Category Archives: Vancouver

VIFF 2020 | Creating Quite the Stir at Vancouver’s Film Festival

September 30, 2020A & E, Cinema, Media, Pop Culture, Vancouver, VIFF 2020Raymond Tomlin

Stir, Vancouver's new arts and culture online magazine

There’s a new online arts & culture magazine in Vancouver that’s creating quite the stir. Staffed mostly by former (and recent) arts staff at The Georgia Straight — said the weekly’s new owners, MediaCentral (a condition of employment: management must show their horns at all times) “Nah, we’re not cutting arts coverage. We’re just rationalizing it, by dumping a whole lotta staff, and refocusing editorial categories by eliminating any focus whatsoever on venues and the arts”) — the glorious new Stir is the illustrious new home for arts & culture coverage in our city.
Where to find beloved Straight arts & entertainment editor, the kindly but tough Janet Smith, or bon vivant, Adrian Mack, and acclaimed journalist, Gail Johnson? Vancouver’s nascent Stir magazine is the place where you’ll find Janet, Adrian and Gail, as well as a number of other former Straight staffers, and first-rate British Columbia-based arts & culture journalists, who in Stir have created the place to be for arts coverage in our city.
And isn’t that what makes a city, culture? Otherwise, what are we but an amalgam of greenhouse gas spewing towers, and windy roads laden with too many carbon emitting vehicles. Vancouver’s many and varied arts & culture institutions breathe life and meaning into our paradise by the ocean.

In 2020, at the virtual Vancouver International Film Festival, Stir has emerged as the place for coverage of VIFF 2020.
For instance, in her enthusiastic review of Jimmy Carter: Roll and Roll President (which VanRamblings just loved when we screened it at 3 a.m. yesterday morning), Ms. Smith writes …

Jimmy Carter was cooler than you ever knew — even more so when he’s put up against the presidential candidates for the 2020 U.S. election. Turns out the man once derided as the Peanut Farmer was besties with the likes of Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson, both of whom sing his praises here. He also hosted regular concerts, first at the guv’nah’s mansion in Georgia, and later at the White House, after the Allmann Brothers helped propel him to election. In her fun, well-researched, and zippily edited documentary, director Mary Wharton connects Carter’s open-minded approach to music to his political achievements.

The review above is just one of many VIFF 2020 reviews you’ll find on the Stir Vancouver online website, from Janet Smith, Adrian Mack and Gail Johnson, in 2020, your go-to website for Vancouver’s finest VIFF coverage.
Here’s hoping Stir thrives long, long into the future, that Ottawa’s modernized Canadian Periodical Fund provides sustaining monies to aid Stir in its necessary endeavours, and that readers (and advertisers) flock by the thousands to Stir Vancouver, such that Stir becomes a west coast institution, a Canadian version of New York Magazine’s Vulture website.

Stories of a Life | My Days in Radio in the Late 1960s

September 26, 2020Radio, Stories of a Life, Vancouver, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

In the 1960s, radio announcers — or “boss jocks”, if you will — were celebrities, afforded the same degree of adoration by young people rock ‘n roll bands were accustomed to, their deep, resonant male voices (because, alas, radio was exclusively a male domain) you heard through your transistor or car radio speakers transporting you to another time and place.

RadioWest dot ca [www.RadioWest.ca] · J.B. Shayne CKLG Vancouver April 11, 1968

vanramblings · CKLG Radio Jingles, 1960s

The late 1960s was when a motley group of young guys took over the radio airwaves in Vancouver, when radio really meant something: lanky John Tanner arriving from Penticton, Daryl B from Winnipeg, Terry David Mulligan from North Vancouver via Red Deer and Regina, the ‘real’ Roy Hennessey, Rick Honey travelling cross-country after working a radio gig in Halifax, the preternaturally young and talented Fred Latremouille, East End boy wonder Don Richards, ex-Edmonton Eskimos football player Jim Hault, and radio screamer, CKLG’s ‘let me on the radio’, 16-year-old ‘little’ Stevie Wonder.

And, of course, the incredibly talented Johann Bruno (JB) Shayne aka Chuck Steak, Lucy Morals Loving Housewife Mother of Five, Captain Midnight, resident gardener Herb Folley, and Uncle Ned Out In the Shed Milking The Cow Right About Now, among a dozen other radio characters who were fixtures on Vancouver’s morning & afternoon drive programmes.

These were the halcyon days of Vancouver radio, never to be heard again.

And lucky me, I got to be a part of it from 1966 until 1970, rarely on the air, although I did have a regular Sunday morning gig on LG-FM playing classical music (ordered by the CRTC that the station play classical music 6 a.m. til noon, Sundays) — which was going to be the focus of today’s post, but I thought I’d get into too much trouble telling the story I’d intended.

Even so, I’ll leave you with this one ‘fit for print’ story about my days at LG-FM. Ordinarily, when sitting in the cavernous LG-FM studio (separated from the AM side of the operation by the production studio), there was a small lamp that lit up the console, casting shadow on the rest of the room.

One Sunday morning I arrived for work only to discover that one of the jocks on the FM side who’d been “promoted” to the AM side — although the jocks loved LG-FM, station management could have cared less, as FM wasn’t a revenue generator, barely an afterthought for Conservative party honcho, General Manager Don Hamilton — had taken the lamp home with him, leaving the FM studio well lit by blindingly bright fluorescent lights.

There was no way I was going to work 6 hours under those conditions.

So, following a spin of the Moody’s Blues’ Nights of White Satin — which I considered to be classical music, and anyway, what were the chances management was listening that early on a Sunday morning, although a woman did phone in to lodge a complaint to management — I opened the microphone, gave listeners the studio telephone number, telling them that I’d take the first person to deliver a desk lamp on a tour of the station. Two minutes later I got a call, and fifteen minutes later a group of hippies, a couple of guys and a girl, pressed the front buzzer, and in one of the guy’s hands was a perfectly gorgeous little, near historical Edwardian lamp.

Walking with the three towards the FM studio, I placed the lamp on the console panel counter, put on Circus Maximus’ Wind (I’ve never been good at following directions), and proceeded to take the three on a tour of the station, from Roy Hennessy’s music room, to the newsroom, into the AM studio where my friend (and best man at my wedding), the late Bren Traff was spinning discs, and then to the basement where all the jocks got together to get stoned (another story I can’t tell — well, maybe one part of it one day, involving Carol-Ann ‘Angel‘ Mulligan — who I was head over heels in love with at the time), and then back towards the entrance to the building, showing them the front offices of 1006 Richards Street, bid them adieu, and made it back to the studio just in time to put on the next record.

I pulled the chain on the lamp to turn it on, and then proceeded to turn off the overhead fluorescents. Seated back in my chair in front of the console, the room now properly lit, I noticed the lamp had dark blotches on the inside of the shade. Curious as to what those “blotches” were, I reached under the lamp and came across a very small bag that had been taped to the inside of the lamp shade. Removing the little baggie and placing it on the counter in front of me, I saw that it was a small bag of marijuana.

Hmmm, I thought to myself, as I reached under the lamp shade, and removed another baggie, this one filled with small pieces of hash. Lifting out another baggie and placing it on the counter, I saw that it contained several tabs of LSD. Eight bags in total, filled with marijuana, hashish, LSD, cocaine, and psychedelics, ranging from mescaline and magic mushrooms to LSD & peyote, a veritable pharmacological array of common 60s drugs.

And, no, I didn’t do any of those drugs during the course of my six-hour shift — although many jocks did their entire shifts high on one psychedelic or another. There’s a routinization to radio: you open the microphone, and the patter begins, the practiced way of presenting yourself on the airways, such a part of you that no matter how stoned you are, how much the room seems to be floating around you, once that microphone opens, you end up doing what you do best, the experience of the drugs serving to enhance your wit, your humour, your on air insight and your warm welcoming patter.

For years — until Cathy came along and said, “There’s no way you’re going to stay in radio hanging out with those guys. You’re going to university and that’s all there is to it” — radio played a pivotal role in my maturation, surrounded by great people, unbelievably bright and gregarious guys like Bill Reiter and Terry David Mulligan … both among the most generous, sane, and talented men I have ever met, who had my back always, as was the case with Jim Hault and Daryl B, and Douglas Miller, too — although I am sorry to report that I was not near as generous to Doug in our days at SFU, and earlier in our days in radio, as he was to me in the ten years we were close … it took me a long time to mature, and an even longer time to develop kindness and compassion as a way of bringing myself to the world.

VIFF 2020 | Films VIFF Programmer Tom Charity Recommends

September 25, 2020Arts Friday, Cinema, Vancouver, VIFF 2020Raymond Tomlin

For about a decade or so now, in addition to his responsibilities choosing and booking heart-filled, audience-pleasing films into VIFF’s gorgeously well-wrought Vancity Theatre (about which we’ll have more to say, another day), VIFF programmer Tom Charity has played a critical role in curating the film selections which make their way into the final array of international cinema that inspires and delights audiences who love our awe-inspiring Vancouver International Film Festival, now unspooling as VIFF’s glorious and transforming 39th annual — this year virtual — window on our world.
Yesterday, the affable Tom Charity began his own festival — which is to say, watching films in his modest home theatre setting, as he and his lovely bride (and family) commenced the process of “screening” VIFF films he’d not seen, but had read and heard great things about — joining with myriad VIFF aficionados, equally ready to immerse themselves deep within the gift that is our illustrious and much cherished local international film festival.
At the outset of Tom’s Facebook post, he writes about Summer of 85, Another Round, Undine and Falling, VIFF films VanRamblings had recently previewed for our readers earlier in the month, those previews (replete with trailers for the films) are available to you here and here.
Click on any of links below to be taken to the VIFF web page for that film.

My Donkey, My Lover & I (France). As the VIFF guide says, “An official selection for Cannes 2020, Caroline Vignal’s delightful movie is a breath of fresh air, blending life lessons, romance, insight and scenery.”
Plus the four Indigenous films Tom writes about on Facebook …
Inconvenient Indian

Call Me Human

Beans
Beans was for me a knock out, a heartrending, gut punch of a film, and a must-see.
Monkey Beach

We’ll leave you with the three strong films about policing and racism Tom writes about, presenting the remaining films when Tom posts again …
Women in Blue

Down a Dark Stairwell

No Visible Trauma

And finally for today, from Kashmir, The Shepherdess and the Seven Songs.

#VanPoli | Vancouver City Council | Wiebe MUST Resign | Pt. 3

September 24, 2020#VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, Politics, VancouverRaymond Tomlin

Today on VanRamblings, the third and final column on Green Party of Vancouver City Councillor, Michael Weibe, and why he must do the honourable thing, and immediately resign his position on Council.

Anything Goes | The Big Cover-Up, and the Trumpian World of the “We Will Not Be Questioned. Don’t Try” Green Party of Vancouver

Within 57 minutes, less than an hour, long serving Vancouver City Councillor Adriane Carr, following the publication of an article by Charlie Smith, the editor of The Georgia Straight, on the findings of the report of veteran municipal affairs lawyer Raymond Young, mandating that her Green Party of Vancouver City Council colleague, Michael Wiebe, must immediately vacate his office and resign from Council — arising from an egregious, self-dealing Conflict of Interest, where Mr. Young found that the Councillor had placed the interests of two businesses he owns above the interests of the citizens of Vancouver — published the tweet above.

Three-term Councillor Adriane Carr might well be seen to have adopted a “shoot the messenger” political strategy, a troubling extension of the consistently discouraging modus operandi of the U.S. President — who always goes after those who question the veracity of his character — and as is the case with Mr. Trump, the allegations she makes in her tweet are absolutely fact free, and utterly without foundation. Apparently, Councillor Carr is unfamiliar with the central tenets of Crisis Management 101.

For the record, as VanRamblings reported yesterday, when Raymond Young was brought on by City Manager Sadhu Johnston to conduct an investigation of the actions of Councillor Michael Wiebe, arising from a complaint filed by non-practicing lawyer, Michael Redmond, Mr. Wiebe readily agreed to Mr. Young taking on the role of investigator, committing to his full co-operation with the investigation.

Again, as VanRamblings published yesterday, in fact, at no point over the course of the summer did Councillor Wiebe either meet with Mr. Young, or provide answers to any of the questions submitted in writing by Mr. Young to Mr. Wiebe, nor did Councillor Wiebe provide any aid whatsoever to Mr. Young in the conduct of the Code of Conduct complaint that had been lodged against him, and Mr. Young had been hired to investigate.

As one of Councillor Wiebe’s colleagues told VanRamblings yesterday …

“Michael likes to skate by, generally poorly prepared and cavalier in his approach. Certainly, that’s what many of his colleagues in the Green Party have observed, and as Commissioners found during his tenure on Park Board, that’s the way he conducted himself throughout the 2014 – 2018 period. Seems Michael Wiebe didn’t learn very much during his first term of elected office, and if the present circumstance is any indication, still hasn’t. Michael has clearly decided that his best strategy is to hunker down, and play the innocent card. We’ll see how that works out for him.”

In her tweet above, Councillor Carr expresses concern about “no due process”, therein attacking not just the integrity of the process conducted by investigator Raymond Young, but impugning the professional reputation, character and integrity of one of Canada’s most respected jurists, as she once again adopts Donald Trump’s practice to libel the person whose opinion s/he doesn’t agree with. Councillor Carr seems to have learned her Trumpian lesson well: attack, attack, attack — City Manager, Sadhu Johnston; veteran municipal affairs lawyer and UBC professor, Raymond Young; and her colleague, Mayor Kennedy Stewart — and add libel, unrighteous indignation, and character assassination as the cherry on top.

One can only anticipate what the B.C. Supreme Court Justice who rules on the matter of whether to remove Councillor Wiebe from office will have to say, as he reads his ruling in open Court, about Vancouver City Councillor Adriane Carr’s clearly libelous, wrong-headed, & utterly self-serving tweet.

Councillor Adriane Carr is not alone in adopting Trumpian tactics, although Green Party of Vancouver School Board trustee Lois Chan-Pedley is somewhat more measured and kindly (a fan of Dr. Henry, no doubt) in her Trumpian tactics of obfuscation and misdirection (what can we say? We like being called “Raymond”, Raymond over Ray, although investigator / lawyer Raymond Young prefers Ray over Raymond — and there you have it).

VanRamblings is mightily pleased that Ms. Chan-Pedley enjoyed her Philosophy 101 course in her early days of university, and that the concept of “appeal to authority” made such an impression on her young mind. VanRamblings, too, enjoyed Philosophy 101, albeit approximately 40 years prior to Ms. Chan-Pedley, and we too retain fond memories of that most important, and even defining, academic course of study.

The above said, we believe she has inferred a fallacious syllogism.

In Logic (a central tenet of the philosophical approach to an argument), Appeal to Authority is an informal fallacy of weak induction. This fallacy occurs when someone uses the testimony of an authority in order to warrant their conclusion, but the authority appealed to is not an expert in the field in question. Tch, tch, Ms. Chan-Pedley.

Raymond E. Young, not an authority? Um.

Raymond Young studied at the University of British Columbia, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Classical Chinese Language and Literature; thereafter, Mr. Young attained a Masters Degree in Community and Regional Planning; and in 1978, a Bachelor of Laws.

Called to the bar in 1979, after articling at Lawson Lundell Lawson and Macintosh, in 1982, Mr. Young established the law firm of Baker Young & Anderson. Ray, in addition to his work as a municipal affairs lawyer, has taught at the University of British Columbia, focusing on Land Use Law in UBC’s Faculty of Law for a period of five years, spending the following decade as a Professor of Municipal Law at the university.

Named a Canada-US Fulbright Scholar, Raymond Young spent a term as visiting Scholar at Georgia State University Law School in Atlanta.

On January 17th, 2011, Raymond Young was appointed as a Queen’s Counsel; carrying the Q.C. designation is considered a mark of prestige.

Raymond Young has practicd law in British Columbia for 40 years, as a barrister and as a solicitor, acting for local governments. Mr Young continues to practice law as a municipal affairs lawyer, to this day.

And now, a bit of a digression, if you will allow such …

The Honourable Madam Justice Francesca V. Marzari of the B.C. Supreme Court

On December 29, 2017, Francesca Marzari (pictured above) was sworn in as a justice of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, before a small gathering of family members, colleagues and staff. Francesca’s mother, Darlene, was a member of The Electors Action Movement majority on Vancouver City Council between 1972 and 1980, and then a Member of the Legislative Assembly for Vancouver-Point Grey from 1986 to 1996, during which time, as Minister of Municipal Affairs, she brought in British Columbia’s innovative regional planning legislation.

The younger Ms. Mazari’s legal career was spent entirely at the prestigious law firm of Young Anderson, the British Columbia local government law boutique she joined as an articled student after clerking at the B.C. Court of Appeal, following graduation from UBC Law. At Young Anderson, she “sponged up” the intricacies of local government law from founding partners Raymond Young, Q.C., her principal, and Grant Anderson.

To answer Green Party of Vancouver Board of Education trustee Lois Chan-Pedley’s allegation that VanRamblings has engaged in an untoward and unjust “appeal to authority” in our recognition of Raymond Young — who we have known personally and professionally for 37 years, and who we know to be a person of the highest integrity, personally and in the practice of law — which is to say, that Ms. Chan-Pedley alleges that Mr. Young is not an expert in the field of municipal law … well, Ms. Chan-Pedley, we hope that yours — and your Green Party colleague, Adriane Carr’s — concerns have been both addressed and alleviated. One can only hope that when the matter proceeds to Court, as it most assuredly will, that both Ms. Carr and Ms. Chan-Pedley do not draw the ire of the Court, in questioning the professional integrity of Raymond E. Young, barrister and solicitor, long one of Canada’s most respected jurists, and a Queen’s Counsel who continues to this day his much respected practice in the field of municipal law.

Crisis Management 101. Mandatory Reading for Councillor Michael Wiebe

From the outset, the response by Councillor Michael Wiebe; the Green Party of Vancouver; Mayor Kennedy Stewart; City Manager, Sadhu Johnston; and Vancouver City Councillors has been botched. It’s almost as if these persons were completely unaware of the concept of “crisis management.”

Here’s what should have happened when Georgia Straight editor Charlie Smith published his blockbuster article last Sunday morning, and didn’t happen: an adherence to the central tenets of crisis management.

Leadership. The Mayor | When things go wrong, citizens look to leaders. At the time of a crisis, the Mayor needs to be seen to be taking charge and providing direction, to take responsibility, to offer reassurance that there will be action, that they will encourage action. They lead.

Michael Wiebe | Should have been available, acted swiftly, and in an authentic manner. Taken responsibility. Admitted mistakes. Promised to do better in the future. Have been responsive and transparent in responding to the media. Listened, and spoken with gravitas when answering questions and addressing issues, and with humility. Answered all questions that were put to him. Not lost his cool, ever. Be of the mindset that “perception is reality” — this is a question of his humanity, not necessarily of right or wrong. Disclosed all bad news up front. Never said, “no comment.”

Emphasize what he’s doing to remedy the situation in which he finds himself embroiled, as well as what preventative measures he will employ in the future, so there’s no re-occurrence of a perceived impropriety. And, under no circumstance, assess “blame” to others.

Sad to say, none of the advice above was adhered to. Michael Wiebe, the City, the Mayor, and elected Vancouver City Councillors have lost control of the narrative. Aggrieved citizens taking the matter to the British Columbia Supreme Court is, inevitably, the next logical step toward resolution of the current inauspicious circumstance involving Councillor Michael Wiebe.

There is a great deal more that VanRamblings would wish to write respecting the issue we have addressed three days of this week, how the dysfunction of our current Council has led to the current circumstance involving Councillor Wiebe, an expansion and insight into the issues Georgia Straight editor Charlie Smith published yesterday, involving the role Mayor Kennedy Stewart’s office may have played in Mr. Wiebe’s decision to vote on patio permits, the source of the current pickle in which he finds himself.

We will, however, leave these matters for the moment, with this …

The audio broadcast of the interview with Councillor Wiebe, conducted by CBC Early Edition host Stephen Quinn the morning of September 21st, where Mr. Wiebe babbles incessantly and can’t quite seem to shut up, disallowing the host from asking questions (which, most assuredly, raised Mr. Quinn’s hackles, leaving questions to be asked on another day);

Councillor Michael Wiebe’s statement in response to the recently completed Conflict of Interest probe; and …

The 39th always glorious and life-enhancing annual Vancouver International Film Festival gets underway today — that, and our current provincial election, will be VanRamblings’ focus over the coming fourteen days.

But make no mistake, Mr. Wiebe is not out of the soup with VanRamblings, not by a long shot. We’ll return to this subject again and again and again.