Vision Vancouver Mayoral candidate, Ian Campbell, is asking for your vote in 2018
On June 7th, Vision Vancouver — the ruling party at Vancouver City Hall for the past 10 years — announced that Squamish Nation hereditary Chief Ian Campbell, had been selected as the party’s 2018 Mayoral nominee.
The following morning, Mr. Campbell visited the downtown Vancouver studios of CBC Radio One, where he was interviewed by respected broadcast journalist Stephen Quinn, the host of Vancouver’s top-rated morning news and information radio show, The Early Edition. The entirety of the often contentious interview is available in the video directly below.
CBC Radio One Early Edition interview with Vision Vancouver Mayoral candidate, Ian Campbell
At the 7 minute,15 second mark of the interview, Mr. Quinn queries Ian Campbell on his thoughts on the implementation of a so-called Mansion Tax, a plank in the platform of Coalition of Progressive Electors’ City Council candidate, Jean Swanson, while also querying Mr. Campbell on the efficacy of the provincial New Democratic party government’s new School Surtax.
As you’ll hear upon listening to the interview, despite Stephen Quinn asking the question of Mr. Campbell several times as to whether he supported both the Mansion Tax and the School Surtax, Vision Vancouver Mayoral candidate Ian Campbell obfuscated on the question, refusing to give Mr. Quinn anything close to what might be considered an adequate reply to a 2018 Vancouver civic election issue of some contention, and an issue that all of Vancouver’s progressive, left-of-centre parties — OneCity Vancouver, the Green Party of Vancouver, and the Coalition of Progressive Electors, save perhaps Mr. Campbell’s own party, Vision Vancouver — will run on.
Perhaps, the individual who was most exorcised by Ian Campbell’s refusal to answer Stephen Quinn’s direct question on the Mansion Tax and the School Surtax was CBC reporter Justin McElroy …
At this point, we’ll say that Vision Vancouver Mayoral aspirant Ian Campbell will have to do a much better job of answering questions put to him by reporters during the course of the next four months — VanRamblings notes, in passing, that it is four months to the day today when Vancouver voters will go to the polls to elect our city’s next Mayor and City Council.
During this next four month period, Ian Campbell will have to make it abundantly clear as to which side he is on, whether he supports the initiatives being placed before voters by his coalition One City / Green / COPE partners, and whether he’s ready to build the city that we all need.
The City We Need? A Vancouver that is defined by social justice, most certainly, but a city as well that is committed to building thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of homes — as independent Mayoral candidate, UBC professor of urban affairs, Patrick Condon is advocating for: housing co-ops, land trusts, owned homes on city land leases, and all forms of non-market housing, towards the creation of an affordable housing city for all, where 50% of homes in Vancouver will be designated as social housing, as Mr. Condon has explicated, and is often referred to as the Vienna Model.
Vancouver is situated on unceded / stolen Coast Salish territory
Each time we write about Ian Campbell on VanRamblings, the same issue is raised by our readers — and some friends and associates — to wit: “Ian Campbell lives in North Vancouver. He’s not even a Vancouver resident.”
The answer to the erroneous charge: take a look at the graphic above, Vancouver is situated on the ancestral lands of the Coast Salish peoples, and in the case of Vancouver, in Squamish Nations territory. Let’s be clear: we in Vancouver are settlers. More than 200 years ago, we stole the lands on which we live from our indigenous peoples, no treaty was ever signed with the Squamish Nation, nor any other First Nations peoples in British Columbia, the Squamish Nation did not relinquish their sovereignty over their land — which, as I point out above, Vancouver is situated on.
To say that Ian Campbell is not a “resident” of Vancouver must be seen as a failure to acknowledge Squamish Nation sovereignty over the lands we call home, and that we are interlopers living on stolen land, resident in Vancouver only by the good graces of the Squamish Nation peoples.
Let us hope, once and for all, that the issue of Ian Campbell’s “residency” is finally put to rest, that we acknowledge Squamish Nation hereditary Chief Ian Campbell is offering his Vision Vancouver candidacy as Mayor of our city on lands that are his ancestral lands, and that he has every right to bring his name forward, and ask for the support of the Vancouver electorate in the crucial 2018 civic election on election day, Saturday, October 20th. Final note: Should Ian Campbell garner the support of the Vancouver & District Labour Council as the VDLC’s choice for the next Mayor of our city, VanRamblings will enthusiastically support Mr. Campbell’s candidacy, and will do all in our power to see that he becomes our next Mayor. In the interim — all of the first part of today’s column aside, which is not meant as an attack on Ian Campbell’s good name, nor on his unrivaled contribution to the livability of our city, but rather is issued as a plea for clarity from Mr. Campbell as to the tenets of his campaign for the office of Mayor …
VanRamblings continues to believe that Ian Campbell would make a fine Mayor for our city, that not only is Ian Campbell a man of much erudition and accomplishment, but that he is as well possessed of a humane and caring manner, and way of bringing himself to the world, and that he is a humble man of character, integrity, much wit & good humour, with a ready, warm, genuine, engaging and reassuring smile — and dare we say grace — and a man worthy and deserving of your consideration in the coming days and weeks ahead in this civic election season as, perhaps, Vancouver’s next Mayor, and the man to lead our beloved city by the sea into the future.
OneCity Vancouver’s 2018 candidates for City Council, Brandon Yan and Christine Boyle
United Church Minister, longtime community activist and lifelong Vancouver resident, Christine Boyle — for those of you who have been following VanRamblings’ coverage of the 2018 Vancouver civic election, you’ll know the accomplished Ms. Boyle is our favourite 2018 candidate for office — and Brandon Yan, a community activist with a Master’s degree in Urban Studies from Simon Fraser University, where he researched civic education and public engagement practices — were selected by OneCity Vancouver’s membership as the party’s 2018 candidates for Vancouver City Council.
OneCity Vancouver’s Christine Boyle addressing members at nomination meeting
Brandon ‘hope of our future‘ Yan thanking new members of OneCity Vancouver
OneCity Vancouver 2018 School Board Candidates
OneCity Vancouver’s Jennifer Reddy, Erica Jaaf & current Vancouver School Board trustee Carrie Bercic were selected as the party’s 2018 candidates for Vancouver School Board
OneCity Vancouver also selected its 2018 Vancouver School Board candidates at Saturday’s nomination meeting: Jennifer Reddy, 2010 – 2017 Vancouver School Board Program Director for Engaged Immigrant Youth & Settlement Workers in Schools; Data Manager for Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) — Canada’s federal funding agency for health research — HIV Trials Network, and longtime public education activist, Erica Jaaf; and veteran public education activist, current OneCity Vancouver School Board trustee, and the conscience of the Board, Carrie Bercic.
Under a progressive coalition arrangement struck with the Vancouver & District Labour Council, OneCity Vancouver was allowed to run two City Council and three Vancouver School Board candidates. In the 2018 civic election, OneCity has chosen not to run Vancouver Park Board candidates.
Brandon Yan committed to electing a progressive civic administration at City Hall this year.
All was not sweetness and light at the OneCity Vancouver, though — although you’ll never meet a more engaged and good-humoured, passionate and compassionate group of civic politicos than is evident hourly with the good, caring and activist folks involved in OneCity. No, the hardest working and most organized, with the best on-the-ground team signing up members and running a pretty darn skookum nomination campaign, was Ben Bollinger, who could be seen standing outside the Polish Community Centre building gently kvetching that a OneCity nomination candidate for Council, other than he, looked likely to be selected by the some 266 OneCity members ready to cast their ballot on Saturday afternoon.
Blame Charlie Smith, the Georgia Straight’s longtime editor, who wrote a column last week headlined Racist at-large voting system creates uphill challenge for Vancouver candidates of colour, in which he wrote …
“Vancouver’s at-large system would lead to the election of hardly any new candidates of colour to Vancouver council. It might result in an even whiter council than the current group, which includes Kerry Jang and Raymond Louie.”
One supposes that VanRamblings didn’t actually aid Mr. Bollinger’s venture, either, when we pointed out in a June 5th column that …
According to the 2016 census demographic, Vancouver’s population by racial and ethnic breakdown …
Chinese: 27.7%
South Asian: 6%
Filipino: 6%
Southeast Asian: 3%
Japanese: 1.7%
Korean: 1.5%
West Asian: 1.2%
Take a look at the figures: 47.1% of Vancouver’s population is Asian.
The Asian vote is monolithic.
Buzz in the Polish Centre Hall was that members should give serious consideration to casting a ballot for either candidate of colour, Brandon Yan or RJ Aquino, which venture ended up savaging Mr. Bolliger’s unannounced vote total. Still, almost unique to OneCity Vancouver, members and candidates in the party work together as a team, for the greater good not just of the party, but for the citizens of Vancouver.
You can take it to the bank that there’ll be no harder-working OneCity Vancouver campaigner for OneCity candidates than Ben Bolliger. Full disclosure: VanRamblings is a member of OneCity Vancouver, although we keep at top of mind, Groucho Marx’s old aphorism, “I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.”
For now, though, VanRamblings has something of a love affair going on with OneCity Vancouver (although, we’re quite sure we’re driving them crazy — condolences may be sent to OneCity co-chairs Alison Atkinson and Anna Chudnovsky, as well as Board member Cara Ng, and OneCity Vancouver City Council candidate, must, must, must-elect Christine Boyle).
2018’s Vancouver civic election is — for the first time ever, we believe — a heart election, an election in which we believe that the most compassionate and heart-filled candidates in the current civic election will be elected to Vancouver City Council, Vancouver School Board & Vancouver Park Board.
Of course, we’re talking: informed heart, fiscally prudent heart, affordable housing championing heart, public education activist heart, parks, recreation and environmentally conscious heart, good-humoured and good-natured heart, change the city for all of us, and not just the elites, representing heart — a beating, vibrant heart that will sweep OneCity Vancouver’s Christine Boyle & Brandon Yan, Coalition of Progressive Electors’ Jean Swanson, Anne Roberts & Derrick O’Keefe, and Green Party of Vancouver’s’ Adriane Carr & Pete Fry to a bountiful victory as the 2018 – 2022 Vancouver City Councillors of conscience, to build The City We Need.
In 1972, upon returning from our two month sojourn to Mexico, Cathy and I became vegetarians. While traveling through Mexico, we were uncertain about the provenance of much of the food we ate, but were certain that far too much of what we consumed as “meat” was not meat from a cow.
Once back in Vancouver, Cathy and I were made aware of a “buying group” that had been formed by a friend of a friend, a sweet-natured, calm and centered, energetic and idea-filled fellow by the name of Murray Head. Murray had put together a group of 10 couples who would order food each week collectively, mostly produce, top quality from the best suppliers, as well as cheeses and a vast array of food staples of the very highest quality.
Cathy and I joined up with Murray and his wife, and eight other couples in May 1972 into this new, largely vegetarian collective buying group.
As word spread throughout the community about our newly-formed “buying group”, friends, neighbours, dope-smoking Cosmic League baseball players, and activists wanted in, and joined with us to create a much larger buying group, which by mid-July had become the Tillicum Food Co-operative.
With the support of Dave Barrett’s groundbreaking and leftist provincial government — a grassroots-based government if there ever was one, in Canada or elsewhere — $300,000 was granted by the government to the nascent group of activists who were organizing for change around food.
Norm Levi, British Columbia’s first Minister of Human Resources, was assigned the task of liasing with the members of the now burgeoning Tillicum Food Co-operative. A warehouse on Vancouver’s eastside was secured, two blocks north of the Waldorf Hotel, just off Hastings Street.
As the new Tillicum Food Co-op was realized, the food-buying club was re-organized into neighbourhood collectives, organized, run and operated by family groups with friends and neighbours in each of Vancouver’s 23 neighbourhoods, each collective run autonomously, but coming into the Tillicum Co-op warehouse each week to pick up their weekly food order.
Initially, collectives collated and submitted their orders for bulk pre-ordering with the other collectives. Responsibility for ordering and sorting the food for the whole club rotated among the various collectives.
As it happened, and quite fortuitously, the founders’ experiences with activism and community organization brought forward a skill-set that proved useful to starting a co-operative. Together, our collective experience brought communication, group decision-making, and leadership qualities.
Through trial and error, good-naturedly we learned how to start, manage and operate as a truly democratic, grassroots, member-run co-operative.
By September 1972, though, with dozens of collectives now spread across Vancouver, and beyond, moving into all of the cities across Metro Vancouver and into the Fraser Valley, a decision was taken to hire a “co-ordinator,” someone who would oversee the growth of the burgeoning grassroots co-operative movement in Vancouver. The “Co-ordinator” would be the de facto Chief Executive Officer, responsible for liaising with suppliers, organizing the collectives, overseeing the distribution of food, publishing a magazine, and working with all levels of government to grow the movement into a much larger social-environmental justice movement.
The individual who was chosen as the Tillicum Food Co-operative’s first co-ordinator was a 22-year-old Simon Fraser University student, a fellow by the name of Raymond Tomlin. From the time of his hire and over the course of the next year, Tillicum grew into a province and nationwide co-operative movement, with collectives in every town, village, community and city across the province, into the prairies, as well as into Washington state.
The thousand dollar a week buying club that had begun in May 1972, by September 1973 had become a thriving, two million dollar a month business, working with government to create British Columbia’s first co-operative child care centres, securing funding for our province’s first recycling depot, creating the Wild West Organic Co-operative (western Canada’s first organic food distributor), going on to purchase farms, setting up furniture building, tool and automotive co-operatives, and working with the provincial, and more, the federal government, to create a made-in-Canada solution for the provision of member-run affordable housing.
And thus by 1977, Canada saw the approval of our nation’s first housing co-operative, the Amor de Cosmos co-op in Vancouver’s Champlain Heights neighbourhood, followed by the creation of the Kitsun Co-op on West Broadway in Vancouver, Canada’s first solar-powered housing co-operative. Halcyon days those, when all you had to do was come up with an idea, and with the support of Premier Dave Barrett’s and Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s governments — federally, Mr. Trudeau initiating virtually all of the policies of David Lewis’ federal New Democratic Party — there were jobs aplenty, significant funding for federal job creation programmes for activists, federally administered job programmes like the Local Initiatives Programme (LIP) that gave priority to “funding non-profit organizations that would provide useful services or facilities to the community,” and the longer term Local Employment Assistance Programme (LEAP) that not only created hundreds of thousands of jobs for activists across Canada, but in Vancouver funded almost all of the jobs at the Tillicum Food Co-operative.
1972: A fuzzy picture of a long-haired Raymond Tomlin, and exquisite Cathy McLean
Note should be made that the always brilliant and phenomenally talented Cathy McLean (my spouse and love of my life) wrote all of the grant applications — of which there were hundreds — every single one of the grant applications she submitted approved by the federal government.
1973: Grandview United Church, Venables & Victoria, became Vancouver Free University
The LIP and LEAP programmes were also responsible for helping to acquire a closed and forlorn church at Venables and Victoria Drive, which first became an open university, and soon after became known as the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, and then simply, in recent years as, “The Cultch.”
Paul Phillips, one of the founders of Vancouver’s Fed-Up Food Co-operative Wholesaler
A group of activists lead by Dana Weber, Ros Breckner and Paul Phillips left the now thriving Tillicum Food Co-operative to form the Fed-Up Food Co-op Wholesaler, importing food stuffs from across the globe, and acting as a supplier to the Tillicum Co-op. Fed Up was the first North American wholesaler to sign a contract that would bring sultana raisins from Australia onto this continent. Where Tillicum remained responsible for distributing food throughout the Metro Vancouver region, Fed Up took on the job of distributing food across the province, western Canada and down into the United States, and growing the food co-operative movement globally.
Simon Fraser University’s Louis Riel House, student family 1 + 2 bedroom residence
Meanwhile, there was nascent women’s and LGBTQ movements that were just getting underway. Throughout the 1970s, I recall that each Wednesday evening that Cathy would leave our apartment to meet with almost every woman who lived in Louis Riel House — the 148 one-bedroom and 61 two-bedroom student apartment residence located at Simon Fraser University’s Burnaby Mountain campus — for what was termed consciousness-raising.
The “consciousness-raising” of the day was not limited to white, cis-gendered women, however. No, as I wrote above, there was along with the women’s movement, a burgeoning & activist LGBTQ movement in our city.
And thus, finally on VanRamblings, the raison d’être as to why I am writing today’s Story of a Life, because today’s story is one that has remained deep within me all of my adult life, and helped to define my involvement over the past near 50 years in both the feminist & LGBTQ social justice movements.
In the autumn of 1972 I made the acquaintance of a group of activist women who had formed their own collective in the Tillicum Food Co-op.
Young, bright, passionate, articulate, as I am wont to do, I fell in love with each of these women who supported me in my various endeavours, tough, strong, take no guff women who were surprisingly gentle and supportive of me, giving instruction to me as it was necessary (which was probably more often than I would admit even now). The group of us became fast friends, as we worked together to build a fairer, more just and inclusive society.
Now, each of these women, average age about 22, were strikingly attractive in the most usual sense, and drew a great deal of unwanted attention from men. To say that the early 70s were the days of rampant sexism is to understate the matter. These were antediluvian times in the history of the women’s movement, and in our collective history. The women in the Women’s Collective were able to handle whatever situation came their way, though, and nothing too untoward ever occurred, until …
The Women’s Collective was an overtly political collective. Not only were they progenitors of the women’s movement in Vancouver, they also wished to be progenitors of the LGBTQ movement, although all the women were white, educated and decidedly heterosexual.
The Women’s Collective, though, still took on the goal of championing LGBTQ issues, and lesbianism in particular, by adopting lesbianism as a personal and political endeavour. To thwart any interest by men, a decision was taken by each woman, who when I first met them weighed in at about 110 pounds sopping wet, to gain 60 pounds apiece — and they did.
By February 1973, each woman weighed in at about 185 pounds.
In addition to gaining weight, and becoming an overt, in-your-face lesbian collective, the Women’s Collective undertook a military-style training regimen, a three-month long boot camp that even though the women were now of hefty frame, they were also as strong, in actuality much stronger, than any man involved with either Tillicum or Fed Up Food Co-operative.
From autumn 1972 to winter 1973 I saw the transformation, and it was something to behold, a form of experiential personal theatre made live that was amazing to watch unfold. The women continued to be kind, tending to a quiet and less boisterous nature — although fun to be around, and at the monthly drunk-a-thon dances we had in the Tillicum warehouse, great dancers each and every one of them, lithe despite their new bulkiness.
Still, as I say, these were sexist and regressive times in the early 1970s.
Women were undermined as a matter of daily intercourse in the life of our society, tended to have what they said readily dismissed, and were regarded by most men of the time as little more than sexual playthings.
Not so for the politically active lesbian women in the Women’s Collective.
In Vancouver this past year, a new movement of change has emerged, the sort of revolutionary change many of us felt and lived in the late 1960s and early 1970s, this new Vancouver-based movement identifying themselves as TeamJean, a cadre of activists who have organized around Order of Canada recipient and veteran community and anti-poverty activist, Jean Swanson. What I find so becoming and hopeful about the, mostly, young people involved with TeamJean is not just their revolutionary fervor and their work towards creating substantive change in our society, and change now, but in how much fun they’re having in organizing for change, how each of them see the necessity of theatre as a necessary communications tool to get their ideas across in a humanist and non-threatening manner.
There is an excitement within TeamJean that is wholly inspiring, an excitement I haven’t seen, felt and experienced in more than 40 years.
In the 2018 Vancouver municipal election, I have been writing that Derrick O’Keefe, working with organizers within TeamJean like Sara Sg, Chanel Ly, Fiona York, Maddie Andrews, Duncan Martin, Selina Crammond, Riaz Behra, Luis Porte Petit, Ngaire Leach (the graphic designer behind the Jean Swanson logo, and all of TeamJean’s visual design), Shawn Vulliez, Aiden Sisler, Darlene Alice Bertholet, Beverly Ho, Devin Gillan, Alex Kennedy, Ishman Bhuiyan, Jorj Tempul and Qara Maristella believe not just in activism and activism with a conscience, but in the transformative power of theatre, art, song, dance and plain good fun towards changing and helping minds grow, to bringing people along with them into a new era of peace, social justice and inclusion, that aims to serve the many over the few.
In February 1973, a meeting of the collectives involved in the Tillicum Food Co-operative movement was called, the meeting taking place in a workshop space on 2nd Avenue just west of Main. These meetings were held monthly, chaired by me, where we shared ideas on how to grow the co-op movement, not just the food co-op movement, but movements in general.
Of course, a cadre of my favourite women in the Women’s Collective were present, all bulky and fine and in good spirits, on their home turf in their workshop space, and ready with a plethora of ideas on a panoply of activist fronts. The Women’s Collective had proven central to the success of the Tillicum Food Co-op, and the soon-to-be Fed Up Co-operative — without their support, counsel and energy, I’m not entirely sure that the Tillicum Food Co-op would have grown as it did in the first year, and beyond.
So, there we were on this chilly Tuesday evening in early February 1973, in a dimly lit workshop space, approximately 75 chairs set out, me at the front, collective members from across the Lower Mainland settled into their chairs, the women in the Women’s Collective “patrolling” the meeting, none of them seated, almost a security force, in case such was needed.
There was talk of forming a camping and adventure equipment co-operative, which eventually became the Mountain Equipment Co-op. There was talk about working with the provincial government on creating child care in our province, which occurred in 1974, when Norm Levi assigned $100 million to the creation of child care centres throughout the province. As usual, the meeting was positive and directed, orderly and respectful. Except …
There was one man, sitting off to my left, in the second row who, when one of the women in the Women’s Collective offered up an idea that met with support, but debate from some of those present, that when it came time for this man to speak, he looked directly at the woman who had made the suggestion, and started off his address to her, saying, “Hey, douchebag …”
In a millisecond, a woman in the Women’s Collective who’d been standing behind him, pulled his chair back on its back legs, his feet now dangling, while another woman in the collective approached him, pulling down his pants and his underwear, and when this was accomplished, yet another woman in the collective grabbed his flaccid penis, pulling it taut while also pulling up his scrotum, and then placing the tip of a knife under his scrotum in the perineal region midway between his anus and his genitals, the woman who had pulled down his pants and underwear now looking directly at this now formerly recalcitrant man, and asked, “Did you want to repeat yourself? Did you want to address my friend using the pejorative you employed just a moment ago? You called my friend what? I’m waiting …”
All of the above had occurred in much under 60 seconds.
The formerly surly man of intransigent nature was mute, not frightened exactly but more contemplative than anything else. He shook his head, and finally uttered, “No, I have nothing to say other than, I’m sorry. It’ll never happen again. I promise.” And, in all the time to come it never did.
As quickly as the errant man had been approached, the women withdrew, his chair let down, aid given to pull up his pants, those 75 Tillicum members in attendance acknowledging what had occurred between the Women’s Collective and the disagreeable man, for what it was: theatre.
Of course, change doesn’t happen in a day, it is long and arduous and hard fought for — but occurs most often with action and a degree of humour.
Some year later, I recall working in the offices at the Fed Up Food Co-op on Scotia Street, and walking down into the warehouse, where 80 pound sacks of oatmeal were being carried from one end of the warehouse to the other. On one memorable occasion, I saw a young, petite woman quite easily carrying an 80-pound oatmeal sack on her back, as a man came up to her and, gallantly I’m sure he thought, looking at the woman, saying to her, “I can do that for you. I’ll take the sack, if you’ll let me.” And she did.
The man took the cumbersome 80-pound oatmeal sack, and struggled to carry it across the warehouse. Meanwhile, the woman who had given up the oatmeal sack had gone back to pick up a 100-pound sack of wholegrain flour, and as the man continued his struggle with the heavy oatmeal sack, the woman sailed on past the man with a light as a feather 100-pound flour sack on her back, glancing back at the struggling man saying, “Thank you,” and then proceeding to the other end of the warehouse with her burden that was not a burden at all, but a metaphor for change and growth, and the doctrine of a necessary and revolutionary change of consciousness.
Illicit: Stories from Vancouver’s harm reduction movement is a community-engaged arts-based project developed and led by residents of our region brought together by the harm reduction movement, and the ongoing opioid crisis impacting on our region’s most vulnerable citizens.
Please listen to the audio above of the interview conducted last evening by VanRamblings with Illicit Artistic Director Kelty McKerracher, for full background on the development of the Illicit community-developed performance piece, what it’s all about, who developed and is involved in the project, the rationale behind Illicit, upcoming performances, and more.
Created in response to the 2016 closing by Vancouver Coastal Health of the Downtown Eastside harm reduction facility DURC (Drug Users Resource Centre), Illicit explores the lived realities of the opioid overdose crisis, the effects of Canada’s drug policy, the stigma faced by those who use illicit drugs, and the courage of community to act in the face of continuing loss.
On July 3rd and 4th, the creators of Illicit invite you to witness the next step in the evolution of their work-in-progress — by entering an immersive world of shadow, music and story that celebrates the heart of a movement. The July 3rd and 4th performances of Illicit will take place at the Orpheum Annex, at 823 Seymour Street, in the artistic heart of Vancouver.
At 1pm on July 3rd, there’ll be a ‘pay what you can’ matinée performance of Illicit, for community members and anyone who wishes to attend, with ticketed performances in the evening, at 7pm, on both July 3rd and 4th.
Towards the end of the month, or very early in July, VanRamblings will re-publish today’s post. Tickets for the upcoming performances of Illicit will be available here, at some point in the next 24 hours, for the July 3rd and 4th performances of Illicit with information, as well, on how you might contribute to the Illicit project, as well as where and when performances of Illicit will take place in Victoria and Kamloops.
“In both places,” says Ms. McKerracher, “we’re working with wonderful teams of people, to set up not only a theatrical venue but an environment where we can have a productive dialogue. Illicit isn’t just about a performance, it’s about opening a space for a conversation that needs to be happening across the board in our society.
Harm reduction and the opioid crisis is not just a Downtown Eastside issue, this is affecting people across the province and across the country. We’re hoping that by taking it outside of Vancouver we’re going to reach audiences who don’t have access to this kind of conversation, and this kind of cultural shift.”
Illicit, a site-specific installation and performance uses theatre, monologues, shadow puppetry and marionettes to tell personal stories that nurture dignity and hope. The artistic team behind the project: current Artistic Director and producer Kelty McKerracher, director Renae Morriseau, musical director and Juno award-winning artist, Devon Martin, and shadow marionette and puppeteer David Mendes, who collaborate with an active and intimately involved group of co-researcher performers — including Alanna Abrosimoff, Tyler Bigchild, Steve Cardinal, Nicolas Leech-Crier, Shawn Giroux, Jim McLeod, and Tina Shaw — to create Illicit.
Tina Shaw, who works in overdose response in the Downtown Eastside, is involved in the upcoming production about Vancouver’s opioid crisis.
Presented in partnership with PHS Community Services Society, Hives for Humanity, and SFU ‘s Office of Community Engagement. And with support from Canada Council for the Arts, Community Action Initiative, and Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research. As Ms. McKerracher related to VanRamblings last evening …
“The show will be educational and anecdotal, about what’s going on in our community and how people feel, the performance of Illicit hopefully ending with a discussion. It’s about truth and understanding and about acknowledging the uncertainty, the loss, and the tragic unfairness of the current opioid crisis.”
For more information on the Illicit project, please visit the Illicit blog.
Vision Vancouver Mayoral candidate, Ian Campbell, is asking for your vote in 2018
