by George Le Masurier | Apr 9, 2017
Those of us who study elections seriously have stumbled upon an alarming discovery about British Columbia politics: spending too much time in Victoria reduces your intelligence to the rough equivalent of a kumquat.
You’ve probably noticed this, too.
A candidate carrying a clipboard rings your doorbell and engages you in thoughtful conversation about the issues that affect you the most. Based on their doorstep brilliance, you elect them and off they go to Victoria where, after about two weeks, their ability to maintain rational thought basically resembles an obscure and bad-tasting fruit.
The problem is that all of our province’s major issues, like fully funding basic education, preventing further environmental disasters and when will we have enough medical marijuana stores, are kept in a big storage locker hidden somewhere in the Capital Region.
That means our politicians have to go there to work on them. But due to the rare Geographic Onset Of Brain Erasure and Restore Syndrome (GOOBERS), the problems just get worse.
That’s why those of us who take elections seriously have concluded after much deep thinking that we need to elect someone who refuses to go to Victoria, and why, at the last minute, I have decided to offer myself as a write-in candidate.
I don’t seek any applause, heartfelt personal thank-you notes or unsolicited friendly letters-to-the-editor. Although large envelopes filled with cash would be nice.
I’m just in it for the issues. And speaking of that, here’s where I stand as of 11:45 a.m. this morning, April 10, 2017:
Taxes and Budget deficits – Against ‘em.
The environment – For it.
Education —Hire more teachers for public schools because it will take a really smart new generation to fix all the messes we made.
Plush jobs for all my friends – No problemo.
War – Normally opposed, but I could justify a small offensive on the price of beer.
People have asked me whether I intend to run as a Green, NDP or Liberal because, you know, after the old conservative SoCreds glossed themselves as “Liberals,” nobody’s really quite sure what party designation means any more.
So I’ve worked up some of my own campaign slogans:
Politicians are like diapers, they both should be changed often, and usually for the same reason.
I’ll be tough on crime, so don’t steal. That’s the government’s job.
WARNING: I advise you to support me now because there are only so many really good pork-barrel jobs to go around (actually, both parties have proven this isn’t true, but it’s a good pressure tactic).
Remember, if I get only one vote, I’ll know it wasn’t you.
by George Le Masurier | Apr 5, 2017
Vandals spray-painted the historical home of Hamilton Mack Laing, known as Shakesides, this week with what appears to be a lame version of tagging.
Squiggles of red paint were carelessly sprayed on three sides of the building, and a circle with an upside down ’Y’ was painted on plywood covering the building’s front window.
This doesn’t look like the work of any young graffiti artist. Not a serious one, anyway. They would not spray meaningless scribbles at a fast walk around a building and then produce a 50-year-old peace sign.
No, this seems like the work of somebody without spray-painting skills attempting to inflict maximum damage in the shortest amount of time.
Who would do such a thing? I don’t know, maybe someone angry about something? A jerk?
The front stairway into Shakesides
But it is interesting that no other sign, bridge, post or even tree was spray-painted. That creates the impression this was about something else, possibly the political and legal battle over preservation of Laing’s home.
Maybe it was an attempt to show that a building in a secluded location is vulnerable to defacing by graffiti. But that logic doesn’t hold. It doesn’t explain the worldwide tagging of downtown buildings, railway cars, subway walls, etc.
The whole point of graffiti is to be publicly viewed.
Mayor Paul Ives told me the town will remove the scrawls. They pretty much have to after last year ordering parks staff to remove good-looking murals painted on the window boards by turning the plywood panels around.
Unwanted graffiti is a nuisance and the bane of every property owner. Except that, in this case, the murals made the building look better.
But the town hasn’t always been so keen. Someone painted the word FUCK on the front of Shakesides two years ago and the town just ignored it. A citizen eventually painted over the obscenity.
And the town has ignored other graffiti previously sprayed on parts of the Mack Laing Nature Park.
When a person or organization wants to tear down a heritage building, they employ a variety of tricks to gain public support.
The type of graffiti a young graffiti artist might do, from a building in Olympia, WA.
The most commonly used trick is to let the building fall into disrepair. Spend as little as possible to repair rot or leaks, don’t make improvements and board up the windows quickly. Make it look as bad as possible.
The Town of Comox has used this strategy on Shakesides for 35 years.
Maybe the person or persons who committed this recent act of vandalism wanted to help the town along in its plan to demolish the house. Who knows? Sometimes, people just do dumb stuff.
by George Le Masurier | Apr 4, 2017
Fresh out of college in 1982 at the age of 23, Richard Mackie came face-to-face on Newcastle Island with “Torchy” Smith, a B.C. government employee who roamed the province in search of abandoned buildings in provincial parks.
It was his job that when he found one, he burned it down.
Mackie had just taken on his first job: writing a historical report on the Newcastle Island Dance Pavilion. It was the last remaining pavilion of the 10 built by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) in the early part of the 20th Century.
The pavilions were featured attractions of the CPR’s coastal resorts, whose guests arrived on the company’s Princess Ships of the British Columbia Coast Steamship Service.
The Newcastle Island Pavilion after it’s 19834 restoration. It’s a popular and busy site for weddings and other social gatherings.
Mackie’s 1983 report noted the historical, recreational and aesthetic values of the last pavilion, and it sent Torchy back to the mainland to start some other fire. The pavilion was restored in 1984 and today is a sought-after location for weddings and other events.
Flush with his initial success, Mackie began a noted career of teaching and writing about history, with an emphasis on heritage buildings. He’s authored half-a-dozen books.
“I got the idea from my Newcastle experience,” Mackie told an audience at North Island College on Saturday, “that if I wrote a report, people would always care. They don’t.”
That’s particularly true in the Town of Comox, which Mackie accused of perpetrating “wanton cultural vandalism.”
He referred to the Comox Council’s decision last year to demolish famous naturalist Hamilton Mack Laing’s original Comox Bay home, named Baybrook, and its plan to demolish Laing’s second home, Shakesides.. The nation’s top heritage experts have criticized Comox for demolishing Baybrook and are fighting the town to save Shakesides.
“In the Comox, you can write all the reports you want, but they’ll tear them down,” he said.
Mackie titled his lecture, the last in an NIC Elder College series featuring authors, “Dead Dog or Land of Plenty? Creating and Effacing History in the Comox Valley.”
He discussed many of the region’s “dead dogs,” which have either been torn down or burned down before they could be restored. It’s a long list that includes the Lorne Hotel, the Elk Hotel, the Courtenay Hotel, the Riverside Hotel and the EW Bickle Palace Theatre.
He lamented the loss of these historical buildings because they serve as anchors for a community’s collective memories, like rooms and artifacts in a person’s childhood home.
He noted the contrast between Cumberland, which has preserved many of its historical buildings, and Comox, which has no apparent regard or respect for its history.
He did have praise for the preservation of Courtenay’s Native Sons Hall and the Filberg Lodge.
Mackie said saving heritage buildings can benefit a community in many ways, including financially.
Campbell River boosted its public awareness when it preserved the home of Roderick Haig-Brown, a more well-known figure but less important to the scientific world than Mack Laing.
And that city also supported the restoration of artist Sybil Andrews’ home, which has since become a popular tourist and event location similar to the Newcastle Island Pavilion.
Referring to the area’s moniker as the “land of plenty,” Mackie asked “plenty of what?” The Comox Valley is destroying its ghosts, he said, with a frontier mentality that doesn’t value these buildings.
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Richard Mackie is a former Comox Valley resident. He is the author of Mountain Timber: The Comox Logging Company in the Vancouver Island Mountains (Sono Nis Press, 2009), Island Timber: A Social History of the Comox Logging Company, Vancouver Island (Sono Nis Press, 2000), Trading Beyond the Mountains: The British Fur Trade on the Pacific, 1793-1843 (UBC Press, 1997), The Wilderness Profound: Victorian Life on the Gulf of Georgia (Sono Nis Press, 2009) and Hamilton Mack Laing: Hunter-Naturalist (Sono Nis Press, 1985). Mackie lives in Vancouver where he is Reviews Editor of the Ormsby Review.
by George Le Masurier | Mar 29, 2017
With new organizations and high-profile individuals joining the movement to preserve the waterfront home of internationally known naturalist and Town of Comox benefactor Hamilton Mack Laing, there are rumors that some Comox Council members might reconsider the town’s plan to demolish the house, known as Shakesides.
Robert Bateman, Canada’s most famous naturalist and painter, is the latest individual to support saving Shakesides.
In a March 23 message to town officials, Bateman wrote, “I have spent my life since the 1960s battling to hold back the destruction of our human and natural heritage … it is your job to protect this property and honour the wishes of its owner ….”
Laing, who died in 1982 at the age of 99, gave his waterfront property, his home, substantial cash and personal papers from his estate to the Town of Comox “for the improvement and development of my home as a natural history museum.” The town accepted the money and, therefore, the terms of the trust.
But 35 years later, the Town of Comox has done little to satisfy his last wishes and apparently mishandled the Laing trust funds. The current Town Council has voted twice to demolish Shakesides, raising serious ethical and legal questions. The demolition was stopped in 2016 by the B.C. Attorney General.
Top Photo: Laing with spring salmon, April 26, 1929. Above: Shakesides today
Comox Council voted unanimously in February to ask the B.C. Supreme Court to release the town from its obligations under the terms of Laing’s trust, which required it to use 25 percent of his money to develop a natural history museum in Shakesides and to invest the other 75 percent to fund ongoing operations.
But at least three Comox Valley groups plan to seek intervenor status in opposition to the town’s application.
The latest to join the movement is the Comox Valley Naturalists Society, commonly know as Comox Valley Nature. In a letter to the Provincial Ministry of Justice, the group asks for a 12-month to 18-month freeze on demolition so it can work with “Heritage B.C. and the National Trust of Canada to prepare a heritage management plan.”
It also requests an independent forensic audit of the town’s handling of the trust’s money. Documents collected by other intervenors show the town spent trust money on improvements outside the park, and that none of the investment income was spent in accordance with the terms of the trust until the early 2000s. The more than $100,000 in rental income from Shakesides was funneled into the town’s general ledger.
Comox Valley Nature also asks the Attorney General to remove Mack Laing Park property, including the Shakesides house, and the trust funds from the town, and place them “in more trustworthy and capable hands.” The group intends to create a consortium of community and provincial groups to take responsibility for the house and park.
Besides Comox Valley Nature, support for Shakesides has also come from B.C. Nature, Heritage B.C., the Comox Valley Conservation Strategy Partnership, Project Watershed and dozens of well-known individuals, including Bateman, author Robert Mackie and columnist Stephen Hume.
This mounting support has at least one council member questioning whether the town should proceed with its Supreme Court application, which could cost more than $100,000. If council was permitted to proceed with demolition, taxpayers would pay an estimated $250,000 in legal costs, demolition and remediation of the site into a viewing platform.
Surely other council members are also wondering if it might create more goodwill and community cohesion to direct that amount toward living up to the terms of Laing’s trust.
An unfavorable Supreme Court decision could be even costlier for Comox taxpayers.
Comox resident Gord Olsen commissioned an independent analysis of the Laing trust by Kent Moeller, CPA, of Moeller Matthews in Campbell River. It showed the trust fund could be worth $481,548 today. He used figures released by the town and conservatively calculated interest rates and added in the investment of rental income.
Moeller’s analysis suggests that if the town had immediately invested all of Laing’s bequeathed cash plus the rental income, it would have nearly a half-million dollars in the trust fund.
Laing left the town about $60,000 in 1942 (note: the price of a newly built similar-sized home in Courtenay in 1982 sold for about $50,000).
According to Bunker Killam, who rented the house, and Richard Mackie who lived there after Laing died to sort and organize his personal papers and belongings, Shakesides was in good condition at the time the town took possession. A nationally recognized heritage consulting firm recently examined the house and determined it is still structurally sound, and are prepared to write a conservation strategy.
No date has been set for the town’s court application to modify the terms of Laing’s trust. Comox Council should recognize this as a grace period to reconsider their decision and save a public relations disaster with just over a year before the next municipal elections.
by George Le Masurier | Feb 14, 2017
Not many people who moved to the Comox Valley for its small-town feel, access to recreational opportunities or the lively arts scene imagined heroin addicts injecting themselves in public places or one person dying almost every month from an opioid overdose.
But these things are happening here.
The Chambers of Commerce and elected officials don’t want to draw undue attention to this grim reality, but it has become too big to ignore.
More than 150 people died from opioid overdoses on Vancouver Island last year. Although more people died in the larger centres of Victoria and Nanaimo, the North Island (including the Valley) had the highest rate of increase — up 156 percent over last year — in overdoses. Ten people died from overdoses over the past 12 months in the Comox Valley.
And Island Health believes the overdose statistics are actually worse, and that many overdoes go unreported. And heroin kills more people than official death certificates indicate. That’s because heroin metabolizes as morphine, so toxicology reports in overdose cases often list morphine or an opiate as the cause of death.
Opioid deaths have increased sharply because most street heroin today contains fentanyl, which is up to 100 times more powerful than heroin. Just a speck of fentanyl the size of a few grains of salt can kill a 113-kilogram (250-pound) person.
Island Health Medical Health Officer Charmaine Enns told the Courtenay City Council this week that her agency hopes to reduce the Valley’s overdose death rate by opening a safe injection site where trained personnel could administer rescue breathing or Naloxone, a drug that can reverse an opioid overdose.
But these sites are misnamed and give the public a false impression. Island Health staff cannot prevent someone from overdosing, which occurs nano-moments after the drug is injected. They can only prevent the overdosed person from dying.
Enns said the supervised injection site at the offices of Island Health or some other provincial agency will allow staff to interact with users and offer mental health counselling and other services. That’s a good thing, and so is giving people a chance to live another day and get their life back on track.
But there are potential downsides.
To keep people suffering from addiction coming back to the clinics, Island Health staff might have to offer users less addictive drugs, such as methadone, and potentially dispense stronger drugs. If that does occur, the public may have a strong reaction.
The sites also put staff at risk because even a small amount of fentanyl is deadly if it’s absorbed through the skin or inhaled when airborne. Fentanyl’s potency has already harmed first responders from New Jersey to Vancouver.
The public should know what safeguards are in place to prevent this from happening here.
City of Courtenay firefighters have agreed to voluntarily respond immediately to serious medical calls, which includes overdoses. But they will only do so if they are equipped with Naloxone nasal spray, supplied by either the province for free or if the City Council agrees to purchase it.
They will not, in other words, participate in using needles to inject Naloxone, sometimes known by its commercial name, Narcan. To do that increases the chance of contacting fentanyl or needle injuries.
The extent of the heroin addiction problem has been partially hidden because today’s users are often middle-income, white, and no longer habitues of the gritty alleys of urban areas. The use of heroin and other opioids has moved into suburbs and small towns.
Island Health reports that overdose occurrences are widespread across the entire Comox Valley.
All over the province and across North America, people hooked on prescription painkillers find heroin easier to acquire and less expensive. If that wasn’t alarming enough, heroin use has become popular among school-aged teens. U.S. studies show that 3 percent of high school students are using heroin today.
The province was right to declare a public health emergency over the opioid problem. But whether the ministry’s plan just treats symptoms, or provides a lasting solution remains to be seen.
Even though safe injection sites raise troubling questions about enabling addiction rather than treating it, doing nothing is not an option when so many deaths can be prevented.
At the very least, we can learn from this effort, change course based on what is learned, and, at the same time, start thinking a whole lot harder about what it would take to prevent people from becoming addicted in the first place.
