Opinion – Appalbarry.com

February 16, 2020February 22, 2020

It’s Too Late For Us To Fight Climate Change. Instead, Here’s How We’ll Spend Our Lives.

Published: Huffington Post
February 16, 2020
700 words

(Note to commenters: This column has generated a significant amount of email and feedback. All comments are moderated. Climate science deniers will simply be deleted and blocked. Anyone rep[lying with “OK Boomer” will be asked for a 1000 words explaining how they came to that assessment.)

Last year was when the endless bush fires in Australia convinced me and my wife, Susan, that climate change was unstoppable. It’s also when we realized that we likely will avoid seeing the worst of the climate emergency.

At 64 and 74 years of age, my wife and I believe there’s a good chance that we’ll be gone before coastal cities are flooded, the ice caps have melted, and the planet descends into a “Mad Max” dystopia. We would like to think that this isn’t what the future has in store, but the intransigence of almost all governments to actually slow carbon emissions leaves little doubt that things are unlikely to turn around.

One of the things that age gives you is a sense of history, a feeling that you’ve seen patterns repeat and that you can see where things are heading in the near future. Over and over again, we’ve seen corporations and governments ignore the people they should protect in order to line their own pockets. What has changed now is that they’re sacrificing an entire planet instead of a town or a country. I would like to believe that the younger people marching with Greta Thunberg could change that, but honestly I can’t see it happening.

Do we need CanCon for print media?

Published: Friends of Canadian Broadcasting (En français aussi)
February 4, 2020
1211 words

The Canadian content regulations established by the CRTC in 1971 played a major part in building our homegrown music industry. What would happen if we applied those principles to Canada’s news media sector?

In my hometown of Kelowna, B.C., in 1970, you bought your records at the Music Box store on Ellis Street. Each week you’d travel downtown to choose from the new 45s and albums that you’d heard on the local radio station. And while you were there you’d pick up the latest list of the top 30 records being played on Vancouver’s powerhouse station CKLG.

Looking at those old charts today, you’d be struck by one thing: aside from an occasional appearance by Anne Murray or the Guess Who, you would almost never see a Canadian artist in the Top 30. The charts were dominated by American and English musicians. The assumption at CKLG, and among its listeners, was that popular music came from those places, not from Canada.

Because there was little airplay for our musicians, there was also very little recording industry infrastructure in Canada. Becoming successful in music back then meant going to the U.S. to record, work and live. Today, by contrast, it’s hard to keep track of all of the Canadian artists who enjoy successful careers here and abroad. Everyone from Drake on down is able to record here and build a global profile without leaving the country. That wouldn’t have happened without Canadian content regulations.

Read the full article.

December 23, 2019February 22, 2020

My mother gave her children the magic of Christmas. I’m proud she had the courage

Published: Guardian (Australia)
December 24, 2019
815 words

Christmas Tree — Photograph: Holly Anissa Photography/Getty Images

Excerpt from the article:

The most amazing thing about our Christmas was that it even happened, and that it was a wonderful day year after year. My mother claimed that Christmas was “for the kids, not the adults” but the truth was that this was the one day of the year that she protected from my father’s interference. It is only years later that I realise just how hard that must have been.

My parents were married in 1952. They were both just 24 years of age, and my father had been widowed only six months earlier. His first wife had killed herself by walking in front of a train, leaving behind her husband and her infant child, my half-brother.

I do not know whether that trauma was the cause of my father’s psychosis, or whether her suicide was the result of something that had been with him throughout his life, but I do know that he was a desperately unhappy man. I grew up never knowing affection or approval, and my mother’s life was even bleaker.

Read the full article.

November 5, 2019December 31, 2019

DNV Council – For The Birds?

This week the municipal council of the District of North Vancouver voted to prohibit the keeping of pigeons in the District. Or, more specifically, they voted to prohibit the keeping of pigeons by one resident.

Even that wouldn’t have particularly bothered me, except that the homeowner in question, Kulwant Dulay, happens to live next to the sole person complaining to the District about his pigeons – District council member Betty Forbes.

CBC reports that Dulay says he’s lived in the District of North Vancouver for 25 years and, for most of them, he’s kept homing pigeons on his property in a coop in the backyard, without ruffling any feathers. Only when he moved in next to Forbes three years ago did this become a problem.

The biggest concern with this story has to be the way that the District and Forbes very explicitly didn’t name her as the complainant, or discuss why a new bylaw was needed to deal with her complaint. It seems that only when CBC filed an FOI request did the truth emerge. There’s now a suggestion that Forbes was in clear conflict of interest.

Perhaps ironically, the previous council actually brought in rules that allow people to keep chickens in their back yards.

Postscript: Justin McElroy has a great Twitter thread recounting this saga. Including this gem in the comments:

October 15, 2019May 8, 2020

The Chinese media prepared me for the Canadian election

Published: Friends of Canadian Broadcasting (En français aussi)
October 15, 2019
1277 words

Donald Trump’s trade war with China was in full swing when we left for China. Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou had been arrested at a Canadian airport, and two Canadians had been detained in China. By the time we left it was July and the Canadian government was warning us to “Exercise a high degree of caution in China due to the risk of arbitrary enforcement of local laws.”

The trip was wonderful, and we came away with a much greater understanding of China and the Chinese people, and with an appreciation for how little we knew about the history, culture and government of the country.

The most striking thing about living in what is undeniably a police state was the iron grip that government has on the news media. Since the average person in China isn’t likely to use a VPN to access foreign media, most people see and read only what the Communist party wants them to see and read.

… When we returned home, I was truly looking forward to returning to my regular media diet of Twitter, Facebook and our local newspapers. Instead, I was shocked to realize that the Canadian news landscape was far too much like the Chinese one we had just left behind. The only difference was that the control was by corporate interests instead of the government.

Full article here.

October 6, 2019October 15, 2019

Show Me The Way To Go Home

Published: PriceTags.ca
October 6, 2019
300 words

What is this — a café? A library? A corner store?

Unless you regularly travel by transit to Langara College or the Alliance Française, you’re forgiven for not recognising this as the 49th and Langara Skytrain station. This photo was taken from the west side of Cambie Street looking east on 49th Avenue.

And unless you’re standing in front and looking directly at the entrance, there’s no way to identify this as an essential part of urban infrastructure.

Where’s local news in the Facebook age?

Published: Friends of Canadian Broadcasting (En français aussi)
August 6, 2019
1233 words

The Liberal government’s newspaper bailout will undoubtedly help big media players like Postmedia or The Toronto Star, but it will likely have little to offer the hundreds of smaller local newspapers in Canada. As many of these community newspapers shrink in size or get closed down entirely, a lot of Canadians are finding that the only remaining place to find out what’s happening in their hometown is Facebook.

July 9, 2019July 21, 2019

Notes from a Podcast: The North Shore’s Grand Bargain

Published: PriceTags.ca
July 9, 2019
658 words

(many thanks to the Price Tags crew for allowing space for this essay.)

During the Q&A that followed the Price Tags taping at the North Vancouver District Public Library moderator Gordon Price asked Holly Back, a member of the City of North Vancouver council, how she felt about the “bargain” that had been struck between the City and the District.

The bargain is straightforward: the City will build lots of new housing, more than a thousand new rental units, and low income and supportive housing, while the District will do nothing, in order to preserve a suburban community of single family detached homes.

As the City grows, the District will remain unwelcoming—to both outsiders and population growth.

The current District council is smug in its determination to block all new development, and openly hostile to developers, but I suspect they’re fooling themselves if they think this is a triumph. By refusing to approve any development, and asking staff for help in shaming council members who accepted developer contributions, the District is trying to preserve the type of community that was popular a half-century ago; one with suburban houses, big shopping malls, and a complete dependence on cars for transportation.

Meanwhile, the City is densifying, diversifying, and creating a twenty-first century municipality that acknowledges these changing demographics, as well as the looming threat of climate change.

While the District is chasing away projects that would offer services and housing to seniors, the disabled, and the low income workers that drive the retail sector, the City is welcoming them with open arms.

Already you can see and feel the difference. The lower half of Lonsdale Street—especially near the Shipyards and Seabus terminal—is alive with new development. A new Whole Foods store has opened, and a flurry of new businesses, restaurants, and services have appeared that are supported by the rising population. Equally noteworthy is the sense that it’s a young population moving in, with different priorities and different spending patterns. Compared to Lynn Valley where we live, it’s a community—alive and vibrant. There are even people on the streets after nine o-clock on a weeknight.

The feeling that the City is younger is in fact supported by the 2016 census; the City’s population is growing at a rate several times faster than the District, and much of that growth is in people in their prime earning years. That working age population represents a bigger percentage of the City’s residents, than the District, and it skews younger too. While the District’s population currently has more children and teens, by adulthood they’ll join the “missing middle” — younger working adults who can no longer afford to live in the District. Meanwhile, the District is left with a surplus of people at or approaching retirement age.

What hasn’t been discussed by the new District council is what all of this holds for the future. As the City adds housing, and population, and density, it will also grow its tax base and its economic activity.

Building housing will allow the City to grab the lion’s share of Federal and Provincial funding that has become available. More people will mean more spending, more jobs, and more vitality and resilience. A population that is younger and more diverse will create a city that can see new opportunities, and find new solutions to the problems faced by any municipality in the Lower Mainland. And of course, more density will encourage TransLink to improve transit services.

And the District? As the population ages into retirement ,the incomes that support local businesses will decline. As council insists that they only want two million dollar single family homes, they’ll see young people and young families choosing to live in the City. Those people will be looking south, towards the galleries, and shopping, and excitement of Lower Lonsdale and Vancouver, and eventually won’t even think about the District as a place to live or visit.

While the City thrives, the District will just fade away, becoming less relevant with every year.

October 1, 2018March 15, 2019

Building Bridges: A new political party in the DNV

Published: The Global Canadian (pdf)
October 1, 2018
420 words

There are two reasons why Building Bridges chose this year to launch a new political party in the District of North Vancouver. The first and most obvious is that in a town where incumbency almost always equals re-election the retirements of Richard Watson, Doug Mackay-Dunn, and Roger Bassam opened up the field.

When Council members run time after time it can be hard for newcomers to overcome the advantages of name recognition, healthy campaign funds, and a basement full of campaign signs.

The second reason for the launch of this new party is disaffection with the status quo. As Building Bridges mayoral candidate Ash Amlani says, “We’re tired of seeing the same old same old and we know that the challenges we face won’t be solved by voting for more of the same.”

The slate includes two experienced local politicians, incumbent DNV councillor Mathew Bond and long-time Tsleil-Waututh council member Carleen Thomas. Bond is a Transportation Engineer, avid biker, and devoted family man. Thomas is an educator and has served for sixteen years on the Tsleil-Waututh band council. Both Bond and Thomas want to see a lot more affordable and rental housing in the District.

Joining them is political newcomer Sameer Parekh, a marketing manager at BCAA. Along with the overall Building Bridges platform he supports the Maplewood Innovation District and the housing that it would deliver. Running for School Board is Devon Bruce, who describes himself as a “dedicated professional in special education with over a decade of varied experience in the field.”

Much of the Building Bridges platform echos the incumbents running again this year, with housing and transportation topping the list. “We need to make sure that people who work in North Vancouver can afford to live here.” Amlani says. She describes a generation of young people who are “frustrated with the inability to stay in the region.” Helping those people means more density, and more purpose-built rental stock. The group also sees improved transit service and bike infrastructure as essential to serving the local population and reducing traffic congestion.

The North Shore sometimes has a reputation for being insular, or resistant to change, and there is a part of the population who are vocal in their opposition to population growth. Building Bridges wants voters to look beyond their own neighbourhoods. “There’s a global demand for change,” says Amlani, “information moves quickly, global capital moves quickly, work styles have evolved. People are looking for government that is able to respond to those changes, that can be resilient.”

https://www.buildingbridgesnv.ca/

Continue reading “Building Bridges: A new political party in the DNV”

July 20, 2018March 15, 2019

CACs: Track the money that funds the heart and soul of the District

Published: The Global Canadian (pdf)
July 12, 2018
850 words

Sewer Pipe — Photo by: eutrophication&hypoxia

“My favourite thing about living in Lynn Valley are the excellent storm sewers!”

I’ve never said that, and neither have you. The reasons for living here are always the mountains and trees, or maybe the library and the music outside in the plaza. For some of us it’s the Panto at St Martin’s Hall, biking the trails on Mount Fromme, or just enjoying the dogs playing in Princess Park.

If the roads and sewers and water pipes are the bones and sinew of North Vancouver, all of these other things are the heart and soul of our community. They are the things that get people out of their houses and cars and bring them together to enjoy the place where we live. They’re also the things that are too easily sidelined as “frills” or “luxuries.” Continue reading “CACs: Track the money that funds the heart and soul of the District”