mayor-husband (who, she says, still loves to play). An emerging artist with her first exhibition slated this month. And, perhaps above all, finding her footing on the public stage as Vancouver’s new first lady.
“My main role is on the personal level in supporting Gregor,” she says resolutely. “But I need to figure out what it is that I can pursue on my own because it’s my interest and I’m not seen as riding on the coattails of Gregor.”
As a serious artist, she worries that by forging a role as a leader in the arts and culture community, the screaming issue of Vancouver’s homeless would not get the attention it deserves. “When you start to compare it to issues that your partner is standing up for, such as homelessness, I think, ‘God, what am I doing? I’m sitting here weaving a basket. I should be out helping people get off the streets.’ It’s challenging to be an artist in this day and age,” she says, summing up her quandary, “because it does feel sort of selfish.”
Dig a little deeper and you’ll find her actively exploring with the Crafts Association of B.C. how she can help convene programs around art as therapy to support community well-being. For instance, with her own craft of basket weaving, she would work with people of Aboriginal descent to reconnect with their roots through crafts that have been part of their heritage. Having spent most of her life outdoors (“I’ve never had a desk job”), she’s experienced and nurtured nature on many fronts. Her art is no exception.
In West Coast Aboriginal style, Amy harvests bark from the north side of cedar trees (the only safe way to not endanger the trees) when the sap is running, spring to summer. “For me, gathering weaving materials is an excuse to go for a walk in the woods. One of my favourite things to do is be out-of-doors and with the luxury of having access to the trees.” She crafts her cedar bark baskets mostly while sitting at her kitchen table, the busy intersection of kid traffic and family life. The finished baskets with their rich, textured patterns and subdued colours have a simple elegance, much like the artist herself.
Trusting the River’s Current
Poised to become an oil painter upon completion of her art degree from Colorado College (in Colorado Springs, where she met Gregor), Amy found her future taking a sharp turn. “After I graduated, the only things I painted were fences, houses, and boats. Not on the canvas, but the actual things,” she muses. “So art completely lost focus, and part of that was having three children in four years and running a farm and a business.”
One of the boats she painted was a 40-foot 1957 sailboat that she and Gregor restored and lived on for nearly a year and a half while sailing the Pacific as newlyweds. Amy readily admits that this was his dream, but that she loved it, too.
As she recounts the meandering course of her life, it becomes clear that much of it has been propelled by her husband’s ambitions. Gregor most often staked the path to adventure and to her it was always new and always intriguing. “It sounds a little lame that I’ve just gone along with it, but it’s been so exciting, so why question it?” she says. “You know, we’ve followed these great paths, and life has pushed us in the right direction like the current of a river.”
Post sailing, they landed in New Zealand and took up organic farming. She recollects working in the farm’s slaughterhouse while pregnant. “Disgusting,” she murmurs, though she says the farm’s abattoir was small and humane —she is a staunch critic of factory farming—and in the same breath remarks how extraordinary such experiences were.
Returning to Canada, Amy and Gregor transplanted their organic farming expertise to the Fraser Valley, where she managed their commercial farm and headed up the B.C. Association for Regenerative Agriculture, one of the province’s largest certifying bodies. And then onward to settle on Cortes Island to raise their family: Hannah, now 18, Satchel, 16, Terra, 13, and their 18-year-old foster son, Jinagh, who’s lived with them since he was 16.
Amy says that Gregor, though a workaholic, still loves to play.
As Gregor began commuting between Cortes and Vancouver overseeing Happy Planet, the juice company that emerged from the fruits of their organic farm, Amy took the lead in parenting, chaired the local school board, and pursued “some serious self-sustaining farming practices.” When they moved to Vancouver, Gregor’s hometown, Amy recalibrated her passion for living off the land to embrace urban life.
For city dwellers who don’t get their hands dirty, the next closest thing to the ground is the local farmers’ market. Amy sees these venues as the Holy Grail of food security. Her tranquil voice amplifies with her passion for this issue as she describes how factory farms and our industrial food system ravage the environment. “What’s important is that people develop a relationship with farmers and know where their food comes from. Chemical-free is really the way to go, and ideally it does not have to come from California. It’s going to come from those farmers we influence and support, who live right here in the Fraser Valley.”
As a board member of the Vancouver Farmers Markets, she says one of her organization’s goals in working with the city is securing permanent locations for farmers’ markets. I half-jokingly suggest that, given her husband’s new role, this should be a slam-dunk.
She balks at the idea of leveraging her position but adds, “I think about that, and there’s this very fine line I need to be walking; that will take some figuring. Yet I also think there will be opportunities I should be taking advantage of because I am the mayor’s wife.” tvw
Rebecca Ephraim, publisher of Today’s Vancouver Woman, revels in having such a savvy, green, and soulful woman grace the pages of our newly titled publication.
Meet the Artist
The opening of Amy Robertson’s first exhibition of her cedar basket work takes place Feb. 27, 6-7:30 pm, at the Jericho Arts Centre in Point Grey (1675 Discovery St.) The exhibition runs through March 14. See jerichoartscentre.com
Meg Tilly’s star had limitless potential but, as Pamela Post reports, this Oscar-nominated actress rejected the limelight to reclaim her life
She still speaks with the same soft little-girl voice and exudes the same gentle-as-a-fawn aura as she did as the lithe and ethereal Chloe in The Big Chill or as the enigmatic young nun in Agnes of God. But it’s clear to me after spending an afternoon with her that Meg Tilly is no lamb—she’s a lionheart.
It’s a crisp fall day and we’re sharing comfort food at Aphrodite’s on Fourth Avenue. I chose the venue after reading her delightful blog. Her almost daily entries gave me a clear sense that Meg Tilly, the Academy Award-nominated actress and ’80s film waif, is an Earth mother at heart.
Her blog (officialmegtilly.com/blog) is peppered with musings about her kids, the economy, her life as a writer—and recipes. She shares her joy in the sensual pleasures of making turkey gravy, sweet potato mash, the perfect piecrust, and buttermilk pancakes in a way that gives you as much enjoyment reading about it as you’d expect to have eating the results. As we drink hot chocolate and share a piece of rustic apple-blackberry pie after lunch—“Mmm, good filling,” she murmurs approvingly—she tells me about what a long, strange trip it’s been.
She’s now 48 and I’m struck by how unapologetic this creature of Hollywood is about her age. Her black hair has whispers of grey that she respects enough to allow. There’s not a spot of makeup on her face or on her still disarmingly doe-like eyes. And unlike her glamorous sister Jennifer—Meg is the first to admit—she doesn’t get the fashion thing.
In this era of Botox and Desperate Housewives, there’s something about Meg’s comfort—even delight—with her unadorned self that feels infectiously liberating. The wisdom that comes with experience, she says, is one of the wonderful things about getting older. “I know a lot of women really don’t like it. But I love getting older. I don’t like the aches and pains in the body, but if that’s the price I have to pay for getting this much me—then it’s worth it, you know?”
Meg Tilly left life in the Hollywood fast lane in 1995 for what to her was a far greater calling: raising her three children. Her goal: to make the home life for them she never had as a child. “I made the decision to quit because I wanted to rewrite the book on my childhood. My kids now bear the burden of hearing what a ‘gifted actress your mother was’ and thinking I left this fabulous career for them. But it was as much for me as for them. It was hard being famous. It can be very lonely and isolating.”
She loved acting, “getting into someone else’s skin and having these wonderful experiences and travelling.” And the “fabulous” pay provided her with a nest egg that has both paid for her children’s education and has been carefully invested into a retirement fund.
But she doesn’t miss the dark side of fame. Like the time during childbirth when the modest Meg, splay-legged in stirrups, was deep in labour. “And every intern in the hospital was coming in to take a look, and the nurse saying, ‘What was Bill Hurt like? I have such a crush on him!’”
The decision to jump off the fame train was also the catalyst for her reincarnation as a writer. Meg crafted stories that she first passed off as fiction, but that after publication came with a stunning confession: her stories of children enduring heart-rending abuse, neglect, poverty, violence, and sexual predation—often within their own families—were based on her own childhood.
Meg Tilly was born Margaret Chan on Valentine’s Day in 1960 in California. Her teacher mother divorced her Chinese-American father when she was a toddler. Her mother and her new stepdad then moved the family to rural Texada Island off the B.C. coast. Being half Chinese was the first of many secrets that she and her siblings were taught to hide.
“Growing up, we were led to believe that being half Chinese was a dirty secret that would cause people to shun us if they knew. My mother loved us, but it was a defective, crippled love.”
After decades of hiding the truth, Meg talks with plain candour about the hurts and evils that came with her childhood. She now says her first novel, Singing Songs (1994), was her childhood, with dates, places, and birth orders mixed up to hide identities. In a fictionalized gloss it tells the story of growing up with a series of her mother’s boyfriends and husbands who were violent sexual predators. Meg, her sisters Jennifer and Rebecca, and several half- and step-siblings survived the rages and nocturnal visits of these men who beat, humiliated, and sexually abused them. And perhaps the worst nightmare of all: a mother who didn’t protect them.
The Big Chill (1983).The young Meg fled to New York at 16 on a dance scholarship at a top ballet school. When an injury put a halt to that career, she moved to acting and shot up the star stratosphere like a rocket. Her first screen role was a bit part in Fame, followed by The Big Chill, and Agnes of God, for which she won a Golden Globe Award and an Oscar nomination. She was director Milos Forman’s first choice to play the role of Mozart’s wife, Constanze, in Amadeus. After rehearsing the role for seven weeks in Czechoslovakia, Meg tore ligaments in her leg during a pick-up soccer game the day before shooting was scheduled to start and ended up in hospital. The role went to Elizabeth Berridge.
“It was like a death… I felt like someone else was wearing my underwear,” she recalls, describing how she felt seeing the other actress playing Constanze on screen.
Looking back on her childhood, she sees why she so quickly became adept at acting or “hiding” in another person’s character. “Maybe that challenge was a gift as well. I learned to be a very good hider as a child. When my stepdad was coming to beat somebody, I was very fast. I could hide behind the fridge, under the sink, out of my window onto the roof.”
Much of her adult life, she says, she spent “being afraid,” sometimes attracting the wrong friends, partners, and relationships. She’s been married several times. Her two eldest children, Emily and David, are from her marriage to Hollywood film producer Tim Zinnemann. She had her youngest child, Will, now 18, during her five-year relationship with actor Colin Firth, with whom she is “still friends.” Another marriage was to a Hollywood mogul three decades her senior. She lived in a pattern of excessive caregiving, bailing one husband out of massive debt and hiding her fame light under a bushel, afraid to make the powerful men in her life feel “less than.”
After writing Singing Songs, Meg came more fully out of the closet with Gemma, the harrowing account of a 12-year-old girl kidnapped by a violent pedophile. Last year, her first book for young readers was released. Porcupine is a tale of children surviving the death of their soldier father in Afghanistan and subsequent abandonment by their mother. Her latest novel, First Time, released in November, tells the story of how a teenage girl deals with unwanted advances from her mother’s boyfriend.
She’s received critical acclaim for her writing, including comparisons to John Steinbeck. But disclosure came with a cost. Some family members loved her for it; some no longer speak to her. That was a tough pill to swallow for Meg, the nurturer. “I still send them love, but I decided not to be the doormat anymore. I decided in my books not to whitewash over the way these predators’ minds work, or what they did, because to do so would be a disservice to the children they victimize.
“My sister said to me, ‘Meggy, you know we spent our whole life holding the closet door shut—like terrified. And what you did is open it up again. You cleaned it out and you shined a light in there, and it’s like everything is clean again.’”
Having left Hollywood far behind, Meg now lives happily with her husband, Don, also a writer, and Will, who is in his final year of high school in Vancouver. She’s relishing her last year of being Earth mom to her last nestling. She makes Will hot breakfasts at 6:45 a.m. and drives him to school. Next year he heads to England to live with his famous actor father for the first time ever to study acting himself. All of which gives Meg chills of pride and fear.
“My goal when I left acting was to see my children safely into adulthood. I now realize that in trying to give them the wonderful childhood I didn’t have—the warm milk and cookies and the safety—that I deprived them of other things, like some of my self-sufficiency skills. But they’re off—well, almost all off—leading adult lives and doing so well. I’m left with this scary kind of exciting freedom for the first time in my life. It’s a little bit like feeling cut adrift.”
The pie plate is now empty. Just two forks and some crumbs remain. The now-cold hot chocolate sits congealing in our mugs as Meg muses about what comes next. “This I know. I want to be able to walk tall in this world and be solidly me, with all my perceived flaws or gifts. When I was a child, I had to take care of my brothers and sisters, coming from such a damaged childhood. Now I’m in my late 40s—almost 50. I don’t want to be good anymore. I’m just gonna be me.”
Pamela Post is a writer and broadcaster who has mastered Meg Tilly’s secret recipe for perfect piecrust. It wasn’t lard... um... hard.
How Simon Baston dreams of housing the rich.
by Stephanie MacDonald
 on cloud nine: Insulation is sprayed into the walls of Simon’s LEED Gold home.
This ensures walls are as airtight as possible, which minimizes the escape of cool air during the hot months
and warm air in winter. The insulation “ends” shown here will be recycled. An opulent, state-of-the-art home is being built near Dundarave Beach with a swimming pool and a price tag nudging $5 million. “So what?” you yawn. True, it’s hardly a thrilling event; we’re in West Vancouver after all. But this is no McMansion—this is the house Simon Baston is building. And it’s poised to occupy a unique niche in the Canadian real estate milieu: the eco-friendly high-end home.
It’s difficult to envision what this wood and concrete skeleton in a muddy lot will soon flesh out to be: 6,000 square feet of sustainable splendour in a verdant, manicured oasis in the Lower Mainland’s priciest postal code. But Simon, owner of development company Leading Homes, can iterate exactly what sets this home apart from hundreds of other upscale dwellings in West Van.
“Homes here are being built to great standards, great detailing, fantastic specifications, but none of them comes with the unique selling point of a LEED Gold Standard,” exclaims Simon, a transplant from Wales who exhibits the boyish, rough-and-tumble enthusiasm you’d expect from someone who first fell in love with Canada during the rugby season he played in Edmonton for the Welsh Druids in 1990.
LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is the measure of sustainability, health, and efficiency of a building. Certification levels range from Certified to Platinum and are based on a point system.
But the real question remains: in a world of exploding population growth and a civic movement toward greater density and less urban sprawl, isn’t there a fundamental conflict between living in a 6,000-square foot home and claiming to care about the environment?
Simon gives a disarming shrug. “Well, I could always use the argument that wealthy people are always going to want to live in big houses, so why not make them more sustainable?” says Simon, who wants to live in the house but at the same time is aggressively marketing it to potential buyers. “But the reality is, this is the way that virtually everyone in Europe builds, and that’s where I have all my building experience.”
 The House That Simon Built
- Windows/doors: “low-E,” argon-filled; keeps house cool in summer, warm in winter; built with local timber
- Siding/roof: cedar shingles, locally sourced
- Organic vegetable garden: 100% drought-tolerant planting, irrigated with recaptured rainwater, fertilized with compost from kitchen garburator
- Hard surfaces (patio, driveway, roof): 100% rainwater recapture system for irrigation
- Heating: high-efficiency air source heat pump with forced-air gas furnace; saves on energy bills
- Hot water: greywater passively preheats incoming domestic water; in effect, up to 80% free hot water
- Fireplaces: sealed combustion, no-standing pilot light appliances; 10% savings on emissions/gas
- Swimming pool: saltwater heated via solar energy with electric cover; up to 80% reduction in use of standard chemicals; health benefits, up to 95% energy savings
- Concrete: 30% use of fly ash compound, a recyclable material that makes for stronger, less permeable concrete
- Roof overhangs: bigger than standard; reduce heat gain in summer and provide better protection in winter
- External envelope: keeps house cool in summer, warm in winter; reduces energy loss; minimizes use of fuel
- Insulation: sprayed foam; keeps house cool in summer, warm in winter; airtightness ensured
Building is in the Baston blood. Simon’s father is a builder, and Simon himself entered the business as a bricklayer. After receiving a degree in building engineering, he went to work on strip malls. “No, no, no!” he says emphatically, when asked if he constructed the not-so-Earth-friendly structures. Instead, he refurbished them, turning the upper floors into apartments.
“It’s a different business in the U.K.,” he explains. “Here it’s knock it down and build something new. But in the U.K., this is what you’ve got—make it work. That’s why the European model is more inventive, due to the lack of land and the ability to knock something down. You have to use what’s there.”
Simon, his wife, Joanna, and their three kids left Wales for West Vancouver two and a half years ago. From the rugby tour that brought him from Edmonton to Vancouver 16 years earlier (“Being my student days, I don’t remember an awful lot of the tour,” he admits, laughing), Simon was already hooked on the West Coast lifestyle. Joanna took longer to convince.
“I think it was the combination of close family and historical ties [in Wales],” he recalls. “People go back 500 years in the village we live in. The reality of it now is I would go back before she would.”
Their move to Canada was seamless. Before emigrating, Simon had already bought apartments in Vancouver and on the North Shore and was renting them out. He made contacts with banks, realtors, solicitors, and accountants, building up his business model before he left Wales.
“When you’re an immigrant, nothing comes to you,” he explains. “You’ve got to work that much harder because you’re not from here.”
Despite the smooth transition, Simon concedes he misses certain things from the old country. “I miss my father. We worked together for 20 years and I had daily contact with him. It’s the pros and cons—you just have to weigh the benefits against the losses, don’t you.”
One of the key benefits of this part of the country, in Simon’s words: it’s a “sporting paradise.” He’s taken up rowing and skiing, and he plans to get into kayak racing next year. “My intention is that every year of my life I’m going to try a different sport. Because I like competition and I’ve always competed in different sports. This year I’ve taken up boxing, and I hope to have a fight.”
Simon freely admits he’s as competitive in business as he is in sports. He wants his company to be at the forefront of building high-performance, socially responsible homes. He’s confident it’s already there. “Without the shadow of a doubt. There are many builders who could claim to build high-performance homes, or high-standard homes, but are there any building a high-standard, high-performance home with the environmental certification that we’re going to give?”
From the outside, Simon’s house won’t look much different from your garden variety West Coast mansion. But its most entrancing features are the things you can’t see: natural building materials low in VOCs (volatile organic compounds); solar panels to heat the saltwater pool; drought-resistant landscaping; a greywater recovery system that preheats incoming domestic water; and underground cisterns that capture 100 per cent of rainwater from roofs, the driveway, and the patio for irrigation.
All this eco-innovation. Yet Simon wants more. “Really, we should be using rainwater to flush toilets, or use it for the swimming pool. Why would you use water straight from the tap? But codes have got to change here.”
Besides installing state-of-the-art eco-systems, the location was also vital to Simon. It’s important to him that the house be within walking distance of the village. “I think people in general are coming full circle, back to an appreciation of a more simple life, where you can walk to the market, grow your own food, where you know your neighbours.”
Despite his enthusiasm for green technology and livable communities, underneath the ebullience is a shrewd businessman who is cognizant of the economic potential of a business branding itself as sustainable.
“Let’s forget the sustainable lifestyle for a while and concentrate on the economics: a LEED Gold home will have 65 per cent energy savings over a standard new home. With energy costs rising on average of 8 per cent annually, this will be significant.”
You might think that low energy bills would not be high on the list for wealthy homeowners. But Simon knows better. “I’ve found that people genuinely want to know what can they do. I really do think they feel that certain levels of consumerism must be matched with their social responsibility.”
And with the global economic downturn, you might expect even the rich to take a firmer grip on their wallets and not splash out on a pricey home just now. Simon concedes that property values have indeed fallen. But he considers the kind of home he’s building to be worth the steep investment.
“You’ve got to ask yourself a question: the next property that you buy—you know, for multi-millions—do you want a home that’s future-proofed in value? Or are you going to build a home that’s just built to code standard, and two or three years down the line you’re going to have to pay 100 per cent of the energy costs, whereas this home is just 35 per cent? To me, they’re recession-proof.”
Meanwhile, a couple of streets away is another big, muddy lot earmarked by Leading Homes. Simon has plans to build a LEED Platinum-certified, single family house. One of its many innovations will be the installation of photovoltaic (solar) cells; whoever owns the home will actually be able to sell energy back to the grid.
Present project excepted, erecting grand palaces is not in the cards for Simon. Instead, his goal is to create inexpensive subdivisions or mass-produced homes designed to make the most of a smaller footprint. “To be honest, the direction I would like to go in the future is building better, not bigger.”
Stephanie MacDonald is a Vancouver writer who would never, ever consider moving into a sprawling, luxurious mansion. (OK, she would, but only if it were LEED certified.)
Five high-powered businesswomen help build an 'oldgirls'' network.
by Jennifer Croll
Our crack styling team glams up one of our other uber-businesswomen, Catherine Winckler. They love their achievements but
no more than they love helping
other female entrepreneurs realize
their full potential. Writer Jennifer
Croll profiles five high-performance
Vancouver businesswomen invested
in the success of the “sisterhood.”
Women helping women. Call it the Old Girls’ Club—or perhaps the “Women of a Certain Age” Network. One thing is certain: there’s a growing trend toward highly successful female entrepreneurs dedicating time and energy to mentoring other women business owners. At the centre is the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs B.C. (FWE), an organization providing support, mentorship, and training to those with new and growing businesses. FWE gives businesswomen a structured source of mentorship that has been seen informally in the “old boys’” network for ages. In these pages we introduce you to five of the outstanding professional women who have made mentoring a central focus of how they “give back.”
 Christina Anthony
Revelling in Others’ Success
Christina Anthony thinks it’s strange anyone would question putting in time for free. “You’re paid in so many other ways than money,” she says. And she knows a thing or two about money, having become one of the youngest directors in the 85-year history of Odlum Brown. She’s a star at the venerable investment firm and has remained one of its top portfolio managers. Last year, at 32, she was named one of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40.
But personally, her passion is supporting other women in their chosen professions. “You’re paid in a good feeling of being able to help someone else. I really believe you have a responsibility, when somebody has helped you, to turn around and help somebody else.”
With three kids at home, she’s used to nurturing, but Christina takes it to new heights with her mentoring work. She coaches students at UBC and leads a free seminar, Wall Street 101, on finding jobs in the financial sector.
Her dedication to seeing others excel has been amplified in her role as founder and president of the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs of B.C. “I just get so inspired by women who are running and driving their own businesses. And I looked at this market [Vancouver] and felt that there weren’t enough mentoring or educational programs geared toward helping women entrepreneurs.” In fact, she couldn’t find any.
With FWE, an “old girls’’’ network of sorts was born. “A lot of people who I’ve mentored I’ve been able to hire,” Christina remarks. “So I’ve benefited by having really great people join my team at Odlum Brown or at FWE.”
 Nicole Stefenelli
Finding Her Mentoring Feet
As a university student, Nicole Stefenelli wasn’t sure how to react when friends encouraged her to follow her passion for recycling. “They said, ‘Nicole, you need to do something about this.’ And I actually didn’t know what that meant.” But she soon figured it out. Today, she’s the founder and president of Urban Impact Recycling.
Started as a university project in 1989, Urban Impact has grown into a Lower Mainland success story. Nicole confesses she’s surprised by how far the company has come. “When I started, one of my best friends said, ‘How many businesses do you need to make a go of it?’ And I said, ‘Oh, 25?’”
Nearly 20 years later, Urban Impact has 4,500 pickup locations. Amid all this eco-friendly success, Nicole’s desire to give back prompted her to introduce Urban Impact’s charitable giving program, which provides free recycling services to charities. The company has also recently taken on the task of going carbon-neutral.
Seeking to strengthen her entrepreneurial chops, Nicole approached the FWE in 2003. “I was just so lucky because the fit, the match, was ideal,” she says of the mentor assigned to her. Still a mentee, Nicole’s unofficial mentoring duties, plus a turn assisting Christina Anthony in organizing the FWE’s e-series entrepreneurial training sessions, suggest that she’s up for the challenge.
In the meantime, Nicole has some sage advice for women entrepreneurs. “Whatever you choose, make sure you absolutely love it, because you will work harder than you’ve probably ever worked,” she says. “But if you do love it and you do feel the passion every time you go to work, it’s easy.”
 Lisa Palleson-Stallan
Born to Lead (and Mentor)
“I like to be busy,” says Lisa Palleson-Stallan. That’s an understatement. Lisa is the CEO and co-founder of local activewear company Lotuswear. In her personal life, she devotes time to the Minerva Foundation (an organization dedicated to empowering women) and the Centre for Exceptional Leadership (which fosters leadership development for companies). “Oh, and I’m involved with the Coaches Association of B.C. and Women in Sport,” she adds. And the mother of four still finds time to participate in events at her kids’ school.
Lisa also makes room for mentoring with FWE. “I think the personal reward is seeing people two or three years down the road, and seeing that you may have had some part in helping their business to grow,” she says. “Part of the mentoring process is that both parties are learning all the time. You’re always getting something out of it.”
As for her business, Lisa has enterprising plans for Lotuswear, including expanding across Canada and eventually, into the U.S. But her ideas for future not-for-profit activities are equally ambitious. “Have you heard of Operation Christmas?” she asks. Lisa wants to use Lotuswear stores as collection points for this Christmas charity, which ships presents to poor children in Africa.
Her ties to the continent are deep. “My plan this year is to take my two older sons to Africa, where the Centre for Leadership runs a leadership camp for AIDS orphans.” And perhaps that’s her best plan yet: guaranteeing that the next crop of Palleson-Stallans benefit from the help of one generous, motivated, and invaluable mentor.
 Catherine Winckler
A-Ha Moments
Catherine Winckler has achieved many things, but she admits that work/life balance isn’t one of them. “I have no balance. I absolutely don’t,” says the vivacious creative director of Switch Interactive, a new media firm she founded and then sold to Fleming Creative Group. “I’ve tried really hard to do up those little pie charts… but I can’t compartmentalize my life.”
As a businesswoman and partner in Fleming, Catherine knows she wouldn’t be where she is today without help. “Mentoring, for me, has been everything. I’ve had a mentor from the first days I left university… an absolutely amazing woman.”
Catherine became a mentor herself in 2005. “I was six years into Switch, and [I] wanted to push my business internationally and didn’t know what to do. I became an FWE attendee and saw huge value in myself, so I became a mentor.” She’s adamant that mentoring is a two-way street. “Every time I’m talking to one of my mentees, I have an equal if not bigger ‘a-ha’ to help me with my own business. It’s just amazing, because they’re smart women, and they’re giving back to me in the same way that I’m giving back to them.”
When asked what she would change if she could do it all over again, Catherine takes a long pause. “When I was young, I would have tried out New York or San Francisco; I wish I’d been a little braver to go into the big pond.” Then she laughs. “But it’s not too late. Maybe I can go volunteer at an agency in New York. So you see? There—I just had an ‘a-ha’!”
 Sandra Wilson
$30 Million Later
“Oh! I just have a whole lotta fun.” Sandra Wilson laughs. And so she should: two years ago, Sandra sold Robeez, the children’s shoe company she started in her basement, for $30.5 million.
Sandra launched Robeez in 1994 after she was laid off by the now-defunct Canadian Airlines. She saw her new business as a way to make money while still being around for her one-year-old son. “Yes, I put in a lot of hours,” she concedes, “but I also didn’t miss very many of my son’s hockey games or soccer games. Ever. I was able to set priorities.”
Since selling Robeez in 2006 to American shoe giant Stride Rite, she’s had a lot of time to play: with family time, golf, and a recent cycling trip in Bhutan. But for Sandra, part of the fun of being independently wealthy has been sharing the secrets of her success with other women entrepreneurs at the FWE. “I learned a heck of a lot over those years, and it’s nice to be able to share with other women who have earlier-stage businesses. I know, having been there, that you can often shorten the learning curve significantly.”
So how do the rest of us expedite our journey to good times and good fortune? Sandra ultimately thanks mentoring for steering her in the right direction. “I think one of the reasons I was successful in the early days is that I didn’t ever hesitate to ask for help or ask questions. And you know, it’s amazing: it’s very rare to have a door slammed in your face. People usually do want to help.”
Boost Your Business Chops
The FWE offers five programs to help your company (and you) grow
- E-Series Entrepreneurial Training Sessions: for women entrepreneurs of early-stage, high-growth businesses who want to take their businesses to the next level.
- A-Series advanced entrepreneurial training sessions: for graduates of the e-series program seeking enhanced education and networking to support the steady growth of their established companies.
- Mentor Program: for active women entrepreneurs seeking improvement and growth for their companies, this program strategically partners them with mentors who meet their specific business growth stage and industry needs.
- Roundtable Events: to bring FWE members and other business leaders together for lively discussions focused on specific topics. The next event (Nov. 20; open to non-members) is called: “Corporate Social Responsibility: Giving Back Through Your Business.”
- Student Internship Program: a one-year educational and hands-on program for female students working with venture capitalists, private equity firms, and entrepreneurs in B.C. The FWE is currently seeking entrepreneurial and venture capitalist companies interested in taking on qualified students for a paid internship, April to August 2009.
The FWE is always looking for new mentors and mentees. To find out more about this opportunity or about FWE events and programs, visit fwe.ca or contact Jill Earthy, executive director, at 604-290-4236, jill@fwe.ca
.
The art and science of transformation.
by Rebecca Ephraim
 Sure, you’re not the same person you were 10 years ago, last month, or perhaps even yesterday. What happened? You’re a little bit older and, if you’ve learned anything, somewhat wiser.
But then there are the big changes… the ones that are transformative. And Marilyn Schlitz, PhD, lives to study them... on our behalf. At Northern California’s Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), she works with a remarkable team of scientists and educators to achieve breakthroughs in our understanding of consciousness and human potential, à la transformation.
Later this month, UBC, in partnership with the Institute of Noetic Sciences, is presenting a weekend of exploration called “Living Deeply” with Marilyn. We caught up with the good doctor for more insight on transformation.
 What does “noetic” mean in IONS? And how did you become associated with the institute? “Noetic” comes from the Greek word nous, meaning “direct knowing.” It refers to our inner experiences, intuitions, and subjective awareness. William James referred to such experiences as “states of insight unplumbed by the discursive intellect.” I first heard of the Institute of Noetic Sciences in 1977, when I read a book called Psychic Exploration by the Apollo 14 astronaut, Edgar Mitchell. That book changed my life and set the path for my career.
We all transform—after all, just the act of growing up is transformation. What are you talking about? We define consciousness transformations as “profound internal shifts that result in long-lasting changes in the way you experience and relate to yourself, others, and the world.” We have discovered that many people report moments of great insight that led them to deeper, more meaning-filled and purposeful lives. Through hundreds of hours of interviews with religious and spiritual masters, we found tools for achieving positive transformations that are common across cultures and traditions.
Is it apt to say your study merges science and spirituality? I am deeply interested in working at the nexus of science and spirituality. Bringing two seemingly disparate domains together offers the potential for breakthroughs in our understanding of who we are and what we are capable of becoming.
What has surprised you about this work? I have been surprised by some of the stories that people in our survey of more than 2,000 people shared with us. A Vietnam vet described a profound insight that changed his life as he watched his colleagues gunned down on the battlefield. We heard from a mom who had an inspiration to help her sick daughter by sending subtle energy and ultimately healing the daughter and their relationship. Anything can be a catalyst for transformation. Setting a positive intention and practising mindful attention can help us see the opportunities in any situation or life experience.
In light of this research, how can we best prepare our children for the future? Our research on positive consciousness transformations suggests some general directions we can take. As parents, we need to hold the tenuous paradox between setting firm boundaries and creating ample space for our kids to think and experience in their own ways. We need to model deep respect and appreciation for them and for our elders.
We need to make sure they have the opportunity to experience silence and reflection as we race through our days. We must create openings for undirected play, immersion in nature, and interactions with people from different cultures, world views, and life experiences. And we should spend as much time with our kids as we possibly can, listening deeply.
With your perspective, what does sustainability look like? In my mind, how we get to full sustainability is—in part—a matter of seeing consciousness as the missing piece in the sustainability puzzle. Each of us is hungry to find greater balance in ourselves and our relationships. All of us need to reduce the noise of mass distractions that lead to stress, exhaustion, and burnout. Sustainability involves weaving together networks across communities and cultures that strengthen the web of humanity. And it includes our sense of belonging to something greater than ourselves that gives us meaning and purpose.
Is there anything I can do to nurture transformation? Our work on consciousness transformations suggests that there are some simple things you can do. Take time out for silence. Remember, you choose how you interpret your experiences. Know that people who annoy you the most can be your greatest teachers. Understand (especially if you’re in the middle of one) that most significant positive transformations arise out of crisis or some destabilizing experience. Revitalize yourself in nature. Use everyday moments, like your carpool or exercise group, to practise good social and emotional intelligence. Be willing to forgive. And take time to play—sometimes we take ourselves too seriously. As we transform in positive ways, we become a model for others. Finding like-minded communities can also make a difference.
How has your research on transformation affected you? I use what I have learned every day. When I find myself becoming reactive, I try to pay attention to my emotions and to work with them, rather than letting them control me. When I find myself thinking limiting thoughts, I remember that I control my own experience. And I celebrate my family and friends who help me recall the person I most want to be—even when I forget.
How do humans need to adapt to survive the changes predicted for this, the 21st, century? We need to learn more about consciousness and to understand that the root cause of many of our social and environmental problems lies in our limited belief systems, assumptions, and worldviews. Just as we have created many of the problems we face as a civilization, we can create solutions.
If our world is really looking down the barrel of an environmental catastrophe, how do I live my life right now? As someone very wise once said: “Even if the world will end tomorrow, plant a tree today.” You just never know what the morning might bring.
Marilyn will be teaching IONS’s signature workshop on “Living Deeply” with Cassandra Vieten in Vancouver Oct. 29–30. For more info: lifeandcareer.ubc.ca/sv or 604-822-0681. Also visit noetic.org .
—interview conducted, condensed, and edited by SharedVISION publisher Rebecca Ephraim.
A Kamloops lawyer crusades for Canada's health freedom.
by Tamara Letkeman
 Shawn Buckley climbs the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery to the sound of ardent applause, whoops, and whistles. With his dark good looks (think Christian Bale or George Clooney), he could be mistaken for a celebrity who’s hit town to hold court with his fans. And in a way, he is.
It’s Sept. 10, and about 50 people have rallied under the blazing sun to hear the Kamloops lawyer speak. Many hold placards, some of which face Shawn like soldiers standing smartly to attention, others of which are deliberately turned backwards to entice passersby to join the tight circle that’s formed on Robson Street. “Sign the Petition Here,” the signs urge. “Support the Canadian Charter of Health Freedom.”
Shawn Buckley has emerged as Canada’s all-star for natural health products (NHPs), a superhero who’s crusading for our right to have access to herbal remedies, vitamins, and minerals. Sept. 10 is a historic day because the Natural Health Product Protection Association (NHPPA), a group Shawn formed to protect access to natural health products and dietary supplements, has released its newly inked Charter of Health Freedom. This is landmark legislation that would allow the feds to safely regulate natural and traditional medicines while guaranteeing our access to them.
“It’s designed to give the government the authority they need to regulate things that are actually dangerous,” Shawn, who wrote the charter, explains. “But they cannot thwart our opportunity to choose how we’re going to treat ourselves in a health crisis.”
The goal: to collect three million signatures across the country in support of the charter and have it drafted into law.
Health Canada began regulating natural health products on Jan. 1, 2004. Shawn, who has successfully defended a number of NHP companies against Health Canada in court, noticed many manufacturers’ licence applications were failing. “It became absolutely crystal clear to me the industry was being headed to disaster. And when I say disaster I mean the majority of natural health products being forced off the market.” (To wit, it’s estimated that some 20,000 products have already been taken off the shelves.)
Canadians are serious about their health supplements. According to a 2005 survey by Health Canada, more than 70 per cent of us have used a natural health product at some point. The number climbs to nearly 80 per cent for British Columbians—the highest in the country.
The Charter of Health Freedom may well place Shawn squarely in the history books. But it was a far different bill that originally pulled him into the limelight. Last April, while he was quietly working on the charter, a copy of the newly released Bill C-51 crossed his desk. A wildly controversial piece of legislation that proposed to tighten labelling and licensing requirements for makers of natural health products, Bill C-51 would also grant Health Canada the unprecedented power to seize the property of manufacturers, practitioners, and retailers in the industry without a warrant and without reporting the seizure to a court.
“And the person who decides whether you are guilty or innocent is the minister [of health],” Shawn laments. “And guess who gets to keep any seized property if you’re guilty. The minister. I have a problem with that.”
As a consumer, Shawn worried his family’s access to natural health products would be drastically reduced. As a lawyer, he was horrified at the bill’s departure from the rule of law. “It so frightened me about the powers Health Canada was going to be given over the industry that we couldn’t allow it to stand.”
Since Bill C-51’s introduction seven months ago, Shawn, like a tenacious bulldog, has never let loose of this unsettling legislation.
 At least 500 people came to hear Shawn’s first talk on Bill C-51 June 2, in Vancouver. He travelled around B.C., Manitoba, and Ontario to give lectures on the bill’s ramifications. Meanwhile, newspapers and radio stations from across the country came a-calling. “The media interviews, I couldn’t even count them,” he says.
With the announcement of the federal election last month, Bill C-51 died on the table. But Shawn isn’t mollified. “Bill C-51 is gone now, but what will prevent the government from just reintroducing it after the election? Nothing.”
Shawn’s Epiphany
Though these days Shawn swallows a number of natural supplements, including hemp oil, to maintain his stout good health, he didn’t always believe in the healing powers of Mother Earth.
“I just assumed that the whole thing was snake oil,” he confesses. “I grew up in a family where if we had a medical problem, we went to the doctor.”
Shawn’s first contact with the natural health products industry came in the mid-’90s when he represented Health Canada against a Kamloops herbalist, Jim Strauss, maker of Strauss Heart Drops. A shipment of herbs that Strauss had ordered from the United States got seized by Health Canada at the border. Strauss was suing for damages.
Shawn had the case thrown out due to a procedural error, and Strauss lost his herbs. But that didn’t stop him from hiring Shawn to defend him when the province later went after him for practising medicine without a license.
“He was clearly guilty,” Shawn recalls, adding that he considered Strauss a “flake.” Then it dawned on him that the law Strauss was being prosecuted under contradicted the Charter of Rights and Freedoms: while the legislation in question prohibits people from making untruthful claims, the Charter grants us freedom of expression.
Shawn served the Crown notice that he would attempt to have the law declared unconstitutional. The province promptly dropped the charges. “We consider that to be a tremendous win when they have to back down,” he says.
Peter Helgason, special projects manager of Strauss Herb Company, was thrilled at how Shawn handled the case. “I was very pleased that the Crown walked away after [making] a 73-count criminal charge. I have no reservations whatsoever recommending Shawn’s legal services to other people who are in conflict.”
While preparing Strauss’s case, Shawn had an epiphany. “When I defended Jim, my eyes started to open.” Strauss had given him boxes of letters containing glowing testimonials from patients who’d taken his heart drops. “There were hundreds of credible people who were literally at death’s door, and they all got well and went back to work.”
The letters, and subsequent interviews with many who wrote them (Shawn ended up calling five witnesses to the stand—an unusually high number), made a powerful impression. “Now, if I get sick, my last resort is taking a pharmaceutical pill.”
The same goes for Shawn’s wife, Barbara, and their children, Alex, 16, Elycia, 13, and Zachary, 10. But Shawn admits that he, who’s absolutely pro-natural remedies, and Barbara, a former nurse, sometimes clash. “I mean, there’s conflict over simple things like whether or not the kids should get Tylenol if they have a cold.”
When asked how these conflicts are resolved, Shawn laughs. “Well, usually how things are resolved in a marriage—the woman wins.”
Despite the utter lack of telltale signs that his labours are wearing on him—he’s got an enviable tan and no circles under his eyes—Shawn says the stress of long work hours and criss-crossing the country is mounting. “It can’t go on indefinitely. The plan was to get the NHPPA up and running and phase out my law practice and phase in to the NHPPA. But then Bill C-51 came along.”
Yet the Kamloops lawyer-turned-crusader for natural health products remains tough, resolute, and unwavering in his commitment. And his fans love him for it.
“I don’t think you can get much better than Shawn,” affirms Lorna Hancock, director of the Health Action Network Society, the group that organized the Sept. 10 rally. “You know, he’s a real champion. He sees what’s right, and he sees what’s wrong. He’s not there to back down.”
Tamara Letkeman is SharedVISION’s editor. Though the Chinese herbs she’s taking taste terrible, she demands the right to continue forcing them down.
Get Involved: Make Your Access to Natural Health Products a Federal Election Issue
- Download the petition supporting the Charter of Health Freedom at charterofhealthfreedom.org or nhppa.org, collect at least 25 signatures, and send your petition to the NHPPA’s office. The NHPPA will forward all petitions to Ottawa.
- Stay informed. For information and updates on letter-writing campaigns and rallies, visit the charterofhealthfreedom.org or nhppa.org websites.
The truth about teenagers
interview by Tamara Letkeman
Quick—who was it that bemoaned: “Our youth
now love luxury, they have bad manners, contempt
for authority, they show disrespect for
their elders and love chatter in the place of
exercise”? Was it your mom? Grandpa? Your
Grade 10 teacher? Surprise! The quote is attributed to Socrates—who lived nearly 2,500 years
ago. But the point isn’t who said it; it’s that
grown-ups have been vilifying teenagers since
time immemorial. Do they deserve it? Dr. Peter
Marshall, child psychologist and author of Now
I Know Why Tigers Eat Their Young, recently
stopped by to answer some burning questions
about what makes teenagers tick.
Which has sharper teeth: a tiger or a teenager? A tiger is more predictable in what you’re going to get from it. But teenagers can go from this nice, soft way of communication—almost like they’re toothless—to grinding away with their molars. And sometimes they’ve got their canines out.
What’s wrong with kids today anyway? Not too much of anything. One thing I’ve emphasized in the book is that really, we get a lot of bad press about kids. There may be a few problems that are peculiar to this generation, but by and large the problems are pretty much the ones that their parents had—that they’d like to pretend they didn’t have and forget all about.
What is the Chicken Little Syndrome you talk about in your book? The sky is falling, the sky is falling, the sky is falling. I traced it back in history—sort of tongue in cheek—to Socrates, who talked about what a rotten lot kids were back in his day. And then you go through the 17th, 18th centuries, all the way into Dr. Spock, who thought that kids were terrible. You start to think: there’s something wrong here, because every generation says the same thing. What happens is people look at a snapshot—“what’s with these kids going around with mohawks” was a big one a while back. Well, think back: if you were around in the ‘60s, parents were just as outraged when we grew our hair over our ears. So just relax and realize that the sky is not falling.
Is the present generation of teens doomed? [laughs] I hope not, because I want them to be looking after me in about 20 years! No, they’re not doomed at all. We have the most highly educated generation of kids in history. Again, contrary to what people would have you believe—that teenagers couldn’t even read The Bobbsy Twins or something—they’re smarter than they ever were.
Guilt-tripping: an effective method for dealing with teenagers? Well, my mother tried it! I always feel very guilty when I say that. Nothing wrong with a little bit of guilt, but management-by-guilt is really not the best way of doing it. Why would you want to make someone feel guilty because they stayed out till 1 in the morning when the curfew was 11? They’re having fun, they broke a rule, they knew what the rule was. Apply a consequence.
Parents are former teenagers themselves, so why the generation gap? I don’t know if there is a huge generation gap. There was in the ‘60s and ‘70s because the values being espoused by teenagers in the ‘60s were quite discordant with the values of their parents. But if you ask kids what their core values are, and what the parents’ values are, the top four for both are family, friends, a good, solid education, and a good career.
I want my daughter to be an engineer—like me—but she has this ridiculous dream of becoming a sculptor. How do I get her to see the light? [laughs] I’m sorry—she’s already seen the light. It just happens to be a rather different light than you want to shine in her life. I guess that would be one issue where I would say, “Follow your dreams.” And if you want to, say, give her the information—we really do want her to know that the life of a sculptor is probably a little bit more precarious than going into engineering, in terms of guaranteed income and career. But if she says, “I don’t care, I want to do that,” I’d say, “You go for it.”
My no-good son took the car without asking and proceeded to ram it into a tree. How do I deal with him when strangulation is not an option? One of our sons went off with the car—now he actually had permission, but he drove like an idiot and he caused considerable damage, and the consequence was he would not drive again until he had worked and paid off the money for the damage…. Chances are if there’s major damage he’s going to be paying it off for a long time. The car will be safe—till the next time.
What is the worst thing you ever did as a teenager? Oh, I think I stole a cookie…. OK, I got kicked out of school when I was 15 and my mother believed that I was going to another high school. I didn’t go once. And before my transcript came out, I hopped on a ferry to Belgium and went to India. And that’s when I got a letter—when she finally caught up with me—saying, “You can lead a horse to water, Peter, but you can’t make it drink. And you’re a bloody horse.”
The third edition of Peter Marshall’s international bestseller Now I Know Why Tigers Eat Their Young (Whitecap Books) is available in bookstores.
—interview conducted, condensed, and edited by SharedVISION editor Tamara Letkeman
by Linda Solomon
 “I spent most of my adolescence trying to kill my IQ with drugs and alcohol.”
Andrea Reimer laughs. She holds up a hand, as if to say, “I give up.”
“You want to know what my IQ was? OK, it was 160.”
Some estimate that Einstein, it might be noted, possessed an IQ of 160. “It’s a blessing and a curse,” Andrea says.
When asked what the curse is, she squints. Her look seems to ask: “Are you blind?”
“I’m kind of a freak. I go to a party. People are just hanging out and socializing and then I come in and over-intellectualize things. The blessing is that I can sit on eight boards, run a large organization, raise a daughter, play soccer, and run for office.”
Andrea, the executive director of the Wilderness Committee and a former Vancouver school board trustee, announced her intention to seek a Vision Vancouver nomination for city council in July. She hasn’t been over-intellectualizing her desire to work towards change through municipal government. She’s been reaching out across a broad spectrum of Vancouver, drawing on her background as a street person, an elected official, a leading environmentalist, and a mom, to pull in support.
At 36, she appeals to young people who would like to see government be more inclusive. “I am part of the leadership of a new generation that sees the world not as an ‘us’ and a ‘them,’ but as a big ‘us’ that needs to work together to find solutions.”
Andrea lives on the edge. She’s always been there, and it’s easy to guess that she always will be. “When other candidates ask for my support,” she says, “I make sure they know about my past so it doesn’t catch them by surprise later.”
Born in Saskatoon, Andrea was put into foster care as a baby and knows little about her biological parents. At eight months, she was adopted by a Vancouver couple. They settled in Calgary by the time Andrea started school.
Both parents came from abusive backgrounds. Her father was raised in a Mennonite community in Manitoba. He grew up in poverty so dire there was often nothing to eat. He was “beaten, doused with water, and tied up outside, just because that was how his parents thought you had to learn the right way to do things.” Her mother’s father was an alcoholic and used to “beat the crap out of my grandmother and my mom.” Her maternal grandmother, who has been a source of inspiration for Andrea, finally took the kids and moved to Vancouver.
“My grandmother was a fatalist. She had a belief that things happen because they happen, and you can control how you react to a thing, but you can’t control the thing.”
Her parents taught her to work hard at a young age. By the age of three, she had to do the dishes. She was making dinner at the age of five. She had five hours of chores to do each Saturday. “I dusted the whole house, vacuumed, laundered towels, cleaned the bathrooms and the kitchen. Every four weeks, on top of that, my brother and I had to polish silver and clean the chandelier.... Then I could leave the house.”
“I’ve never known anyone who works quite as hard, and is always the first to volunteer to take on yet another task,” says Karen Mahon, executive director of Hollyhock Leadership Institute, about Andrea. Karen laboured alongside Andrea in the environmental movement when the former worked for Greenpeace.
As she neared her teens, Andrea grew rebellious. “My mom used to hit me. When I was about 11, I grabbed a brush and hit her in the face. I didn’t think it through. It was a defensive reaction. And she never touched me again. I think what she realized in that moment was that trying to control me wasn’t going to work. I wondered why I hadn’t done it before.”
She took her first drink and smoked cigarettes at 10. At 11, she tried drugs like hash oil and mushrooms. “I was probably 12 when I did my first acid trip. I was mature for my age and had a good mind.”
She also began drifting towards the streets. It was the first time in her life she felt connected to something. “There was a culture of people who looked after each other. They liked new ideas. They talked about things. They were politically engaged.” After a few months, she stopped going home altogether.
It was a life of danger and adventure. She travelled through Canada and the States, Asia and northern Africa. She was involved in Food Not Bombs. She hitchhiked on sailboats from Prince Rupert to Port Hardy and lived in tiny villages in Central America. She worked in Portugal on a eucalyptus plantation and travelled around Europe with an art-slash-party collective called the Mutoid Waste Company. She got arrested (although never for serious offenses), dumpster-dived, and sat at the edges of food courts, waiting for people to get up so she could scavenge their leftovers.
 Andrea says she is open with daughter Roan about her past.
She wound up in Yugoslavia, where she slept in public parks and on the streets. It was two months before the Bosnian War broke out. “The situation was so tense, I didn’t know if I’d wake up in the morning,” Andrea recalls.
She also got into hard drugs and developed addictions to substances she prefers not to talk about out of respect for her mother. “My mother is a private person and has asked me not to go into the details of what I did back then. She’d rather fill in the blanks.” Her father died last May.
In El Salvador, she went to work with an indigenous solidarity group a few months after the civil war, which raged from 1980 to 1992. The group rebuilt homes destroyed by bombs. One day, Andrea observed children going to a stream that ran right through a bombed-out building for water. On the spot, she decided to go back to Canada, enter university, and use her personal resources to try and help children like these.
She enrolled at Montreal’s Concordia University, hoping to find an environment where she could engage in intellectual discourse. Bored after a few months, she quit. While in Montreal, however, she got involved with a cocaine addict. They moved together to Vancouver. Once here, she signed up for a job training program sponsored by the government and got work with Gordon Neighbourhood House Youth Works. From there, she was sent for a practicum to Western Canada Wilderness Committee. She fell in love with the work.
“Wilderness is something you see and feel. It is about experience. You get it the moment you make eye contact with a bear, or take your first jump in the ocean.”
The boyfriend fell by the wayside, and so did the drugs. “In relation to the job, drugs were boring. I promised myself I wouldn’t get high for a year and I didn’t. Learning I had control over my body and my addiction was pivotal. I’m a fatalist, and it’s good to know that addiction isn’t inevitable.”
At a Wilderness Committee annual general meeting in the mid-1990s, she met Andy Miller, an American wildlife biologist. After a year together, they had Roan. A month later, they married. Roan, now 11, shows signs of having inherited her mother’s brains, independence, and tendency to work hard.
“When she was five, she told us she wanted a new bed. We said, ‘If you want one, you can buy it yourself.’” After one year, Roan had earned enough money from selling lemonade, hot chocolate, and crocuses.
Andrea tries to be open with Roan about her past. “I say that I made choices that weren’t always good ones, but what matters is the next step. It’s not worth sitting there and rueing the last mistake. It’s about trying to get to the next step without making another one.”
Restless, curious, compassionate, and above all else, hardworking and brave, Andrea says she has never believed there was a problem she couldn’t solve through “blunt force, smart thinking, or by bringing enough people into it.” One of 300,000 hopefuls who first applied to train with Al Gore to deliver the Inconvenient Truth slide show, Andrea was one of 500 chosen. She loved training with Gore in Tennessee.
“I went through this intense emotional experience in Nashville that took me from thinking ‘we’re all going to die’ to thinking, ‘holy crap, anything is possible.’”
She has delivered An Inconvenient Truth to more than 10,000 people. Before she left for the training—and before realizing how hard it was going to be to memorize an hour and a half of detailed scientific information—she had already booked an event in Parksville. “When I found out 800 people including the Qualicum city council were going to be there, I was terrified.”
She overcame her fear and got on with it. The talk went so well that afterwards the audience demanded city council do something about global warming, and agreed on the spot to create a citizens’ advisory committee on climate policy.
“What I have is the courage to stand up and do something,” Andrea says. “I get described as fearless. I’m very fearful. I just don’t let it stop me from doing things. When you do it and you see how much difference it makes to step into that terrifying moment, it’s empowering.”
Linda Solomon is the publisher of TheVancouverObserver.com . She says it’s better than paper—SharedVISION excepted.
Support Andrea in her bid for Vancouver city council
As a Vision Vancouver candidate, Andrea first needs to be nominated to the Vision
Vancouver slate.
To support Andrea in getting on the slate, you need to:
- Be a Vision Vancouver member
- Vote Sept. 20, 10 am–7 pm, at Sir Charles
Tupper Secondary School, 419 E. 24th Ave.
If you can’t make it, Vision Vancouver has an
alternative voting date Sept. 15.
(votevision.ca for more info)
Then, assuming that Andrea makes the slate,
all Vancouver voters can participate in the
municipal election Nov. 15.
For more on Andrea visit andreareimer.ca.
by Kathy Sinclair
 It’s 8:05 am. Year 2020. You whiz out the door of your condo (thank Goddess the real estate bubble burst in 2011!) to catch the SkyTrain. After a pit stop for an americano, you board the train, and make it downtown by 8:35.
You exit the SkyTrain station and approach the row of shiny, identical bikes just outside, sidling up to the one on the end. A hunky executive type donning Armani sunglasses just about beats you to the punch; you exchange awkward smiles. You slip a card into a slot, deposit your briefcase and laptop in the bike’s generous basket, and hop on the saddle of one of Vancouver’s 3,000 shared bikes.
The upright design makes biking in a business suit easy. Heck, you’re even wearing heels. You jockey for space among the other cyclists on the bike route, riding blithely past the a.m. gridlock. As you take a left up a hill and onto the seawall with the help of the bike’s electric assist, the noise of the city evaporates. With such a sweet commute, even the occasional raindrop is immaterial.
Ten minutes later, you park the bike at a station near your office; because your ride took less than half an hour, you weren’t even charged. With the money you’re saving on a car and gas, you decide to treat yourself to a fancy dinner and a glass of wine on a patio somewhere after work.
Welcome to the future of commuting. At least, this is the vision of a dedicated group of sustainable transportation gurus. And if the success of cities like Paris, Lyons, and Barcelona are any example, these folks might just be onto something.
Back in the present, I wander the sidewalk in front of Chai Gallery on West Broadway looking for a place to park my bike. I lock up to a parking meter with a fleeting worry about theft, and go in to meet with one such guru, Richard Campbell, who—no surprise—has also cycled here.
We find a table and then attack the buffet. Richard fills his plate with dessert—albeit healthy dessert—first. It somehow seems appropriate for a man who would rather jump on a road bike than into a Porsche.
To say that Richard has made sustainable transportation his life’s work would be like saying Steve Jobs dabbles in computers. Richard is one of Vancouver’s pioneer cycling advocates; if you’ve cycled across the Lions Gate Bridge in the last few years without fearing for your life, you can thank him (though he’s reluctant to take any credit).
“You used to have to cycle on the sidewalk,” Richard recalls. “It was in pretty poor shape. You could actually see the water through the cracks. Traffic lanes were narrow as well, so cyclists would get hit by mirrors on trucks or buses.”
 So, on a rainy day in 1999, Richard and 350 other cyclists sought to “Tame the Lions Gate,” defiantly riding in the car lanes of the bridge to advocate for better bike facilities. Funding was allocated to new bike paths soon after; the career of a cycling advocate had officially begun.
Though he’s made a name for himself raging against the machine, in conversation, the most extraordinary gentleman cyclist in all Vancouver is positive and upbeat. Of course, I want the dirt on my seemingly squeaky-clean, charmingly ebullient interview subject—whose initials, appropriately enough, are “CAR” backwards. And indeed, one of the city’s best known bike champions has a couple of shocking secrets: he once dreamed of owning a shiny red convertible—and he didn’t learn how to ride a bike until he was 21.
“My father was concerned that we’d get injured,” he explains, smiling. “So, as an adult, I got myself a 10-speed and taught myself to ride out in the suburbs in Richmond.”
He hasn’t looked back. A software designer by trade, Richard joined a grassroots organization called The Bicycle People in 1990, which later spawned Better Environmentally Sound Transportation (BEST); he then co-founded the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition, and spent several years as a sustainable transportation advocate for non-profits.
Environmental concern was his initial motivation. But what really drives—or shall we say, ahem, pedals—this man? “I enjoy getting around by bike,” he says. “People don’t seem very happy behind the wheel, and biking is really a much more civilized way to get around the city. It’s also cost-effective, and it’s an excellent way to get in shape.”
Now, along with B.C. Cycling Coalition president Jack Becker, and Paul Dragan, owner of Reckless Bike Shop, Richard is working on developing what he calls “the next generation of bike sharing.” “Bike sharing can help transform the entire city,” Richard explains. “We could get rid of a lot of asphalt and create some wonderful public outdoor squares. We live in a wonderful city; it would be marvellous to be able to go to a number of places and enjoy a coffee or a beer or a meal outside, and be surrounded by the happy hum of conversation rather than the constant drone of automobiles.”
The concept of bike sharing is nothing new; the first program was launched in Amsterdam in 1968 (albeit with abysmal results: many of the bikes were kept by users or tossed into canals). But nothing has prepared the world for third-generation systems such as Paris’s Vélib’ bike share and similar programs in Lyons and Barcelona.
Vélib’ debuted last year; in just 12 months, the number of cyclists in the city has doubled, and car traffic has dropped by five per cent. Mayor Bertrand Delanoë, who initiated the system to cut down on smog and traffic in la belle Paris, now wants to take it to the ’burbs.
On our side of the pond, Washington, D.C., just launched the first high-tech bike sharing program in the U.S. (SmartBike). Denver and Minneapolis are following suit, and programs in Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and Arlington, Va. are set to kick off within the next year. In Vancouver, TransLink is investigating what it would take to install a system here. (A board decision is expected to be made as this article hits the streets.) Mayoral candidates Peter Ladner and Gregor Robertson are both gung ho.
If TransLink gives the go-ahead, Richard’s Third Wave Cycling will be putting in a bid—though Richard speculates that nothing would be implemented until after 2010, with so much city money being earmarked for Olympic projects.
Our international man of cyclery recently returned from an R&D trip to Europe (nice work if you can get it), full of praise for the Continent’s cutting-edge transportation systems. “The automobile no longer dominates the public space,” he enthuses, adding that one of the best things about Europe are the car-free public squares—where restaurants and businesses thrive. “People still drive, but they’ve mastered the automobile; the automobile has not mastered them.”
To Richard, the perks of bike sharing far outweigh the benefits of owning a car—even of owning your own bike. “When you take [a shared bike] somewhere, you leave it there. You don’t have to go back to it. You also don’t have to worry about maintenance or theft. You don’t have to buy fuel or insurance, and the cost of entry is really low.”
Eric Britton, a Paris-based American who’s leading a worldwide bike share revolution, is even more emphatic. “This is not going to be ‘just one more nice bike project,’” Britton states in a report titled The World City Bike Implementation Strategies: 2008. “It is, in fact, a significant public transport project; a roads and infrastructure project of some dimensions; a public health project in a time of need; a city centre economic development project; a climate project that can really make a difference; and an exercise in deep democracy and active citizenry.”
Lofty goals, perhaps, but ones befitting such daring agents of eco-change. As Richard makes his way to the buffet for another helping of dessert, he sums it up succinctly: “The trend is using better forms of transportation to create a more beautiful world.”
Kathy Sinclair is a writer and editor who looks forward to the day when Vancouver has more than one separated bike lane. She cycles in heels regularly.
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